The graph is from the electric company website showing my usage for a single day last week. It was sunny all last week, so pretty much every day’s usage looks like that graph. The little peaks around 1pm are when I made lunch since I can’t run the electric range from the power station. I could have run things for about 3-4 more hours from the power station, but I like to end the day with it charged to at least 90% in case I need to use it for a power outage.

This is just my trial PV setup with 800W of PV on the south-facing side of the house and another 800W on the west-facing side so I get a pretty continuous 600W throughout the day. I’m currently using an Anker Power Station which is limited to 60V and 600 watts of input, so I’m not getting the most out of my PV panels.

Today I ordered two, big 16 KWh batteries and a 10KW inverter to finally start my “big boy” PV installation (for comparison, that’s 32x the capacity of this power station and 5x the total wattage in addition to supporting 220v split-phase). That will let me take better advantage of the panels since I can put all 8 in series for less losses (partial shading notwithstanding).

I’ve been planning on building this out all winter and am finally seeing it through. Totally unrelated (/s), but my electric rate just got hiked another $0.01/KWh so I wanted to get this in place before A/C season kicks in.

  • PancakesCantKillMe@lemmy.world
    2·
    2 days ago

    With all the rate hikes, we no longer have cheap power in the PNW. I was recently able to get enough together that I think I can afford it, so I called Signature Solar yesterday and started a dialog and quotes. I watch a youtuber (Jesse Muller) and he recommended them. They seem to use decent quality gear.

    How many kWh a month do you use? We use a…lot. I am a systems admin, so I have gear in the homelab I’d like to maintain through any grid outages. I have three potential service goals: essential power, whole house, and finally whole house and shop. I’d rather start on the small side, but want to be able to reuse gear, if at all possible, as I go up in capacity.

    Anyhow, just saying another Dull Guy is getting into solar, but I still have much to learn. Any youtube channels you’d recommend? Other resources? Advice?

    • Iced Raktajino@startrek.websiteOP
      3·
      2 days ago

      How many kWh a month do you use?

      Depends on the month as everything except my furnace and hot water heater are electric. In March, when the furnace barely ran and didn’t need any ceiling fans, etc, I used 391 KWh and my bill was $105 for the privilege. In July when I have to run the A/C almost constantly, I use close to 1,300 KWh and don’t even want to say what that costs me. I work from home, so I kind of need to keep it comfortable all day as well as run my WFH office gear. (Otherwise, I’d bump the thermostat up until I get home in the evenings)

      I’ve also got a homelab, but I’ve downsized it enough over the years that it’s down to ~250W continuous (yay USFF PCs! I used to use old rack servers that were 200W each).

      Any youtube channels you’d recommend? Other resources? Advice?

      I’m more of a hands-on learner, so mostly I’ve just played with it in different forms for 6 or 7 years and started small or Googled specific questions i had. The main thing I learned is that on a good sunny day, PV is like a waterfall and you often only need a glass of water from it. Unless you’re going grid-tie to absorb the excess, storage (batteries) is important otherwise it’s just wasted. The rest I guess I’ll figure out as I get this one up and running. As far as the electrical work, I grew up helping my grandfather on jobs (he was an electrician) so other than referring to NEC for some specifics, I’m pretty comfortable/confident with that kind of work (doesn’t make it any less of a pain in the ass though haha).

      • PancakesCantKillMe@lemmy.world
        3·
        2 days ago

        I appreciate the information! Yes, I still have some of the large servers and I don’t see them being retired soon either. We’ve always had higher bills because of it, and that was fine when power was inexpensive. The recent data center cost increases being shoved onto the consumers has solidified my desire for renewables to offset the hikes and I am lucky enough to be able to afford it, atm.