Personal Energy Independence

[Ajax]

So far, for the calendar month of August, my offset is 111%. The billing period starts on the 9th, so my offset for the billing period (so far) is much higher.
We are running the A/C.

We have been engaging in one minor cheat- We've been out of town for four days during each billing period. During that time, we obviously consume far less electricity which helps us get a jump on our offset. My spousal unit still makes me turn on the A/C in the evening (remotely through the Nest thermostat) to give the cats a cool blast of air but it's a much shorter interval than if we were home.

The Japanese maple near the corner of the roof is casting too much shade on the corner of the array too early in the day. I'm going to have to trim it back a bit. I'm very certain that when I replace the water heater and shut down that stand up freezer that we'll really be kicking ass.

[BeauV]

Ajax, be sure to take a look at chest freezers. If you do any long-term storage, they win big on energy. They are, however, hard for shorter folks to rummage through as you have to dig. But I think it's worth it. My Admiral does not

[Orestes Munn]

Good for storing corpses until the ground thaws.

[Ish]

Good for storing corpses until the ground thaws.

We could probably get two into our small chest freezer if we folded them right, but my sister's old freezer would hold a platoon. It was huge. I helped move it. It was huge.

[Panope]

An old acquaintance of mine put her mother in a chest freezer for a couple days. She claimed that she did not want to pay the "weekend" rate to the funeral home. In reality, she was an attention seeking, shit stirring, drama queen that just wanted to pull a stunt.

Steve

[Ajax]

December and January offset absolutely sucked at 59% due to the extremely short days and cloudy, wet weather.
The panels had snow on them for a full week after a snow storm. I missed around 5 sunny days of production. I found a "snow rake" that will be safe to use on the panels.

The February calendar month was 90%. The February billing period has been much better in spite of a fair amount of rain. I'm at 99% right now and the meter reading is on March 8th. I might actually generate a surplus.

[Benno von Humpback]

Feb was net positive and beat 2018 by a few percent.

[Ajax]

The Power Ranger was a baking fiend during December. It seemed like the oven was always on.
She also does enough laundry for 4 people.

I always thought that florescent light fixtures were somewhat energy efficient. I just replaced our 2-bulb kitchen light fixture with a very nice, LED unit. You can choose from 3 different light wavelengths with a switch, ranging from cool to warm. The new fixture is also much brighter. When I opened the circuit breaker and removed the old florescent fixture, I was stunned at how hot it was. Definitely not energy efficient.

[Benno von Humpback]

The Power Ranger was a baking fiend during December. It seemed like the oven was always on.
She also does enough laundry for 4 people.

I always thought that florescent light fixtures were somewhat energy efficient. I just replaced our 2-bulb kitchen light fixture with a very nice, LED unit. You can choose from 3 different light wavelengths with a switch, ranging from cool to warm. The new fixture is also much brighter. When I opened the circuit breaker and removed the old florescent fixture, I was stunned at how hot it was. Definitely not energy efficient.

We have gone LED for all of our every-day use areas except the basement, where I'm using the last of the CFLs. I'm not crazy about the light quality from some of the lower color temp units, but I'm stuck with them for 15 years now.

[Ajax]

Yeah, not a fan of cool color light fixtures. Very industrial, Federal prison-like.

[Benno von Humpback]

Yeah, not a fan of cool color light fixtures. Very industrial, Federal prison-like.

I meant the yellow ones trying to approximate the light from halogens. Cooler color temp = warmer color. The bluish ones are what they are.

[Ajax]

Oh, I seem to have my frequencies backwards.

[SemiSalt]

The Power Ranger was a baking fiend during December. It seemed like the oven was always on.
She also does enough laundry for 4 people.

I always thought that florescent light fixtures were somewhat energy efficient. I just replaced our 2-bulb kitchen light fixture with a very nice, LED unit. You can choose from 3 different light wavelengths with a switch, ranging from cool to warm. The new fixture is also much brighter. When I opened the circuit breaker and removed the old florescent fixture, I was stunned at how hot it was. Definitely not energy efficient.

The amount of choice overwhelms. Too many for the average hardware store. When we redid a bathroom, we experimented with a couple of options, but we had to mail order to get the particular lumens and color temp we wanted.

[Ajax]

You're right, I did the same thing. Scouted out the colors and lumens. Fixture came in the mail.

[BeauV]

My experience talking with friends about LED is that they don't make a purchase choice based on color, only on price. When I try to explain color choice I get a blank look.

What I'd love to get are light bulbs which can alter their color based on time of day and what you're doing. No reason we can't do that. LEDs don't naturally make "white" light. When the diode starts to emit light, it doesn't make white. The bulb designers have to put a phosphor between the LED and the person which will emit light when it's impacted by another source. The phosphor layer absorbs at least 10% of the energy emitted by the LED and turns it into heat. The LED puts out Red, Blue etc... but not white. As a result, you can either have the LED smack the phosphor and create a fixed color, or you could have a mix of colors in the light bulb (typically Red, Green, and Blue) which is more expensive. But, if you had all the colors in the bulb, the bulb could change colors under software control and we could Party Down! (you can read about all this here.)

[SemiSalt]

My experience talking with friends about LED is that they don't make a purchase choice based on color, only on price. When I try to explain color choice I get a blank look.

What I'd love to get are light bulbs which can alter their color based on time of day and what you're doing. No reason we can't do that. LEDs don't naturally make "white" light. When the diode starts to emit light, it doesn't make white. The bulb designers have to put a phosphor between the LED and the person which will emit light when it's impacted by another source. The phosphor layer absorbs at least 10% of the energy emitted by the LED and turns it into heat. The LED puts out Red, Blue etc... but not white. As a result, you can either have the LED smack the phosphor and create a fixed color, or you could have a mix of colors in the light bulb (typically Red, Green, and Blue) which is more expensive. But, if you had all the colors in the bulb, the bulb could change colors under software control and we could Party Down! (you can read about all this here.)

https://www.amazon.com/Dimmable-Colors- ... B007V1VOI8

[BeauV]

My experience talking with friends about LED is that they don't make a purchase choice based on color, only on price. When I try to explain color choice I get a blank look.

What I'd love to get are light bulbs which can alter their color based on time of day and what you're doing. No reason we can't do that. LEDs don't naturally make "white" light. When the diode starts to emit light, it doesn't make white. The bulb designers have to put a phosphor between the LED and the person which will emit light when it's impacted by another source. The phosphor layer absorbs at least 10% of the energy emitted by the LED and turns it into heat. The LED puts out Red, Blue etc... but not white. As a result, you can either have the LED smack the phosphor and create a fixed color, or you could have a mix of colors in the light bulb (typically Red, Green, and Blue) which is more expensive. But, if you had all the colors in the bulb, the bulb could change colors under software control and we could Party Down! (you can read about all this here.)

https://www.amazon.com/Dimmable-Colors- ... B007V1VOI8

Semi, thanks!!! Very cool. Now where did I leave my disco ball????

[floating dutchman]

You're right, I did the same thing. Scouted out the colors and lumens. Fixture came in the mail.

Helogen is about 2700K.
Warm white is 3000K and that is my preferred color for use around the house.
6000 - 6000K is cool white, almost blueish, I can't stand it but some people like it for work areas.

My standard rule for buying lamps is "If it doesn't have Osram or Philips written on the label, don't buy it". Lamps are one of the few products I buy by brand name. Cheap lamps have bigger variations in color and can be spotty in build quality.
I have just bought cheaper fixtures and used retro fit LED replacement lamps. Works for me.

[Slick470]

Cree is also usually a safe bet for LED modules.

[Ken Heaton (Salazar)]

Philips offer quite a broad range of choices for what you can do in your home with LED replacement bulbs: https://www.lighting.philips.ca/consumer

I find the light from Philips LED's quite nice. My wife didn't notice I changed them over. She did notice some of the compact florescents that were there before were not entirely attractive.

The led's used in Philips Hue consumer lamps are made by Lumileds and are essentially the same as used in our high end LED theatrical light sources such as our ETC Source Four LED Series 2's: https://www.etcconnect.com/Products/Lig ... gn=Theatre

A quote from the ETC website here: https://blog.etcconnect.com/2018/10/beh ... come-from/

A few years after amber, Philips introduced its Hue line of color-changing, smart-home lighting products for consumers. Rather than traditional RGB, these products use red-orange, indigo, and lime for their mix. Lime works just like PC amber. It’s an indigo pump and a layer of lime-green/yellow phosphors that convert all of the indigo light. For Philips Hue products, it means that they have a pretty limited range of saturated colors, but they are able to do white, particularly warm white, far more beautifully and convincingly than any RGB mix can do. It was actually a very smart way to go. AND … it gave Lumileds a reason to produce lime – FINALLY!

[Ajax]

Powerwall is installed.
I will set it to partially discharge at night to further distance myself from the grid.

[Ajax]

The hardware:

[TheOffice]

That would fit nicely in Atlantis!

Damn wood roof shingles prevent me from converting.

[Benno von Humpback]

Powerwall is installed.
I will set it to partially discharge at night to further distance myself from the grid.

Congrats! How many Ah does it store and how many hours does that get you with/without AC?

Also, our PV system goes down if the grid does, in order to safeguard anyone working on the lines. I assume you have some sort of interface which does that, but enables you to keep charging the battery.

[Ajax]

A single powerwall is 14kwh. It won't drive any loads greater than 30 amps, so no heat pump. The system has an automatic bus transfer switch that senses commercial power to protect the linemen.

In a crunch, 14kwh will last 24 hours. The sun will recharge it daily.

I will actually release stored energy each night to avoid drawing from the grid.

[Benno von Humpback]

A single powerwall is 14kwh. It won't drive any loads greater than 30 amps, so no heat pump. The system has an automatic bus transfer switch that senses commercial power to protect the linemen.

In a crunch, 14kwh will last 24 hours. The sun will recharge it daily.

I will actually release stored energy each night to avoid drawing from the grid.

Well, that'll keep the fridge and a few fans and lights going. Something to consider when and if we move to some sort of micro dwelling down there. We can live comfortably on 11 kWh with no AC if we don't bake any cakes.

[BeauV]

Ajax, thanks for the numbers.

Our two electric cars hold 100KWH and 85KWH, causing me to consider why there isn't a hack to run the house off the car in a power failure. But your numbers also illustrate to me that we've got a ways to go before solar+powerwall can do anything substantial about powering my trips to and from San Francisco. I burn through about 60KWH round trip.

Our home would work for quite a while off of 14KWH, as we don't have AC and heat is natural gas except for the water pumps to circulate the hot water. The fridge/freezer is the only thing that would be running in addition to heat (in winter).

[Ajax]

Beau,

There isn't a "hack" to power your house with your car because the house needs an ABT to avoid frying any linemen working on the grid lines.
You can't have every Joe Idiot backfeeding into the grid with their car.

I mean, I guess you could pay an electrician to install an ABT, a large breaker and a 220V outlet on an exterior wall of your home that feeds into your breaker panel, then plug your car into the outlet.

It's interesting that you use 60Kw to drive to town and back. How many miles is that? Do you drive aggressively? I imagine there are a lot of steep hills?
I estimated that I'd use 8kw to drive to work and back each day. Flat ground, easy driving, 44 miles round trip. My estimate may be way off.

[BeauV]

I get it - about not frying the guys working on the power line. I have a generator and manually disconnect from the grid when I start it. Although, most of the time I just plug things into the generator with an extension cord.

My Santa Cruz to San Francisco loop is 140 miles. I go from sea level to a pass over the Santa Cruz mountains that is just under 2,000 feet high once each way, so there are at least 4,000 feet of climbing and equal descent. Coming back down I think the Tesla re-captures about 40% of what I used climbing the hill. The real power hog is that I tend to set the autopilot at 80 or 85 MPH and just leave it there for 90% of the trip. Pushing air out of the way burns a lot of KWH. I could slow down, but were's the fun in that?

Here at home, I pay about 18 cents/KWH from 1am to 8am, 25 cents/KWH during the day, and 32 cents/KWH on peak hot days in the summer.

The round trip cost works out to $10.8 in electricity. But most of the time I stop and re-fill at a Supercharger which is free for us for the life of the cars because we bought the Teslas early. Driving the Ford SUV which gets 20 MPG comes out to $29.4 per round trip.

[Benno von Humpback]

We pay a hell of a lot less for power. I think our rate is on the order of .11 plus fixed costs.