Building Residential Off-Grid Solar System (Questions and Advice, Suggestions)

silvertop

Re: Building Residential Off-Grid Solar System (Questions and Advice, Suggestions)

I would love to see more people grid tie solar. It Does Work, but they need to understand its not free and you are not going to run every 220V circut in your power hungry house with it. 1# conservation is very important. There are too many nay sayers out there now ... Im in the NW and get really tired of all the it doesent work up here ......I picked up a part for my car the other day an asked the counter person if he knew where the farm was that had the 8.2KW array but was told dont bother that solar stuff doesnt work up here anyway:grr

BB.

Re: Building Residential Off-Grid Solar System (Questions and Advice, Suggestions)

silvertop wrote: »

...grid tie solar. It Does Work, but they need to understand its not free and you are not going to run every 220V circuit in your power hungry house with it. 1# conservation is very important.

Just to clarify a bit--Grid Tied solar does not care about how many (or how few) 120/240 VAC circuits are attached. For all intents and purposes, the Grid is powering your home's circuits. If they will run on Grid Power (i.e., wired to code, sufficient drop from utility, etc.), then adding GT solar will be utterly transparent to how your home's electrical appliances will operate.

GT solar inverters just pump "current" into your home's wiring--That extra current either goes to support some (or all) of your loads, and any "excess" current goes back to the utility and causes the utility meter to spin backwards (there are lots of details about installations, limitations, local laws and regulations--but that is for another post).

However, if you want to save money (and/or the environment)--Conservation is certainly important in working out the best solution(s) for your home. If not the most important.

-Bill