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To: Tell It Right
Your approach does provide more independence, but at a much higher cost.

Can't go "off grid" or our property would be condemned.

(Because we have access to the public utility and don't use it.)(Amazing control, eh?)

So, having both Utility and Solar power would require separate Panel and wiring...

9 posted on 12/15/2022 9:25:41 AM PST by G Larry ( "woke" means 'stupid enough to fall for the promotion of every human weakness into a virtue')
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To: G Larry
Are you sure? We may be talking about the choice for inverter. I have a Sol-Ark 12kW Indoor inverter (a bit pricey, and after my upgrade last year I have 2 of them working in a stack as one inverter). It has the option that a lot of solar users call "no output" or "zero report".

Here's what it does with incoming solar power:
1. provide power to the house (the Load), if there's more power,
2. charge the battery stack, if the stack is 100% charged, then
3. do nothing with the excess power. Don't put power onto the grid under any circumstances. That excess power is simply lost.

Now with all of that, I constantly pull 100W from the grid so that I'm never "off grid". I always have something drawing over 300W anyway (i.e. my electric clocks and my appliances with clocks and my cable modem). So as far as my utility is concerned, I'm never off grid. It's just on most days I pull only 2.4kWh total for the day (the 100W for 24 hours). So my utility sees me as someone who lives like a hermit on most days, then gets a bit power hungry on other days (of course, those are the days I don't have solar power for a while and have to get my power from the grid).

13 posted on 12/15/2022 10:02:53 AM PST by Tell It Right (1st Thessalonians 5:21 -- Put everything to the test, hold fast to that which is true.)
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To: G Larry
I should add, to clarify how to work the "not off grid" feature, here's how my inverters provide me power (satisfy the Load my house needs):

1. draw the first 120W from the grid, if I need more than that,
2. get what I need from solar, if I need more than that,
3. get what I need from battery storage. If I need more than that (either because my battery charge is below 30% or my load is more than the 18kW my inverters can convert DC to AC at any point in time),
4. get all else I need from the grid.

So as far as my utility goes, I'm never "off-grid". I'm always drawing at least a trickle of power from them.

Do you remember the dial-up internet days, when people would start a large file download ("large" in those days LOL), walk away from their computer, and their internet service would automatically hang-up because of no response? Do you remember some of us getting around that by having an automatic ping program to every now and then ping a server so that the internet service counts you as still working online? That's what the first 120W (I said 100W earlier, I forgot I recently increased it) does. It's like a constant "ping" to tell the power company I'm still here and I'm still a customer. But for all practical purposes, it's a drop in the bucket on my power bill (about $9 in a month's time with my recent rate, and that's if I had enough solar to be off-grid anyway without the ping).

16 posted on 12/15/2022 10:24:24 AM PST by Tell It Right (1st Thessalonians 5:21 -- Put everything to the test, hold fast to that which is true.)
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