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@majorrage The problem is solar panels are incredibly sensitive to angle and distance from the sun. I get 10 hours daylight in winter and generate ~17kW but in summer with 14-15 hours I can generate ~54kW
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@frank said in Future Of Energy - Ukraine Spin Off:
@majorrage said in Future Of Energy - Ukraine Spin Off:
The problem with Nuclear is where to build it. Absolutely nobody wants to live anywhere near a nuclear power station.
Totally right.
Taiwan referendum here blocked restarting existing station because of this exact point + hard core propaganda from the ruling party media who dominate the airwaves and social media.That's true if basically everything in modern life. Witness liberals who advocate for cheap housing as long as it's not in their suburbs.
I'd love next door to a reactor. Heaps of people in Sydney have done so for decades. The problem is how Fukushima Daiichi was framed; rather than pointing out the magnitude of the events that hit it, not enough attention is given to how well it stood up. A modern design is basically a non issue.
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@majorrage said in Future Of Energy - Ukraine Spin Off:
He said the latest generation of panels is brilliant and more than sufficient to completely power a house in the UK 365 days a year. Now I'm not up to speed on it & perhaps @NTA can offer some thoughts here but he think our house with 16 panels will be sufficient for
All existing electricity needs
Around 50 miles per day of electric car
50% of heating needs during winter.
Nick, does that sound right to you?Short answer: maybe
There are a lot of variables, and @antipodean is right in that the correct system will power you through the day, while exporting enough kWh to the grid to cover the costs you'll incur at night.
"The correct system" comes down to a few things, and when including battery storage, the starting point might be what you do now:
- Maximum power draw in your house.
- Average energy usage per day in kWh
- Usage patterns in your household - do you have a smart meter (this is common in UK depending on provider) and can your retailer supply you this data in hourly or half-hourly increments? Sometimes they do it on request, particularly if you're throwing a couple of gorillas at them for a battery.
Consultant might know more, but make sure you hammer them about all this stuff.
Before you buy the system: based on the data, can you make yourself more efficient today to help realise the value of a system (battery or not) sooner?
Not suggesting at any point you start shutting down everything and wearing a parka inside all winter like some kind of prepper, but I occasionally see people who get a solar system with a bit of smarts (app connectivity etc) and realise, once they look at the data, how badly they use power and whether they've perhaps spent more than they need to on the system.
For example, I didn't understand just how inefficient my HVAC was and how that contributed to my summer and winter bills, until I saw it "live" on the app. Experience is something you get just after you need it.
Certain things you can't change like fridges or lights at night.
But are all those lights LED?
Are you running a beer fridge or other appliance all the time you don't really use?
Is the envelope of the house nice and tight? Do you run your heating at 24C when you could get away with 21C?
Are you running the toaster and the kettle and the oven and the iron and the microwave all at the same time? Do you have a pool pump?
When was the last time you called your retailer and asked them to do better?Those are the sorts of questions that don't even need to consider a battery - if your energy rates are decent, you don't need the biggest system in the world to make your energy cost neutral.
In fact, here in the Australian market, the value for solar exports is starting to fall as the wholesale market price falls (ironically due to renewables entering the market at grid scale), so people who thought they'd just export their way to a cheque are starting to find that isn't so.
Back to your sparky: "16 panels" depends on how big those panels are (watts per), which direction they face, and how that matches up to your usage pattern. If you're able to charge the car during the day then south-facing (for NH installations) works. But maybe you also want some facing west/southwest to extend your generation period during the day, particularly for summer evenings.
Have a good look at the energy rates available for your consumption, feed in tariff (export), and any discounts. Recently my consumption rates dropped, but so did my export rate, which makes me slightly worse off per annum. And it is no good getting a 25% discount for paying on time or combining with gas when the base rate is higher.
The main thing to ensure IMHO for any install is:
- Connectivity so you can monitor the system "live" (near real time)
- Option to retrofit battery if you don't want one right now
- Check you're getting the best rates for both consumption and export overall
- Look at making your consumption smarter through better management of your energy and maybe even smart devices or lights
I follow Fully Charge for EV/energy info and smart home stuff coming out of the UK. Worth a look to see what you may be able to do with other areas:
Last word: being self-sufficient doesn't mean leaving the grid. You need a LOT of storage for that, and it isn't cost-effective, particularly if your strategy relies on export and you've got an EV to charge off peak overnight.
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@majorrage said in Future Of Energy - Ukraine Spin Off:
@nta Thanks Nick, that's an awesome, useful post.
Getting me to shut up about it is the challenge
I've got a battery that is 6kWh or a bit less now it is getting on a bit - that handles about 80% of our overnight needs but we also have gas hob and hot water so that is a factor. 2 adults, 2 teens (17 & 13). Average consumption of 20kWh / day across the year.
I think if I had a 10kWh battery that would move it to 95% of overnight needs, weather pending.
Oh another thing: smart home control can also extend to devices like your car charger. If it knows when you have excess solar or offpeak power available, it can use that rather than peak grid tariffs. My battery has a smart controller than can pull in cheap power overnight, for example, and apparently it is EV-ready.
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@nta said in Future Of Energy - Ukraine Spin Off:
@majorrage said in Future Of Energy - Ukraine Spin Off:
@nta Thanks Nick, that's an awesome, useful post.
Getting me to shut up about it is the challenge
I've got a battery that is 6kWh or a bit less now it is getting on a bit - that handles about 80% of our overnight needs but we also have gas hob and hot water so that is a factor. 2 adults, 2 teens (17 & 13). Average consumption of 20kWh / day across the year.
I think if I had a 10kWh battery that would move it to 95% of overnight needs, weather pending.
Oh another thing: smart home control can also extend to devices like your car charger. If it knows when you have excess solar or offpeak power available, it can use that rather than peak grid tariffs. My battery has a smart controller than can pull in cheap power overnight, for example, and apparently it is EV-ready.
Yeah, we have a smart meter & we have a smart car charger (with no car to charge, yet) which are linked. The guy who installed it who got me talking about solar panels said it's amazing the number of people who charge their cars at night who have solar panels.
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Last time I looked at solar in NZ you couldn't sell the power back so it was pretty useless, plus I'm old so will probably die before i get a return, plus it's highly likely I will move homes or be away travelling for much of the year so....
I could do it for the good of Gaia I guess, but I have to protect my boomer reputation.
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@dogmeat Here in Oz, when the first solar schemes came out and offered 40-60c per kWh exported, boomers were the first to jump on board.
A system back then was like $20,000 for 2.5kW, but if you turned your shit off during the day you could export way more than you imported.
In NSW with 60c export, and roughly 23c import at the time, it was easy money if you had the capital.
Those schemes are gone now, except in e.g. QLD where you got 44c export if you never increased the size of original install, and didn't move house, with a hard stop of 1 July 2028. The result: people who installed solar systems prior to 2012 paid for them inside a few years and everything after is gravy. For over 16 years...
Government seriously underestimated the resilience of people to stick with the same sized system and address, actually believing that people would move house every 7-10 years...
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The House of Saud, etc.
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@kid-chocolate fluffybunnies
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We've just ordered solar with a 10kWh battery on a 5.8kWh system & a diverter to use any excess power to heat our water. It's going on a SSW facing roof. I have a personal weather station and we've used a year's solar energy data to model our savings. We'll be energy self-sufficient from April-mid November and around 60% for the rest of the year.
The big issue is the return on your investment. I think that will be around 7.5 to 8 % which is payback in around 9 years - earlier if I go for an EV in the next few years.
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This was last month and I'm starting to think that a battery could make sense given how much energy I'm still pulling in from the grid
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Just remember that an Electric Car has around a 60kw battery inside of it. In theory if your car can power your house and act as a battery, you may not need a massive home battery. Of course, it depends how often you use the car, but I see that as an obvious solution for many going forward.
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@chimoaus said in Future Of Energy - Ukraine Spin Off:
Just remember that an Electric Car has around a 60kw battery inside of it. In theory if your car can power your house and act as a battery, you may not need a massive home battery. Of course, it depends how often you use the car, but I see that as an obvious solution for many going forward.
My provider mentioned the same thing when I had the system installed. The major stumbling block is the car probably isn't going to be home during the day.
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@NTA said in Future Of Energy - Ukraine Spin Off:
Oh another thing: smart home control can also extend to devices like your car charger. If it knows when you have excess solar or offpeak power available, it can use that rather than peak grid tariffs. My battery has a smart controller than can pull in cheap power overnight, for example, and apparently it is EV-ready.
Have you thought about moving into the energy/utilities IT field? the analysts used to get paid a bomb (not sure about now) and you sound more knowledgeable than them (well the ones I worked with).
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@nostrildamus said in Future Of Energy - Ukraine Spin Off:
@NTA said in Future Of Energy - Ukraine Spin Off:
Oh another thing: smart home control can also extend to devices like your car charger. If it knows when you have excess solar or offpeak power available, it can use that rather than peak grid tariffs. My battery has a smart controller than can pull in cheap power overnight, for example, and apparently it is EV-ready.
Have you thought about moving into the energy/utilities IT field? the analysts used to get paid a bomb (not sure about now) and you sound more knowledgeable than them (well the ones I worked with).
I kind of work parallel to our company's energy team in the data area from the corporate consumer side. I thought about going fulltime into the energy bit but got lazy
Future Of Energy - Ukraine Spin Off