I have been thinking about adding solar. Of course up here in the sub-arctic winter nights are long and summer nights short, so seven months of the year solar provides quite a bit. Doing co-generation with the utility definitely reduces your personal utility costs if you do not need battery banks.
I already have a standby gasoline generator (6500w Honda) for power outages. Up here its quite normal to have five or so episodes lasting up to twelve hours/each per year. Very nice to be able to push button for electric start and resume normal life when the power goes out. I can even run my kilowatt amp if I desired. We live in the country so have own well and septic so having backup power keeps everything running. Heat is natural gas but furnace needs power for blower and ignition.
I inquired at the local power office when recently paying the bill and they support co-gen so all I need to is do my research and save some pennies.
BTW I installed solar panels at work before I retired so have a bit of background. Solar insolation on a cloudy day is only 70% down from a clear day.
If enough private solar power were built it probably would offset building some of the utility infrastructure in the future. That might even lower the utilities' cost. Up here one utility installed several large windchargers out on a island which has reliable sustained wind which is supplementing the grid (25Mw I believe). There is ample hydro power so solar might depend on the small private sector to build?
73, Ed - KL7UW Nikiski, AK BP40iq
Date: Fri, 8 Apr 2016 17:31:21 -0400 From: [email protected] To: [email protected], Robert Bruninga [email protected] Subject: Re: [amsat-bb] Satellites and Solar (a) Message-ID: 20160408173121.S6MF2.63087.imail@fed1rmwml301 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
And the price of commercial electricity will go up because the power companies will still have to support the infrastructure to supply the full load at night or during cloudy weather yet have it sitting idle when as they say "The Sun is shining."
John WA4WDL
----snipped the rest of the long thread that everyone has already read - right/
73, Ed - KL7UW http://www.kl7uw.com "Kits made by KL7UW" Dubus Mag business: [email protected]