I think we're going solar

Good insights, R-P. Thanks. Yes, lots of people do use batteries here. I don't need them enough to justify doubling the cost of the installation, though.

Our electric company will pay for any excess electricity I produce at the end of the year, but it's only 3 cent per kWh compared to the approximately 12 cents they charge us to use their electricity. So it doesn't pay to install much more capacity than what you can use on average. And I don't mind the price difference since it's way cheaper than buying batteries and the other equipment needed to use them.

 

Your electricity rates are just one item on a very long list of reasons I would never want to live in CA. Beautiful as it is, it would drive me so nuts they'd send me off to Berzerkley. LOL! But I did enjoy the months I worked there temporarily.

In the 20-something years we've lived in FL, I don't think we've had more than 10 hours of blackout, if that. For whatever reason, this area has been amazingly solid. Since we moved back here from our sojourn in Honduras in 2014 we've only had a couple little blips. Our offices, 10 miles away from here on a different electric company, have had lots of extended outages.

I have an inverter that I can connect to the car to run the fridge and some lights. That would probably suffice. But a small propane generator is on my list of things to look into. I'd just need enough to feed 220 to my panel. That would keep the solar working in the daytime and keep the fridge and some fans and light on at night. And cost a whole lot less than batteries.

 

The generator would obviously necessitate a transfer switch. I have quite a few years of experience as an electrician and have a bachelor's degree in that field so it's not like this is my first rodeo. The main thing holding me back is the challenge of that xfer switch. The meter and breaker panel are back to back, so I'd need to coordinate with the electric company to run a new feed from the meter to the switch.

 

Silly me. Looks like I need to work from home again tomorrow. The inspector and tech are coming sometime tomorrow. That's the claim anyway.

At least I got my recording studio work done, so I can do the editing at home. PTL for cloud storage!!

So far, only having it in daylight and not being able to store electricity isn't too bad. I only had to buy 6.8 kWh yesterday. Not sure what I used, but it was way more than that since the A/C ran most of the afternoon & evening and I charged the car.

So tomorrow I'll see if that inspector has the brass to stand us up three times.

 

The whole generator thing is purely hypothetical. That would be something I'd not spend much time researching except in the unlikely event that I got serious about it. Most likely, I'll leave things as they are since it should serve me well 99.9999% of the time.

 

That's pretty much how I was expecting it to work. Thanks for being the guinea pig. If I ever do launch into a project like that, I'll try to do a little research first since I really don't want to blow up anything. Actually, the inverters & controller have a lot of protections built in so if it didn't work, it would probably just not work. Since our electricity is so dependable here, I may never get to it.

 

Woo hoo!!!
The inspection is finally done and passed. Next step is waiting on Duke Energy to get over here with a net metering electric meter.

In the meantime, the panels are providing well over half my power even without being able to generate at night or to generate and store more than I use at any given moment.

Also, they got me set up with the Enphase software for monitoring. It's mostly a way to track production and use. Nice in that regard but no real-time info.
Here's what the total energy screen for today looks like at the moment. The reports it can make should be really helpful in predicting the next electric bill.


It shows no production till the sun came up. (DUH!) From that point on, it has pretty much produced what we've consumed although it seems to always be a little behind the demand. Later this evening, as the sun gets lower, it'll gradually become unable to fully supply the air conditioner which keeps on running till this masonry heat sink we call a house cools off. Of course all that will change with the new electric meter.

Since I don't yet have the new electric meter, I won't get credit for the little bit of exported energy, but at least, so far today, I've only bought 3.3 of the 12.3 kWh we've used so far today.

Edit to add odd factoid:
Since the lack of a net metering meter is throttling production, the system seems to favor one panel over the others. So one of the twenty is producing over 3 times more than any of its buddies. Weird. But the numbers in this picture give an idea what it could could have been doing if allowed to go full out.

 

Twelve if you count heat pump season. However there are a few months when we just run it a few minutes a day to dry out the humidity.

Edit to add:
Right now, demand is moderate. Next month it will increase and by August the AC will be running about 7-8 hours a day. That's why I'm in such a hurry to get the new meter in place and start storing electricity for the summer.

 

It looks like you're using EnlightenManager. I just have the free Enlighten app. I see that it's $9.99 per month or $249 for lifetime. Looks like it might be worth a try to see if I want to buy it.