Solar PV News

[nwdiver]

Even after single digit or low double digit solar PV residential penetration - to help deal with excess solar in the middle of the day, why not open up rate plans where the utility tells you 1-10 days in advanced based on weather forecasts when you can dine for ~free. Of course not everyone can partake in this based on their schedules and where the excess solar PV is islanded. But there is probably a willing and able audience of BEV drivers who would participate. Lot of free "fuel" for a large part of the year.

That was basically Griddys business model. Vertically integrated utilities are generally not motivated to pursue such an efficient solution to problems. They make money solving problems and the more expensive the solution the more money they make. They're incentivized to fix the solar problem spending >$100M on new transmission lines or generation not <$10M on rate changes...

 

[ItsNotAboutTheMoney]

Here is a fairly curious thought:

A Tesla Model 3 LR AWD costs $50k and has an 80 kWh battery
A Powerwall costs ~ $7000 and holds 13 kWh

The car sans battery is an $8k device -- obviously not true, so

It does point to the car being the cheapest venue for adding storage to cover the 5pm to 9am daily cycle

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I call it the 'CamEl Walk'
All rights reserved

For sunny locations, you have to add in the cost of massive scale workplace charging and the additional transmission capacity required to power it.

 

[mspohr]

Blue Bird Delivers North America’s First-Ever Commercial Application of Vehicle-to-Grid Technology in Electric School Bus Partnership with Nuvve and Illinois School Districts

Nuvve’s V2G platform allows the school bus batteries to store energy, including renewable energy generated from sources like wind and solar, when the grid doesn’t have immediate need for it. This allows fleets to sell stored energy from the school bus batteries to the grid when demand calls for it. The Nuvve V2G system can also be used to supply energy back to the school and intelligently charge the buses during non-peak hours to reduce peak-consumption energy costs. Nuvve is installing their high-powered V2G DC charging stations at each site.

 

[miimura]

Blue Bird Delivers North America’s First-Ever Commercial Application of Vehicle-to-Grid Technology in Electric School Bus Partnership with Nuvve and Illinois School Districts

Nuvve’s V2G platform allows the school bus batteries to store energy, including renewable energy generated from sources like wind and solar, when the grid doesn’t have immediate need for it. This allows fleets to sell stored energy from the school bus batteries to the grid when demand calls for it. The Nuvve V2G system can also be used to supply energy back to the school and intelligently charge the buses during non-peak hours to reduce peak-consumption energy costs. Nuvve is installing their high-powered V2G DC charging stations at each site.

Blue Bird was not the first. Lion Electric has been using the same Nuvve system for 2 years.

Cummins claims to power first vehicle-to-grid school buses in North America, 2 years after Lion

Global power provider Cummins announced it has powered two fully operational vehicle-to-grid Blue Bird school buses in Illinois.

electrek.co

 

[mspohr]

Electrek: US says it will cut the cost of solar by 60% in a decade. US says it will cut the cost of solar by 60% in a decade - Electrek

 

[mspohr]

SciTechDaily: Floating Solar Farms Could Help Protect Lakes and Reservoirs From Harmful Effects of Climate Change. Floating Solar Farms Could Help Protect Lakes and Reservoirs From Harmful Effects of Climate Change

Their results show that floating solar arrays can cool water temperatures by shading the water from the sun. At scale, this could help to mitigate against harmful effects caused by global warming, such as blooms of toxic blue green algae, and increased water evaporation, which could threaten water supply in some regions. The scientists found that floating solar installations also reduce the duration of ‘stratification’ — this is where the sun heats the water, forming distinct layers of water at different temperatures. This tends to happen more in the warmer summer months and can result in the bottom layer of water becoming deoxygenated, which deteriorates water quality — an obvious issue for supplies of drinking water.

 

[ItsNotAboutTheMoney]

Electrek: US says it will cut the cost of solar by 60% in a decade. US says it will cut the cost of solar by 60% in a decade - Electrek

Definitely headline sensationalism. It's their target brought forward. And it's just a target. DoE also has a target for hydrogen fuel cell cost.

 

[Merrill]

Unfortunately if the utilities get there way no one will want solar unless it is free!

 

[SageBrush]

Definitely headline sensationalism. It's their target brought forward. And it's just a target. DoE also has a target for hydrogen fuel cell cost.

Pretty much, but funding basic research is not that expensive in the scheme of things, and occasionally huge benefits are reaped

 

[SmartElectric]

Unfortunately if the utilities get there way no one will want solar unless it is free!

Posted this before, newer inverters like Sol-Ark provide a "zero the meter" option with dump load, where solar completely offloads house loads, but no export to grid done via CT measuring the grid connection cables to cap inverter output back into panel to only exactly match house load. Excess solar can be sent to a secondary load such as water heater or car charging. Utilities can't stop technology!

 

[SageBrush]

Excess solar can be sent to a secondary load such as water heater or car charging. Utilities can't stop technology!

This is exactly what I want, although it does not seem like it is any easy (or cheap) nut to crack.

 

[SmartElectric]

This is exactly what I want, although it does not seem like it is any easy (or cheap) nut to crack.

https://practicalpreppers.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/12K-Manual-7-27-2020.pdf

Limited To Home (zeroing home meter) o Pushes power to your whole home without selling back any excess to the grid (no net metering agreement required) o This mode requires the use of the limiter sensors 1. Main Menu → System Settings → Grid Setup →

^ This will configure the inverter to not output energy to the grid, it measures current at the grid connection.

Smart Load (Gen Load) July 27, 2020 31 ▪ This mode utilizes the Gen input connection as an output which only receives power when the battery is above a user programmable threshold. ▪ The Gen input breaker in the user area of the system becomes an output to high power loads such as a water heater, irrigation pump, ac unit, pool pump. ▪ Smart Load OFF Batt • Battery voltage at which the Gen load will stop being powered ▪ Smart Load ON Batt • Battery voltage at which the gen load will start being powered ▪ Note: If using Gen load for a water heater, it is recommended that only one leg (120V) be connected to the bottom element. This significantly reduces the power consumption of the water heater while retaining core functionality (it will heat water, only slower). ▪ Note: Gen Load is limited to 40A at 240V (Do not exceed!)

^
When your home battery is "full", redirects excess PV solar power to ^ other loads


The Sol-Ark supports 12kW of DC solar power and outputs 9kW of AC power and 3kW to battery simultaneously. It effectively replaces a ton of separate equipment as per : Sol-Ark 8k vs Sol-ark 12k - Practical Preppers

I am not affiliated with any of these links or products. My home uses Sunverge (Schneider sub components), Sunny Boy, Canadian Solar equipment, which doesn't have all of the features of the Sol-Ark.

 

[SageBrush]

^^ Thanks, @SmartElectric ,

I spent some time viewing a Sol-ark webinar. My impression is its high cost is in part explained by its off-grid roots which not only included integration with PV, but integration for battery storage and ICE generator use. So it is at the same more than I want or need, and less than I want. What do I want ? So glad you asked

• PV integration
• Programmed efficient utilization of my main energy sinks, some of which will be heat pumps that are ambient temp dependent.
• Down the road, small battery storage

I'd like to be able to set up a PV consumption profile that goes something like this:
1. If EV is less than 40% SoC, charge EV until 40% and then stop and direct power to house if temp is outside of boundary temps
2. When EV and home are within thresholds, heat the hot water to lower boundary temperature
3. When EV, home temp and hot water are within lower limits, go through same cycle to upper limits
4. If excess PV remains feed home A/C and DHW to maximum set limits and export excess to grid.

My impression is that I am mostly looking for electronically controlled on/off breakers and a central control that takes user programming. I sure would not mind being able to use PV when the grid is down but that is not a high priority for my locale. Maybe that will change in the future.

 

[cali8484]

This is exactly what I want, although it does not seem like it is any easy (or cheap) nut to crack.

Why? Do you not have NEM? With NEM it's financially better to export excess solar. In regions that don't have NEM and/or have feed-in tariffs solar diversion controllers for water heaters and even EVSE are fairly common. You may want to check out solar diversion controllers (e.g. Immersun, iBoost, etc.) for water heaters fairly common in UK/EU. There is also OpenEVSE that has solar diversion controller for charging EV's.

 

[SmartElectric]

My impression is that I am mostly looking for electronically controlled on/off breakers and a central control that takes user programming. I sure would not mind being able to use PV when the grid is down but that is not a high priority for my locale. Maybe that will change in the future.

Indeed. I just looked, and found "GE Enbrighten Z-Wave Plus Heavy Duty 40 Amp Smart Switch" and such devices. Can be automated for timing and via home automation software, requires z-wave hubs.

 

[SageBrush]

Why? Do you not have NEM?

A couple of reasons, even though we have NEM now:

1. I expect NEM to go away; and even though the utilities are lying ass-hats, they are not completely wrong about NEM
2. I don't want my generation to count towards the state clean energy requirements

 

[SageBrush]

Indeed. I just looked, and found "GE Enbrighten Z-Wave Plus Heavy Duty 40 Amp Smart Switch" and such devices. Can be automated for timing and via home automation software, requires z-wave hubs.

Thanks. It does look like home automation is progessing nicely in the 'control one device remotely by sensor data' arena, but I want to provide home programming that tells the devices to consider each others states in making a decision.

 

[ohmman]

Thanks. It does look like home automation is progessing nicely in the 'control one device remotely by sensor data' arena, but I want to provide home programming that tells the devices to consider each others states in making a decision.

Depends on your setup, but I am old fashioned and still use a central server in my house to manage my home automation needs. I have a Z-wave hub and could easily have it consider the states of multiple devices to trigger an event on the Z-wave switch. But again, my setup is pretty old fashioned and not an "out of the box" kind of solution.

What I really need is a Z-wave valve for my hot water heater. That way, I can tell my kids "you literally have one minute left in the shower," hit a button, and have the hot water valve turn off in 60 seconds.

 

[SageBrush]

I have a Z-wave hub and could easily have it consider the states of multiple devices to trigger an event on the Z-wave switch.

Great to hear that is possible. Do you know of a working example ?

 

[ohmman]

Great to hear that is possible. Do you know of a working example ?

I use Indigo software for Mac. Basically you can use any inputs connected to it to create triggers, schedules, etc. For instance, I have motion sensors throughout the house. If no motion is sensed in any area for 30 minutes, my HVAC is set back. I also poll my Tesla Powerwalls and if I'm on backup power, it disables my pool pump schedule. In the morning when I walk out into the kitchen, my Hue lights turn on dim and warm and slowly become brighter and whiter over the next 15 minutes. That kind of thing - so what you'd like to do is possible, but you'd need to spend a little time ensuring everything is registered in the system and that your algorithms are sound.