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What storage medium do you use? Fork truck battery packs?
Our battery bank is 48v 600ah made with lead-acid marine deep-cycle batteries.
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... Can you heat your house with electricity at night?
We have been heating with wood. Electric pumps circulate heated water from woodstove to thermal-bank and from there to our radiant flooring. This year we are installing solar thermal heating array, which should reduce our fuel consumption to a quarter of our current consumption. We have been burning 3 to 3 1/2 cords of firewood per year, we hope to cut that down to less than one cord/year.
We have a big house, when it gets -20F outside it can take a lot of heat it.
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... Run your water heater? A/C? Welder? Table saw?
We do not have A/C. Our water heater is fine. I do weld some, drill press, table saw, washer, dryer, 3 chest freezers, etc.
We calculated our system to provide roughly 80% of our average household usage, by all the solar power websites and advice. On most days around 11am our battery-bank reaches 100% State-of-Charge. From then on we are making surplus power that can not be used. My wife just bought a dish washer. During the day we can operate every appliance, every power tool, everything we own and still we will charge the batteries. It is at night when we have to do things sparingly. The chest freezers are on timers so they only run during day time.
It does change your lifestyle. Everyday we can run the dishwasher, washer and dryer because it is free power that would be wasted otherwise.
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... More importantly, how much did it cost to do so?
A little under $20k. Plus the rebate. Plus the IRS says to use a 7 year depreciation table, you depreciate 1/7 of the cost from your taxes every year for seven years until the cost-basis of the system has depreciated to zero.
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... I can power my lights as well without grid power. It's called a generator. Or flashlights/gas lantern.
Every house in our town has at least one generator.
They can spend $100 of fuel every month, some months our neighbors will spend up to $150 in fuel to run their gennies.
I'm all for clean energy.... WITHOUT SUBSIDIES. hell, I'd even compromise on tax deductions, not credits.... BUT NOT SUBSIDIES.
Create a fund, allow applicants to bid for those funds.
Even better, incentivize through a reward: attach kwh per hour to a price and those that meet it, get a stipend, a la Ansari X Projects.
The problem is solar and wind as literally as fickle as the weather. A cold, foggy morning and an overcast day, and we have no wind or solar power.
We cannot plan for a winter cold front prediction, by begging the wind to blow and the sun to shine when subzero temps roll in. But we can prepare to have the coal or natural gas, or nuclear power plants to ramp up and provide more energy to heat people's homes.
If a wind and/or solar farm is going to replace traditional generated-power, these farms must be huge to meet peak demands.......especially for large cities. So it is very costly to build and maintain these farms.....and there IS going to be some environmental impact.
With solar/wind farms, when the demand is very much lessened in off-peak hours.....you have this VERY expensive infrastructure that must be idled......there is currently no practical/economical way to store these huge amounts of energy
... As submariner points out solar with storage is already practical for those off grid or with unreliable utility power. And that class will expand over time. Here it is still most common to see diesel generators rather than larger solar arrays and batteries. That may however change with the Tesla units. I expect the initial configurations will be backed up by diesels but down the road a couple of years that will change.
Our land is alongside the pavement so we had easy access to grid power. In our town though about 1/3 of the length of pavement does not have grid lines, and from the tax map we can see that well over 3/4 of the parcels in our town have no access to pavement or to grid power.
A generator is the obvious first choice for all of these homeowners. But after a few years, the fuel costs and maintenance of those generators gets costly.
When I was shopping for land many parcels I looked at did not have grid power available. You can try to buy easement rights and then install your own private power poles at $800 each. People are often faced with spending over $20k to get grid power to their home.
I could have spent a lot less, than what I paid. Some of our neighbors are operating very inexpensive solar systems.
Our land is alongside the pavement so we had easy access to grid power. In our town though about 1/3 of the length of pavement does not have grid lines, and from the tax map we can see that well over 3/4 of the parcels in our town have no access to pavement or to grid power.
A generator is the obvious first choice for all of these homeowners. But after a few years, the fuel costs and maintenance of those generators gets costly.
When I was shopping for land many parcels I looked at did not have grid power available. You can try to buy easement rights and then install your own private power poles at $800 each. People are often faced with spending over $20k to get grid power to their home.
I could have spent a lot less, than what I paid. Some of our neighbors are operating very inexpensive solar systems.
Around here off grid is generally very hot hence substantial AC loads. The few places not very hot are very cold in the winter...though that can be solved with wood or propane.
you can reduce the generator use a good bit with PV solar but you still need something else 1/3 of the day. Generally not practical with marine batteries though perhaps the Tesla stuff will make it feasible. We generally don't have the problem of loss of sun light. Even overcast days probably get to half of a sunny one. And we don't have very many of those.
If a wind and/or solar farm is going to replace traditional generated-power, these farms must be huge to meet peak demands.......especially for large cities. So it is very costly to build and maintain these farms.....and there IS going to be some environmental impact.
With solar/wind farms, when the demand is very much lessened in off-peak hours.....you have this VERY expensive infrastructure that must be idled......there is currently no practical/economical way to store these huge amounts of energy
Maintenance of wind farms is expensive but you need to consider the infrastructure and maintenance for fossil fuels including transportation, drilling.
Maintenance of wind farms is expensive but you need to consider the infrastructure and maintenance for fossil fuels including transportation, drilling.
I am not against wind/solar.
But I think the BIG breakthrough will be when they can STORE the generated energy, in a fairly efficient manner, when conditions warrant (low demand times). This would mean a powerplant could be utilized to near-maximum capability......operating close to 24 hours a day.
But I think the BIG breakthrough will be when they can STORE the generated energy, in a fairly efficient manner, when conditions warrant (low demand times). This would mean a powerplant could be utilized to near-maximum capability......operating close to 24 hours a day.
Energy storage is required to rely exclusively on renewable energy. Texas and CA have proved that investing in the transmission infrastructure is the next big step.
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