What 4 bad weather days in row looks like without a generator

Re: What 4 bad weather days in row looks like without a generator

Where I am, unless you are living like a hermit, you will need a generator in winter. With a larger set of panels, you might get by with low yearly run times. Year before last, mine ran 35 hrs for the entire year. The bulk of that being during Dec and Jan. The irony with that is grid power goes out alot here due to trees and I know grid connected people who have backup generators that run more than mine. I haven't added it up yet, but this past year my generator ran more than 35 hrs, but that was due to having contractors working on the house from late Oct thru to Feb.

Larger panels work for me because in summer I run AC and having a bigger set of panels allows me to do that with no change in lifestyle. I haven't hooked it up yet but my plan for spring/fall excess juice is to preheat hot water. In winter, the large array lets me charge the battery more quickly. So even in a short winter day I can fully charge my battery when it's 50% and even have enough daylight for a short EQ. The larger array minimizes generator use, but doesn't eliminate it.

I would imagine if we change our lifestyle, we could probably go without any generator at all. Not sure how the wife would like those lifestyle changes tho.

I've actually been thinking about buying more panels. They are still cheap.

Re: What 4 bad weather days in row looks like without a generator

jtdiesel65 wrote: »

Where I am, unless you are living like a hermit, you will need a generator in winter. With a larger set of panels, you might get by with low yearly run times. Year before last, mine ran 35 hrs for the entire year. The bulk of that being during Dec and Jan. The irony with that is grid power goes out alot here due to trees and I know grid connected people who have backup generators that run more than mine. I haven't added it up yet, but this past year my generator ran more than 35 hrs, but that was due to having contractors working on the house from late Oct thru to Feb.

I don't know where you live, but I suspect I "...lived like a hermit" in general this last winter in mid Missouri. I use wood for heat, and heated water with the array, I had a few luke(?) warm showers, and once went to a friends a day early to prevent running my batteries down, but mostly it worked. I have another 2.6kw of panels in a closet, that will be directly wired to the water heater by winter, running about 200 volt dc directly, using the hot water like a battery and the thermostat like a Charge controller... my grand experiment, would be more of a challenge if more than 1 person live there on a regular basis