900 tanks of (electrons)

Our home's solar roof has made about 45 MWh of electrons, which we pushed into the grid (and pulled back out). For electric vehicles with 50 MWh batteries, that's 900 tanks, or 900 fillups, from our roof, in its first four years.

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    - Win
Reply to
Winfield Hill
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If it has a 50MWh battery it's not even 1 tank.

I think you meant to say 50kWh.

\pedant

Reply to
Andy Bennet

Winfield Hill wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@drn.newsguy.com:

Tanks a lot.

Reply to
DecadentLinuxUserNumeroUno

Right, that'd be 0.9 tank. Or 4.4 years/tank.

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 Thanks, 
    - Win
Reply to
Winfield Hill

I assume you meant 50 kWh battery capacity.

Assuming 6 km/kWh consumption, with a single fill up, you could drive

300 km or 270 000 km total or 68 000 km/year or 185 km each day..
Reply to
upsidedown

snipped-for-privacy@downunder.com wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

What? I can't power a laser or railgun from my car? Damn!

Reply to
DecadentLinuxUserNumeroUno

tirsdag den 10. december 2019 kl. 10.32.57 UTC+1 skrev Winfield Hill:

or you postponed the powerplant burning a bit of coal until you pulled it out again ;)

Reply to
Lasse Langwadt Christensen

Lasse Langwadt Christensen wrote in news:a1cbc19f- snipped-for-privacy@googlegroups.com:

Hill:

Oh No! Don't pull it out! (That's what she said).

She said "Don't!... Stop!... Don't!... Stop!

I am not sure what she meant.

Reply to
DecadentLinuxUserNumeroUno

The most energy-efficient use of a car as a weapon is to crash it into the target.

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

lunatic fringe electronics
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Reply to
jlarkin

What was the actual cost of the solar roof? Including maintenance...

Dollars per tankful might prove illuminating.

John ;-#)#

Reply to
John Robertson

John Robertson wrote in news:T- snipped-for-privacy@giganews.com:

maintenance...

So might the term "amortize".

Reply to
DecadentLinuxUserNumeroUno

Over how long a period? What did it cost, installed?

At 15 cents per KWH, the energy was worth $6800.

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 
picosecond timing   precision measurement  
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Reply to
John Larkin

I spent $34k for an 8.5kW system. I got $10k back from the IRS** (dems made deal with repubs, who got to export oil and natural gas), about $10k back in SREC coins so far (auctioned off to power companies), and saved about $8k on my electric bills so far. $6k more to amortize, 1.5 more years. Maintenance costs so far, zero. Expected lifetime, 20 more years. We have two spare panels and a microinverter in the basement.

Electricity in NE costs about $0.20 / kWh, thanks to a New England consolidation deal, forcing us to pay for needed NY & Long Island transmission lines.

** The 30% IRS rebate drops to 26% in 2020, 22% in 2021, then 10%, get yours while the getting is good.
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 Thanks, 
    - Win
Reply to
Winfield Hill

Winfield Hill wrote in news:qsp36401tr4 @drn.newsguy.com:

Cool stuff.

Reply to
DecadentLinuxUserNumeroUno

If it's a Tesla, the automatic emergency braking may well prevent any injuries to the intended target, which will be very satisfying, and hopefully very frustrating for the would-be perpetrator.

Reply to
Chris Jones

Sorry you talked a little to fast for me. $10k from the IRS, I assume that was a tax credit? $10k back in SREC coins, That is a different $10k, can you explain SREC? $8k of electricity you would have bought but were supplied by your panels. $6k more to amortize, 1.5 years. I get the $6k left but what is the relationship to 1.5 years? How long ago did the solar panels start producing electricity.

My only beef is the taxpayers are footing the bill for 59% of the cost. If I understand correctly. Solar still can't stand on it's own. I wish it could, I want it to.

Mikek

Reply to
amdx

The panels will have been producing 4 years, 11 days from now. SRECs are Solar Renewable Energy Credits. We get an SREC "coin" minted for every 1 MWh produced by the panels, no matter who consumes the power. A separate production meter keeping track of that. The minted SRECs are auctioned to power companies; we pay a 5% fee. Power companies use them to help fulfill state-mandated green production requirements.

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35 states have Renewable Portfolio Standards, 17 have specific mandated solar carve-outs, and 7 utilize SRECs. Mass just made changes, and new systems now use a different scheme.
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 Thanks, 
    - Win
Reply to
Winfield Hill

$4 per peak watt for the entire system, installed. The current cost of panels is roughly $0.23 US per peak watt in container lots of 2400 265 watt panels, and falling. 4 decades ago panels were over $23 per watt and the accepted analysis was that they would not be economically practical until they reached $2 per watt. Anyone who claimed that the price would drop two orders of magnitude in 4 decades was deemed a hopeless dreamer.

The $0.23 per watt figure is what was paid for a container of panels last summer by Tanzsolar, a company run by someone I know which is selling an average of 80 3-panel solar well pump systems per month to market farmers in rural Tanzania, where there are no plans to extend the electric grid. A solar well pump costs ~$2000 US in 18 monthly payments, installed in the customers existing well bore with a 2-year warranty for on site service to fix any failure. Users often report more additional income than the monthly payments while they are still paying for the system because of the ability to keep crops alive during dry spells and the ability to produce during the dry season when prices are higher. The existing alternatives, generator or hand powered well pumps, are impractical for crop irrigation for cost or flow reasons, and having the pump run only when the sun shines works pretty well for irrigation. (A tank is required for water at other times, since no one makes a battery which works adequately at 40 C.)

Widespread deployment of solar power to the millions of market farmers in Africa has the potential to at least double agricultural output, which currently runs at about 1/18th the yield per acre we get in the US. China's ability to sell every panel they can crank out from their modern factories has been unaffected by the tariffs which are allowing US producers to milk every last bit of cash out of our obsolete old factories while we fall further behind in a technology we created.

Solar might not stand on it's own where you live, but in most of the rest of the world it is doing pretty well, and doing better every year.

Glen

Reply to
glen walpert

The production was 45 MWh in 4 years or 1.3 kW as an annual average, thus the capacity factor was 15 %.

During this 4 year period the cost was $0.76 / kWh. To get down to the $0.20 / kWh utility price, 15 years without maintenance is required. If the system lifetime is 20 years and some maintenance is needed, the investment is questionable.

Which us $26 / W on average production.

How much electricity does a container full of solar panels produce even if you open the container door ? Even taking out the panels from the container and install them in some meaningful way at some cost, but you still should factor in the site dependent capacity factor, the price per average watt is many times higher in order to compare with other energy sources.

Reply to
upsidedown

A couple years ago, I bought a pallet of 300+ watt panels for 30 something cents per watt. I suppose there are deals still at even lower cost if you look around.

If you are building an off grid house where utilities can't be had, solar can make a LOT of sense VERY quickly. Still have to have a generator for times when the sun doesn't shine.

If you have some decent head, water wise, even small-ish micro hydro works wonders too. Even small wind if you know what you are doing and do it right.

Combine 2 or 3 of these and you'll be in great shape energy wise. Nothing beats solar PV for simplicity and cost and low maintenance.

If you're living in the city and on-grid with 5 to 20 cents per kW-Hour or so, then you can do it to "feel good" if you really want to now that subsidies are starting to go away.

I'd have just a few modules keeping a battery charged for backup myself, but that's just me.

Reply to
boB

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