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Building my own solar power system
- stevoski 1y agoTo save you the click, it’s about building a solar electricity system. And not a cosmic solar system.
- stevoski 1y agoAh, the title was edited, so now my comment seems nonsensical.
- pantalaimon 1y agoto make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe.
- sponaugle 1y agoMy favorite Cosmos episode (#9)!
- epistasis 1y agoThis is fantastic. Looking at the absolutely massive cost differential between DIY and full-service solar installers, the DIY option looks pretty pretty tempting. My main concern was 1) actually getting through the local permitting process, and 2) what a potential purchaser would think of a DIY system when I go to sell the house. Seeing that somebody has done it is very inspiring, and if I didn't see a high chance of moving in the next 5 years I'd be on it tomorrow.
- madaxe_again 1y agoI have the advantage of living totally off grid and not planning on ever selling the place, so I can have whatever screwy setup I fancy. Well - I say “off grid” but I’ve built a grid - I now have over a km of buried SWA cable linking the three houses on our land, battery banks at each (60kWh of OPzS down at the mill, 15kWh of LiFePO4 at each of the others), and victron inverter-chargers all over the shop. Two arrays of panels each 8kW, one winter optimised, one summer optimised, and planning on adding a third to make more of the morning sun, as we are in a deep and steep valley with awkward topography. Have mucked around with hydro on and off before landing on a plan for an overshot waterwheel using bits of a burned-out ‘88 hilux, which is my current project. Pessimistically it will give us a constant 1.5kW, but theoretically it should end up nearer 3. Either way, that’s a lot of power. Right now I’m stuck running a Honda generator off our biogas in the winter, and it works, but it’s noisy and I have to go yank the cord to start it, usually in the pouring rain. Using victron and fronius gear all over, frequency shifting to control where the power goes, and home assistant to automate the whole shebang where it’s beyond what the inverters and chargers can do themselves. As we aren’t grid connected, the permitting process is… “you do what you want”. It’s all far, far more straightforward than most people think - the hard bit is the physical install, as you’re inevitably lugging awkward panels onto roofs or up cliffs (going for smaller panels can help with this if you’re doing it without any help), or incredibly heavy batteries to wherever they need to be. The lithium arrays weigh about 150kg each, the lead array the better part of 2000kg. People assume it must have cost hundreds of thousands of euros, but no - all in it has been about €30k, and our ongoing costs are zero.
- davedx 1y agoYeah, we once unmounted our panels so painters could do some work on our roof. It was pretty trivial to do. The tricky part is the electrical work.
- 4gotunameagain 1y agoThat sounds amazing, would love to be able to check it out. Out of curiosity, have you ever calculated the cost of the batteries over their expected lifetime ?
- baq 1y agoDYI if your dad is an electrician. I wonder what the total would be if he tallied his dad’s assistance at market rates - probably not that much less than the initial quotes he got from professionals.
- rusk 1y agoDepending on the jurisdiction you could be saving a whopper amount on taxes. Where I live the service tax could be anything up to 23% and the guys doing the work have to pay income tax. Insurance would also be a factor where I live too. There are massive savings if you can get a friend to do it or if somebody does it for cash (which is considered tax evasion)
- 9dev 1y agoI'm still curious what you'd need a rack consuming 1kw for… in your garage. From the photo, it looks like lots of storage(?).
- sneak 1y ago1kW is less than a toaster, fwiw. I draw 1-1.5kW for my servers in a spare bedroom. It’s not a lot of spindles/cores, just a few dozen.
- padjo 1y agoNot many people run their toaster 24/7/365
- nicolaslem 1y agoIt is always surprising to me but small loads that are on 24/7 end up consuming a ton of energy. My 55W idle "homelab" consumes as much energy as my dishwasher, fridge and washing machine combined.
- jaapz 1y ago1kW continuously is 8760kWh per year. To compare, my house used 6200kWh in total over 2024, including heating. Your toaster draws 1kW for maybe 5 minutes a day, which is maybe 30kWh per year. The power in this comparison is not important, it's the total energy consumed (which is what you are billed for in the end).
- sneak 1y agoyes, computers use a lot of energy, and spinning disks in my 40 hard drives use even more.
- 9dev 1y ago> 1kW is less than a toaster, fwiw. Odd argument. A cheetah can run up to 110kmh, but that doesn't mean they can cross 110 kilometres in an hour.
- yasir326 1y agoWith the rising price of energy, this is a fantastic idea
- looofooo0 1y agoWell big chunk of the electricity cost are fixed cost, meaning if enough people lower their bill with PV and batteries then prices will have to rise for their connection. In fact some suggest that it would make more sense to let people pay a flat rate.
- brnt 1y agoAnd over here in NL we're going to be _charged_ when returning power to the grid in 1.5 yr... I'll be running my airco to burn off those kWh's :P
- baq 1y agoThe grid needs batteries and that’s how they make you buy some. They have good reasons - look at Spain. Running aircon to burn the excess is better than feeding an already overloaded grid, too. The second best outcome for them, neatly contained in a single euro amount.
- tralarpa 1y agoWhat should the grid operators do with all that energy that comes in at noon on a beautiful sunny day?
- madaxe_again 1y agoHeat up molten salt, or shipping containers full of sand. It’s a surprisingly high density and cheap way to store an awful lot of energy. Don’t have sand batteries here yet, but they’re on my todo for deep storage of excess energy, which I currently just dump as heat into the air.
- rmu09 1y agoI don't know. Salt (NaCl) is corrosive. Specific heat capacity is not that high (about 1/5th of water per weight). Suppose you have cubic meter of molten salt at 800°C in a dewar, how do you get the heat out again?
- elcritch 1y agoHmmm, run direct carbon capture systems?
- delamon 1y agoPump it to the storage. Building something like https://www.energyvault.com/products/g-vault-gravity-energy-storage https://www.energyvault.com/products/g-vault-gravity-energy-... is impossible for a home owner. But the country scale energy provider can build such thing.
- sneak 1y agoIt’s a true shame that the public utility commission is so corrupt that we lose the obvious economies of scale from grid-scale installations of same in favor of expensive rent seeking by a state-sanctioned monopoly. I also have 60kWh of batteries in my kitchen, but for the average person who doesn’t want to deal with this stuff, having to admin part of the power grid is a tragic waste. If the PUC and power company weren’t bastards, this could all be in a giant field somewhere staffed by a tiny fraction of the people who have to waste their lives dealing with it in their garages. So many unnecessary struts, so much caulk and EPO switches, so many inverters.
- epistasis 1y agoIt turns out that the biggest cost of California energy is not generation, it's distribution and transmission. Highly distributed energy lessens the peak demands on the T&D system, which means that the T&D system can be smaller, which greatly reduces the fixed cost of T&D. Utility scale solar requires greatly expanding transmission lines, to the extent that lack of transmission is the biggest barrier to adding solar to the grid in most of the US. So even if installation costs of solar are higher on the grid edge, it usually makes a ton of sense, and this is evident in the payoff times of NEM3 systems that include batteries. As batteries get cheaper, or there's more vehicle-to-home systems out there, it will only increase. This lessened need for T&D is the true reason that utilities in California hate solar and need to stop it. They can take a guaranteed rate of profit from anything they get to spend on T&D, but the same isn't true of generation. So utility solar, which requires building more lines and beefing up distribution substations more, lets them profit much more than residential solar.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- alex-moon 1y agoHaving done some work around net zero policy I am increasingly convinced that this is the way forward, and indeed that this will be the way things are done normally maybe 10-20 years from now. The concept is called "distributed generation" and in UK each distribution network keeps an "embedded capacity register" which is basically all the distributed energy resources that are connected to the grid at distribution level (i.e. in the local area). Over here the national grid largely operates at or over capacity, which is a very serious problem for the immediate future, especially as more and more power is drained by compute-heavy infrastructure (data centers and such). Distributed generation is an attractive solution for households regardless of which angle you look at it from.
- looofooo0 1y agoWell problem in the UK is that in summer there is like a magnitude more power from PV then in winter.
- calgoo 1y agoI personally feel there should be more allowance for small personal wind generators in sub-urban areas. That would offset a bit at least in winter for places like the UK. Not sure what the actual laws are, but I can assume councils wont be too happy about someone putting one up on their home.
- leovander 1y agoI feel like they overpaid maybe because they got direct to consumer rates for the gear. If you would have went through a full on solar installer that solar system would have come out to less than $15k, throw in having to get the subpanel and a reroof you would maybe be looking at $30k all in. (Not including the batteries, but by the time he got to the batteries I feel like his budget was way overboard even going the non-microinverter route). Make sure you are buying and not leasing from the company, have that all rolled into a single loan and then you claim the tax credits to help pay for the reroof. To add to this, they take care of getting the certified roofers, the city permits for both the roof and solar and handle the PTO for you, which from what you called out is even more costs.
- madaxe_again 1y agoNo way, man - yes, they overpaid for some of their gear, but the labour cost of an installer ends up being most of what you pay. No, the smart move here is to find out where the installers buy from, and buy from them. I never explicitly stated I was or wasn’t an installer, they just assumed that I was, as I was buying pallets of panels and kilometres of cabling. The one advantage of going with a professional installer is that it makes it a lot easier to get grants - I had to spin up a company and invoice myself to get my rebate.
- babushkaboi 1y agoThis is brilliant. Energy self-sufficiency often associated with off-grid eccentricity,looks engineerable for city homes. Goes to show that the more "personal" our energy solutions become, the more they reflect institutional failure. Wonder how this scales and if it does what are the political implications? Funnily enough back home along the equator, having a solar setup still is a social signal of luxury!
- donnachangstein 1y ago[flagged]
- esskay 1y agoAh yes...because the simple solution is always "just pack up your life, leave behind your family and friends, and relocate half way across the country".
- donnachangstein 1y agoRelocating is a simpler ask to most ordinary people than is turning their garage into a battery vault.
- Dylan16807 1y agoThat's the most ridiculous claim I've seen in a while. Giving up one foot of space along one garage wall is not a big deal. And if you're worried about physically getting the batteries into place, hiring people would still be cheaper than movers. Also, a basement that removes cooling costs for the home lab would not make a big difference. If the 800W A/C unit runs 8 hours a day for 4 months out of the year, then it's only about 10% of the home lab power use. Since it's not needed at night it's probably even less.
- jajko 1y agoFrom logical/cost perspective maybe, from emotional not so much... is it really that hard to see it?
- esskay 1y agoYeah sorry but thats the most insane take anyone could have. You're again quite litterally saying upping sticks and moving across country, so new job, losing friends and family, etc is the best option, vs losing a big of garage space...
- willis936 1y agoUnironically that is what cost-of-living is forcing a lot of people to do in coastal cities. If you have a cushy six figure salary you aren't faced with that reality, but it's different for median-income.
- gniv 1y agoI don't understand the comment about the small battery from installers. Don't they allow customization?
- davedx 1y agoHe estimated break even at 2-3 years.
- agumonkey 1y agoreddit thread with the article author commenting https://old.reddit.com/r/bayarea/comments/1kpm2cb/i_got_sick_of_pge_so_installed_my_own_solar_and/?submit_url=https%3A%2F%2Fmedium.com%2F%40joe_5312%2Fpg-e-sucks-or-how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-building-my-own-solar-system-acf0c9f03f3b&already_submitted=true&submit_title= https://old.reddit.com/r/bayarea/comments/1kpm2cb/i_got_sick...
- g0ran 1y ago"they have come out and said what we knew all along: they only care about profits." Not the detract from the rest of the article, but - it's a company, what did you expect?
- lostlogin 1y agoI’m cynical, but most companies do have some scruples. Eg basic environmental care/policies or how they handle staff and customers.
- davedx 1y agoIt’s a public utility, possibly with monopoly pricing power. There are other well known economic models around for managing public utilities, that mean profits don’t get prioritised above everything else
- dzhiurgis 1y agoOkay I finally did this earlier this year too and it took quite a bit less than that. Started with impulse buy of invert at an online auction end of January. Installed last panels end of April. 3 months. Quite a bit of it was waiting for third parties or just me being lazy and not ordering parts I needed. I've wanted them for years beforehand so I did some research. For actual labor - it's about half days to install roof racks (I have shingle roof so quite a bit of time on angle grinder). Another half day to put panels on (requires 1 or more helpers), run a cable thru roof space. I've installed 12 panels on 2 facia. My hack was hiring electrician to install inverter so I can export to grid (I'm in New Zealand).
- apexalpha 1y ago> I found three companies and gave them my PG&E usage for the past year (about 16,000 kwh) and got three quotes ranging from ~45 — 55k. Wow these rates are crazy. A 10kW setup costs you maybe €10.000 all-in here in the Netherlands. What's going on with these rates? Do they already include the ridiculous tarrifs? A new battery setup for a 20kWh LFP battery + 10 kW inverter + installation is €7000 now. And dropping, fast. Assuming batteries and PV come from China, someone in California is making a lot of money or the government is straining the process with bureaucracy costing $30.000 per setup.
- slavik81 1y agoFor comparison, my 10 kW solar install completed last week cost 24k CAD (15k EUR). That's just panels, inverters and installation. The incremental cost was likely in part due to the ~160% tariffs on solar panels imposed by the Canadian government, but not all.
- testing22321 1y agoOuch. My 7.8kW system fully installed was 13k CAD ( a bunch was DIY) Had it for a year now. Generated 7.7kWh which is worth $950. Took out natural gas, power bill for the entire year (heat pump, elec hot water) was $1000. Snowy mountain town in a tight valley in BC.
- bdcravens 1y agoPrices were high even during the Biden administration. Markups due to subsidies are a part of it.
- pjc50 1y agoSubsidy causing high prices? You're going to have to explain that.
- isoprophlex 1y ago- Subsidy starts: prices drop. - Greed kicks in because capitalism: prices rise again, maybe not back to pre-subsidy levels, but they rise. - Subsidy gets axed: prices rise to above pre-subsidy levels. (Note: I'm personally entirely pro "subsidize things you want more of". But that requires a stable, trustworthy government that plans on longer timescales.)
- louwrentius 1y agoThis solar installation is quite large and quite expensive. There is a whole cottage industry of DIY 48V 15kWh batteries based on LFP prismatic cells (16x) and special battery case resulting a price of around 1500 Euro for 15 kWh. A DIY setup is quite doable, Deye (EG4) or Victron make suitable inverters. The continuous 1 kW power draw I find Ludicrous, probably especially as a European. I would realy rethink what is absolutely necessary. Huge data storage was my hobby but the storage server is only turned on when required, saves a lot of power.
- OhNoNotAgain_99 1y ago[dead]
- meitham 1y agoforget the technology, what is that gorgeous snake-like plant in the picture by the blue stairs? I need that
- elmolino89 1y agoNot sure if the identification by the PlantNet is the correct one, but you may check [1]Asparagus aethiopicus 1 https://www.backyardboss.net/asparagus-fern-guide/ https://www.backyardboss.net/asparagus-fern-guide/
- meitham 1y agoThank you, I think that's the one!
- elmolino89 1y agoIf you like the general shape you may look into various Echium species. Echium wildpretii is just stunning.
- bloodyplonker22 1y agoGuy claims he's tired of paying for electricity because of the "ludacris" (sic) costs so he's going to "DIY". Yet, first thing he does is pay a guy to do it.
- cyri 1y agoI did build my own solar system too. In Switzerland. Took me 1-2 month planning and then 3 month building it alone nearly each day. Sept 2023 til Xmas 2023. Got all the hardware from a PV dealer friend on his purchase price level. Even 24 panels I have put myself alone onto the roof. With two persons it was a bit better. I've got: 420w x 71 Trina solar panels and two SolarEdge inverters. SE10K Hybrid and a SE17k. Also a 24kWh BYD LFP battery. All prices without state funding: Offers from local installers for 56*410W Panels without battery were around 65k CHF. I've paid now 44k CHF including every kind of cost associated with building it. Should write a blog post about it :-) Next project is a solar fence with 6kWp.
- pingou 1y agoWhat do you do with that much electricity? Was it necessary to over-dimension for winter?
- yvan 1y agoIf you have an EV that can be charged only at night, a big battery is required.
- cyri 1y agoFor solar excess charging I use evcc.io When I charge the car via battery then only down to ~75% for now. The remaining energy is needed by the house during winter months.
- raphael_l 1y agoI would also be interested in the reasoning here! Just for comparisons sake, our 8.6kwP setup with a 10kwH battery cost us (after subsidies from governemnt) appr. ~€11.5k. Haven't received all the subsidies yet, so the total will be lower by about 1.5k (I think). Everything was done through installers, we didn't lift a finger (also couldn't, because when it comes to electricity I have as much experience as the dog next door). If I had more due diligence before I would have scaled up the panels up to at least 10kwP, for future proofing probably to 12kwP. This is mostly just to make sure winter is covered better, as our production is really low as we have a 10° flat roof installation.
- jillesvangurp 1y agoGreat to see DIY early adopters getting great savings here. I think the bigger trend here is lower cost, commoditization, and it eventually becoming a no-brainer for people that have the opportunity/space to be running their own micro grids for cost reasons. The cost of what you need here is still quite high. But making things easier to plug together helps. And of course component cost is coming down. For example, you can buy kits on amazon for powering your shed or boat and it's essentially a smaller version of what you would put on your house. No electricians needed. No permits required. Here in Germany you can buy balcony solar kits in the supermarket. They only deliver a few hundred watts of power but it's plug and play. And you can get a nice little subsidy to do that. Some of these kits only cost a couple of hundred euro. I could see that eventually adding a microgrid to a building is not going to break the bank. Car batteries are much larger than what goes in a house and kwh prices are trending well below 100$/kwh now. Meaning it should not cost tens of thousands to get a couple of tens of kwh to store energy. Inverters shouldn't break the bank either. The going rate for solar panels is around 200$. Mostly current prices for home setups are much higher than the component cost mainly due to regulations, labor cost, certifications, etc. If you go off grid, you can just DIY and you end up much closer to the component cost. But of course long term both component cost and other cost are coming down. With the exception of labor cost probably. Though the skills needed will become more common and you might be able to do a lot of work yourself.
- speedbird 1y agoAm interested in the DC-AC—DC- Battery-AC vs DC-DC-Battery-AC efficiency argument. As in there must be a DC-DC conversion happening to charge batteries appropriately.
- davedx 1y agoStepping voltage up or down isnt as lossy (or expensive) as converting from AC<->DC
- rssoconnor 1y agoAs someone not into electronics, can you explain how that works. I'm only familiar with transformers which, of course, require AC?
- aa-jv 1y agoI have a minor interest in this subject as well, and after some thinking I realized that my personal solar interests are best served by electro-mechanical harvesting of solar energy, first and foremost .. since a full-blown EV solar rig would require the purchase of components I cannot myself personally make very easily. This summer I'm building a solar oven to cook bread and veggies with .. and if this works well, I'll build a solar death ray to play with while I wait for lunch. It seems to me that this is a potential route for the popularization of off-grid/local-energy-harvesting movements to gain more traction. Sure, its nice to have a whole roof full of PV panels and a battery bank to sip juice from now and then, but this still requires a heavy investment in foreign-originated parts and materials. A solar oven/solar death ray, however, is a lot more feasible to produce locally.
- KaiserPro 1y agoI have a solar system in my house in london. 5kw, 13kwhr battery. I am self sufficient from end of march to october. I recently got a second hand electric car. I bought an EV plug (total fucking ripoff. its a fucking plug with a contactor, RCD and a CAN interface. no way is that worth fucking £600) It has some basic control to allow me to charge from excess solar. What is not easy to do is charge at night without draining the house battery. Its fine for me, because I have Home Assistant, with enough fiddling I can get all the systems to talk to each other to play ball. (to add to the complication, I'm on a variable rate tariff, so price can be negative or £1 a kwhr) I would really love a "house power API" that would allow a "controller" to locally control the power behavior of all the things in a house. Because at the moment, a "normal" person wouldn't be able to charge their car and have house batteries and have solar, and optimise for cost.
- epiecs 1y agoIf your electrical installation allows it: You can connect your ev plug before the battery so that it does not drain the battery. You can do this by placing the fuse/connection before the measurement clamps for the battery. Somewhere in between your mains connection and your battery/solar system. This way the battery does not see the load and does not provide power to your EV. That way you can still use excess solar (before you inject it into the mains) to charge your car + you do not pull power from your battery :)
- KaiserPro 1y agoThe ideal solution is for the battery to have a third set of clamps to measure the EV. But as I don't have installer access to the software (centrally managed for the win) I'm not sure thats possible. I might ask to see if thats possible. I probably need more panels to cover the winter load.
- metalman 1y agoMidnight Solar are the OG company in off grid and they have a "waste not" feature from way back that triggers any device when the parameters you set are reached, ie: float voltage, and/or other things, like a second set point where power would be sent to a third load, like the grid or water heating. https://www.midnitesolar.com/ https://www.midnitesolar.com/ hard core techies, even had the pleasure of detailing my inadvertant and unsucessfull attempts to melt one of there controlers.......literaly had a main lug get loose, and the panels arc melted the lug to slag, and it lived. in any case, there web site has a wealth of info on what is possible, and to look for elsewhere
- venamresm__ 1y agoWe also setup our own off-grid solar system, almost 4 years ago now. The cost was much lower due to lower import fees and lack of regulations where I live, it was altogether somewhere between $3-4k total, for 16 panels, mounting rack, inverter (with backup inverter), mptt, 12 acid-lead batteries, etc.. We saved so much money, and fewer headaches, since state electricity only came around 5-6h a day and people relied on scammy-mafia generator providers that ask for insane prices.
- thefz 1y ago> I have a rack in the garage that pulls a little less than 1kw. That’s 1kw 24/7/365 This is insane. And here I am shutting down nightly the drives in my synology to save 20W.
- sponaugle 1y agoHold my beer!
- bmqpo 1y agoWith power issues in Nigeria (basically no power from my perspective), I have been building my home solar system. Currently at 9kw solar panels, 10kva inverter with 30kwh Chinese LFP. Spent about $7,000 so far. Looking to eventually get to 60kwh and at least 20kw in panels because of air conditioning needs. Waiting for government, my kids currently in primary school would probably have graduated from college before they fix the power situation (they are currently fixated on building roads to nowhere).
- growt 1y agoI missed the "power" when I skimmed the headline and clicked the link. I was slightly dissapointed when I finally realised that the OP is in fact not building his own solar system.
- K0balt 1y agoI’ve been running a solar microgrid on my coffee farm for the last 7years. We started with a few golf cart batteries and 4 panels, these days we’re powering 4 houses, 7 cabins, water extraction, treatment, and RO processing, campus-wide fiber network and switches, path lighting, security systems, and a small server rack. We’re running 6 inverters on our primary system in a three phase configuration, 35kw of panels and 160kwh of lithium iron batteries. About to add an additional 20kw of panels and a test bank of LiTo cells. Our panels are a distributed set of rooftop mounted panels on various buildings, which also serves to shade the rooftops reducing cooling loads. We still have to run a generator to supplement charging on dark overcast days, but it’s typically about 100 hours a year. Hooping to get that running on biomass eventually. It’s strange to me that people in rural areas pay for electricity. It makes no economic sense, at least here in the Caribbean.
- account-5 1y agoWould imagine it's the initial cost of seeing all that up, and then the cost of maintenance. For me personally, where do you even start?
- K0balt 1y agoIt grew organically so there was never a huge cost Really, except when we decided to build a building for The power plant because it was getting out of hand. It’s been a few thousand dollars a year in growth as we add batteries and panels. Also a bit of labor for installation of course, but we handle that in house.
- boringg 1y agoHow much are you valuing your own time? Theres money cost, then theres time cost and the final one is in more remote communities with cold weather… insurance costs on failure… Also to be clear - good on you for building out rural off grid electrical. Its a fun project and satisfying no doubt (outaide of costa)
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- caseysoftware 1y agoI'm in Texas and designed our own solar+battery setup in '21. I had an installer handle that bit and the interconnect though. I found the "secret" was the to leave room for expansion. In Texas, residential grid-tied solar can be up to 20kWh so I chose cells that got me to 19.96kWh Then I added an 29kWh battery stacks (18kWh total) but each stack could go to 18kWh (36kWh total). Then I also used a pair of Generac inverters which lets me get two more stacks for 72kWh total. My goal was resiliency, not sufficiency, so I use it grid-tied so I charge during the day and use at night. When there are storms coming, I flip it to "priority backup" which will prioritize charging.. even using the grid to do it if there's not enough sun. Anyway, it's been in production since January '22 and my annual* electric bill is ~$1100. Even better, when we have an outage (occasional as we live in a heavily wooded area) if our stack is full, we have ~5 days of battery backup for the fridge, a handful of appliances, and our Starlink.. therefore we have safe food storage, safe food prep, and non-terrestrial communications. Of course, this cost ~$80k to get there in 2021 (aka before crazy inflation)
- Aurornis 1y ago> Anyway, it's been in production since January '22 and my annual* electric bill is ~$1100. A more helpful comparison would be to see your electricity bill before and after. For comparison, I’m in an area with low electricity rates and I don’t run A/C at the level of someone in a Texas climate. My annual electricity bill is barely higher than yours but I don’t have any solar at all. Absolute electricity bill numbers don’t translate well.
- ctkhn 1y agoSaving this for when my parents moves - they're on NEM 1 and will freak at the rates for a new solar install. Right now the excess power goes to an EV and then the grid since the power import/export rates are almost 1:1 but after the move these in home batteries are going to be crucial.
- heytakeiteasy 1y agoGreat writeup! Seems bizarre to have a furnace in the Bay Area. Air-source heat pumps and heat pump water heaters are fantastic these days.
- EcommerceFlow 1y agoImagine if America didn't have any tarrifs or constrains on Chinese advanced goods like EV cars and Solar Panels.
- M3L0NM4N 1y ago>We can't all live in SF Thanks to California zoning
- breakds 1y agoWow, what a fantastic write-up—thanks for sharing this! I’m a San Jose homeowner (and PG&E sufferer) with a homelab that pulls over 1 kW, and I’ve been down the DIY solar rabbit hole for the past two weeks. Based on my research, I’m planning a roughly 9 kW Signature Solar setup: 20× 455 W Canadian Solar panels (~$173 ea) 1× GridBoss MID V2 (~$2 400) 1× FlexBoss 21 (~$2 400) 4× Eco-Worthy 48 V 100 Ah LiFePO₄ batteries (~$1 500 ea) 18 U server rack (~$500) — total hardware ~$14 760 My big hang-up has been the rooftop work, permitting and inspections—almost no one I call will touch a true DIY system. If anyone here in the Bay Area has recommendations for installers or back-of-house permit-whisperers who’ll partner on a non-Tesla/Sunrun job, I’d love to hear how you made it happen. Thanks again for the inspiring guide!
- quickthrowman 1y agoCrazy, where I live the payback on the hardware would take ~114,000 kWh (or 13) years at 24kWh per day, $0.13/kWh). Where you live it’s only 24,000 kWh to pay off the hardware, or just under 3 years ($0.61/kWh). I’d definitely pull the trigger.
- sowbug 1y agoGreenlancer will draw up code-compliant plans that you can submit to your local building permit agency, and they'll revise if anything needs it. It cost less than $400 last year. You've done enough research that they'll be able to easily take your project and turn it into something legal. I recently did an Enphase system of a similar size to yours. It was fully DIY except for wiring the combiner and a roofing company to plug all the holes I drilled. Working with PG&E was truly an epic year-plus battle culminating in a CPUC complaint, but in the end it was really just a bunch of emails. I don't have any installer recommendations, but it should be easy enough to find a local electrician, and I've found that they tend to know others in adjacent fields.
- breakds 1y agoThanks so much for sharing your story – hearing about your DIY Enphase install (and epic PG&E battle!) really gives me confidence. And the information you shared is extremely helpful for first-time DIYers like me.
- bredren 1y agoWhat happened with the broken panel shown at the end of the article?
- nodesocket 1y agoWe’ve recently had some crazy storms and power outages and my Ecoflow units kicked in and worked perfectly. I have a River 2 which I use as a UPS for my Mac Mini + Monitor at my desk and a River 2 Pro as a UPS for all my Ubiquiti networking, Protect cameras, and severs in my racks. Then I have a Delta 2 I can hookup to the two Rivers to add additional charge. Just pulled the trigger on a 3600watt gas generator off Amazon as well incase of extended outages. While not whole home backup by any means it’s a solid setup for electronics and server gear.
- GratiaTerra 1y agoI installed a similar EG4 inverter and battery system and had a similar experience. The big problem I ran into was that EG4 inverters are NOT compatible with my state's power grid (Hawaii) but because I had so much power, it turned out I never needed to connect to the power grid but I am loosing out on selling power. (Check with your local power company before buying!). Another problem I had was that a week after installing, one of the TIGO units burned up and started a fire that burned a hole in a solar panel. I only noticed the problem when I saw that one of the solar arrays wasn't putting out power. Replacing the defective unit solved the problem. Also, I had assumed I would need a generator to power through consecutive days of dark clouds but I instead opted for Ford's Pro Charger Station which has a feature that allows you to power the house; no need for a generator. However, its been over a year and not once have I needed this. My big takeaway is this: having energy abundance is the good life when you have all electric appliances. My EV (a Ford Lightning Truck), hot tub, AC, water heaters etc have been running over a year with no problems and zero costs after the initial investment.
- SoftTalker 1y agoHow many days can the truck power the house, and what's the longest stretch of overcast days you get (in Hawaii, I am gussing you get at least some sun almost every day).
- GratiaTerra 1y agoTruck at 100% = 131 kwh, Minus 10% loss in transfer = 120 kwh House using 12 kwh/d = 10 days, up to 24kwh/d = 5 days Local conditions are typically partly cloudy/rain but still system producing more than can be used.
- thegrim33 1y agoIt's kind of telling/ironic that the author gripes (whether rightfully or wrongly) about PG&E wanting more return on investment due to their risk of doing business in California, but when the author decides to build their own power system to not deal with PG&E, literally almost every paragraph related to their planning/setup contains a mention of some different California/city regulation that the author had to meet or else it's illegal for them to build their own power system. To the point where they had to pay a professional to help them meet all the regulations.
- vasusen 1y agoThis is the key issue. We are over-regulated. We rebuilt our house in the SF Bay Area in 2022 and went fully electric, no gas line anymore. It was really sad that I couldn't resuse any of my previous 12 kwh solar panels that were fully functioning and had another 10-15 years on them as they wouldn't match the new regulations. I tried to get them installed on a separate area in my own backyard for off-the-grid charger just for my car, but you are not allowed to have a big off-the-grid system unconnected to PG&E. No electrician was willing to help with risk of losing license. The author was lucky that his dad could help with electrical. Due to similar issues, I couldn't find anyone to take them for free as well. Demo dad was a truly sad day to watch these perfectly functioning solar panels being destroyed by a crane.
- bityard 1y agoWow, not being able to have an off-grid system AT ALL without the utility's approval just sounds bonkers to me. I guess PG&E is even more evil than I thought. Used solar panels are a pretty brisk business right now. Lots of places are replacing their 10-15 year-old panels with new ones just due to the better efficiency and capacity alone. And now that we have over a decade of large-scale solar experience to draw from, we are finding that they tend to degrade a lot slower than expected and that the original 30-year lifespan was highly conservative. I'm surprised you couldn't find someone from out of state to buy them.
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- gdubs 1y agoThis disabused me of the notion of doing it myself, lol. This is super impressive. Hope to one day be confident enough in electrical work. That and plumbing are the areas of home improvement that I still just would rather sub out. But, this is such a cool article. The quotes on solar installs for some reason seem a lot higher than what you'd expect, given all the charts showing the absolute cratering of solar energy prices – but doesn't seem to work out that way when it comes to residential installations.
- danans 1y ago> This disabused me of the notion of doing it myself, lol. The author did a very custom setup. If you want to DIY with a pre-integrated setup, you can enroll in Enphase's self installer program, and complete their online coursework: https://enlighten.enphaseenergy.com/manager/registration?_gl=1*k9hp2s*_gcl_aw*R0NMLjE3NDU0MjM1MDIuQ2p3S0NBanduNkxBQmhCU0Vpd0FzTkpyamo5dWMyM1dmYnhaVHVBNUNHWmF2NkpSYWp1VEFoaktxVmJTM0FyMThUTTJKZUEyUFFVR254b0M4R3NRQXZEX0J3RQ..*_gcl_au*MTIzNzAwNDAxMS4xNzQ1NDIzNTAx*_ga*MjA3MDQ5MTk5OC4xNzQ1NDIzNTAy*_ga_0L7F5QSJ7V*czE3NDc4NDg3NTEkbzIkZzAkdDE3NDc4NDg3NTIkajU5JGwwJGgwJGQ4SEVyLWNLQTNwN045dWUyZFBMRTV5TTlLY3dUWFZYSTZn&utm_campaign=internal_reference&utm_medium=answer_links&utm_source=community https://enlighten.enphaseenergy.com/manager/registration?_gl... I think EcoFlow may have a similar option.
- Havoc 1y agoSuspect it would have been cheaper to invest money in upgrading the homelab and aircon to more efficient. Not downgrade, but rather moving to newer lith nodes etc. Tackling the usage before bigger battery system often makes sense
- somanyphotons 1y agoThe solar system will pay for itself within N years, and then he has free power for as long as the batteries and panels last
- Havoc 1y ago>pay for itself within N years The total outlay in that calc is affected by how big of a system you need though. If you've got no obviously inefficient gear then yes you just put in a system of whatever size is needed. If you have easy wins on the consumption side then you do that first. Silly example but say you could eliminate half your consumption with a once off $100 spend then you do that. You don't pay through your nose for an system twice the size just because of ""free"" power later. Where that cutoff point lies will require calculation, but chances are old enterprise racks are on the wrong side of it.
- bsder 1y agoIt's really unlikely that most people will gain a lot of money from these kinds of installations nowadays (an EV probably tips that somewhat). The big benefit is the resilience. Since you are using them every day, they will be far more likely to work in the event of an outage than a gasoline generator that you test once a year.
- ryandrake 1y agoPretty cool. I'd love to get into solar DIY but it seems pretty daunting. I moved in to a place recently with an (apparently very old) 7kW rooftop solar system without a battery, and I called the original installer to talk about what my options are if I wanted to expand it, either adding more watts or adding a battery. The overall take-away from talking to the installer was that it wasn't worth it because my existing system uses some different, older technology, and that making any substantial improvements to it would change my "NEM" whatever that means. The way I understand it, it would move me into some other, more expensive regulatory regime. I don't know--my head was spinning after the conversation, and I was basically convinced to just ignore the system I have and not touch it.
- danans 1y ago> Missing site diagram placard at MSP I got dinged for this on the first inspection of my own self-installed solar+battery system. A lot of signage companies don't know how to do the placard, but the company that I found that knows how was PVLabels: https://www.pvlabels.com/04-645-map-placard/ https://www.pvlabels.com/04-645-map-placard/
- duffpkg 1y agoEven with tariffs batteries are very cheap. Into the 4 year mark my cost per kwh is down below $0.02 because I end up using excess power for all sorts of things because it is "free". https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40877337 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40877337
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- ellisv 1y agoI've interested in solar and batteries but unfortunately the return would be too long for us if we hired a contractor and I'm not confident in my own skills to pull it off correctly. Mostly I want an easy whole home battery just for some arbitrage. Our rate plan has a 4 hour peak period of $0.27/kwh vs $0.14/kwh off peak. Of course the peak time is when we actually want to use a lot of energy running our AC and other appliances. Unfortunately I haven't found any DIY stand alone battery systems that offer the simple scheduling I need since most seem to be only backup systems.
- KPGv2 1y ago> $30K Wow. That's ten years of electrical bills where I live in Texas, and you also have to deal with the increased water leakage risks, any maintenance issues, storm problems, etc.
- hurtuvac78 1y agoThe author says that the resale value to PGE is 25% of the buying price. Is there some way to get a better rate by selling CPU time instead, when the sun shines and batteries are full? Especially if you have your own server rack. I have computing needs that can wait for 12/18 hours. Would it make any sense to have those processed by distributed solar server farms between 11am and 5pm? They just take data in and send results back, using their own "free" marginal kwh. It would reduce the need the connect to the power grid, but still benefit from selling solar power indirectly. Cloud providers may just be so much better at doing this already?
- bauruine 1y agoMining Monero maybe.
- cranky908canuck 1y agoThe technical work is lovely. I would have liked to have seen (though I respect that it might be personal or PII) a working out of the accounting, specifically about the amortized cost of batteries vs just eating PG&E costs and treating them as the battery.
- aucisson_masque 1y agoHow well do solar panel resist to Hail or tornado ? Getting Tree branches thrown at it or whatever happen when there is a lot of wind ?
- trod1234 1y agohttps://archive.ph/yDwRZ https://archive.ph/yDwRZ