[chrisser]

“Successful”: forcing other people to give you money for nothing.

Exactly. There's a reason the power company distribution lines operate at thousands of volts, and it's not because the power company has an affinity for zeros.

It's because it's the only way you can get a reasonable fraction of the power shoved in one end of the line to come out the other.

Anyone who's tried to use a couple hundred foot long extension cord or had to run wire to an outbuilding has experienced how quickly the voltage drop eats up any useful power when you're at double and even triple digit voltages.

I bet the "green" power, by the time it gets to even the nearest neighbor is such a trickle that it isn't even measurable compared to the line losses involved.

We have some property in a rural area. The site where we spend most of the time is shaded by a hill. I have another hill several hundred feet away with better solar exposure. But even to get that power across our property would require a significant investment in heavy copper, and that's after inverting it to 110vac first. Trying to push that at 12-18VDC? Forget it.

[Paladin2]

"Anyone who's tried to use a couple hundred foot long extension cord or had to run wire to an outbuilding has experienced how quickly the voltage drop eats up any useful power when you're at double and even triple digit voltages."

Try running 12 DC from the batteries to the inverter.

[Prophet2520]

“I bet the “green” power, by the time it gets to even the nearest neighbor is such a trickle that it isn’t even measurable compared to the line losses involved.”

Are you kidding? Get real. The power fed back to the lines has to be stepped up to the same voltages as everything else on the lines. The only thing you have accomplished with your argument is to show how ridiculous central power is compared to distributed power. Thanks for arguing for solar.

“But even to get that power across our property would require a significant investment in heavy copper, and that’s after inverting it to 110vac first. Trying to push that at 12-18VDC? Forget it.”

Absolutely, but you don’t have to send it at 110, you can send it at 220, or 440 or higher. But it sounds like solar might not be optimal for your situation. Wind may be an option, I don’t know. Cogeneration is an option as well, but is usually too costly for very small systems.

[mrsmith]

Using the reasoning of the OP, the government should give you the money to buy that wire. Then you’d have a ‘successful’ solar setup!

But it also shows a really successful application of solar: avoiding long runs of wire. If one can put up with the harsh limits of PV solar money can be saved at isolated sites.