Driving on Sunshine

Well done David. I also hope to get an EV and a solar power system soon.

 

Looks great!

 

Very neat! It is my dream someday to have a solar powered home and EV. And by the time that becomes economically viable for me, both solar and EV's will be much cheaper!

(Although I expect home prices to rise)

 

I said no. We have a very good Feed In Tariff program in Ontario for solar, but my house is surrounded by trees and doesn't get very good sun exposure. I do have a rental property about 2 hours away that has the perfect roof for solar. I've toyed with the idea of installing solar there, but am not sure how long I'll hold on to that property.

Ontario's supply mix at night is pretty much all Nuclear, Hydro and Wind, so I do get pretty low carbon power from the utility anyway. We have gas peaker plants that mostly operate during the day, and coal is being phased out.

 

Like mknox my roof isn't really ideal either, but I'm part of a solar co-op that just got approval for 17 projects in Ontario. They are going to have a preferred share offering later this year. I'm likely going to chip in for at least 10kW worth.

 

That, I think, is the way to go in Ontario. Our Feed in Tariff program results in essentially a system on your roof that is separate from, and in parallel to your existing electrical service and has its own meter on which your payments are based. So, in that sense, it really doesn't matter where the panels are. I could set up a system on my rental property roof and receive payments just as if the system was on my own roof.

A large scale solar project (i.e. ground-mounted with motorized trackers) that you buy in to makes a lot of sense. If you move, for instance, you don't have to leave a large capital investment behind.

 

In case you're interested:
Investment Hamilton Association for Renewable Energy

 

Congrats on the installation! It does feel awesome knowing we are getting free energy from the sun to power our homes & cars. Thanks for putting up the poll. I love it.

If you have time, please join the Solar tour that is this weekend across the Nation. Let others see your installation & EV.

Our house is on the DFW Solar Tour this Saturday. There are 30 homes in DFW on the tour this year.
They have asked all the homeowners to have EV cars at their events. I probably could use more Tesla's but don't want to interfere with Cars & Coffee. This is their 18th year doing this, have 165,000 people visiting 5,500 homes in the US. Here is the link: http://www.dfwsolartour.org/locations/squyres/

I will make the next Cars & Coffee. If anyone is interested in Solar but will miss this Saturday, our house is always open for tours. Just let me know.

If interested in tracking our Solar production, visit here: https://enlighten.enphaseenergy.com/public/systems/3PJ33260

 

I live in NC (Close enough to you) and from what I can tell peak production has passed. The days are getting shorter and it is hitting production.

Now - usage has been very low for us because minimal a/c. If you live at elevation, I would think you would peak in June. With heat (Raleigh area), the peak is more like April (still long days but cool temps). I'm going to guess you live at some elevation because otherwise a/c makes it hard to solar away all your usage.

 

It's probably not to late to join the tour. Here is a map of locations near you and the website:

 

We have 28 panels at home and 90 panels on my office. Yea . . . Driving on a Sunshine . . . and cooling, lighting, heating, computing, entertaining, cooking, working, recreating . . . you get the idea.

 

Does it have a battery buffer, or do you get a brownout if it gets cloudy? Just curious how it works.

 

This is the first I've seen of Sunny Boy's version. Very Nice. I have 6 of the SMA's running my office's 198 panels. On my house, all 132 panels are Grid-Tied with Enphase Micro-Inverters, and I wanted juice when the Grid was out also.

The only solution is an AC-Coupled Battery Backup system, when I looked 2 years ago. Our panels will stay on, because the transfer switches so fast, they believe the Grid is still active. We use 2 Magnum Pure Sine-wave Battery Backup Inverter's that output 4,400 watts each. We have 32 Trojan batteries and 16 Deep-Cycle batteries that keep us connected when there is no sun. Here is a picture:

 

My properties are completely shaded by large trees. While this greatly reduces our A/C use, it eliminates the possibility of solar.