Solar vs grid cost

MrM1

Yes, One Hurricane and I get pretty emotional

Photowhit

Marc Kurth said:

Grid electric cost here is: $5.00 base charge, $0.057/kwh for energy, $0.039/kwh for delivery. Depending upon the value of your invested capital, it is difficult to build an economic reason for off grid solar when grid is readily available.

Most off grid systems that I get involved with, are emotionally justified, or solar is chosen because a $35K+ investment is required to have grid power brought to the property.

I can't recall where 'here' is, but  higher user fees and the split 'energy' and 'delivery' are becoming more prevalent  these days. Certainly rural COOPs many/most of which are run by Touchstone Energy, have high user fees. Mostly in less  populated areas. I  was looking at higher user  fees in Florida and most were through COOP's run by Touchstone at $25 or more per month.  The splitting of delivery/line fees and energy costs allow Power companies to  apply net metering to the energy and still charge for the use of 'lines'.

I'm in Central Missouri (Callaway  county) and Even at $39 a month not the highest in the state! Another COOP near Springfield has that distinction! 

Along with regressive energy rates, electric costing less when you buy more, unusual these days, does make it favorable to go off grid for minimal energy users. Of course many of the minimal energy users aren't capable of making the investment, though some cattle wells and such are moving toward solar. Interestingly in the next county over the have progressive energy rates and lower fees, the monthly costs would be considerably cheaper there!

I  think the Net Metering is bringing some of these higher rates for poorer/more frugal users, it disappoints me  a bit.

softdown

Texas is a different world than California it would seem. I heard figures around $50,000 plus to run power here though I never got an official estimate. 

If I was buying a used rural house, I might prefer a really good off grid system now. Almost anything that gets some independence from governmental ways and means. Icarus has an almost ideal sounding scenario to me. Though I don't see how he gets internet out there. Perhaps satellite? That is said to be both expensive and slow. 

Estragon

I think it was photowhit who got off-grid close to grid cost.  Icarus is in (very roughly) my neck the woods.  Don't know about him, but my internet is via (boosted w/tower mounted antenna) cellular modem.  It's cheaper and likely better than satellite, but obviously not up to city performance.

The utility is also talking about upping delivery rates for seasonal/remote grid here too.  It doesn't affect me (being off-grid), but does bug me a bit anyway because in most cases these folks paid up front for a lot of the infrastructure.  Granted, there's some cost to the utility if a storm takes down a line or whatever, but geez.  I didn't bother getting a price on a ~1.5mi submarine service here, but having heard of ~$50k prices to go across a bay, I assume it would have been well north of that.    Had I spent the 100k or whatever it cost, it would kinda burn some for them to crank delivery rates up because "it costs more to service low density and seasonal customers".  Politically though, the feeling seems to be "if you can afford a cottage, you aren't paying your fair share".  Never mind that lots of these places were hacked out of the bush on their own by ordinary folk.

Marc Kurth

Photowhit said:

Marc Kurth said:

Grid electric cost here is: $5.00 base charge, $0.057/kwh for energy, $0.039/kwh for delivery. Depending upon the value of your invested capital, it is difficult to build an economic reason for off grid solar when grid is readily available.

Most off grid systems that I get involved with, are emotionally justified, or solar is chosen because a $35K+ investment is required to have grid power brought to the property.

I can't recall where 'here' is, but  higher user fees and the split 'energy' and 'delivery' are becoming more prevalent  these days. Certainly rural COOPs many/most of which are run by Touchstone Energy, have high user fees. Mostly in less  populated areas. I  was looking at higher user  fees in Florida and most were through COOP's run by Touchstone at $25 or more per month.  The splitting of delivery/line fees and energy costs allow Power companies to  apply net metering to the energy and still charge for the use of 'lines'.

I'm in Central Missouri (Callaway  county) and Even at $39 a month not the highest in the state! Another COOP near Springfield has that distinction! 

Along with regressive energy rates, electric costing less when you buy more, unusual these days, does make it favorable to go off grid for minimal energy users. Of course many of the minimal energy users aren't capable of making the investment, though some cattle wells and such are moving toward solar. Interestingly in the next county over the have progressive energy rates and lower fees, the monthly costs would be considerably cheaper there!

I  think the Net Metering is bringing some of these higher rates for poorer/more frugal users, it disappoints me  a bit.

I am in Henderson County in North-East Texas. About 60 miles SE of Dallas and 60 Miles West of Tyler, on Cedar Creek Lake. Our "deregulated" market is open, so we select/negotiate our rates from multiple potential suppliers.The transmission/delivery is fixed by region. Our delivery is via Oncor and they charge the 3.9 cents for delivery and metering.

I had a choice of nine power providers with all kinds of crazy "incentives" from free power nights and weekends, to automatic removal of your seven highest billing days per month, to variable spot market shopping groups.

In January, I signed a simple 4 year contract with Reliant Energy for a flat $0.096/KWH including delivery and base fee. (I had the same thing in 2018, but I was hesitant to sign for more than a year.)

My home is an old 2,500 sq. ft. all electric. Loads include HVAC, electric oven/stove, electric water heater, dishwasher, electric dryer, two refrigerators and two chest freezers,1.5KW irrigation pump, aerobic system pumps compressor, etc..

A lack of tiers or demand charges was very important to me because when the kids and grand kids are in town, I can have crazy high 130KWH days, mixed in with our normal consumption which is a fraction of that.

Generally our monthly power bill runs $65.to $95. during mild weather to a single month "worst ever" $ 252.00.

Our total electricity cost was $1630.00 for 2018, so about $136.00 per month annual average. We are on track to be about 10% higher in 2019 because of more visitors. For me, effective conservation is the huge bang for the buck.

Marc

mike95490

It's all changing in Kalifornia.  Today grid, tomorrow wind and no grid.....

softdown

mike95490 said:

It's all changing in Kalifornia.  Today grid, tomorrow wind and no grid.....

You referring to wind power? Just watched a youtube production regarding wind power. Turns out that many of the leading edges on older wind turbines are disintegrating. Hopefully they have the good sense to wrap the disintegrating edges in a metal alloy but I doubt that good sense will prevail. After all, the work is funded with the public's money. Great opportunity abounds - for corruption and incompetence. 

Reminds me of the brilliant decision to use glue, and only glue, to adhere the tiles to the space shuttles. Thus forcing the premature retirement of that glorious bus program. Oops. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Columbia_disaster

mike95490

In Kalifornia, the gas & electric utilities have neglected the infrastructure, in order to make annual dividends and bonus payments.

The aging infrastructure can no longer withstand wind events without wires falling down and starting fires.  So to prevent the fires, the grid sections subject to high winds are shut down.  So if San Francisco receives it power from a feeder line that passes through a high wind area, the city goes dark.  Last week, it was about a million customers north of San Francisco.

http://www.startribune.com/the-latest-power-outages-begin-in-california/562618812/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Bruno_pipeline_explosion

Marc Kurth

It was a tough decision process to pull up 48 years worth of roots and move. I could not envision wanting to live anywhere else but the Golden State. After being in Texas since 2008, I wouldn't move back to California for anything now.

I'm not insulting Californian's, it's just that the State morphed into something that isn't compatible with my core beliefs. It's a mindset thing.

icarus

My internet has evolved over the years, as has my basic telephony.  When I was a kid, we had no phone at all of any sort.  Then we had a hand crank party line literally nailed to a tree in the bush on the mainland by the railway tracks, a 15 km boat ride.  Pretty unreliable as everytime a moose crashed through the bush or a tree fell on the line, the telco had to walk 15 miles of line to find the break.  Later we got a radio phone, with a real dial and real number.  That lasted a couple decades, until we got rudimentary cell service.  

Our initial internet came from a series of sat dishes and services, both slow and expensive.  Mostly the ping times were really slow.  Eventually, the cell system improved, and with the aid of an outside antenna and a Wilson Amplifier we could get dial up speeds, better than nothing.  

Now days we have legitimate “high speed” service, provided through the cell company with a dedicated “rocket hub” through a Wilson amp, and a high gain Yagi antenna.  On a very good day, I can get ~10mbps down and about 5 up.  Normally, ~5 up is pretty good, fast enough to stream video.  The cost is not cheap, but compared to an urban isp it is not so bad.  It costs me ~$100CDN per month for more data than I ever use, $50 if I’m a bit more frugal. The difference between the $50 and $100 is about 4 times the data.  It also supplies the eq of a land line included at that.  We are ~20 Km from the tower, with some pretty good hills and dense bush between us and the tower.  The hub without the amp gets me a very marginal -100dbm signal.  The amp bumps it to a pretty good -70 dbm.  

Tbaytel (the local telco) is building out LTE service on the line, and it promises to increase the speed ~10 times, not that we need it any faster.  My worry is that the signal strength of the LTE is worse, so I hope we can get it at all.  For the third time, I am going to have to buy a new antenna cut to the right freq, along with another amp.

tony

softdown

 Pretty unreliable as everytime a moose crashed through the bush or a tree fell on the line, the telco had to walk 15 miles of line to find the break.

Hilarious

Estragon

Bell put a submarine line to a demark box near the shoreline sometime before I bought the place. 

In theory, that should make landline voice, and possibly DSL available. 

I called them shortly after I took possession with whatever identifying numbers I could see on the box to see what was available, but apparently without a street address or lot/block number they can't provide any service.  This place has no road, or any plan of subdivision.  So they could find the place to physically install the cable and demark, but not to actually sell a service using same.

Somehow, the moose in the bush makes more sense to me than that.

With LTE, I had to hack the hub and my phone to not use the higher frequency bands (850 only).  Ideally, when I replace the booster and hub to use 700mhz, I'll see if there's a yagi that works best at the lower frequencies.

icarus

They do make a multi band Yagi style antenna that works on both ~800 MHz as well as the 1700-2700 MHz bands.  It is not actually a Yagi, but a Log periodic antenna.  I don’t have one, but expect I will when I need to upgrade to LTE freq.  T

Estragon

The thing is, I want it to work well with the lower frequency bands, but not well at all with the 1700+ bands.  The higher bands don't propagate well over distance and through bush.

icarus

I am worried about signal strength when we have to switch to +MHz. Time will tell.  T

MrM1

Does anyone see any value in sending in the Classic 6 months before the end of the 5 year warranty with $147 dollars for What Midnite Solar calls a replacement of any wearable parts and do a general tune-up?   This would extend the warranty of the Classic for another 2 years.  Or is it better to leave well enough alone if it has lasted that long? Any experience with this?  What is Midnite's turn around times?  Pretty good?

Having the system down for a reasonable time is no big deal. Not critically dependent on it, but would not want to send the classic in and not see it for 6 months.

But With a 2600+ Watt array on 24v my system is  near the Max array size, and heat has been a bit of an issue. (another reason I wished I'd have used 48v).  Bobb on the Midnite forum did not think I was grossly hi,  but it does get hi from time to time in the summer.  Around 63C (+/-) on the FETs.  Would the refurb offer replace anything that might be effected by this "excess" heat?

softdown

MrM1 said:

Does anyone see any value in sending in the Classic 6 months before the end of the 5 year warranty with $147 dollars for What Midnite Solar calls a replacement of any wearable parts and do a general tune-up?   This would extend the warranty of the Classic for another 2 years.  Or is it better to leave well enough alone if it has lasted that long? Any experience with this?  What is Midnite's turn around times?  Pretty good?

Having the system down for a reasonable time is no big deal. Not critically dependent on it, but would not want to send the classic in and not see it for 6 months.

But With a 2600+ Watt array on 24v my system is  near the Max array size, and heat has been a bit of an issue. (another reason I wished I'd have used 48v).  Bobb on the Midnite forum did not think I was grossly hi,  but it does get hi from time to time in the summer.  Around 63C (+/-) on the FETs.  Would the refurb offer replace anything that might be effected by this "excess" heat?

Your sending it in is saying that you bet that is a good investment. The manufacturer offering the warranty extension is them saying that is a good investment - for them.

My personal suspicion  is that I would not send it in. $147 plus shipping for two year extension on an item that normally lasts ~10 years. A new one costs about $600? 600/10 = $60/year to use. You would be paying at least $75/year for a two year extension. 

This is assuming that you can normally absorb the cost of replacing the charge controller. Plus you would get a new one in a couple days. Your idea would likely mean being without for significantly longer than a couple days.

Estragon

I have no experience with it, but my guess is if MN took 6mos to turn around a refurb, they wouldn't offer it.

Also guessing, they may offer it more to give a reduced likelyhood of failure in use cases where the failure is really costly (access or whatever) vs just the warranty value.  For those who can just wait for it to fail and then either send it in for repair or replace it, the refurb may not be worthwhile, IMHO.

softdown

Guessing 10-20 days. Plenty of fuel plus wear and tear on the genset. Might OP spend $200 keeping the CC cooler? Stable temperatures keep the extensive solder joints from the expansion/contraction cycles that cause premature failure in electronics. 

I said extensive solder joints mostly because it seems like electronics tend to be packed with such joints. 

I gleaned this tip from BB - who knows a thing or two about the subject. 

MrM1

Thanks.  That is kinda what i was thinking.  I still am 3 years out from the send in period.  As noted might be a better idea for those who have limited access to the CC or for other reasons.  But A repair might be a better investment if ever needed in my situation.

"spend $200 keeping the CC cooler" ?? Wondering how i would do that.  I have done a good bit to cool it as best I can now.  Installed a large 1" heat sink behind the Classic (larger than the classic body) and have a 4" fan blowing on the case out side it 24/7.  All this has helped,  but with a 24v system and a 2600 Watt array - near max on 1 Classic at 24v,  short of going to 48v I do not now how I could get it much lower in temp.  Any other ideas for cooling?

softdown

MrM1 said:

Thanks.  That is kinda what i was thinking.  I still am 3 years out from the send in period.  As noted might be a better idea for those who have limited access to the CC or for other reasons.  But A repair might be a better investment if ever needed in my situation.

"spend $200 keeping the CC cooler" ?? Wondering how i would do that.  I have done a good bit to cool it as best I can now.  Installed a large 1" heat sink behind the Classic (larger than the classic body) and have a 4" fan blowing on the case out side it 24/7.  All this has helped,  but with a 24v system and a 2600 Watt array - near max on 1 Classic at 24v,  short of going to 48v I do not now how I could get it much lower in temp.  Any other ideas for cooling?

Can you create a 3' hole? It would be cooler but condensation may become a problem. 

Mine is in the staircase to the root cellar. 54F right now, never gets about 61F. 

MrM1

I could probably poke some more holes in the front case.  I popped two  3/4" holes in the bottom a year ago.  May not be a bad idea.

706jim

icarus said:

My internet has evolved over the years, as has my basic telephony.  When I was a kid, we had no phone at all of any sort.  Then we had a hand crank party line literally nailed to a tree in the bush on the mainland by the railway tracks, a 15 km boat ride.  Pretty unreliable as everytime a moose crashed through the bush or a tree fell on the line, the telco had to walk 15 miles of line to find the break.  Later we got a radio phone, with a real dial and real number.  That lasted a couple decades, until we got rudimentary cell service.  

Our initial internet came from a series of sat dishes and services, both slow and expensive.  Mostly the ping times were really slow.  Eventually, the cell system improved, and with the aid of an outside antenna and a Wilson Amplifier we could get dial up speeds, better than nothing.  

Now days we have legitimate “high speed” service, provided through the cell company with a dedicated “rocket hub” through a Wilson amp, and a high gain Yagi antenna.  On a very good day, I can get ~10mbps down and about 5 up.  Normally, ~5 up is pretty good, fast enough to stream video.  The cost is not cheap, but compared to an urban isp it is not so bad.  It costs me ~$100CDN per month for more data than I ever use, $50 if I’m a bit more frugal. The difference between the $50 and $100 is about 4 times the data.  It also supplies the eq of a land line included at that.  We are ~20 Km from the tower, with some pretty good hills and dense bush between us and the tower.  The hub without the amp gets me a very marginal -100dbm signal.  The amp bumps it to a pretty good -70 dbm.  

Tbaytel (the local telco) is building out LTE service on the line, and it promises to increase the speed ~10 times, not that we need it any faster.  My worry is that the signal strength of the LTE is worse, so I hope we can get it at all.  For the third time, I am going to have to buy a new antenna cut to the right freq, along with another amp.

tony

You too are in Thunder Bay?

Estragon

T-Bay tel covers quite a bit of NW Ont, as far west as the MB border.  I think Icarus is roughly 1/2 way.

icarus

In the bush,north and west of Tbay, north of the Quetico park.  T

Jeremy

I have a hard time understanding how all this can be with the usages and costs. Make no mistake, I am off grid for 25 years. 1600 sq ft house, at 49 degrees N latitude. Here is what I operate in my house: water pump, tv occasionally, computers, stereo, bean grinder, power tools up to a small table saw, blender, ethernet, router, a bunch of LED lighting, and so on. No air conditioner needed here on the Canadian border. Here is what I run it on: 6 golf cart batteries, powered by 450 watts of solar panels, rigid mount. I have gas for stove, refrigerator, and hot water. My propane tank takes 100 US gallons to fill, and lasts exactly one year. This would cost about $175 dollars in the U.S. The really big users, in terms of watts if they were electric would be, of course, hot water, stove, and refrigerator. So, my point is that why would one spend 10,000 dollars to do all this when a mixture of energy sources could knock that down to a price 1/8 of that number? I am currently installing and sourcing small PV systems. The last 3 I did were: 570 for (2) 240 watt panels, 350 USD for inverter and charge controller, 900 USD for batteries, another 280 for hardware, wire, breaker panel. That is 2100 USD for the entire thing , before labor. If you have a family, sure, it's gonna be bigger....but there is no need to pay so much simply for the purpose of avoiding all fossil fuel. This approach is more like what the energy future will hold: a mixture of fuels and sources combined with newer tech like LEDs and MPPT controllers and lithium batteries.

Ralph Day

To help cool my MX60, then Midnite solar 250 Classics I drilled 1/4inch holes in a grid on the lower cover (wiring cover).  All the knockouts were plugged with conduit or mounted to a disconnect box.  Works fine.

Ralph

mike95490

Looks like the equation is going to change for Northern (and maybe southern) California....  Multi day grid shutdowns are being planned for the next decade, as the power company learns how to maintain transmission lines ignored for 40 years.  "Did you business fail because it was closed, when others with power, were open ?

Photowhit

Jeremy said:

So, my point is that why would one spend 10,000 dollars to do all this when a mixture of energy sources could knock that down to a price 1/8 of that number?

Jeremy said:

 I have gas for stove, refrigerator, and hot water. My propane tank takes 100 US gallons to fill, and lasts exactly one year. This would cost about $175 dollars in the U.S.

You  need to add the cost of a gas refridgerator, which typically runs $1500 more than an electric fridge.

Also I have no alternate generator, so I save that $175 a year. I also think you are getting an exceptional deal on propane, I thinkk here it runs $2.25 - 2.50 a gallon. Also since most apartment sized  propane fridges use 4.4 gallons every 3 weeks, I might assume you are using a smaller RV fridge.

I also am not tied to any rising costs for fuel.

Photowhit

Ralph Day said:

To help cool my MX60, then Midnite solar 250 Classics I drilled 1/4inch holes in a grid on the lower cover (wiring cover).  All the knockouts were plugged with conduit or mounted to a disconnect box.  Works fine.

I can't  recall for sure,  but I have1 or 2 screens on my Midnite 150's, provided by Midnite, covering 1 or 2 conduit holes.