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Two Years Alone in the Wilderness | Escape the City to Build Off Grid Log Cabin
PING!
In fairness, there’s a number of things in California that need to be turned off.
Most people don’t know that wind turbines produce very little, if any,energy on frigid winter days. Texas, which produces a lot of wind energy, learned this the hard way in the unusually cold spell in February 2011. Without enough wind to keep the windmills turning, Texas was forced to buy electricity from Mexico, and those nasty neighbors tripled the price for Texas utility companies and their customers.
Solar panels work just fine in blackouts. The problem is that everyone goes with pure Grid Tie systems. In such systems when the grid goes down then so does the inverter which makes such systems worthless during a blackout.
The alternative is to have a battery bank and a system that can charge the batteries. The inverter runs off the batteries. And it has to be able to totally isolate from the Grid. That adds another level of cost and maintenance, but it will work during a blackout.
Stupid people who did no research before spending tens of thousands of dollars on solar.
There are three types of solar installations:
1. Grid-tied
2. Hybrid
3. Battery backup (off-grid).
Most people install grid-tied because it's less expensive - but you would think they would know that when the power goes off, their solar is shut down as well.
Hybrid systems allow the choice of being grid-tied or using battery back up, isolating from the now-dead grid with a switch. The batteries are what makes the hybrid systems expensive (plus the additional electronics, switches).
Off-grid are what they sound like. No grid, all panel to battery.
Vote for demonrats, win stupid prizes
I can’t blame people for thinking that they live in a first world country where the electricity is always on in CA, save for the rare earthquake event. They did not count on the destructive power of socialism, far worse than any natural disaster.
What everyone is missing is.......most people in California who go solar aren’t doing it because of environmentalism. They’re doing it because our electric bills are outrageous and they are trying to save money. Saving the earth is secondary.
Most California utility customers who opt for solar panels do so because the local utility (PG&E or SoCal Edison) provided subsidies and incentives for installation of solar panels that are connected to the grid. This is because the panels themselves are eligible for tax rebates and taking solar power from these individual homes helps the utility satisfy the state-mandated requirement that they sell X percentage of “renewable” energy.
It is a purely artificial concept that has been forced on the utility companies and subsidized by the government, and has nothing to do with allowing individual customers to power their own homes.
I suspect that a pure “off-grid” solar system that PG&E cannot claim as part of its renewable energy sources, would not be eligible for tax or utility incentives.
ping
Solar and batteries works. Period. It’s expenisve
7.39 Million views so far....
Two Years Alone in the Wilderness | Escape the City to Build Off Grid Log Cabin