Mastodawn

Sean Heber Mar 24

Rooftop solar update: IT'S FINALLY ON!

Downside is, because everything is messed up about this install with things being done in the wrong order, they don't yet have the device hooked up/configured that lets us actually SEE the production. So here we are... after all this time... producing power. Maybe. I can't even tell. lol

Sean Heber Mar 24

I took a closer look at the meter and I realized it toggled between a couple of different states. So I went back out and one of the states that was showing all zeros before is showing a 1 now. I think it's already generated 1kWh.

(I should also note it's kind of dark and cloudy right now.)

Sean Heber Mar 24

Up to 3kWh! ⚡

brb - turning on ALL THE THINGS!

Okay not really... but... I mean... even right now on a cloudy day, we're feeding power BACK into the system right now. Essentially everything in my house is now running for free.

(Of course, it's not a very cold day so the electric heat isn't running right now. I'm sure that'll change the equation a bit. 😛)

Sean Heber 6d ago

Sweet - we got logged into the solar tracker thingy. So far it says we've generated 17.46 kWh in under 3 hours. I have nothing to compare this with, but seems good considering it's so cloudy.

So far the "equivalent trees planted" is 0. (Doh...)

Sean Heber 6d ago

And while I was writing that post, it went up to 19.28 kWh. Hmm!

Whoa, neat, I can click on each panel and see their own individual stats.

My best performing panel appears to be: 295.6 W, 33.9 V, 8.7 A, 24.2°C right now. Neat!

Whoa.. I can click on an individual micro inverter and turn it off from this web interface for... some reason.

Looks like every single micro inverter has a firmware listing. I hope they either auto-update or never ever update. 😛

Sean Heber 6d ago

Now kind of annoyed the power company doesn't have a live dashboard like this. Theirs is just a graph with something like a 4 day lag. Meh.

Renaud Lienhart 6d ago

@bigzaphod power meters can’t transmit in real time over the internet — they do bulk transfers (usually at night) over a wireless mesh network made up of *all* power meters. It’s actually pretty interesting tech, and less likely to be hacked.

Sean Heber 6d ago

@layoutSubviews it's pretty neat, but it could be even neater is all I'm sayin! 😛

Michael Cook 6d ago

@bigzaphod I don’t think I’d want to see that. It would be too depressing at certain times of the year when they like to extract blood money.

@bigzaphod after like uhhhh 6 months we might finally be able to turn ours on next week 🤞

Sean Heber 6d ago

@powerllama whooo! We started this process in June. So... pretty similar timeline here.

@bigzaphod hahahahaha our power is now cut off because of permitting issues ahahahahahahahahahahahaahahah

Sean Heber 4d ago

@powerllama oh no!!!!

@bigzaphod oh no!!!!!!!!!

Carlos Chacon 6d ago

@bigzaphod may I introduce you to Home Assistant? Mine’s not real time but aggregates every hour

@bigzaphod Hey! That's a nice panel you got there! Yeah, no.. I mean that one-no.. Yeah THAT one! Nice Panel!

Tom Harrington 6d ago

@bigzaphod nice! How many panels is that? What’s the overall capacity?

Sean Heber 6d ago

@atomicbird 42 panels / 14.618 kW.

Tom Harrington 6d ago

@bigzaphod Awesome. My power company limited me to 3.6 kW if I want to be on grid, or I'd have more.

Amy Worrall 6d ago

@bigzaphod @atomicbird I am jealous of your roof space! I have 19 panels (IIRC) and that's all I can get on there!

Jeff C. 🇺🇦🇬🇱6d ago

@bigzaphod 17.46 kWh!?

Great Scott!

@bigzaphod 2.5 times what our houses uses in a day :)

Sean Heber 6d ago

@janl it's possible this array is massively oversized... I'm not really sure. Although we have electric heat now (and of course electric A/C in summer). Also electric clothes dryer. At some point I'd like to get electric water heater and kitchen stove, too, which would complete the set and I can get rid of the gas tank we have finally.

@bigzaphod I made some grievous maths errors here. I didn’t take into account our own solar production and it’s been very sunny here these past few days.

That makes your setup about 1x what our house uses in a day.

But that’s without warm water which we get from solarthermics, so that’d be another 5–7kWh.

Which I don’t think is oversized if you have heating / cooling attached.

Also there is no oversizing solar in my book. Every kWh helps.

@bigzaphod how do you/they decide how many panels you need or can install? Up here in Alberta they won't let you generate much more than your house uses in a year.
@janl

Sean Heber 6d ago

@todd @janl I don't recall any rule here about how many, although realistically the power company doesn't pay out cash money (at least not for a home install), but they pay out 1:1 credits (here anyway). So installing more than the power you use would just sort of be making free power for the power company because you can't turn those credits into real money - but they apply toward your bill and they bank them so over-generation in summer/sunny days apply to winter/cloudy days.

Sean Heber 6d ago

@todd @janl but from what other people have said, every power company around is different. Some have strict limits. Some won't even pay you for power so on those you'd really need a battery system to make it worthwhile. Some pay you back with real money. Some pay with credits. Most don't do a 1:1 thing where the credit == real cost of electric. So that one is a big win for us here - our power company credits are worth the same amount as the actual price they charge for power.

Sean Heber 6d ago

@todd @janl so in terms of deciding how many to install, it could be as simple as adding up total yearly energy usage and just aiming for that amount. They have models that show how much sun you get, etc, so they can calculate how many panels you'd need to offset the total power usage for a whole year taking into account the change in sun angles, etc, etc. The solar company did all that. But we also added extra because we also were switching to all-electric heat/heat pump too. Some guesswork.

@bigzaphod @todd @janl What solar company did you use? National chain or a regional provider? I’ve been interested in solar for years but haven’t found a good provider.

Sean Heber 5d ago

@ryan @todd @janl local company that's been around 10+ years.

@bigzaphod Ah, yeah sucks when they can charge you more than you get for selling them your excess. Up here there’s a high solar rate where you sell/pay .30/kWh during the summer when you generate way more than you need and then a low rate in the winter when you use more from the grid than you generate (around .08/kWh these days). Haven't seen that anywhere else except here.
@janl

@todd @bigzaphod @janl I live in the tropics and it’s the same story - low buyback price (much lower than the unit price) to feed into the grid with a cap on how many units can be sent out per day

There’s also very slow approvals for grid export permits (and some outright denials) but that’s probably a monopoly desperately trying to protect their margins

Renaud Lienhart 6d ago

@bigzaphod soon you’ll be yelling at (literal) clouds

Matt Pollari 6d ago

@bigzaphod great to hear!!