General > General Technical Chat

Power Failures! In the year 2020 !!

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Gregg:

--- Quote from: Berni on May 11, 2020, 05:30:34 am ---We have a 12kW solar array but the way it works with the particular power company we use is that you only pay for the difference in kWh between the generated and used power. But if you generate more than you use they won't pay you for it and you give them the power for free. So you can't actually make money from the solar power, but it does grantee a 1:1 buy/sell rate for you. To be able to actually sell power here, then you need some extra paperwork cause you need to be a company to do that.

But it does work out pretty well overall. Its similar to having a off grid setup except that the power company instead provides you with a "battery array" with infinite capacity and zero maintenance in the form of the power grid. Real battery arrays big enough to cover the daily usage of a typical full sized house are not cheap so its a pretty good deal. But you don't get any of the battery backup functionality since if the grid is down so is your solar setup. But the grid appears pretty reliable here apart from a few extreme cases here or there, i only have one UPS and its a dinky little one that i got a few years ago to gently shut down my NAS server in a potential power failure. Nothing else is on UPS cause power failures are so rare.

--- End quote ---

This sounds reasonably fair if the KWH is averaged over a year.  If it averages every 24 hours it doesn't sound like a very good deal for the consumer.

Berni:

--- Quote from: Gregg on May 11, 2020, 05:03:32 pm ---
--- Quote from: Berni on May 11, 2020, 05:30:34 am ---We have a 12kW solar array but the way it works with the particular power company we use is that you only pay for the difference in kWh between the generated and used power. But if you generate more than you use they won't pay you for it and you give them the power for free. So you can't actually make money from the solar power, but it does grantee a 1:1 buy/sell rate for you. To be able to actually sell power here, then you need some extra paperwork cause you need to be a company to do that.

But it does work out pretty well overall. Its similar to having a off grid setup except that the power company instead provides you with a "battery array" with infinite capacity and zero maintenance in the form of the power grid. Real battery arrays big enough to cover the daily usage of a typical full sized house are not cheap so its a pretty good deal. But you don't get any of the battery backup functionality since if the grid is down so is your solar setup. But the grid appears pretty reliable here apart from a few extreme cases here or there, i only have one UPS and its a dinky little one that i got a few years ago to gently shut down my NAS server in a potential power failure. Nothing else is on UPS cause power failures are so rare.

--- End quote ---

This sounds reasonably fair if the KWH is averaged over a year.  If it averages every 24 hours it doesn't sound like a very good deal for the consumer.

--- End quote ---

Yep the line is drawn at the end of the year. So it works out pretty good.

Especially since we heat the house using a heatpump. So a crap ton of power is used during the winter, but the solar is generating a crap ton of power during the summer. So they are pretty nice for holding on to that exess power for half a year.

Not sure how the finances work out on there side for this. But they are a company that just resell power, they don't maintain any of the power infrastructure. Mostly started off with them striking a deal with the nuclear plant for cheep power and then selling it off to households at a cheaper rate than the usual power company. So they don't really have any concerns with keeping the grid healthy. Later on they started offering these solar deals and i guess this just means they have to buy less power from that nuclear plant.

Red Squirrel:
My fear with solar taking off is the government will eventually tax it to the point that you don't save by going solar.  They don't like it when people find ways to save money, and they want their cut.   Hopefully it does not happen but I would not put it past them tbh.

Electro Detective:

Everyone I know with solar prayer panels is going to lose money in the long run after doing some rough math,
as well as the current stress of gearing their lives around the peak and off peak thing

Those panels and electronics will need to be replaced one day,
one day after the first lot finally just got paid off  |O

Solar panels charging batteries sounds like a better goer than just playing the grid game bs,
it's stored power you can use any time running it through the sine wave inverter

I'll wait a while longer and DIY a decent rig, once the prices get real methinks..


Berni:
Yeah saving money with solar is pretty iffy

Dad wanted to get into this solar thing and with all the batteries involved it didn't quite make sense. Especially since it would be difficult to make use of all the excess power in summer. So the idea was abandoned.

Its only once this power reselling company offered this new way of just trading your generated kWh for consumed kWh 1:1 making them a free infinite capacity battery that it started making sense. On top of this there are some subsidies for this to help reduce the initial investment. But even after this its still not that terrific of an investment, but it does pay back well within the expected lifetime of the system.

If we are trying to be nice to the environment then id say just build more nuclear plants.

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