I’ve been experimenting with my newish solar battery
Represented here is the end of the charge cycle yesterday at about the same time the sun started to set
I’ve been powering the freezer with this 2 kWh battery, and every morning there is ~50% charge left, and so far every day I get it up to 90% (by choice) from solar alone
I can also do a load of laundry or two, and some vacuuming, without being even connected to the grid (if I get the timing right)
Of course this is clear summer weather, so this won’t be the same all year
(This is far from sufficient to power the entire house, it’s just an experiment)
Essentially, 1-2 kWh that aren’t drawn from the grid on a daily basis
#solar
The experiment has been running smoothly so far
(TL;DR for today: was a bit uncertain but still managed 1 laundry and some vacuuming, in addition to the freezer)
This photo is from today at 1pm, because this morning the battery was much lower than usual, with a cloudy sky a few days in a row
I seemed like it was going well so I started a load of laundry, shown in the output in the photo
Two hours and a stretch of clear skies later, the battery was upwards of 70% so I got a little greedy and I did some vacuuming too, and it dropped to 40% (no surprise there)
I was hoping to get it back above 50% before the sun rays stop shining on the panels, so that it can last the night for the freezer
Seems that I am in luck, it’s now 5:30pm and the battery level is at 60%, cloudy skies again but charging a little regardless, and I only need a half charge to tie it up with tomorrow’s first rays (if they are on time)
#solar
A little bit of a hiccup today that, in hindsight, I really should have seen coming [1]
Outside temperatures were in the thirties (°C), so the battery, being built to protect itself against aggressive use, started rotating a fan according to the room temperature
In summary: the battery has been using additional 50 kWh consistently all day for cooling purposes, even after the sun set, and it actually needed recharging from the grid
/cc @solaradmin@solarcene.community fiy watch out for this?
[1] the air-water heat pump has the same issue
#solar #HeatPump
I am feeling more confident in my little #solar experiment here
I was worried that absorbing 1-2 kWh per day (about a third of my daily use in the summer) didn’t mean anything in the grand scheme of things
I was also worried that since we have so much excess energy in the summer, my experiment was moot
But I’m coming to realize a few things【first: how I’m using my solar】
I have a 2 kWh battery/generator that I can easily fill on clear days, probably even several times over
I have my freezer on this 24/7, that’s the only appliance not plugged into the grid; that’s about 1 kWh per day of background use
Sometimes I spend my work from home days outside, plugged into this battery; that’s 1 kWh per day too, spread over 8h
As for surge uses, the vacuuming and the laundry machines also haven’t needed the grid for over a month; that’s another 1-2 kWh within a few hours but not every day
The vacuuming is the most surge-like of these examples【usage spikes】
I understand that usage spikes (noon & evening for example) are an issue for energy providers, especially when most of the energy comes from nuclear sources (as is the case in France)
Nuclear reactors aren’t meant for episodic production within the day, their cost is constant throughout the year and they are meant to function more or less constantly at their optimal level
Spikes mean unpredictability, and we can’t guarantee that there are enough dams, wind and solar to absorb tomorrow’s for example; which means having giant backup generators that run on fossil fuel, and I’m not in favor of those【excess in the summer at utility scale】
I’m not sure how energy providers deal with excess energy produced from domestic solar and such, but if negative prices are any indication, they aren’t doing great
This is also a spike, just in production rather than use, and it’s equally difficult to deal with this problem at scale
We would need storage at scale, and we don’t have that
So… We can’t really count on excess production spikes to excuse our behavior (consumption without regard, just “because we have excess anyway”)【disclaimer】
I am in no way an energy professional and I don’t work at a utility
I’m just a random trying his best
Today was very cloudy, a blanket white-grey sky, but the two solar panels were still able to eke out a little over 130 W when I was looking, and sometimes even 200 W
The panels charged most of the battery (almost 80%) by noon even while I was using it (freezer + some computer stuff)
I decided to do some vacuuming (went down to 52%) and to start a laundry
At 16h30, the battery level was back up to 75%
Cloudy days and photovoltaics are weird
#solar
I tried charging from last night’s full moon, but no luck 🤣
Guillaume Rossolini