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To: ctdonath2
The goal here is to be completely off grid, correct?

I don't believe that you will achieve it unless you already live a minimalist life.

An airconditioner is a huge power hog. And then there is the furnace — is yours electric or gas or some kind of oil? If electric then that is another power hog. Then do you have an electric stove? Or gas? Again, another power hog. Then an electric clothes dryer.

Other parameters: time of year, time of day. Clearly there are times of the year when the sun intensity is not that great and of course, during the day.

What time of day and time of year does the panel system drop out?

Some calcs.

1. minimum power required + 20%. That is everything running at the same time — airconditioner, electric stove, electric dryer TV on plus 20%. The power dropping out is very hard on appliances and your power distribution system — especially inductive motors. Can your standalone panel system handle transient loads? Power conditioning?

2. Time of day and day of the year. These two parameters determine performance. Probably follows some kind of parabolic curve where the offset is determined by the time of year and the time of day is the actual curve. The curve would probably flatten out. The result is peak power produced is less and power duration is less — sort of an area under the curve. Has to do with angle of incidence and intensity. Plus weather conditions, clouds, etc.

Either way, you are not going to be running the panels at night. Predictions: power window of operation is 2 hours on bad days and 5 hours on good days. If you can figure out how to align the panels with the sun during the days, then you might be able to extend this.

69 posted on 10/15/2019 2:35:43 PM PDT by dhs12345
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To: dhs12345

Batteries are a thing.
My power load closely correlates to sunlight intensity.
And my 100m^2 figure is already near 150% of baseline.
I’d keep grid connection (if they’ll agree, see CA) for convenience.
Got some more numbers to crunch and graphs to draw, but upshot is full home solar is reasonable if a few limits are accommodated.


70 posted on 10/15/2019 3:28:55 PM PDT by ctdonath2 (Specialization is for insects.)
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