Switching To Solar Power – One Month Later

ThinSkin writes "After an interesting article on solar panel installation for the home, Loyd Case at ExtremeTech has written a follow-up after about a month of normal use. Posting an $11.34 electric bill (roughly 3% of previous months), Loyd shares his experiences using solar power and how it can be fun for the geek, with computer monitoring services and power generation data. Of course, solar power isn't all fun and games, given the amount of required maintenance — even unpredictable maintenance, like wiping off accumulated ash from fires in Northern California."

Comments

Re:DC - AC - DC

[Smitty825]

Not that I'm an EE or anything (I'm not), but I do know that the higher the voltage on your system, the lower the power lost due to resistance (assuming the same amount of power is transmitted) So even at short distances, it likely makes sense to lose a bit of power for the conversion from DC to high-voltage AC and not lose the power in the line.

(Also, again, I'm not an expert, but I don't believe DC to DC transformers exist. (Flame-proof protective suit on in the likely event I'm wrong) If I'm right, if you wanted to convert 12V DC to 3.3V DC, it would have to be converted to AC before being transformed to a lower voltage...)

Re:Why can't he sell it back?

[ddrichardson]

How about if the power companies installed the equipment in homes themselves? You know - capitalise on it.

They could get huge volume discounts on the equipment, and use it to top up their grid - kind of like a distributed power system. Given the wide areas supplied by the average power station, it would seem likely that in a similar proportion of all their distributed panels would be receiving sun at the same time.

Now how the customer is recompensed is the problem - is it just their surplus that tops up the grid? Well no - they need to pay in for the equipment. How about a much reduced rate on power - they're still saving.