I’m curious as to what people are doing with their spare solar power.
I’m in the US and on NEM2. I already have batteries and discharge them when the rates are favorable.
But I still have a lot of leftover juice. My partner recently bought an EV but doesn’t drive much.
I set up a home lab and even bought a small bitcoin miner that turns on when electricity rates are favorable.
I’ve been using it to build cellulose, sugars, and other organic compounds from CO2 and water. I get oxygen as a byproduct too which is neat.
What
If you’re saying power indoor growing, then yes I’d agree. Those lights use a lot of energy.
selling back to grid at market price 🙂
I’m interested in doing this. So when you wire it up, do they just know you’re giving it back to the grid (selling it) or do you need to contact them and tell them?
This is what I do too! Your utility company will need to install a bidirectional electric meter and some sort of system that allows them to disconnect you from the grid for when they need to shut down areas like for maintenance operations. My city did this for free - It’s a local company though not xcel or one of the big ones. I would give them a call to see what they will supply for you
Also we have TOD pricing so it is like 4x price they buy it at in the prime generating hours.
You must contact them else they will disconnect you pronto.
Not sure, I had an electrician do all of that 😁 not much room for mistakes there 😅 I did have to inform my power company, and switch to a supplier that would buy power.
Here (Canada), solar is hooked up to the hydro line and the hydro company buys any extra. Plus, there’s no need for big banks of batteries.
Very boring. I have 10kwh of battery in the basement, another 4 under my desk, and 77 and 30 parked in the garage.
Even then on sunny summer weeks everything is full around 11am. I use some to cool down the house for extra comfort and just export the rest to the grid, around 1.4MWh per year (out of 7.3MWh produced). At 8 cents per kWh it’s about 115 euros… not great but not bad either.
My homelab consumed about 1.1MWh last year.
I’m installing more solar this year, to have higher production in winter. Will result in even higher export in summer, probably.
More bitcoin mines.
Eh, well, some people I used to know just never bothered with stuff like that and almost always had a negative power bill which would be settled by the power company at the end of the month.
This is the best option. Don’t look at “free” solar power as an excuse to be wasteful - put it back in the grid and reduce your neighbors’ CO2 production.
May I ask which solar setup you have, and how much it cost?
Tesla, 2 batteries 7.5kw panels. I think it was $35k back in 2020?
Nothing exciting - I don’t have a battery system yet so all excess generation goes back to the grid for my neighbors.
I don’t know, my landlord does all that.
In the Netherlands you have to pay to feed the leftover juice to the grid, by the way…
