Since the end of August I’ve pulled only 100 watts from the grid. I do that as my “zero base” as a way to make sure my solar inverters don’t err and put power onto the grid. 100 watts X 24 hours = 2.4 kWh daily. That is all Ive pulled from the grid since the solar upgrade I did in August. That’s even with charging my EV at home, plus running my A/C a bit to cool my 2,300 sq ft home in the still warm days in Alabama.
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Sounds like a voice of wisdom.
People told me I was crazy putting 12KW on my roof for a cost of about $50k but the government had a 30% rebate and I had a lot of food storage in the freezers and wanted to protect it. Well now the solar has paid for itself and saving me a lot.
I think solar is pretty good for home use, not so much for the grid though. A good part of my cost is in the batteries. I have a 3000+sqft house so the A/C can be pretty expensive and if I use the main a/c plant the battery will only last a few days without sunshine to recharge. If however I use the mini splits instead of the larger system I can keep the most important rooms in the house comfortable winter or summer and have the battery last for weeks instead of days without sunshine.
I have a NG gas and a gasoline generator if there is no sunshine for extended periods. I’m also working on a Lister style diesel generator that just sips fuel. 4 hours of the 16kw ng generator and about the same time on the 15kw Lister will give me two days of battery operation.
Spending a lot of money for solar was not something my wife wanted to do when I did it, now however it seems like a wise thing to have done even to her. I’m afraid it will get much worse before it gets better. Even in Kentucky with only 12kw of PV’s on the roof I seldom have anything more than the minimum electric bill.
We have a house in Florida, getting pounded by Ivan right now that has only 9kw of PV on the roof. The 9kw gives us much more power down there than the 12kw here (Ky) because there is so much sunshine. With a pool pump and pool heater we need every little bit we make. I do not however have battery backup down there. I’m hoping the PV’s survive the storm, we’re in Cape Coral and getting the worst of it. I expect I will have to go down tomorrow and start the clean up. I do have a portable generator so at least I will have hot water for showers, lights and refrigeration, no A/C though.
You and I think a lot alike.
I couldn't do mini-splits because part of my house is in the ground (nowhere for condensation drips to go). So I have a variable speed heat pump. It replaced both my old A/C and my old natural gas furnace (I also have heat strips for the few times it gets too cold for the heat pump). I also replaced my natural gas water heater with a hybrid water heater (it has a built-in heat pump to heat the water tank). On that I duct the air intake from the attic to give it free hot air as the heat source so it doesn't have to run as long to draw heat from the air (might as well use the free heat that's in the attic). During the warm parts of the year I duct part of the air output (cold air from the water heater's heat pump) into the living areas. (But not too much because it was creating a cold spot in the living room LOL.) The idea is to help my home heat pump not have to work as hard to keep the house cool when I take a shower and run the water heater (which generates cold air -- might as well use it).
Not only do those two appliances use less power to do their jobs, but they also demand less power immediately. My old A/C would draw 4kW when it'd run, and if I had a standard electric water heater it'd also draw 4kW. That's 8kW if they run at the same time. My inverters total 18kW DC-to-AC continuous capacity. So that'd leave me only 10kW left to charge the EV and use other power before my inverters would have to pull from the grid. The water heater I have draws only 300 watts, even though it takes 2 hours to reheat the water tank if both my wife and I take back-to-back showers and drain the hot water. The variable speed heat pump runs practically all day, especially with it set to lower the humidity in the house. But because it runs all day it rarely has to crank up in high gear and demand 4kW like a regular A/C would.
So I made those changes to not only use less power throughout the whole day, but also use less power at any given moment. That allows my wife and I to do random things throughout the day that require power with little chance that the total load would require pulling some from the grid. All while I have no natural gas bill. And with the EV I rarely buy gas at the pump (I every now and then drive my ICE pickup, but not nearly as much as I used to).