4 ms·
Cool. One caveat in SF (and elsewhere, I'm sure): since I work from home my electricity usage is way higher than the PG&E norm (which itself seems aspirationall
by lubujackson 9y ago
Cool. One caveat in SF (and elsewhere, I'm sure): since I work from home my electricity usage is way higher than the PG&E norm (which itself seems aspirationally low). Of course, PG&E uses this to charge me huge "overage" charges so using a solar panel to offset some of those charges might actually make this economically viable.
- mindslight 9y agoOne of the biggest cost/safety/longevity factors here is the usage of a storage battery. This is necessary because OP presumably uses most power at night, and is unable to use the grid as virtual storage due to all the complexity that brings. If one's usage was mostly in the day or even constant, they could forgo the storage batteries and setup a system to supply specific loads, making up any shortfall from the grid. This would take a different type of "inverter" to avoid becoming grid-tied. I'm imagining a production circuit being based around a 170VDC bus (power factor? who cares!), but that's probably currently rare/custom/expensive. You could DIY the same type of thing with a nominal 12V bus (or 48V, depending on your loads) and DC distribution, from off the shelf components.