Thoughts about installing solar power
Lately I've been looking into installing solar panels.
My house faces east, with the peak of the roof running east-west so I have a pretty good stretch of roof that is south-facing. However my neighbour to the south has a pretty tall maple tree -- at least as tall as my house -- so I'm not sure whether that would affect efficiency. A similar tree on the neighbour's property behind me might block any southwest-facing panels.
I found a helpful site about installing panels here in Ontario that gave prices. A $40,000 investment seems steep. They indicated the investment would be paid off in 6 -- 9 years with our province's Feed-In-Tariff (FIT) program (the government pays me more per kw/h than I pay for the electricity I buy off the grid). But knowing how our Liberal government goes back on their promises, how long is that program going to last?
OTOH, with the rising prices of electricity here, a more recent article suggests the system would pay for itself in 5 years. Prices for solar panels keep coming down and the systems get more energy efficient. Maybe I should wait a bit longer for more technological improvements? The panels are expected to last 25 years or longer so it is a pretty long commitment.
I'll still have an electricity bill though. What about getting a storage system? I've been wondering about the Tesla battery. I hear it is the best technology for energy storage -- apparently storage is the stumbling block of energy self-sufficiency. This analysis of the battery suggests it is still a very expensive solution. “The battery they promote for daily cycling is 7kWh. Electricity costs in the UK are about 15p per kWh, so you’re holding about £1 of value in this £2,000 wallet.” (I'm assuming the cost-benefit analysis would be comparable for Canada.)
However as Elon Musk says our politicians don't have the willpower to fight the fossil fuel industry. “We need to appeal to the people and educate them to sort of revolt against this and to fight the propaganda of the fossil fuel industry which is unrelenting and enormous.”
I like the idea of a grassroots revolution against the fossil fuel industry and I want to be a part of it.
It's just that solar panels look kinda ugly. And they have to penetrate your roof to attach the system to the house. And squirrels could eat the wires (lotsa squirrels around here). Maybe solar shingles? Hmmm, even more expensive than panels.
On a positive note, the future of energy production may be a local grids of all kinds of smart devices, big and small, generating electricity and feeding into local smart grids.
“Instead of the command-and-control system the utilities have now, where a handful of people are actually running a utility grid, you could design the grid so that it runs itself,” says Lawrence Orsini, cofounder and principal at LO3 Energy, a pioneer in the space. “The network becomes far more resilient because all of the assets in the grid are helping maintain and run it.”
It’s a distributed, peer-to-peer, IoT model with smart contracts (which execute and self-enforce using software rather than people) and other controls designed into the assets themselves. This time, when a hurricane destroys transmission towers or fire cripples a transformer substation, the grid can quickly and automatically reroute power to prevent a massive blackout.
Resilience isn’t the only benefit. Locally generated power, used locally, is significantly more efficient than the utility-scale model, which relies on transmitting energy across vast distances, where energy is lost.
Comments
Batteries probably won't save us
Despite what you hear, batteries are not getting better particularly quickly. And given the large amount of research devoted to the problem over the last 30 years, it isn't for lack of trying.
Carbon fuels are by far the best form of energy storage we know of. The problem is that we dig them out of the ground instead of synthesizing them. Cars can probably be made electric by pushing the envelope in the directions that Musk is going, but many other things (air travel, gas stoves) are going to need carbon fuels.
The question is then how to synthesize them from carbon in the air. This takes concentrated energy to produce, but we already have the distribution infrastructure in place if we solve this problem. And the produced fuels will be "pure" (no nasty sulfur compounds or refining needed).
As a side benefit, overcapacity on synthesis would also allow us to pull more carbon than we need from the air, which would help undo a lot of the damage. But the free market will not do this last step (where's the profit?) so we would need to have the government control the infrastructure.
We can’t save the world by playing by the rules, because the rules have to be changed.
- Greta Thunberg
With all respect, Hawkfish
but I went and took a look at your linked article, and the author, Gregg Paschal Zachary. I call BS on the article and the author. The article really strikes me as the typical sort of subtle FUD (Fear/Uncertainty/Doubt) the fossil fuel, big utility, and MIC industries keep trying to insert into the conversation to influence us to delay as long as possible decarbonizing and decentralizing our energy usage. I don't care who pays Zachary to write what he writes, but has has been a WSJ correspondent, and he is saying what industry would like to have us believe. He's also been pro nuclear power and has written a paean to Vannevar Bush. As an example, Zachary writes:
Bullshit. Most of our cars don't go that far on a tank of gas. I say the tipping point for EV's to be more practical is a 200 mile range or greater. Tesla's luxury car already does better, and Tesla and Chevy will come out next year with passenger models under $35K (after rebates). I'm buying one. Zachary knows it's bullshit, I know it's bullshit, and you should too.
What I see in the publications I follow is that the cost per KwH of storage continues to fall dramatically.
Besides, for home storage, you can already just get a rack full of good ol' lead/acid batteries with the same capacity as Tesla's Powerwall for less than half the price. Only downsides is the space it takes up and the need to check the water levels every month.
If you want to make the point that battery performance has plateaued, you'll have to use more reputable sources than this. Preferably from northern Europe or Scandinavia, where they don't have climate denying political parties and universities haven't been corrupted by corporations to the same extent. And no, you may NOT cite Bjorn Lomborg.
The marriage between capitalism and democracy is over. –Slavoj Zizek
No offense, and I appreciate the second look
I did not know the author's background, I just get stuff from IEEE as part of my job (I'm a software researcher).
I agree with you about cars (and I said so in my comment). I'd even add that there are other benefits, like simpler drive trains, and wicked acceleration curves! My larger point from watching the technology for the last 30 years is that the S-curve is not going up much, despite there being a lot of people trying to solve this problem. Technologists are hard to stifle with industry FUD (look at the solar roadways people - no clue, but a lot of enthusiasm) yet not a lot has happened. Just because someone is a shill, doesn't mean they are entirely wrong.
There are a lot of technologies that span the range from creating electrons to storing them. Solar panels are at one end, and carbon fuels are at the other. Fuel cells are in the middle and I've always been annoyed that not more is being done in that area (Batteries get all the love because they have immediate payout in our gadgets. Fuel cells not so much. Gott love the free market as a policy instrument...) There are also a bunch of other non-electrochemical storage devices like liquid salt and oil used by various solar thermal plants, but these are not (yet?) ready for home use.
I'm not trying to discourage anyone from installing panels, I just want us to be clear about what technologies are likely to work. This is an urgent problem, and we need all ideas. I also agree that we can't leave it up to private industry - quite apart from the trust issue, the desire for monopoly rents is naturally opposed to the "all of the above" approach we need. Which is why I found Bernie's WWII analogy so refreshing coming from a candidate - although as my link shows, it is not a new idea with him.
(And because you like to dig into people's backgrounds, yes, I am a backer of Washington's market-based Carbon Tax initiative. I don't think it will solve the problem, but it is at least a step in the right direction that we can take today.)
Anyway, thanks for taking the time to look into this. It's why I love this site.
We can’t save the world by playing by the rules, because the rules have to be changed.
- Greta Thunberg
The onslaught of propaganda from the elites
is so pervasive we are challenged to stay aware of it. We all tend to take what we hear at face value, as I wrote in an article here. So no, I don't hold it against you. It happens to all of us.
As for
The best defense I have been able to muster against this ongoing multi-channel Gish Gallop is to assume in the breach that any opinion that dovetails with industry propaganda is wrong and has been inserted into a discussion to manipulate us until I have had time to really do the research on my own. It's sad --and I say this as a college professor's kid who grew up with a deep reverence for Knowledge and Science-- that "Facts" , "experts" and academie have all been perverted to such an extent over the past decades that it is easier to doubt than to believe.
As to whether battery technology is advancing, i think we need to make a distinction between advances on the forefront of scientific research (where hoped-for breakthroughs may be slow in materializing) and advances in development of energy storage technologies for everyday use and mass production, where I think there is a lot more improvement to squeeze out of technologies currently in use.
As for your work on the Carbon Tax Initiative-- great!! It actually strikes me as the perfect intersection of policy and market economics. Ya think we could get this passed in Oklahoma?? (not)
The marriage between capitalism and democracy is over. –Slavoj Zizek
I have solar, 36 panels. You can have a solar installer
come out and do a survey that will tell you how much solar access you have. With a stand of trees to my south at the back of the yard, I had 82% access. I took one very large fir tree out of the middle
thinking I would get a lot more access (and satellite TV) and it only went up to 88%. I looked into the Tesla battery, but realized as long as I was being paid for my excess power, it wasn't worth it. I did however purchase an Orison Tablet that is coming in August. It is 2.2Kwh and just plugs into the wall. You can have as many as 4 in your home. Check here: Orison
"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." - JFK | "The more I see of the moneyed peoples, the more I understand the guillotine." - G. B. Shaw Bernie/Tulsi 2020
Thanks for the tip
The Orison system looks really interesting.
Big payback in efficiency
The average home in the US uses about 900 to 1000 kWH per month. We got ours down to 300 kWH though improving efficiency. So, my question for you is how many kWH are you using per month? We are at the point where it makes no sense financially to install solar in our house. You need to have really good exposure for the panel cost to pay off. If you are shaded 30% of the time, then you need 43% more surface area of solar panels.
I bought Kill-a-Watt meter and went through the entire house. Replaced all of the incandescent lamps, and bought energy efficient appliances. The refrigerator and the clothes dryer ate very important. I also killed all of the vampire circuits. It helps to go around the house and turn off lights in rooms that are not being used.
Conservation, or efficiency as it's is more properly called, is a big win. The term is Nega-Watts. It means that you don't have to generate the electricity in the first place. It also means that we can shut down more fossil fuel plants. If you have 15% sustainable energy today and you decrease demand by 50% then the sustainable part can become 30% and the need for fossil fuel decreases by 59%.
Capitalism has always been the rule of the people by the oligarchs. You only have two choices, eliminate them or restrict their power.
That's a great idea
And I could do some of it. Already have energy-efficient appliances and a lot of CFU bulbs.
I also have a stay-at-home husband who has at least 2 computers and the TV on all day, plus or minus the PlayStation. He and my stepdaughter leave lights on. My mother also lives here and generally has the TV and her computer on all day, although she is a lot more careful about lights and such.
I'll look into getting a Kill-A-Watt meter and see what efficiencies I can get.
Congrats Wizard! We're working through our house with the Kill-A
-Watt meter. Marvelous thingy! You got your consumption down to 300kWH - wow, that is impressive. You're so right, job 1 is reduce usage to the minimum. Thanks for the inspiration, mate :=)
Resilience: practical action to improve things we can control.
3D+: developing language for postmodern spirituality.
the break-even point is hard to calculate, partly because
it is not isolated to your individual experience. as with vaccination, at certain levels (entirely dependent on local conditions), the aggregate of distributed residential solar power generation can mean:
A. Don't need to build another power plant
and
B. Don't need to run new transmission lines from far away (as they are currently planning in Wisconsin, cutting a swathe across the state to bring "hydro" power from Canada to Illinois).
Maybe others as well. Also, you might be driving all-electric vehicles within the next 5 years. Depending on your driving requirements, that could double (or even quadruple) your personal consumption of electricity.
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
Brilliant post, Thursday. TY for these thoughts. I'm pondering
the very same thing here outside of Ottawa. I'll talk more later; I just wanted to give a quick thank you. And ask you a favour: could you add "resilience" to your post tags? Then the post would show in the resilience group essay queue. Back in a bit. Enjoy your day, mate,
Resilience: practical action to improve things we can control.
3D+: developing language for postmodern spirituality.
Thanks
Thanks for including this diary in the resilience group. I didn't know how to include it and didn't think it was appropriate since I have only questions, not answers. However the comments are very informative.
You're so right; the discussions on resilience posts are so
helpful and informative. And fun :=) The Resilience Group is exactly for your questions and for any questions on resilience topics (practical things inside our control). Here is the name of Martha's flower image in the image library - Resilience1.jpg
I should put that into the intro essay. Coming right up! Enjoy your day, my friend,
Resilience: practical action to improve things we can control.
3D+: developing language for postmodern spirituality.
This works as long as
You can depend on your power grid. As someone who lives in a rural area it is a questionable thing at times.
Then there is the cost. Most power comes from from for profit companies. Enron was one of those. It drove the cost of power up dramatically even here where I live and we have one of the best rural electric coops in the country. My power is cheap but it doubled during the Enron created crisis and never went back down. If you apply that to places where power costs 2 to 3 times what it costs here it could become unaffordable for many.
I'm in the same quandary.
I have good south and west exposure, but there is so much info out there, that it's hard to make a call on what to do. The panels are getting better and cheaper in dramatic fashion; is it smart to wait a bit? We've done pretty good job on the conservation side, other than our air conditioner, which will be replaced fairly soon, I imagine.
Thanks for writing this. Hope we can keep the discussion on personal solar going here, as I could use the community's knowledge on this!
I put 16 solar panels on my roof 3 years ago
SSE facing roof line. It cost $16,000 and I got a 40% tax credit in New Mexico (Federal and state). Also installed a high-efficiency heat pump to replace an old AC unit, and use it to hear the house in winter. That was $6000 with a back up gas furnace, $900 tax credit.
I've cut gas and electric bills from $350-400 in peak summer and winter to around $100, with much lower bills spring and fall. Lighting is mostly LED and CFL. I'd do better if hubby didn't have a fetish for night lights.
I estimate less than 7 year payback on the system, and a real estate appraiser told me the additions probably added $15,000 to the value of my house.
It's a big investment, but it will pay off. And even reducing your dependence on the local utility is a very good thing.
Please help support caucus99percent!
If I ever get my financial act together, I'd like to install
a combined solar system for electricity and hot water. I'd still need LP gas for the furnace, the clothes dryer, and hot water in the winter (i invested in a tankless, but i don't think it's going to survive the rust and hardness of my water ... we'll see whether the "anti-rust" softener salt and my new softener can condition the water sufficiently).
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
Great to hear
It's great to hear your experience. Makes me feel brave enough to start getting some estimates -- not quite as likely to have an embarrassing reaction when I see the price.
Oops, I meant to reply to dallasdoc.
Thanks Thursday, for adding the resilience tag! Now folks
will see it when they peruse the essay queue. I'm learning lots from the comments here; thanks,
Resilience: practical action to improve things we can control.
3D+: developing language for postmodern spirituality.
we have had solar panels since 2007
We installed them as part of a renovation. It was before the price dropped so I think they were over 70k of the cost. We built a small room with battery backup. For some years we were paid by the rural electric cooperative for selling our power to their grid, but that program stopped. Our home is much more efficient(North Carolina, longer hot weather now, but still cold winters) and our bills are very low. The panels shield the attic spaces,too, making them better for storage. One thing we do that is saving us energy is that we hang up most of our clothes to dry on racks - we have an efficient dryer, but it uses a lot of power compared to other appliances. We also have heating/cooling in zones, so the whole house(around 3000 square feet, a big place) is only keeping our living area comfortable. We do a lot of work from home(I am a crafter, husband has job that allows him to work some in home office). The battery backup means we do not have power outages over a downed tree or electrical storm - power pops out for seconds, then all we have to do is reset the clocks. In time we will look into leaving the grid altogether - I do not know exactly how we are connected but our LOW usage means that we are charged a higher rate now. We did have to cut down one tree, but we live in woods on a hill and still produce a lot. March is a big month, when trees are still bare but days are longer.
a consideration for solar on the roof should be...
...you'd have to take it all apart when it become necessary to get new roofing. i'm fifteen years into a 20 or 25-year roof (i don't remember which). even if it was a 25-year the harsh desert sunshine probably cuts the lifetime a bit. so, no solar for me until we put on a new roof.
As an alternative to dedicated battery storage
You might consider an electric or hybrid car. Wire it up as a battery bank when the car is home, storing charge during the day, run through an inverter to get AC out at night. In a pinch it can also function as a backup generator.
I mean, if you're gonna spend that much for batteries, you might as well get a car to go with them, amirite?
Great idea
I'm signing up for the Tesla S3 but I don't expect it for maybe 3 years.
The other concern with rooftop solar
Firefighters raised the concern that they could receive an electric shock if they had to put out a fire on a home with rooftop solar panels. I haven't seen a solution offered for that problem. Anyone know anything about this?
Yes a disconnect switch
Clearly labelled and visible from the front of the house.
Capitalism has always been the rule of the people by the oligarchs. You only have two choices, eliminate them or restrict their power.
This is being done?
Are you saying this is already being done? What's to stop a vandal from switching the system off just to be a jerk?
Is that really a thing?
Solar panels generate low voltage DC. It seems impossible to get a significant shock from them.
Voltage and current are not the same thing
Current is what can hurt you. Not only that, but the dangerous amount is not obvious. IIRC from my radio days, 0.1-1.0 amps will put the heart into fibrillation, but less that that is not strong enough and more will clamp the heart, so I suspect that is why it is a concern.
We can’t save the world by playing by the rules, because the rules have to be changed.
- Greta Thunberg
I have a solar install on my house
It is 12 modules and puts out a max of 3200 watts DC and generates about 3500 kwh a year. It cost me $12000 USD to have installed or a little less than $4 a watt. With incentives here in VT, It should pay for itself in about 7 or 8 years.
The low hanging fruit is to be energy efficient as others have already stated. Spending money to save on consumption is almost always more cost effective. So get those LED/CFL bulbs, get rid of the wall warts and other parasitic loads and try to get energy star appliances as you can.
A qualified installer can do a site assessment and determine whether those trees will be a serious issue. Remember, trees grow, lean, branch and leaf during their life cycle so be sure to take this into account. When I had my system installed, my neighbors tree went from a 10 degree lean to about 35 degrees and wiped out my early morning production - until the tree threatened their house and took it down.
Back up power is nice, especially if you live in an area where the grid goes down frequently. But be prepared to pay a lot for it. Batteries are costly and your installer may need to create a secondary/critical load panel in your home.
I would steer clear of the Tesla battery for now unless you are one of those early adopters that needs the bragging rights. The medium voltage inverter for the power wall has just been developed. There are usually problems at this early product life cycle stage. Also, Lithium ion batteries have a danger element to them. With lithium ion, battery management systems control the charging of the battery bank. Failure of the BMS could result in overcharging and a catastrophic event. These instances will likely be rare, but it is a factor you should be aware of. So if that power wall is there to insure the operation of medically necessary equipment or other important activity, it may be a great idea. If it's there so you can post on c99 while the grid is down...wellll.
The US is going through a series of changes to the National Electric Code regarding PV installation. Firefighter safety has created some important and expensive changes. First there was anti islanding which requires the inverter to shut down when the grid goes down. Then there were roof setbacks where walk paths are required to allow firefighters to safely walk outside the array. Now they are requiring "rapid shutdown" where wiring must be a minimal length or power must be shut off at the module level.
Any qualified solar installer will make certain the installation for your home will meet these requirements via product selection or installation practices.
Which leads me to my last and final bit of advice...get a good installer. Cheaper is not always better. Make certain your installer is accredited and can provide many excellent recommendations...do your homework.
I understand voltage and current
my point is that a system running at 3-6 volts DC will not be able to drive very much current anywhere. This is different from AC, were even very low currents can cause fibrillation.
a good installer ...
my son works and worked for a while as a solar panel installer. His employer is somehow related to tesla, I have no idea how. They warehouse a huge variety of different solar panel brands. The competition among several solar panel installing companies in the same area is high. His employer is the largest in that region and had an excellent reputation in the first years.
But because it's necessary that the companies do a good.secure job very fast and commit to the service often before the contracts with the customers are signed, the companies end up buying the material on not yet fully signed contracts with their customers. Which is risky and lots of things can happen. Contract can't come through and get cancelled in the last minute and the material is already bought and then not used and warehouses overflow. The speed of providing the service of installing and the safety codes the roof installers are supposed to adhere to, are in competition against each other.
Does the roof installer make sure he actually complies with all the security and code requirements for the installation it takes more time than the employer may have expected or calculated to finish the project. Which means that installers get fired if they are too slow, but they get fired too if they are fast make a mistakes or are negligently "cut corners" in their work on the roof to keep up with the time expectations their employer has for the project to be finished.
Firing an installer for shoddy work causes the employer to lose projects and cost in having to pay for the mistakes their employees did on the roof. Firing an installer, because he does a good job, but is slower, costs the company a competent employee, time and fewer projects to get.
Catch22.
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redacted - a mysterious double post haunting me /nt
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