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John Weiland wrote:The impact here with our rural coop in Minnesota is not so much the rate of pay-back for excess power generated. It's that connection fees (billed monthly) are beginning to creep up at a worrisome rate. I'm not sure what their rate for adding grid-intertie to the mix is just now, but even without it, our current connection fee is over $60 per month, even if we were to not draw any power from them during that month. I understand that such fees are necessary to maintain the grid for all, but will have to weigh this as a factor in the homestead economics. What I certainly do like and appreciate is the greater affordability, on-site power storability, generation efficiency, and plug-n-play nature of modern solar offerings. It comes with a re-education for the homeowner to be sure, but the potential for a bit more power independence is sizable.
One question for you in Canada without getting lost in the weeds too much of particulars: Does Canada as a country or the Provinces (or cities/counties) provide financial incentives for solar/alternative power installation by homeowners? A useful swath our tax incentives in the US have disappeared under the current government....could well come back after changes occur in that realm...but i'm curious as to whether or not home power generation up there is seen somewhat in the same light as health care, where the costs of the service are distributed across residents in a different way between the two nations. Thanks....and appreciative of these discussion points from both of you...for solar especially, so nice to hear how those in northern climes are balancing the summer power generation with winter deficits and working out affordable plans with grid power providers.
Mike, when I went down that rabbit hole I came to the conclusion unless you were gifted with large volumes of waste oil it was not worth it. The listers are technically illegal to import, really expensive, and in continuous need of fiddling. If I was doing it I'd filter better and use a modern rig. The difficulties and cost of waste oil led me to the charcoal gasification world but even then the cost of solar panels and drop in price of lithium storage made all of it seem like a fun hobby but not worth the time. Maybe I got too busy, hard to say. If you want to dive in check out Drive on wood They are primarily a wood gasification site but a lot of them do used veg oil, charcoal gasification, stirlings, steam, you name it.Mike Haasl wrote:I hear fossil fuels are getting harder to come by so I figured I'd bump this thread :)
I haven't made any progress but my thoughts have evolved a bit...
If I were to do it today, I'm thinking I'd go with a Lister, put it out in the greenhouse in a sound enclosure. It's heat will help heat the greenhouse. Maybe I could do something with the exhaust heat too. Per at least one video I watched, the Lister could run 24/7/365 and idle when not needed. This would keep the WVO warm and it's so efficient it wouldn't waste much oil. This would also mean I could skip the battery bank :) I would probably want some batteries to give a buffer and handle surge loads but they could be in the warmth near the Lister as well. All of this would go on my personal grid at the 95amp sub panel in the greenhouse. So the cost would just be the Lister, a tiny battery bank and the controller and inverter.
Brilliant? Dumb?
I also have an electrician friend who bought a Lister to use as a back up generator so I may have a local experiment to lean upon. And an electrician to help...
the only thing that really matters at the size you are talking is to make sure to design around an mppt charger and dont lock yourself into a 12 volt system. The mono vs poly debate played itself out and the market decided mono won hands down. The only thing poly had going for it was lower cost and the price of panels kept dropping to the point that poly's advantage disappeared. They still exist from secondary manufacturers but I would never put one into my builds. Racking, labour and space are what counts now not panel cost.Ethan Bell wrote:Hi folks, new here. Been lurking for a while reading the energy threads and finally getting serious about designing the solar setup for my small cabin build. I keep going back and forth between mono and poly.
I came across a nice selection of monocrystalline solar panel options while pricing things out and the efficiency numbers look great on paper, but I wanted to ask folks with actual boots-on-the-ground experience - is the extra cost over poly really worth it for a small cabin system (say 1-2 kW)?
The argument I keep seeing is that mono performs better in low light and has smaller footprint which matters on a small cabin roof. But some older threads here suggest poly is still plenty good for the money if you have roof space to spare.
Anyone switched from poly to mono (or vice versa) and noticed a real difference? Mostly running lights, small fridge, laptop, maybe a well pump eventually.
Douglas Campbell wrote:I agree with David.
The market is changing quickly.
3 years ago we installed grid-tie solar in Nova Scotia with 1:1 kWh exchange with the utility; send a kWh on a sunny day, take a kWh in the dark.
At the end of the year any positive balance in our favour is zeroed out.
So 3 years ago our system was sized at ~85% of our consumption, to avoid 'losing' power to the utility.
But today my neighbour's new system is sized at 101% of consumption, because panels are so cheap that 'losing' a few percent to the utility is negligible.
10 of 36 houses in our little neighbourhood now have grid-tie installs, with a payback of ?8-9? years.
5 years ago in New Brunswick the deal was similar, except the utility sold us power, charging tax, but forced us to pay the 'tax' to return power to them. 15% each way made the deal less favourable.
As batteries drop in price, total offgrid becomes progressively more attractive.
John, I see articles like this as a good sign. Solar is now so successful that utilities have to start treating it as a regular producer not as a feel good greenwashing effort. As the price of panels and storage keeps dropping system sizes keep increasing and utilities feel they need to stop paying people retail rates. The norm is becoming no financial exchange at all you just exchange kwhrs with the utility not money. Thats how they work it in ontario. It keeps the system sizes down to what you actually use instead of milking what is a subsidy program when you think of it. California recently dropped their pay in rate to remove profit from the equation. My view is having access to the grid for seasonal surplusses is a huge incentive and should be enough. More than meeting your needs and you are a business and should be treated as such.John Weiland wrote:Saw this come across the wire today....the link appears to be open access. Although one can dispute the 'Permie-ness' level of the attempts at solar-for-profit of those involved, I don't ever recall (1) the past law requiring that the power being generated needs to offset what would have been purchased from a rural power coop in the absence of the alternative power source, nor (2) the notion that rural power cooperatives are exempt from the jurisdiction of the state Public Utilities Commission. I realize many states do not have Net Metering for grid-interconnected power that the residence sells back to the utility, but for those that do, does this sound wonky compared to your own state laws? Certainly I'm aware of many state private and cooperative utility power producers looking to weaken or eliminate Net Metering and am wondering if this is being illustrated in the article.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/renville-county-farm-field-battle-223600182.html
Nancy Reading wrote:
Jay Angler wrote:I can't imagine how people cope. We just had 60 km/h gusts the other day and I'm still cleaning up the chaos and will be for at least a week. That's baby wind compared to a hurricane.
We get storms of about 90 mph most winters (still short of hurricanes - that is a bit more unusual) If you get it all the time the infrastructure and environment get used to it - if not they fail....that's what I want to avoid too. There is no point in forking out hundreds (or thousands) of pounds and having the panels sail away into the Loch. Also the constant battering of lesser winds (temperature fluctuations are less of an issue here, but appear to be huge in parts of the USofA), might lead to fatigue issues too.
That's good what you say about the panels lasting reasonably well these days Michael. All the technology seems so confusing it's difficult to know what might be best.
they have on staff engineering as well.
r ransom wrote:
If we were further north or used high efficiency panels, angle matters more. But, those panels don't work here from the middle of October to the start of may, so there's no point changing the angle for winter. There is not enough sunlight for the panels no matter how perfectly they are angled. The world is too overcast.
So type of panels is a big part answering the question if it's worth changing the angle.
Personally, I find there is so much solar power information that is useless to my situation, the best thing to do is experiment before investing in a full roof installment.
As a side note, it used to be suggested that the angle of the roof follow the latitude too. This helps with rain, snow, and passive heating and cooling. But we don't do that so often anymore.
most of my work is off grid or grid tied with batteries in rural areas. At 45 degree latitude I almost always go with a 45 degree fixed angle ground mount due to costs, regulation, snow and year round efficiency. If you were only net metering, a roof angle of 4-6/12 is ideal as it maximizes yearly returns but by the time you get engineering on the roof, municipal permits to modify the structure and you factor in increased insurance costs and loss to snow cover the production gain and cost savings of roof mount are gone here. Adjustable racks are more expensive than fixed as well so with the price of panels you just add panels to a fixed angle to compensate. That is where my thinking is these days.Douglas Campbell wrote:Hi;
The standard recommendation for solar panel angle is your latitude;
ex. 45 latitude; 45 angle from horizontal
Panels work best when perpendicular to the suns rays, so 45 from horizontal is a
a compromise between summer (45 + 23 = 68) high angle sun with optimal panel angle of 22 from horizontal, vs.
winter (45-23 = 22) low angle sun with optimal panel angle of 68 from horizontal.
But I do not think the latitude angle works best for typical situations.
i) Grid tie: This depends upon the utility deal.
My jurisdiction pays 1:1 for energy exchange, cand cancels any excess export above consumption to 0 at the end of the year.
I should maximize annual production up to consumption, at minimum capital cost.
In my climate that means a lower panel angle, towards summer optimum, because that maximizes annual production per panel & racking.
Coincidentally, bungalow roofs are less than 45, and so approximate a good summer angle for 1:1 grid tie.
From the utility point of view, they would prefer me to maximize winter production when demand is higher here; eventually regulations will likely push that way.
ii) Summer use off grid: similar to grid tie; optimize near the summer angle to minimize investment in panels & racking required.
iii) Year round off grid: panels near winter angle will maximize scarce winter production, and shed snow better.
The cost of panels is now low, so 'wasting' panels in summer is not a big detriment.
But panels need racks, and rack costs have not decreased, even if home built.
so, there are a lot of variables. One thing i would try to figure out is if you are better off getting a second charge controller or upgrading your all in one to a larger unit that has more mppt capacity. Sell off the old one to help offset the cost. If you upgrade try for one with closed loop communication to get the most out of your panels and your battery. As to brands; that changes depending on where you are in the world. Most of the higher voltage chargers are made by two or three chinese companies then are rebranded into dozens of different names. I stick to gear that has been certified to a certain standard but it adds cost. As to losses the ways the all in one units work means you will burn 50-100 watts per hour just keeping it running. The mppt adds very little to that. Its the inverter portion of the unit that uses most of the stand by losses. Good luck on the journey.Ahmet Oguz Akyuz wrote:Hi David,
I am using Lithium (LiFePO4 to be specific) at 48V. The battery box has a BMS in it and I can monitor the individual cells (there are 16 of them) using an app. But the inverter has no communication with the BMS -- it is an hybrid inverter rated at 6.2 kW. So I think my inverter is already relying on the global battery voltage readings from the poles of the battery. Is this a problem?
If I add a second charge controller, which in the mean-time I realized to be quite an expensive option, it would also connect to the battery poles directly and would sample the battery voltage from there. But I will make sure to enter the same battery settings for the existing inverter and the new MPPT.
I do have a question regarding the MPPT choice. Given that my panel specs are 320W-410W 32V-40V 7.7A-10A and I will connect 6 of these in series, can you recommend me a budget-friendly MPPT that will work with them. Victron models are unfortunately very expensive.
Also, I noticed that inverters can consume non-negligible battery capacity at night. The aforementioned 6.2 kW inverter easily eats up around 15% of my 100 Ah battery. Do you know if charge controllers also consume such capacity?
Thanks.