Yes, but it requires a battery in between with its own inverter. AFAIK (I asked my solar guy) it’s not possible to just hot-wire a load to a modern DC/AC inverter.
@redpoint5 I fully understand that home solar alone doesn’t reduce the baseload on the power grid. However, we are now a net exporter, so while we are still using the grid as a battery at night, we’re talking next to zero use in the summer–cool enough for no AC at night, we go to bed before the sun goes down, and all of our lighting is LED.
What will be interesting is when we start following [Rhode Island’s] (Rhode Island Energy) lead and interconnect home battery storage. In RI when the grid is stressed you will provide power to the grid from your home battery and be paid handsomely. RI pretty much does not have the ability to enlarge their base capacity, so this seems like a fantastic idea.
Cool. We will always pay for the net metering (currently $7.50/month). But I think we are going to use less than we push out. If we want, we could forego the AC. The downstairs is ~ 10 degrees cooler, and has plenty of room. My office is down there.
I asked my solar guy about a batterie/s, and he said “Sure we could do that, but (hint) my commission would go way up.” So doable, but $$. Maybe I’ll look at it in the future.
We got batteries. And then got some more. It was expensive, but we wanted back up in case of outages, and prefer batteries to a generator. (Even though the cost is more). We use the batteries to keep us running all night. I’m about 99% solar powered on these long sunny days.
Just checked, my batteries are full and we’re pushing 9.9 kW to the grid.
While you CAN power DC electronics directly from solar, or even AC ones through a janky inverter, it’s not usually done that way.
Solar is not great for bursty loads like air conditioners that cycle between high and low power usage periods, unless you oversize your solar array to meet the peak draw under less than ideal conditions and (and then end up wasting power the rest of the time).
If you put a battery bank in there, it’s much less of an issue because you can just charge the batteries on whatever cadence the sun and clouds are offering that day, and then the air conditioner would draw from the battery bank instead. It acts a buffer between the volatility of weather and the cyclical needs of your air conditioner (or anything else).
Even when you’re just camping and charging your cell phone, it’s much nicer to have a separate battery pack in the shade somewhere, connected to the panel by a cable. It’ll charge slowly through the day and then when you get back to camp for the evening, you have a full battery pack (and its stable, clean power output) to charge your phone with.
DC direct solar was more of a thing back when solar was really expensive, and people could use it to power electric fans or water pumps or whatever during the day because simple motors without batteries and fancy electronic charge controllers were all they could afford.
But both the modules (panels) and batteries are cheap enough today that if you’re gonna go off grid, you can do so way more conveniently now.
I’d still have a separate fossil fuel generator, just for emergencies. Equipment does break, and it’s possible to have several days without full sun.
There are also hybrid setups that normally run grid-tied, but still charge your batteries, and can change to a fully independent off-grid mode in case of a grid outage or the apocalypse.
But many of those these days rely on some sort of smartphone app for full functionality, which means if the internet (or their servers) are down, you have very limited control of your system. Not great for preppers or people who want to go truly off the grid.
We have solar at our Hawaii house and are adding more and a battery. Our original installation came with Hawaiian Electric buying our excess power at the retail rate
We usually get a check every 3 months for ~$50-100. HE gets a monthly check for $32 to maintain the grid hook-up, maintenance, etc… Getting the additional panels and battery is dragging on. The HOA (town-wide and reasonable) is okay with their permitting. HE is dragging out the process. Oahu is over-subscribed for solar installations. You have to wait until the local grid is upgraded to accept the power (HE is slowly being dragged into the future - gave up their coal plant a few years ago). They don’t have the storage for the daytime excess or upgraded equipment to distribute the power more efficiently.
I was warned that that is a problem in some places. Colorado is a very sunny state, and oddly I don’t see many PV installs in our area. But the subdivision is only about 7 years old.
So nobody wants to talk about how residential solar doesn’t solve global warming, doesn’t solve the fact that rate-payers will have to pay more, and that us wealthy folk get to take advantage of rate-payers to personally save at the detriment of grid stability and rates?
If so-called renewable energy were the best, then my utility would send me letters asking if I’d be willing to pay less per kWh by adopting superior electricity generation methods, but alas they ask if I’d like to pay a lot more.
Doesn’t hurt. I don’t think anyone believes that we can stop global warming. That ship sailed long ago. The need for more power stations will be reduced as more and more people go this route. Yes, the infrastructure still needs to be in place. Battery storage is improving greatly, it’s only going to get better. This helps everyone.
Yup, electricity costs will go up. Make your own, and you will of course pay less for electricity.
These are the choices YOU make. YOU are the one that can be pro-active. Clearly utility companies are on board as they allow YOU to sell THEM energy. Yes it’s complicated, and expensive for the homeowner. These systems are expensive. But if you are lucky enough to find yourself in a position to do it, it’s a choice YOU make.
The analogy I use is that the main power service is like a river and each customer is a little dry creek bed. Normally, flow of the river is strong enough to push water up the creek bed, which you pay for. But you can start sending water down the creek to the river. A little bit of water prevents some of the river water from coming up the creek, so you don’t have to pay for that amount of river water. And if you send enough water down the creek to keep all the river water out and more, not only do you not have to pay for any water, but you can add to the rivers flow and get credit for your contribution to the water in the river.
Depends on what you mean by “best.” Cheapest? Not renewables at this time. Less greenhouse emissions? Solar. It’s not unusual to pay more for the “best” of something. I’m paying a lot more for energy with my home solar panels and battery backup. I don’t expect to “break even” for decades, if I live that long. I’m just trying to help. I reduce the pressure on the grid during peak demand, which my electric company seems to be grateful about.
I don’t disagree with your overall point, but it also seems slightly out of place in a thread mostly about home solar? It’d be like if someone asked for car buying advice and we jumped into a conversation about how cars contribute to emissions and gridlock and pedestrian deaths, etc.
Pretty much nothing will solve global warming at this point. It’s a lost cause, sadly. But solar is still cleaner, in terms of CO2e, than fossil fuels.
Yes, the energy infrastructures many states have will lead to situations where solar oversupply will jack up the grid, especially around sunset, leading to situations where less-than-optimal peaker plants will have to step in to maintain grid stability. To me the answer to that should’ve been “therefore we need to evolve the grid itself to keep pace with generation”, not “therefore we should all just roll coal” (not that you were saying that). Sadly, it takes decades to push through grid advancements at federal and local governments, and a single term or two can undo all that progress. With Republican control of governments, I think our already-dated energy infrastructure is only going to get worse and worse. Some of that would’ve been avoidable otherwise.
But even under a perfectly optimized grid, yes, home solar (as opposed to community or utility solar) was always a trickle-up system, where wealth flows from the poor to the rich. It’s just how our society works. If you think about it, home solar is literally a household seizing the means of (energy) production for themselves. It is a form of energy capital. It’s better for the household (in terms of stability and autonomy, and sometimes but not always in terms of energy pricing). The resulting grid instability is shared by all ratepayers, and in localities without progressive energy prices (i.e. without subsidies for low-income households) this will contribute to the gradual rice of electricity prices. But that’s nothing compared to what a few wildfires can do, skyrocketing California prices like three-fold in just a few years.
But, again, these seem like solvable social problems that would’ve had solutions under a saner government and populace. You can legislate subsidized solar into new low-income housing so that even poorer households could enjoy their benefits (in the form of cheaper or free electricity in that apartment). California started to do that a few years ago. There are also non-profits like Grid Alternatives that provide free, no-strings-attached home solar to low-income households across the country and tribes. I volunteered to do a few installs with them and they’re basically the Habitat for Humanity of solar. At the level of the individual households, their recipients are grateful for their work, but of course the org isn’t quite big enough to really make a dent at scale.
What is “so-called” about renewables? The sun isn’t going to run out in our lifetime. And if it did, we’d have bigger worries…
Batteries, though, maybe not so much… a lot of them still depend on hard-to-source conflict minerals. Still, there are other ways to store power (pumped storage, etc.), and continuing developments both in identifying new lithium sources and potential other materials to make batteries out of.
As for pricing, in most places, your utility isn’t a not-for-profit entity. It may or may not be regulated by one, but ultimately they seek to maximize profit under the extent allowable by local laws. Between that, solar oversupply in many states, the duck curve, cap and trade credits, etc., the solar market (like the rest of the energy market) is a dynamic market-based system that constantly tries to work against you (a single person on the market) in order to, again, funnel wealth to the wealthy. That’s just how markets work in our society.
If instead you lived in an area with community solar that’s self-managed by a jurisdiction/tribe/campus/neighborhood, solar is indeed usually cheaper than grid power — although often that’s at the expense of the grid, using it as a cheap battery. You typically still have to pay the local utility for transmission/distribution, but the generation portion of it can work in your favor.
And in truly off-grid situations, your pricing is entirely in your control, with or without batteries. And it’s up to you to maximize your own energy efficiency and and time-of-use schedule (i.e. only running the washer/dryer when the sun is full bright or whatever). That sort of autonomy isn’t possible under a centralized grid. Conversely, that sort of responsibility or awareness wasn’t necessary at a household level under a centralized grid; it will take some adjustment to live like that.
Personally, I want to better understand how other jurisdictions (Germany, China, etc.) are dealing with these same situations under different social, political, and market conditions.
Many of the solar pricing problems of the US West are due to our particular market forces, owing to our particular individualistic culture that emphasizes a free market above just about anything.
There’s a lot that you could do with a smarter grid that we don’t. California launched smart meters a while ago, to much controversy from the tinfoil crowd, but they weren’t altogether wrong… part of the idea was so that the state (or at least the utility) could remotely control usage schedules and make heavier loads (HVAC, washer/dryer, EV charging, etc.) run at different times. Do other jurisdictions (especially less democratic & capitalistic ones) have better luck with such techniques, or what do they do?
I asked ChatGPT deep research about this, and it did produce some useful summaries:
We currently have two homes. Selling one. With that sale we should be able to pay of the temporary loan on the new house and the solar system and have about 100k cushion. A fortunate position. But not without risk. If we can’t sell our current/old house. We are boned. But, my wife is a real estate appraiser and feels confident.
Was there any particular reason you didn’t sell the old house first before buying the other one and adding solar?
(Just wondering, as someone who’s never bought a home. Not sure if what you did is just how it’s normally done, or if the solar had something to do with it, etc.)
Well, we looked for a new place for about 2 years. So we had to have a place to stay. We pre-approved for a loan and where ready to pull the trigger.
We found the place. My wife and I where sitting at the Cactus Grille both knowing that we found it. But, we wanted a minute to relax and think about it. We talked, and called the realtor and bought it (there where 4 offers on the house).
Another reason is that I can work from anywhere. My wife cannot (real estate appraiser has to look at houses, I’m a programmer). So I can work from the new home and take SUV loads back and forth. And, we need to leave some stuff for ‘staging’ the sale of our ‘old’ house (and my wife doesn’t mind having a bed to sleep in).
It’s quite the juggling act.
The solar kinda came out of the blue (so to speak). A company was working in the area (well known nation wide) and offered to do an evaluation. My wife and I both wanted to anyway. This should lock in a lot of our future energy costs, and we will be retiring. And of course Trump is getting rid of the solar tax credit, so we should be able to get under that wire.
I can’t remember if you mentioned this upthread but are you considering battery storage? That might be helpful if there is a storm-related power outage.
Makes sense. Thanks for explaining. I always wondered how those situations would work. In the movies, you just see a big ol’ moving truck, and the entire move-in is done in 5 minutes
Not too concerned about outages. Last time we had one in the mountain’s, my wife and i played chess by Hurricane lantern light. We play chess every night anyway. The bummer is no music to speak of.
Heh. I used to move with a pick-up truck and a buddies help. Still have my buddy, and I plan to keep it that way
Seriously, we’ve got way too much stuff to not get pro help. We are cutting out lots of chaff though. Just gave 6 guns and 5000 rounds of ammo to a mountain neighbor and good friend. I don’t really shoot anymore ( I did keep 3). My dad gave me all that ammo because he thought Y2K was gonna be the end of civilization.
I don’t get the snark. No one is saying this is a panacea. However, since we turned on our new set of panels 2 weeks ago it’s saying 850 kg of CO2 saved. This may not be accurate, but whatever the number, this is coal not burnt (we lurve us some coal in MT). Now, of course our utility needs to have the capacity to cover our generation if the sun isn’t shining. I get that. But capacity does not equal production. Did you read my post about RI and smart battery/grid optimization?
It’s frustrating to me that there is a major pumped hydro project north of us that’s stalled. With all of our wind and solar I don’t know why it’s not moving ahead more quickly.
In the 8ish years that my very modest 5.3KW system has been running, the tool reports that we’ve produced 66.5 megawatt-hours and offset 48.3 tons of carbon production. I’m not solving all the world’s problems but it’s something. And even when I was charging 2 electric cars and running the AC, while it wasn’t enough to cover all our usage, it was enough to keep us out of the tier 2 pricing where things start to really add up.
