Does anyone have a good link/step-by-step for doing some sort of home solar system where:
- it's sufficiently small-scale that no building permit is required
- it looks nice enough that neighbors won't complain
- the wiring is essentially plug-and-play
The best approach I've been able to come up with is to purchase a medium size battery pack such as is used for glamping (glamour camping), plug it into the wall and connect my refrigerator and a couple of other high-draw appliances to it (basement dehumidifier comes to mind), build a small roof for the back deck, using poured footings with short posts and then attaching the vertical pillars for the roof to that (which should side-step the need for a building permit since it's not a permanent structure), then placing the solar panels on that roof and running a wire to the battery placed in the kitchen.
For those wondering, the article did discuss the safety matter of using a power outlet as an inlet. And the article also points out that while this is allowed in several countries in Europe it's not allowed in the U.S., but I suppose you could always plug appliances directly into the battery instead.
We are starting to have this in the US, in fact I have a company coming by to do an install of a system like this on Monday. Technically you should be able to mostly diy it, but it uses a smart panel that gets attached to the main to prevent backflow, which needs an electrician, and for now they are running its own circuit.
Wild. I wonder how they deal with the back feeding issue. Is there something about the home wiring in those countries that prevents it? (or do they just not care and line workers know to check if a line is truly dead?)
There is a ton of DIY solar info online, but it is very much regionally dependent. Both for permits and system design.
Here in Florida, I can get high output from an average panel, but there are a lot of permit issues (and rightly so, a poorly installed panel can become a severe hazard in a hurricane).
Where I lived in Michigan, there weren't many permitting or zoning issues, but I'd need 3-4x the number of panels to get usable output in the winter time.
Most truly small scale solar systems don't provide enough output/value to be worth the effort, unless you're living a very low-power lifestyle.
I primarily want to generate enough solar to run my AC in the summer because that’s the dominant electricity consuming appliance in our house (except for the EV).
At least with DTE you receive credits for your production, which you can use within 12 months. So generating an excess in the summer to offset the winter is a viable strategy.
Michigan unfortunately represents a mismatch of when you need power vs when power is generated. Arizona, Texas, New Mexico are sweet spots. High power demand in the summer (A/C), relatively high proportion of sunny days.
Depends on your jurisdiction, but roof mounted solar installs generally don't need building permits. Electrical permits on the other hand are almost always required.
If you actually want to offset cost, don't buy a portable battery pack. Get an AIO solar inverter and a server rack battery. They're generally plug and play - wire the panels to it, connect the battery.
If you want to run your home loads, the cheapest/simplest way (without going grid-tie) is to have an electrician add a critical loads panel supplied by your inverter output, then plug your inverter in to the grid for backup (in case no solar or batteries are low).
"If you want to run your home loads, the cheapest/simplest way (without going grid-tie) is to have an electrician add a critical loads panel supplied by your inverter output ..."
No, that's actually not the simplest.
Far simpler is to install a solar breaker in your main panel and a physical lockout[1] between utility power and the new solar breaker.
There is no ATX, there are no smarts, the power goes out and you flip two breakers. There is nothing simpler than this.
The beauty of this is, you can keep scaling up your solar generation, adding panels as the years go by, and you are never locked into these ridiculous "preferred breakers" sub-panels.
Will you have to be smart about your total power use while you are on solar ? Yes, you will - just don't run the dryer and the microwave at the same time.
cheapest/simplest way (without going grid-tie) is to have an electrician add a critical loads panel supplied
Cheaper way is have electrician wire a manual transfer switch at the existing panel. When you loose power, turn off non-essential breakers and then flip transfer switch.
I'm interested in doing something like this as well. Build a pergola with a solar roof instead of just a metal one from Costco. I've seen a few videos online doing a similar sized system with like a Jackert or Anker Solix. Realistically with 2-3 harbor freight panels they're only enough to power like your home office. A fridge will burn through the battery pretty fast.
I do believe you can have them do input and output straight into your wall outlet and you don't have to plug right the appliances into the battery/inverter.
I agree, a solar pergula would be good and hardly noticeable.
A fidge is only going to use 1.5-2kWh per day. A medium sized pergola would give you more power than that. Since you aren't opening and closing the fridge in the middle of the night, a 1 kWh battery would keep it running all day on normal days.
Companies like Ecoflow sell mobile battery packs which you can connect foldable/small panels to by just plugging them in. No roof installation required. Those panels can be bought as a bundle with the packs. Those packs can then be connected to extension cords. It’s a starting point for short term outages.
That is the company whose products I've been considering --- my idea was to attach the solar panels to the roof so as to not need to fold/unfold, and to be able to take advantage of them all day without any further clutter on the deck (gaining a roofed area on the deck is a nice bonus).
Before buying a "glamping battery", you'll want to ensure that it can be run unattended in your desired configuration.
I previously had a Bluetti EB70S and while it almost did what I wanted, it could only charge from AC or Solar, but not both and didn't have a way to set desired levels.
Now I have a Bluetti Apex 300, and I can set it to charge to X% off AC during overnight off-peak rates, and never drop below Y%.
I did something similar with my lawn mower. I bought a battery and a single solar panel from Harbor Freight, along with the controller and wires need to hook it all together. I'd set the panel in the yard when I needed to charge the mower's batteries.
The whole thing, including the mower, cost less than half a year's fees from a yard crew, and I ended up saving money overall.
After the experiment was done (and I realized the mower was too low for my grass and was harming it) I sold the mower and gave the rest to my father-in-law for his shed.
We then got professionally installed solar panels for our house and a full-house battery. (It isn't strong enough for the air conditioner, but oh well.)
If I had it to do over again on the small scale, I'd buy an Ecoflow battery (which I have actually bought) and a solar panel made for it, and your fridge idea is a good one. It'd probably also power a fan, a light, and some light entertainment, I think.
Edit: Might go with "Anker" or "Jackery" instead of Ecoflow now, as it might be cheaper for the same thing.
For comparing those brands (EcoFlow, Anker, Jackery), you might want to check the wh/$ ratio - it's basically the best way to compare power station value (for newer LFP systems). I went through this same analysis recently - gearscouts.com [1] has a pretty good comparison table that tracks actual street prices vs capacity.
I've found the sweet spot is usually in the 500-1000Wh range for emergency backup. Enough to run a fridge for 8-12 hours but not so big that the solar panel costs get crazy. The LFP (LiFePO4) models tend to last way longer than the regular lithium ones - worth the extra cost if you're planning to use it regularly.
Your lawn mower experiment sounds like it was a good learning experience! Those small Harbor Freight panels are great for tinkering. I started with something similar before going to a full house system.
In my jurisdiction, you don't need a permit if you're doing it yourself, and it's on your side of the panel.
So the plan I came up with is essentially the plan you have, but I connect my refrigerator to the battery by the panel rather than running an extension cord from my kitchen to the battery.
The answers here have been pretty solid, a lot of what you want depends on where you live. For example, it is very likely that this is not possible if you're property is covered by an HOA. The definition of "it looks nice" is super hard to pin down (neighbors will complain at everything), and unless you're doing something really small, there is going to be some wiring involved. None of that should discourage you however.
"Zero emission generators" (aka battery boxes) are pretty easy to build, and even a 2kW inverter is relatively easy to hide/disguise. If you're doing this in a home situation (vs a camping situation) the 6V "golf cart" lead/acid batteries are really solid. A couple of those will give you 240 AHrs of 12V that can run a bunch of stuff. 240W panels can be stored at night and brought out during the day so keep them 'temporary.' Etc. Victron[1] makes nice chargers and monitors and are popular in the RV / Vanlife communities. Lots of online resources for hooking them up. And generally things you can roll around your property to different places are pretty easily defined as 'not a building' so immune from the permitting process generally.
I have a massive array+battery (20kWh generation, 19kWh storage) and while it's great, some things to pay consider:
- if you need roof repair/replacement, do it before you get solar. Alternatively, make your array free standing
- prioritize the circuits you want to cover. Not every one is critical but health & safety (water, fridge, cooking capabilities) are key
- MOST jurisdictions won't require permitting for the grid (especially if it's not connected to your house) but MOST will require an inspection if you want to connect to the grid
Where I am ya don’t been a permit for a shed if it’s under a 18 square metres, so 6x3m sheds are common.
You could look in to off-grid / caravan appliances, thereby saving on a smaller inverter, but they tend to be around 3x the price of regular appliances.
Highly recommended going for 48v system if you’re starting from scratch to save on ridiculously large diameter cables and stupidly high amperage you’ll be dealing with with a 12v system.
I did a repair this week on a poorly designed 12v system that had a 12v to 230v 7amp (1600 watt) inverter powering a 230v 10amp cook top in a camper van. That cooktop was pulling 235 amp from the battery through a very hot 175amp slow blow fuse.
Which is great if you want to melt the fuse post and the supply cables and… I found the fault before the fire started.
>No feeding of solar power to the grid so no permits.
If it becomes popular the slimy solar farm developers and the utility will join hands to hire a lobbyist who will ensure the rules get changed to close the loophole.
This will be the main issue. No matter what you're going to be doing work inside the main service panel on your house adding new feeds and you'll need to install a transfer switch to disconnect your house in case of a power outage. Most electrical work inside a panel like adding circuits will require a permit in the US. Seems like your plan doesn't involve any of that though so you should be ok permit wise except maybe needing one for the pad and structure.
It would also be nice to think of your neighbors in terms of not starting a fire and someone capable of doing permitted work will be handy when you go to sell the place and bright red flags show up during inspection.
Depending on where you live, that you can buy solar panels+battery kits that plug into the wall and feed the circuit that way, no need to run extension cords to plug in individual appliances. However I don't think those types of setups are legal in the US, they don't trust the backfeed protection
The glamping approach is probably your best bet if you want to avoid paperwork. The equipment has gotten very good and quite cheap in the last few years.
India has had good luck building solar panels over irrigation canals. The shade substantially reduces the evaporation losses in the canal system. The framing is a bit tricky of course.
I don't know much about electrical grids, but I'm wondering if something like this concept could help South Africa with its endlessly struggling electrical grid problems. My city constantly has power outages and the majority of people cannot afford installing solar into their homes.
It is not necessary for the majority to install solar.
Pakistan had similar problems with rolling blackouts, and mass import of photovoltaic equipment and batteries from China has reduced the load on the grid so that outages no longer occur frequently. In fact the demand has shrunk so much that it jeopardizes financing of coal power companies.
> In fact the demand has shrunk so much that it jeopardizes financing of coal power companies.
That is something that I think would be the impetus needed to motivate reduction in coal power plants. If they become unprofitable to operate, then will the market finally decide to stop using them? Sadly, I could see the current US administration deciding to offer subsidies to keep coal.
Eskom is already trying to take people to court over "non-compliant" solar panel installations [1]. I wouldn't hold my breath. Like most things in ANC South Africa this is a political issue where Eskom wants to get their cut for providing a non-existent service - and then funnel that money back to their friends and family for their non-existent services.
Yup... It's about feeding the greedy fat cats at the top.
A simple solution like "just install solar" isn't going to solve the problems necessarily, because it originates from greed, mismanagement, corruption at the core. Solar is more of a downstream solution in my mind (correct me if I'm wrong).
Demand for coal will be reduced, which might most likely lead to massive job losses in not only the coal mining sector, but also logistics, exacerbating the troubling unemployment issues the country also faces. I don't really want to go down THAT rabbit hole :D
South Africa's problem is the ANC stopped Eskom building what it needed with foreseen growth when they came into power in the 90s. They wanted to introduce competition into the generation market.
They didn't introduce competition, as you might expect from a hyper-incompetent government, and just let the issue languish, and South Africa now just doesn't have enough power plants to serve its population when it takes one offline for scheduled maintenance.
But at least a lot more people got to buy Audis with the freed-up money sloshing around.
South Africa's problems with the electrical system and structure are well documented but also complicated. Here's a good recent video covering it, there are many others. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUnR8PBtVW8
In cases where transmission lines are hitting capacity particularly on hot days, this is a place where batteries can help. Peak shaving is can’t help you with grids that are oversubscribed for more than a few hours a day but they can help load shift for part of the day. The batteries can still have value for emissions reductions if and when you finally get right of ways for more power distribution.
They tried that - especially companies like BMW - and they got no permits, because the state run power company wants money for providing nothing.
The problem is also that thieves steal the copper cables, even for micro-grids. You can not tech your way out of social/cultural problems.
Socialist cultural rot is real and the only way out is to eradicate cultures that encourage that mindset. All the ingredients are there- but the people are still set on telling themselves that robin hood story that destroys everything.
Political movements that have sought to “eradicate cultures” have generally gone pretty poorly in history.
I read the clarifications downstream; and I gather that the intent here is not as malicious as it sounds. That said, I don’t see how the mindset of “I’m going to maximize my extraction from the system.” is substantively different from “I’m going to minimize my input into the system.” The net effect is similar. For example, the current U.S. president paid no taxes for years through various dodges, a fact about which he boasted and which he defended. But without a doubt he is extracting disproportionate benefits.
Undoubtedly corruption is rampant in the systems you refer to; but all of these things exist in democratic free-market economies as well.
Could you please explain the "socialist cultural rot" and the "eradicate cultures"? You might mean something totally sensible but this wording is quite triggering to me.
I love solar, but this "those who can afford microgrids can shield themselves from blackouts" paired with net metering where "the wealthy get paid a premium for excess generation and can buy expensive high-demand power back at a discount" probably aren't steps on the path to improved grid resiliency for any definition other than this weird "no island-wide outages" definition.
Solar output is also proportionate to area of sunlight projection. This means the theoretical capacity available to you is proportionate to real estate, area of planetary surface, under your ownership.
If it's the ancient practice of crediting on a one for one basis, yeah that doesn't help. (A look around says that's probably where PR is now). If they credit power delivered to the grid based on conditions when it was delivered, then that might help. With appropriate controls, storage can increase grid stability. It would probably be more cost effective to do utility scale storage projects, but project management is difficult in PR; letting those with personal capital hook up solar+batteries and send some of that onto the grid when demand is high seems useful?
Agreed. From first hand experience, even for regulated electricity markets, games get played to maximize profit per power generated that are directly making stability worse. Fixing these loop holes is hard for the regulator since they are instructed to encourage both increased renewable penetration and stability, despite traders/operators/producers not acting in good faith and just gaming whatever they can.
A healthy regulated will encourage maximizing profit for power and bring in competition which drives the cost down until energy is a commodity and the cost of electricity is actually based on the price of production and a small profit based on the cost of capital. Any situations that cause price spikes result in investment to harvest the difference.
The fact that you can add to the grid by installing solar and battery and connect to the grid in a single afternoon makes it pretty easy these days to have an elastic market that grows until you hit the limit of decentralized production vs. existing transmission architecture... but with the right equipment you can have community sized islands that can be much more immune to instability.
Net metering is gone in most of California (for new solar). I think it's going away in general. Distributed solar supports a more stable grid for everyone (per UL 1741-SB requirements).
What's the alternative? Equity is important, sure, but to swing all the way towards "only a centralized grid should be allowed in order to make sure all have the same level access" is a head-in-the-sands approach that ignores realities such as how the centralized grid out there has metastasized into a non-functional bureaucratic blame-shifting machine (at least measured by the increasing frequency of outages). A centralized grid also never actually delivers true equitable access.
One alternative is decentralization, and the article talks about that:
> The town’s local environmental nonprofit Casa Pueblo teamed up with researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tenn., to develop a way to connect multiple microgrids to exchange power with one another, all without having to be hooked up to Puerto Rico’s grid. The strategy, called grid orchestration, ensures that if power is knocked out on one of the installations, the others aren’t compromised.
Is it the wealthy that are doing that? Maybe? Probably? But isn't that how any R&D technology investment starts?
It's also involving a government-funded lab to re-envision how these systems could work to achieve resiliency through coordinated decentralization. And if there's any truth to trickle-down economics, it would have to be in something that allows for a decentralized approach accessible to many, not a centralized approach that only rewards r > g accumulation. Sounds like a good use of government research funding to me.
Just taking the article’s title at face value, what does it mean to have a blackout with microgrids?
Microgrids are, by definition, impervious to blackouts.
If a microgrid loses power due to a fault, neighbouring grids are unaffected. If all the neighbouring grids lose power due to a common fault, but your local grid is unaffected due to design or implementation choices, you’re golden.
Microgrids aren’t a solution to blackouts, and blackouts are not an issue microgrids have.
Looking at the article, the first paragraph claims:
When power went out across all of Puerto Rico on 16 April [well, clearly it didn’t as the very next sentence goes on to claim] a lot of the lights in the town of Adjuntas stayed on.
It can’t be both. It’s not a blackout and the lights stayed on.
Grid segmentation and multiple generation sources can do this too, and is a common feature of existing, traditional, power grids. The city I live in has these features with feed-ins from multiple hydro electric plants and wind factories, and a HVDC link to the next state over which has a full spectrum of generation sources bar nuclear.
As a result, the electricity here is very stable, and I don’t recall the last time we had even a brown out that affected the entire greater metro are and satellite towns.
Microgrids with interconnects are grids.
We can build grids that work, thereby leaving the general population free to pursue other, more important, economic endeavours.
Is this more of a battery cost issue - if you owned a battery that charged off the grid and discharged during blackout periods then that might just about cover you if you budget for the expected outage duration.... And assuming you can afford said battery in the first place.
The problem is the blackouts can go for lengths of time that would require impractically large battery installs. You can powerwall your way around a grid that frequently goes down for a few hours to a day, but one that may go down for days to months you are practically forced into some form of generation (solar or otherwise).
Batteries keep getting cheaper but are unlikely to get to where it’s more affordable to store a month’s worth of electricity than just buying some generation.
> if you owned a battery that charged off the grid and discharged during blackout periods
This wouldn't work. The reason isolated units can inject electricity back into the grid without issue is that they can observe frequency. If a blackout occurs, this information is gone. You need to perform a black start, which can't be done by isolated, uncoordinated equipments.
What you actually need is islanding equipment which discharges the battery for local use only, but cuts off (or islands you from) your main incoming power connection.
Many of the PV systems you can buy from the big players (SolarEdge, Tesla and more) support this, often calling it "whole home backup".
Same principle as having a generator with an interlock.
I don't think that applies for microgrids, or at least, it's not really an issue in my case.
I know what you're talking about though: I think that more applies to generators that are operating with megawatts and take time for turbines to spin up and stuff. Microgrids are normally instantaneous battery buffered type things. They can instantly deliver power at the frequency range mandated for the national grid.
Meanwhile, in third-world, overly bureaucratic Italy, one has to wait several months to get all the paperwork in order to take advantage of a solar installation. Self-deployed solutions are also limited to 800 watts, which is peanuts in today's world.
That is the case only if you want to give your surplus back to the grid.
If you avoid that, you are only limited to a maximum power of 20kW of solar panels installed.
You have clearly never spent anything but holiday time in a underdeveloped county. If ever. You won’t draw similarities otherwise. Completely different standing points.
Readit News
- it's sufficiently small-scale that no building permit is required
- it looks nice enough that neighbors won't complain
- the wiring is essentially plug-and-play
The best approach I've been able to come up with is to purchase a medium size battery pack such as is used for glamping (glamour camping), plug it into the wall and connect my refrigerator and a couple of other high-draw appliances to it (basement dehumidifier comes to mind), build a small roof for the back deck, using poured footings with short posts and then attaching the vertical pillars for the roof to that (which should side-step the need for a building permit since it's not a permanent structure), then placing the solar panels on that roof and running a wire to the battery placed in the kitchen.
For those wondering, the article did discuss the safety matter of using a power outlet as an inlet. And the article also points out that while this is allowed in several countries in Europe it's not allowed in the U.S., but I suppose you could always plug appliances directly into the battery instead.
Dead Comment
But watch the video at https://www.mobile-solarpower.com/mobile-48v-system.html for something similar to a Goal Zero or Jackery
Here in Florida, I can get high output from an average panel, but there are a lot of permit issues (and rightly so, a poorly installed panel can become a severe hazard in a hurricane).
Where I lived in Michigan, there weren't many permitting or zoning issues, but I'd need 3-4x the number of panels to get usable output in the winter time.
Most truly small scale solar systems don't provide enough output/value to be worth the effort, unless you're living a very low-power lifestyle.
I primarily want to generate enough solar to run my AC in the summer because that’s the dominant electricity consuming appliance in our house (except for the EV).
At least with DTE you receive credits for your production, which you can use within 12 months. So generating an excess in the summer to offset the winter is a viable strategy.
If you actually want to offset cost, don't buy a portable battery pack. Get an AIO solar inverter and a server rack battery. They're generally plug and play - wire the panels to it, connect the battery.
If you want to run your home loads, the cheapest/simplest way (without going grid-tie) is to have an electrician add a critical loads panel supplied by your inverter output, then plug your inverter in to the grid for backup (in case no solar or batteries are low).
No, that's actually not the simplest.
Far simpler is to install a solar breaker in your main panel and a physical lockout[1] between utility power and the new solar breaker.
There is no ATX, there are no smarts, the power goes out and you flip two breakers. There is nothing simpler than this.
The beauty of this is, you can keep scaling up your solar generation, adding panels as the years go by, and you are never locked into these ridiculous "preferred breakers" sub-panels.
Will you have to be smart about your total power use while you are on solar ? Yes, you will - just don't run the dryer and the microwave at the same time.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/QYZZRS-Generator-Interlock-Compatible...
Cheaper way is have electrician wire a manual transfer switch at the existing panel. When you loose power, turn off non-essential breakers and then flip transfer switch.
A fidge is only going to use 1.5-2kWh per day. A medium sized pergola would give you more power than that. Since you aren't opening and closing the fridge in the middle of the night, a 1 kWh battery would keep it running all day on normal days.
I previously had a Bluetti EB70S and while it almost did what I wanted, it could only charge from AC or Solar, but not both and didn't have a way to set desired levels.
Now I have a Bluetti Apex 300, and I can set it to charge to X% off AC during overnight off-peak rates, and never drop below Y%.
I did something similar with my lawn mower. I bought a battery and a single solar panel from Harbor Freight, along with the controller and wires need to hook it all together. I'd set the panel in the yard when I needed to charge the mower's batteries.
The whole thing, including the mower, cost less than half a year's fees from a yard crew, and I ended up saving money overall.
After the experiment was done (and I realized the mower was too low for my grass and was harming it) I sold the mower and gave the rest to my father-in-law for his shed.
We then got professionally installed solar panels for our house and a full-house battery. (It isn't strong enough for the air conditioner, but oh well.)
If I had it to do over again on the small scale, I'd buy an Ecoflow battery (which I have actually bought) and a solar panel made for it, and your fridge idea is a good one. It'd probably also power a fan, a light, and some light entertainment, I think.
Edit: Might go with "Anker" or "Jackery" instead of Ecoflow now, as it might be cheaper for the same thing.
I've found the sweet spot is usually in the 500-1000Wh range for emergency backup. Enough to run a fridge for 8-12 hours but not so big that the solar panel costs get crazy. The LFP (LiFePO4) models tend to last way longer than the regular lithium ones - worth the extra cost if you're planning to use it regularly.
Your lawn mower experiment sounds like it was a good learning experience! Those small Harbor Freight panels are great for tinkering. I started with something similar before going to a full house system.
[1] https://gearscouts.com/power-stations
So the plan I came up with is essentially the plan you have, but I connect my refrigerator to the battery by the panel rather than running an extension cord from my kitchen to the battery.
I disconnected the fridge and 2 other circuits from the panel, and terminated them with a nema 5-15p inlet receptacle like this: http://www.levitonproducts.com/catalog/model_5278-CWP.htm
I then put 4 solar panels on a 45 degree angle on the ground leaning against a south facing wall, anchored to the wall and ground.
The "solar generator" I used is this one: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/apex-300#/
It's similar to the glamping batteries you refer to, but is more targeted to home backup / off-grid / RV use than glamping.
"Zero emission generators" (aka battery boxes) are pretty easy to build, and even a 2kW inverter is relatively easy to hide/disguise. If you're doing this in a home situation (vs a camping situation) the 6V "golf cart" lead/acid batteries are really solid. A couple of those will give you 240 AHrs of 12V that can run a bunch of stuff. 240W panels can be stored at night and brought out during the day so keep them 'temporary.' Etc. Victron[1] makes nice chargers and monitors and are popular in the RV / Vanlife communities. Lots of online resources for hooking them up. And generally things you can roll around your property to different places are pretty easily defined as 'not a building' so immune from the permitting process generally.
[1] https://www.victronenergy.com/chargers
- if you need roof repair/replacement, do it before you get solar. Alternatively, make your array free standing
- prioritize the circuits you want to cover. Not every one is critical but health & safety (water, fridge, cooking capabilities) are key
- MOST jurisdictions won't require permitting for the grid (especially if it's not connected to your house) but MOST will require an inspection if you want to connect to the grid
- if you connect to the grid, make sure you understand how your electricity provider addresses net metering. I wrote about it here: https://geekamongthetrees.com/what-is-solar-net-metering-or-...
Where I am ya don’t been a permit for a shed if it’s under a 18 square metres, so 6x3m sheds are common.
You could look in to off-grid / caravan appliances, thereby saving on a smaller inverter, but they tend to be around 3x the price of regular appliances.
Highly recommended going for 48v system if you’re starting from scratch to save on ridiculously large diameter cables and stupidly high amperage you’ll be dealing with with a 12v system.
I did a repair this week on a poorly designed 12v system that had a 12v to 230v 7amp (1600 watt) inverter powering a 230v 10amp cook top in a camper van. That cooktop was pulling 235 amp from the battery through a very hot 175amp slow blow fuse.
Which is great if you want to melt the fuse post and the supply cables and… I found the fault before the fire started.
No feeding of solar power to the grid so no permits.
You can add a battery if you want to reduce your reliance on the grid. Or use it with a battery but without solar panels as a whole house UPS.
If it becomes popular the slimy solar farm developers and the utility will join hands to hire a lobbyist who will ensure the rules get changed to close the loophole.
This will be the main issue. No matter what you're going to be doing work inside the main service panel on your house adding new feeds and you'll need to install a transfer switch to disconnect your house in case of a power outage. Most electrical work inside a panel like adding circuits will require a permit in the US. Seems like your plan doesn't involve any of that though so you should be ok permit wise except maybe needing one for the pad and structure.
You don't need permit, and you don't even need new wiring.
Deleted Comment
Fascinating consequences
https://www.volts.wtf/p/pakistans-solar-boom
Pakistan had similar problems with rolling blackouts, and mass import of photovoltaic equipment and batteries from China has reduced the load on the grid so that outages no longer occur frequently. In fact the demand has shrunk so much that it jeopardizes financing of coal power companies.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43620309
That is something that I think would be the impetus needed to motivate reduction in coal power plants. If they become unprofitable to operate, then will the market finally decide to stop using them? Sadly, I could see the current US administration deciding to offer subsidies to keep coal.
[1] https://www.ecr.co.za/shows/stacey-jsbu/eskom-cracks-down-no...
A simple solution like "just install solar" isn't going to solve the problems necessarily, because it originates from greed, mismanagement, corruption at the core. Solar is more of a downstream solution in my mind (correct me if I'm wrong).
Demand for coal will be reduced, which might most likely lead to massive job losses in not only the coal mining sector, but also logistics, exacerbating the troubling unemployment issues the country also faces. I don't really want to go down THAT rabbit hole :D
They didn't introduce competition, as you might expect from a hyper-incompetent government, and just let the issue languish, and South Africa now just doesn't have enough power plants to serve its population when it takes one offline for scheduled maintenance.
But at least a lot more people got to buy Audis with the freed-up money sloshing around.
The problem is also that thieves steal the copper cables, even for micro-grids. You can not tech your way out of social/cultural problems.
Socialist cultural rot is real and the only way out is to eradicate cultures that encourage that mindset. All the ingredients are there- but the people are still set on telling themselves that robin hood story that destroys everything.
Political movements that have sought to “eradicate cultures” have generally gone pretty poorly in history.
I read the clarifications downstream; and I gather that the intent here is not as malicious as it sounds. That said, I don’t see how the mindset of “I’m going to maximize my extraction from the system.” is substantively different from “I’m going to minimize my input into the system.” The net effect is similar. For example, the current U.S. president paid no taxes for years through various dodges, a fact about which he boasted and which he defended. But without a doubt he is extracting disproportionate benefits.
Undoubtedly corruption is rampant in the systems you refer to; but all of these things exist in democratic free-market economies as well.
And more people affording their own panels is still a lot more expensive than fixing the grid.
If it's the ancient practice of crediting on a one for one basis, yeah that doesn't help. (A look around says that's probably where PR is now). If they credit power delivered to the grid based on conditions when it was delivered, then that might help. With appropriate controls, storage can increase grid stability. It would probably be more cost effective to do utility scale storage projects, but project management is difficult in PR; letting those with personal capital hook up solar+batteries and send some of that onto the grid when demand is high seems useful?
The fact that you can add to the grid by installing solar and battery and connect to the grid in a single afternoon makes it pretty easy these days to have an elastic market that grows until you hit the limit of decentralized production vs. existing transmission architecture... but with the right equipment you can have community sized islands that can be much more immune to instability.
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One alternative is decentralization, and the article talks about that:
> The town’s local environmental nonprofit Casa Pueblo teamed up with researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tenn., to develop a way to connect multiple microgrids to exchange power with one another, all without having to be hooked up to Puerto Rico’s grid. The strategy, called grid orchestration, ensures that if power is knocked out on one of the installations, the others aren’t compromised.
Is it the wealthy that are doing that? Maybe? Probably? But isn't that how any R&D technology investment starts?
It's also involving a government-funded lab to re-envision how these systems could work to achieve resiliency through coordinated decentralization. And if there's any truth to trickle-down economics, it would have to be in something that allows for a decentralized approach accessible to many, not a centralized approach that only rewards r > g accumulation. Sounds like a good use of government research funding to me.
Microgrids are, by definition, impervious to blackouts.
If a microgrid loses power due to a fault, neighbouring grids are unaffected. If all the neighbouring grids lose power due to a common fault, but your local grid is unaffected due to design or implementation choices, you’re golden.
Microgrids aren’t a solution to blackouts, and blackouts are not an issue microgrids have.
Looking at the article, the first paragraph claims:
When power went out across all of Puerto Rico on 16 April [well, clearly it didn’t as the very next sentence goes on to claim] a lot of the lights in the town of Adjuntas stayed on.
It can’t be both. It’s not a blackout and the lights stayed on.
Grid segmentation and multiple generation sources can do this too, and is a common feature of existing, traditional, power grids. The city I live in has these features with feed-ins from multiple hydro electric plants and wind factories, and a HVDC link to the next state over which has a full spectrum of generation sources bar nuclear.
As a result, the electricity here is very stable, and I don’t recall the last time we had even a brown out that affected the entire greater metro are and satellite towns.
Microgrids with interconnects are grids.
We can build grids that work, thereby leaving the general population free to pursue other, more important, economic endeavours.
Failing that, build microgrids.
Batteries keep getting cheaper but are unlikely to get to where it’s more affordable to store a month’s worth of electricity than just buying some generation.
This wouldn't work. The reason isolated units can inject electricity back into the grid without issue is that they can observe frequency. If a blackout occurs, this information is gone. You need to perform a black start, which can't be done by isolated, uncoordinated equipments.
Many of the PV systems you can buy from the big players (SolarEdge, Tesla and more) support this, often calling it "whole home backup".
Same principle as having a generator with an interlock.
I know what you're talking about though: I think that more applies to generators that are operating with megawatts and take time for turbines to spin up and stuff. Microgrids are normally instantaneous battery buffered type things. They can instantly deliver power at the frequency range mandated for the national grid.
or is it that to connect to the grid you need to have your own storage as well as PV? it sounded like they joined three "islands" together.