12-25-2016, 03:06 PM
What we need, is a way to reliably wire the house, inexpensively ... To have two systems, the home in the middle on an island, and to be able to switch between grid and off grid at a glance...
Say, the system... will be 100% solar and when the weather gets crappy and cloudy, then the system will sense the change, and draw from batteries, but instead of powering on the generator it will switch to grid to charge up the batteries, as the solar panels continue to adjust with weather conditions. Then, the other scenario will be to switch from off grid to full on grid at night.
This would keep maintenance of the batteries down to a bare minimum, also, it would require less batteries in the bank, as there would be ALWAYS power to keep them charged. One wouldn't have to worry about abusing the batteries, as the entire system would be turned off at night (inverter, charge controller) and would be on 100% grid at night and certain weather conditions (Not just a typical cloud passing by).
A system like this, could allow reduced saving by half or more depending on how many panels were installed, without the fuss of figuring out how to get a huge battery bank and reduce the battery maintenance and buying batteries every 3-4 years. As not cycling the batteries would increase typical lead acid battery life to possible 20-30 years as long as they were in float mode 90% of time.
Tho, if you had Lithium type batteries, one could get away with ZERO maintenance, and very little space required to house them and of course, you wouldn't need a big expensive bank, so you one could have the best of both worlds at a reasonable cost.
One day, everyone will be on systems like this, and when helco starts finding huge drops in mass amounts of customer bills... They will figure out a way to charge even more, and possible even send someone over to rip out your illegally installed non permitted system. As we all know....... Helco is not for the people, but rather for profits to make the top 1% even more rich off the backs of energy consumption.
Say, the system... will be 100% solar and when the weather gets crappy and cloudy, then the system will sense the change, and draw from batteries, but instead of powering on the generator it will switch to grid to charge up the batteries, as the solar panels continue to adjust with weather conditions. Then, the other scenario will be to switch from off grid to full on grid at night.
This would keep maintenance of the batteries down to a bare minimum, also, it would require less batteries in the bank, as there would be ALWAYS power to keep them charged. One wouldn't have to worry about abusing the batteries, as the entire system would be turned off at night (inverter, charge controller) and would be on 100% grid at night and certain weather conditions (Not just a typical cloud passing by).
A system like this, could allow reduced saving by half or more depending on how many panels were installed, without the fuss of figuring out how to get a huge battery bank and reduce the battery maintenance and buying batteries every 3-4 years. As not cycling the batteries would increase typical lead acid battery life to possible 20-30 years as long as they were in float mode 90% of time.
Tho, if you had Lithium type batteries, one could get away with ZERO maintenance, and very little space required to house them and of course, you wouldn't need a big expensive bank, so you one could have the best of both worlds at a reasonable cost.
One day, everyone will be on systems like this, and when helco starts finding huge drops in mass amounts of customer bills... They will figure out a way to charge even more, and possible even send someone over to rip out your illegally installed non permitted system. As we all know....... Helco is not for the people, but rather for profits to make the top 1% even more rich off the backs of energy consumption.