Replies

“Batteries are the tool needed”

Large, all day supply hot water heaters could be made to store water heated up to 180 degrees.

Houses could be cooled below the the desired temperature to a colder temperature that is tolerable.

Cars could be charged up at 8am to 5pm work hours from panels on an commercial building or parking lot roof and the excess battery charge of the car could be used to power a house at night.

“Large, all day supply hot water heaters could be made to store water heated up to 180 degrees.”

We do this. Have a rooftop copper piped collector that in summer will bring water temps in 80 gallon tank to 160 F.

Be careful thou, we have a plumbed in mixing valve to limit the hot distributed to the house to 125F. It will mix in the cold with the extremely hot water to a safer temp. Have well water here too.

On the electric heaters that are no plumbed to roof collector, we heat the water when the pv production has filled the batteries. aka 11 or noon ish and beyond.

Cars could be charged up at 8am to 5pm work hours from panels on an commercial building or parking lot roof and the excess battery charge of the car could be used to power a house at night.

And who is gonna pay for that? Are you supposed to spend $20M on panels on your house, AND $10M for panels at your work? Do you get to take them with you when you quit or get fired?

Pulling numbers from various websites: The average US home uses about 30 kWh a day. Solar panels in mid-TX generate 0.5 to 0.8 kWh a day, per m2. Given Tesla batt packs are 60-80 kWh, if you pull 20 of that for the house and 10-20 to drive to/from work (tesla gets 3-4 mi per kwh, though some Ford EVs are in the 1-2mi range), you're looking at 100 to 200 m2 of panels to break even per workday. Not including power needs over weekends. Parking spots are about 30m2, so each car charging is gonna need probably about five parking spots of panels for this system. Not really feasible, physically or financially.