2 ms·

So I’m looking at this from the perspective of completely eliminating fossil fuels from my home. Not just electricity, but heating as well. I want solar to win,

So I’m looking at this from the perspective of completely eliminating fossil fuels from my home. Not just electricity, but heating as well. I want solar to win, but here’s the numbers I get from looking at December/January this year (my bills don’t quite line up cleanly on month boundaries): 863 m^3 of natural gas -> ~9100 kWh of heating energy Assuming (generously) that I can get a COP of 3, even though that’s unrealistic at the miserable temperatures we had over the last few months, that’s ~3000 kWh for electric heat pump heat. Electricity was about 745kWh for the month, so 3750kWh total between heat pump heating and electricity. https://www.cer-rec.gc.ca/en/data-analysis/energy-markets/market-snapshots/2018/market-snapshot-which-cities-have-highest-solar-potential-in-canada.html https://www.cer-rec.gc.ca/en/data-analysis/energy-markets/ma... shows 3.5kWh/mo/m^2 for December and 4.4kWh/mo/m^2 for January. Let’s go with January to be generous. 3750kWh/mo / 4.4kWh/mo/m^2 = 852 m^2 = 9170 sq.ft. of solar required to cover both my electricity and heating needs. If I look at just electricity it’s a lot easier. 745 / 4.4 = 169m^2 = 1800 sq.ft. which is essentially the same footprint as the house. Heating completely kills it though and is, I suspect for most people, an even larger source of carbon than their electricity use. At least looking at those two bills, there’s an $88 carbon tax charge on the natural gas bill and only $8 on the electrical bill.

bryanlarsen 4y ago
Yeah, I'm not sure if rooftop can quite cut it for Saskatchewan like it can for Australia for instance. I've got one family member in Saskatchewan with rooftop solar looking at numbers similar to you. Another has 40 acres and a honey operation so just has ground mounted solar and often zeroes his electricity bill even during winter months, although he's still using gas for heating. Just got a heat pump water heater, so he's heading in that direction. Saskatchewan has lots of land, so we we can do it collectively even if we can't do it ourselves just with roof tops.
- tonyarkles 4y ago
  Yeah, like, the nice thing about those numbers is that it does work out that solar can very clearly be an effective part of the mix. Out at our family’s farm, there’s a pretty much perfect spot for a long line of solar panels at the south end of the yard that would have no problem zeroing out the electrical bill (is SaskPower still doing net metering? I don’t even know) and probably reducing some of the gas bill as well. As far as the urban spots go, my electricity+gas numbers there approximately match the size of the entire lot. Extrapolating a bit and assuming that my house is “average”, that works out to needing a solar farm about the size of Regina to power the city in the winter. Maybe half the size when considering all of the street area.
  - bryanlarsen 4y ago
    >is SaskPower still doing net metering? As of last year they just give a 25% credit.

bryanlarsen 4y ago

Yeah, I'm not sure if rooftop can quite cut it for Saskatchewan like it can for Australia for instance. I've got one family member in Saskatchewan with rooftop solar looking at numbers similar to you. Another has 40 acres and a honey operation so just has ground mounted solar and often zeroes his electricity bill even during winter months, although he's still using gas for heating. Just got a heat pump water heater, so he's heading in that direction. Saskatchewan has lots of land, so we we can do it collectively even if we can't do it ourselves just with roof tops.

tonyarkles 4y ago
Yeah, like, the nice thing about those numbers is that it does work out that solar can very clearly be an effective part of the mix. Out at our family’s farm, there’s a pretty much perfect spot for a long line of solar panels at the south end of the yard that would have no problem zeroing out the electrical bill (is SaskPower still doing net metering? I don’t even know) and probably reducing some of the gas bill as well. As far as the urban spots go, my electricity+gas numbers there approximately match the size of the entire lot. Extrapolating a bit and assuming that my house is “average”, that works out to needing a solar farm about the size of Regina to power the city in the winter. Maybe half the size when considering all of the street area.
- bryanlarsen 4y ago
  >is SaskPower still doing net metering? As of last year they just give a 25% credit.