Gorilla solar

Mike T., Swampeast MO

Utilities in MO do not buy back excess generation at ANY price. Considering the recently acquired the ability to change rates without approval of the MO Public Service Commission, I doubt they'll be buying back anything soon.

Considering the wild speculations I've heard regarding natural gas this winter, am VERY happy I installed a condensing/modulating boiler last season!

Am still planning my solar system, but installation costs remain high for the benefit received. Especially difficult with an old, historic house in a city filled with large trees.

Am still trying to give a solar "bottom end" to the Vitodens with excess going to DHW. Experiments this season with outdoor temperature diversity should give me a very good idea how much energy I really need for the space heating component.

Dave Yates (PAH)

ever hear of this term?

Gorilla solar: installing a solar PV array without telling your electric company.

The meter spins in reverse when PV power produced exceeds the home's demand. Works great because the owner/occupant is, in effect, being "paid" the same amount for electricity produced as the power company charges.

A HO in our area was caught because he over did it just a wee bit. Seems his meter reading was a negative number! He'd covered his entire roof in PV cells and the negative meter reading naturally caused some head scratching by the utility co. Now he has two meters: one to record use; and the second to record production for which he is paid, but at a reduced rate.

The reduced rate of payment reflects the fact that it costs the utility to produce and provide transmission - costs that are above & beyond the power itself.

Our Government should do as other countries do & reward forward thinking HO's by subsidizing kWh's produced via solar to help promote and make this viable renewable energy source the norm, rather than the oddity.

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Al Corelli

Every KWh produced saves the Utility company the same amount charged to the customer and should be reimbursed in full.

Screw them.

hr

Yep

but just recently. A solar PV guy in my area waits until the electrical and utility inspectors have signed off to install his meter spinning systems

Dave, I need you to get over to Penn State in State College. I've heard they have been testing a boiler that burns shreded plastics. Intended to reduce ag industries plastic waste.

It is supplied with a shreder that will handle those large blue plastic barrels. I've heard models fro 50K to 2 mil. Supposed to have EPA blessing. I should have more specfics tomorrow.

I've always felt bad about sending pex scraps to the landfill. They will be there forever. Mr pex claims pex burns clean, as I recall one of his discussions with copper Ken a few years back.

hot rod

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Larry Weingarten

The term comes from...

...Home Power Magazine, www.homepower.com They have good nuts and bolts info.

Yours, Larry

RadPro

guerilla solar

these inverters add about 3 to 6 volts to the line voltage and therefore the meter will reverse ,unless of course you have one of the new smart meters that will monitor power in and out.

hr

I've heard power companies

are starting to install digital meters that can't spin in reverse to fight the gorillas.

hot rod

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Dave Yates (PAH)

keep me posted!

9 out of 10 plastic water bottles (yup, the same water that costs more per gallon than gas will in the next ten years!) end up in unrecycled waste streams.

If you provide a contact, I have friends whose kids are on main campus and I might (stressing the word "might") be doing a radiant installation just a few miles from main campus.

They also have a prof who is well versed on solar & he's been giving me some pointers on design. We're getting more than a few requests for solar quotes.

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Dave Yates (PAH)

my first thoughts too

but, as a business owner I see the hidden costs that go into our hourly rates and, as a result, can't agree to that line of reasoning. I do agree, however, that the electric utilities in PA (some progressive thinking electric utilities offer extremely good incentives and payment for power produced via solar PV arrays) aren't thinking clearly when it comes to balancing the payment-to-cost ratio they're applying at present.

However, if it's to be looked at as only a payback issue, solar isn't going to be the tsunami I fully expect it will become over the next decade. I won't be investing ij it for my home because of Met-Ed's payments, but for my own future needs and to reduce my dependence on oil/gas/coal.

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Mike Reavis_2

Here in MD, I have had a digital meter for 14 yrs.

> are starting to install digital meters that can't

> spin in reverse to fight the gorillas.

>

> hot

> rod

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> 144&Step=30"_To Learn More About This

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put in when the house was new.

It is a TOU meter (time of use)

off peak, weekends, and some holidays, and overnight we pay about $.04 per kw.

goes up to .18-.19 in the summer/peak.

Mike

Tundra

Rather than give it to the utility for a pittance why not dump the excess into resistance heating. A large electric water heater before your indirect set high to store more energy and kill any bio growth. You should make sure to have scalding protection coming out of the indirect.
It shouldn't be too hard to place a tee and a electric water heater coil in the boiler return (if you are not running glycol).
fifteen hundred watt electric heaters are cheap enough.
In the summer the AC should handle any excess without too much effort. I am sure there are any number of dump loads that will ultimately reduce your onsite energy consumption.

David Woycio

CAREFULL!

When installing a system like this you need to install a power diconnect devise to kill the solar out-put to the system in case the utility goes down. Wouldn't want to kill an unsuspecting lineman.

Spend the money, do it right, and purchase a second meter if necessary.

A lot of PV systems can produce more power than is coming into a home. If you add batteries then you add other safety issues.

Dave Yates (PAH)

Safety

Grid-connected inverters incorporate an automatic disconnect in the event the grid goes down. At least they're supposed to do that, but an improper installation could easily see one in place that's not up to specs.

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Christian Egli

The pirates of net-metering

A gypsum factory we dealt with has its plant in the exclusive hunting territory of this rapacious utility. What is striking in this area, there is very little industry and the housing market is not booming for lack of workers. I think it all comes down to the electric utility, its rates and its methods. The gypsum plant is there because of a raw material quarry.

So, the raw material comes down the big hill on a cable car. Since the heavy rocks only go down, no energy is needed to get moving, rather, things have to be slowed down.

This used to be done with a set of brake pads that ended up being costly to replace all the time. One day, the plant engineering team came up with an electric hook up to have the motor/generator act itself as a brake while pumping out electricity. This seemed great. No more brake pads to replace and some free power to use elsewhere in the large processing plant.

The party did not last a month. The utility did not tolerate being double crossed. It came in, installed its brand service panel on the wires coming out of the cable car control room and promptly started charging the gypsum plant its ordinary rate for the power.

This is power the gypsum plant made itself through a plant it paid for itself. But to the utility, this was causing the plant to buy less power. This loss of income was reason enough for the extra service panel. The utility paid nothing for the free power it was confiscating arguing that the power they were no longer selling in the first place was costing them a full price loss.

Can’t argue with twisted logic… What if the plant decided one day to use energy saving light bulbs, would the utility come in and argue it should still charge for power hypotetically used in incandesant lights? Hey, this is a loss of income.

I don’t know how recent deregulation changes affected this situation.

Meanwhile, utilities charge a monthly basic service and rental fee for the meter, so even with net metering and a zero balance, they’re still making money. The power they made and did not end up selling to you, they sold it to someone else for the same profit.

In the first post here, does the PV cell owner get paid a rate fraction for all the power he makes, and then when he buys back power from the utility including his own he pays full rate?

Ask your public utilities commission for unhindered net metering.

Constantin

Here is the issue with some renewables...

... in fact they can increase the cost of electricity even when they're NOT subsidized... WHY?

Because we cannot depend on them. If there is no wind, the turbines won't turn. Overcast skies exist as well. Thus, the utility ends up having to build and have the same amount of capacity available as before... just that it sits idle part of the time. That cost will get passed on in some form or other... that's the beauty of regulated monopolies.

Still, PV systems can make a lot of sense in areas where you have large electrical loads that coincide with insolation, such as the AC loads. I look at the solar/steam/stirling array they built in CA with interest, as this is a solar system that uses mirrors, stirling engines, etc. to produce a lot of energy at competetive rates. In areas like CA that usually don't have clouds, this may allow the obviation of some production capacity...