I thought that was already the case in California.
Plus, if you live someplace prone to power outages, wouldn't you want the battery?
California slashes residential solar feed-in rates
- Thread starter OVERKILL
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Plus, if you live someplace prone to power outages, wouldn't you want the battery?
OVERKILL
$100 Site Donor 2021
I saw you were in Maryland, so was basing it on that, where I assume rates are reasonable.
A genset is more economically sensible than batteries, so there's that. @UncleDave has a bit genset at his place for that reason (unreliable power in Cali).
I would want solar and batteries and a genset if I lived in California or Florida.
The thing with batteries and solar is that you will be hard pressed to get it installed and not connected to the grid. Not sure if you would be able to get the permits for that either.
And if it is connected to the grid, and the grid goes down, it will shut down solar to prevent back feeding.
To make it work properly as a backup, one would have to DIY.
If you have batteries, there is the option to keep the solar on and disconnect from the grid.
There's even an option with Enphase to allow the solar to stay on in a power outage WITHOUT batteries (but you only get about 1/5 of your array capacity, from the video I saw--and how often does the power go out when the sun is shining, assuming that your power company is NOT Dominion Virginia Power?)
Both of these require an additional switch (similar to a transfer switch like that used with generators).
Where you live in the state has a lot to do with just what does or doesnt make sense.
If you live in an area with water and sewer service, (read in, or close to a city) a battery is great.
You can keep your fridges powered and shower or use a toilet, or water any animals you might have until the power comes back on, maybe even run a small window shaker for a bit when it's hot, maybe. Or you can run a small genny and get by for a long time on a 5er of gas.
If you have to pump your own water to live the battery becomes useless almost instantly and you need a stout generator.
I have to run three water pumps, a well, a septic transfer pump (these two need to run concurrently), and an irrigation pump.
If you have livestock to water, or you are acting as a safety refuge from fire for others animals and the power is out for days- you and your animals are dead without water. It would take a small shed full of batteries to do what I do with a 20KW genset and even at that they wouldn't do it for very long.
During the last big fire, I had employees/friends goats, sheep, horses and cows on my small 1.5 acre plot and they all really like water.
I can relate to that. The province of Alberta in Canada runs mostly on natural gas. Unlike most of the other provinces, hydro is not much of an option. Oil and Gas was our bread and butter. I can't talk about politics but the plan is to demonize O&G workers.
It depends. I have a well. Variable speed pump. It consumes about 800W with one faucet open. I can run it off an inverter and a deep cycle marine battery.
Septic system has pumps, but it can be off for several days (it has in the past due to a failed UV bulb, waiting for parts, so I turned it off so it wouldn't pump to the drainfield) before the tank fills.
Even then these pumps only consume about 1500 watts and only run for a few minutes at a time.
Batteries are big bucks. The idea of CA blackouts is overblown, depending on where you live. The last unplanned outage I can remember was in the early 1990's and they lasted less than a couple of hours as I recall. Now other areas can be a different story.
So you aren't expecting it to get any worse?
And I was thinking more along the lines of a multi day outage due to a hurricane or snowstorm.
Well, I don't have a crystal ball, so I can't say. If there have been no blackouts for over 20 years, then yes, odds are something will happen. You cannot beat 100% up-time.
There are no hurricanes and snowstorms here but there are earthquakes; Loma Prieta was a doozey.
I would worry more about PG&E than anything else.
Sure does, there are lots of variables. My irrigation pump alone is a 2000 watt load.
The VF pumps are great, I particularly like Grundfos products, but my fixed speed pump is only a couple years old so Im going to keep it for a while.
I have a black tank vs a drain field and just pump liquid - but it pumps uphill so it's more akin to running two well pumps concurrently.
Sounds like you can get by with very little. Thats awesome.
A few minutes of runtime wouldnt come close to getting it done for me.
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can't get it to add up here, although I'm strongly considering one with capability of running my house without the grid...we had a 2 week Natural Gas outage last winter (Oz is soone banning NG on new houses and renovations, somes states further ahead than others).
Looked at simplistically...4,000 cycles, 10KWh, at 30c/Kwh (less actually, if I'm getting 7c for my surplus)...so 23c/KWh $2.30 save per day, 4,000 cycles = 40,000KWh...Saves me $9,200 for an $11,000 purchase.
However to prevent my house going black (I'm sure that's Oz's near future, I made a statement about South Oz the day before it DID go black).
Interesting on Sunday in Victoria...as the load demand dropped, the amount of rooftop solar was significantly greater than the electricity demand, pushing the prices to -40c/KWh (a constraing was called, it could have gone to -$1.00/KWh)...meaning that generators had to PAY 40c for every Kwh they produced...
Can't turn off roofs (although AEMO are exploring raising local voltages to trip home inverters...that will be a wild ride).
As a result, the solar and wind farms had to back themselves OUT of the market, as shown below...generators stuck at minimum gen would have been paying 40c for the privilige of staying on line.
Can't turn off roofs (although AEMO are exploring raising local voltages to trip home inverters...that will be a wild ride).
As a result, the solar and wind farms had to back themselves OUT of the market, as shown below...generators stuck at minimum gen would have been paying 40c for the privilige of staying on line.
Interesting read...20% of dispatch intervals at negative prices (the generator PAYS the grid to take their energy) in Q3 this year...this is the reason that solar feed in tarrifs are rubbish here in OZ...there S talk of making panel owners pay for their excess power to be fed into the grid.
Image from that document, shows Sep 16th...Distributed PV is the rooftops stuff...can see everything flexing out of it's way, gas shrunk, black coal shrunk, brown coal shrunk, but is lesss flexible, hydro shrunk...and if you look closely, grid solar and wind shrunk too...they were turned off to manage the market.
If they were left to generate, the dotted line would have come into effect, ad filled the market...but there's be nothing to run the rest of the day on.
That's why feed in tarrifs are dying...and why storage is desperately needed...this is Oz, but watching EVs queuin in Ca at midnight doesn't help their woes.
OVERKILL
$100 Site Donor 2021
Update:
pv-magazine-usa.com
California rooftop solar installations drop 80% following NEM 3.0
Over 17,000 layoffs have occurred, representing 22% of the industry. More job losses are expected.
pv-magazine-usa.com
The same thing will eventually happen with EV subsidies and government efforts to build more chargers. Also, the State will be colleting a full road tax from EV drivers. Is the party over?Update:
View attachment 191244
California rooftop solar installations drop 80% following NEM 3.0
Over 17,000 layoffs have occurred, representing 22% of the industry. More job losses are expected.
We spoke of the duck curve within the 10 pages of posts so far. Here is the curve from earlier this year. The form of the “ duck “ became obvious around 2017. Now look at it. The net power has hit zero on the left axis. “We got all we can use”. Without storage, there is no where to go. They had no choice but to cut the price for output from future installations.
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I would think that future solar roof top installations will be scaled to only cover the air conditioning loads and perhaps EV car charging for WFH or retired people or perhaps charge a second car that is not used for commuting. No use in investing in panels to give the grid low cost power.
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OVERKILL
$100 Site Donor 2021
Yep, highly correlated intermittent sources succumb to "eating their own", which is well evidenced with the duck curve. The same thing happens with wind.
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