Sometimes on the Internet it is hard to tell if someone is serious or trolling you. There was one fellow who posted an image of how is sturdily-mounted panel had survived the recent hurricanes. It looked to be about 20 watts and in a sheltered edge of his roof. I suspect a troll.
I have a lot of panels in my system, most of which are solar shingles. These were an early attempt at solar roofing and the maker made mistakes. One big one, for the Florida market, is that they only have a wind rating of 60 mph. However, they are surrounded by trees, which can help buffer the winds. So far, so good, but we have not had a really rip-snorter of a storm since they went up. I have some more that were DOA, but they are going to be the roof on the north-facing slope of the solar shed’s new extension. They still make good roof and I don’t have to make a run to the roof store.
I have some temporary panels–just trying them out–simply leaning against the shed. They’ll be taken down if we get a serious threat. My sturdiest mount is made of oil drill pipe, which is super strong. It is bedded in concrete. I have great hopes for its enduranceE, but mother nature is tough.
When FPL was building a solar farm a mile down the road from me, there was an incessant pounding noise for weeks. It seems the big players start with galvanized I-beams and pound them deep into the ground. That works very well, but the recent weather activities in Central Florida showed us just what a tornado can do. This was at a Duke Power facility.
The “green energy transition” has not gone as fast as some had hoped. We are seeing more push back in a couple of areas, notably cars and heat pumps. While EV prices are coming down, many people find a new EV to be too expensive. Insurance rates for my aging fleet of petrol burners are high, but small compared to the rates for EVs. Used EV prices are fairly high and there is the uncertainty of the cost of battery replacement. Range and recharge times are still a big deal. I think an EV would be a great daily commuter or delivery vehicle, if you have a fixed route. Meanwhile, a lot of folks are going for a compromise with a hybrid. Here’s another compromise: Use solar to pump your gas!
We are now in one of those twice a year sweet spots on the weather. Temperatures are mild. I have had the a/c off in the house for a month. It still runs in the control room to keep the equipment happy, but the drop off in load is keeping my batteries fat and happy. We’ve even had a number of nights where it has cooled the house down to the point of needing heat. Normally, I use a wood furnace for heat, but last year I started using the heat pump during the day when it is cold and sunny and switching to the boiler at night. Where we are now, I am running the heat pump at night on battery and saving wood. I have an unlimited supply of wood, but am not to keen on cutting and hauling it. As it stands, I have the wood bunkers full, saving it for later.
I do have an order of new batteries awaiting a big truck to head this way. 1700 pounds of Lithium Iron Phosphate beauties. I am anxious to see if another 80 kwh of storage will let me run the heat pump during colder weather. The risk here is that if I push it too far, I will wake up to find it cold and dark until the sun comes out again! Some automation may need to be devised, but for now I have great hopes. Oh, I plan to run the LFP batteries in parallel with a couple of tons of lead batteries. I am hearing that this sort of hybrid battery lash up works great, prolonging the life of the lead and avoiding the sudden dark of a lithium battery that gets too low.
The problem with heat pumps, though, is they don’t work well in cold weather. They work by extracting heat from outside air and pumping it into the house. Below freezing, there is not a lot of heat out there. New models claim to work well below zero, but the reports from the field are not good. The electrification dream is having problems up north in the USA, but there is a massive pushback in England and Europe. Many houses there are made of brick or stone, with little or no insulation. Folks welcomed the subsidized change, only to find themselves shivering. It is hard to beat real fire for heat. The work continues, but a heat pump with solar can work great, within limits.
I have had people tell me I am wrong, that their heat pumps work great in the coldest weather. Here is a very important thing to understand about heat pumps and the traditional thermostats: they have high power consuming resistive heating elements in them for backup. If the set temperature and the room temperature slip by a few degrees, the resistive element kicks in and that power meter spins like mad. If you are running on inverter, you might end up exceeding the capacity of your inverter and things could get dark in a hurry. My main inverter stack is 12kw. You add the heat pump compressor, the clothes dryer, the dishwasher, 3 fridges (I don’t know why I have 3) and all the usual suspects plus another 5-10kw of heater and you have a problem. In my system, I have the resistive elements disabled. This might be a flip of the circuit breaker or you might have to go in and disconnect something in the thermostat or the air handler.
Another thing with the resistance heating is that if you try to save energy by cutting the thermostat back when you go out and run it back up when you get home, you might trip that emergency heat element and end up burning more kilowatts than you would have just leaving it on. There is good news there, though. Many of these new programmable thermostats can delay emergency heat when the transition from an “away” temp of 60 degrees to a “home” temp of 72, allowing the heat pump to do its thing without burning extra power. I put these in two of our museum buildings and it made a big difference in the power bill. I think they are Emerson brand and they give the pump a 2 hour head start before switching to the electric heating coil.
Oh, if you need solar supplies, give Roberto a call at Sun Electronics.
–Neal