OutdoorKing Repair Forum Forums General Discussion Forum Off Topics Solar power systems

I know it is a bit off topic but it is still outdoors
I have some observations regarding my solar system that can bust some of the myths/smoke and mirrors talk that is designed to totally confuse the mug punter who just wants to reduce their power bill. I have a 22 panel system 5kw inverter. I read my meter twice daily so I have facts This system 8am and 8pm so I have data and FACTS on a spread sheet that tell me exactly what is going on every 12 hours, not this, oh you should get your money back in 5/10 years. I am fully convinced that anybody fitting one of the smaller 8 panel type systems is wasting their money and will struggle to ever break even/get their money back. I won't go into a lot of details unless somebody wants more info but what the mug punter is not told is that because you have solar fitted your kw usage rate is increased by up to 10 cents a kwh ( close to 30% higher) and your daily supply charge is increased. This very quickly chews into your export from your system and if your system is only small it will not go close to your consumption and then as you are only being paid 12 cents for whatever you put into the grid (which will only be a small amount) and you are being charged an extra 10 cents because you have solar you end up getting a whopping 2 cents to pay off your system. Based on the figures I have come up with is if you have one of the small systems you would be better of having it disconnected from the grid and use the cheaper power rate. The government is complicate in this scam by allowing these small systems to be sold, they are a complete con job. Sorry to bore you.

I agree. I kinda always there was a hook in there somewhere. Usually what I see here is that somehow the energy companies are losing any money by us going more efficient as they just charge more for the same services, just because they appear to have a stake in the solar panel manufactures.

Here I have been gradually switching over to LED lighting but it is still not cost effectively so it is as lighting sources fail. Solar on the scale that I need to be effective is way too costly up front here too. But I do have a small 60 watt 12V panel that I use for battery charging and the electrolysis cleaning of small steel and tin parts.

As I can will upgrade my household equipment to more efficient ones but not going spend more than I save over a reasonable period of time.

Hi AVB,
I am going to start collecting data from a couple of other systems just so I can prove what is going on. As for you switching to LED's it all depends on what your power is costing you, Government here was replacing the incandescent globes in peoples houses with LED's for free just to help take pressure off our aging grid system, not because they cared about saving people money. I changed both my TV's last week with LED ones, consumption on the old ones were 140 watts, the new ones exactly the same size , 28 watts. What fires your power stations, this is where Australia is heading into trouble we have no future power station plans at the moment. We are so lucky our manufacturing industries have all closed down as we would not be able to provide enough power to keep them running.

I have changed over an led tv here too. Kinda had too as I got tried of buying convertor boxes that only lasted two years. I probably had a lot more of wattage difference as it was an old analog tv. Both of the computer monitors have been led for quite awhile too. One nice about the new tv is that I can now connect to the net and play free movies even I seldom watch them.

Just repair the hot water heater and it going to be using less wattage too as some idiot installed 4500 watt element after the last one failed. I was wondering it always sounded like something frying when heating water. It now has the right 3500 watt element it is now quite when heating.

The next major project is a central unit as the compressor had failed 2 yrs ago. I probably install a hi efficient heat pump version. I currently using resistance heating elements, so the meter gets burn out marks everytime the heater comes on. It probably why I am sitting in a house that is only 15c but that better than the -2C outside currently.

The led bulbs are currently around 6-8 usd a piece. As far incandescent bulbs they are getting hard to find but CFLs and LEDs are all over the place. At lease the prices are coming down now.

A few years ago I bought all the LED's for my house from China for about $2 each. The thing is any we buy locally are made in China anyway but they charge about $10 for them

We used 3.8 kwh from the grid from 8am yesterday to 8 am today. Lowest we have ever used and I thought yesterday was fairly cloudy. Not sure why we used so little. We also exported to the grid 19.3 kwh so yesterday it paid for itself

Glad to hear you are able to export more than you imported.

I think it is that you are watching you usage for one thing; therefore, you are not just wasting electricity on unnecessary things plus all the LED lighting is reducing you demand on cooling as there is a lot less heating that the old incandescent bulbs gave off. Plus your neighbor just cut down his trees which may have been affecting the solar panel system too. Just depends where your panels were located.

Here when I first moved in I was a lot electricity as the bills were in the 250-300 USD range and now with all the energy saving devices I have installed it has has been over $150 and that with the resistance heating elements this winter. You be surprise how much those old electrical adapters wasted too. Many of the newer ones are switching type and not the old linear transformer types.

Hi AVB,
we are trying to not change what we do each day so we can get the data as accurate as possible. yesterday was really good, not sure why, it didn't see that hot just a good temperature but we exported 31 kwh and only imported 3.6 kwh. What I am trying to prove is that the small systems may in fact be costing the owners money instead of saving them money. Once I have enough data I will be taking it to the papers to expose this rort that the government should never have allowed to happen. I believe thousand of people have been stiched up in these useless systems. Yes the trees going will certainly help during winter when the sun gets down lower in the north. Your bills have certainly dropped, anything in particular you can put your finger on that made a big difference?

Well in my case it is to do a lot with me switching things over energy saving items. See the home I brought was owned by new car dealer financial manager who didn't care how much he spent as just stuck to the customers. There was 100w light bulbs everywhere along with that hot water heater. The first thing I did once I got myself rested from taking of my mother that had dementia was to start changing all those light bulbs to CFLs. In the kitchen alone there was 5 overhead flood lights drawing 500 watts. Now with the five LED floods it is 50 watts if I have all of them on but normally I just 30 watts. My repair shop had four 250 watts bulbs and now I have four 40 watt led strips. I actually have more light now than I did before in the shop. I kept the hot water off most of the time except when needed but it now using a 1000 watts less I can leave it on more.

The other thing I did was to replace the 25" CRT television that was on 16 hrs a day and two 21" CRT monitors that ran nearly 24/7. Those LED replacements definitely help out on the bill.

Oh one other thing the local electric company had me on a commercial rate instead of a residential rate. I raise a lot sand about them demanding a $400 deposit a second time. I finally got them to listen after the second time they came out. They refunded me nearly 1500.00 for the three years that they were over charging me.

Energy companies are pretty ruthless. A mate of mine had a small shop repairing old Triumph motorcycles. In the shop he had a small tv, a small bar fridge, 2 fluorescent tubes and a fan that was only used on hot days. His bill just started getting way out of control and jumping a thousand dollars at a time. I kept trying to work it out/sort it out and after several years they were claiming he owed over $10.000. In the end I went to his local MP and within a week they not only cleared the debt , but somehow they claimed they owed him money and sent him a cheque for $130. He immediately shut the shop, retired and moved up the bush, never wanting to come near the city ever again. In the end I never found out why the bills were going like that.

Hey guys,

Same in NSW since the privatisation of electricity, it has been up and up. Of course, now that it isn't in their hands, the Politicians cannot do anything about it except talk, whereas when it was a public entity, it easily became an election issue if things got out of hand and which stopped any rampant attempt to grab too many dollars. CEOs and shareholders aren't accountable to the general public.

Hi Sapper,
When our energy companies were sold off we were all told ( not sure how many were fooled) that competition would keep prices down. Not sure if that worked out too well for the consumer

Hey Norm,

No doubt, when there were 500 companies for almost each and every item/bank/insert whatever other business you can name (which seemed to be the case when I was a kid anyway), I am sure that was the case. Unfortunately, now that a handful of companies at best are involved in every sector, there is no competition. Not to mention that every power company doesn't have their own power plant, so they have to buy energy from someone else, who in turn are ripping the system off. And then we get to contracts the governments have signed with mining companies for gas etc, and the contracts that THOSE companies have signed with China etc...

Electricity should be dirt cheap in this country, when you factor in our resources, even without coal (and you see how the prices were going through the roof even before Coal became evil, so its absence today would really make no difference pricewise), of Gas, and this country should be paying less for it than water. On top of that, we have the ability to have more solar energy than just about anyone else on earth, so even before battery storage comes into its own (which I believe is still a ways off), you could cover a sh*t tonne of baseload generation during the daylight hours with Gas ready and waiting to deal with the shortfall and night times.

But as we have sold our gas and gas rights to China and others, we don't actually even 'own' the gas that is still in the ground, because it is already signed off for in overseas contracts.

Our national fuel reserves are also in the toilet, so in the event of a major catastrophy or war, we have less than a months supply to power even essential industries and services.

That my friend is a true banana republic.

Ah, thats better.

(puts the soapbox away)

Sapper,
That pretty much sums up the stupidity of grubberment after grubberment in this country, only reason most of them get into power is because the have a mouth that can dribble rubbish and make it seem truthful

Hey Norm,

I think Governments these days, of any persuasion, think only about their agendas, their 'beliefs', what their paymasters and future cushy job providers want and of course how to keep their bums in a parliamentary seat for as long as possible, rather than how to govern a country, longterm, in the interests of its citizens.

Pretty sad really, and most probably the reason more and more people are turning sour on mainstream politics and voting in 'oddbods' around the world; desperation for something, anything, different.

Hi Guys

Here in W A we have no choice in who we get our Power from and I pay the residential rate of 26.2026 cents per unit currently.
Ten years ago I erected a 2kw Solar system and have been receiving 47.1350 cents for each unit fed back The system cost us at the time $10,000
but we have not had a power bill and have had several payments of $1,000 back. We have all LED lighting apart from the shed and a solar HWS
Due to an incentive scheme at the time of erecting the solar power from the WA Government we received for 10 years 40c per unit exported back.
This deal is about to expire and all we will get soon is 7.1350 cents so that the Government owned Power supply will make a tidy profit on anything exported back. Lithium Batterys are still too expensive to be viable but I am thinking of going to a 6.65 Kw system and instead of drawing power in the evening as we have in the past and using washing machine Dish washer Bread maker etc during the day to soak up power from the panels and waiting for the batterys to come down in price.

I have not fully worked it all out yet but I guess I will have to in the near future or get used to having a power bill again

If they only stop all the lying would help but so many people just rather a believe a lie than the truth. Over half of our taxes is used to boss other countries around via the military. I just don't understand how they can be multi-trillion dollars in debit and still be in business; if any of us was that far in debit they bury under the jailhouse. Enough said about politics on my part.

Here all they offer is penny for penny feedback rate so it not profitable to install solar panels when they cost a arm and leg with us only getting a $500 on time tax credit which is actually not $500 in tax saves but it just a reduction in they amount they tax us on. Still paying most of the same tax, just a government con job but most people are just that gullible.

exfarmer here they now do have led lighting for those sheds. Matter of fact I am considering having my outdoor security light upgraded to LED from the Sodium vapor one I currently have. Since it is through the electric company it would be a little cheaper every month to it as the current light is billed monthly to me. But the neighbor probably complain about the white light as the amber light now isn't as irritating as a nightlight.

Hi exfarmer,
Those high feed in tariffs were excellent, a mate of mine is still getting 66 cents but as you say it was a 10 year deal and his is also about to expire back to the 12 cent rate over here. As your system has certainly paid for itself you can upgrade to the bigger system for probably another $10,000, not sure if you have any government incentives like we have over here. It will pay for itself but you will still get a bill for the supply charge, maybe seeing you are in the West you may get more sunny days so this might chew into the supply charge. If I export 20 kwh per day that is my break even point which pays my power and also my supply charge. You can never get close to that with a 2kw system with a feed in tariff of 12 cents because here if you connect to solar your peak step 1 rate increases from .229790 cents to .33044 cents so that is a 33% increase. I can't see how a 2kw system would ever pay for itself under these circumstances.
Go as big as you possibly can with your system because that is the only way you can make this work for you.

Sapper, I reckon you weren't standing alone on your soap-box. From the Smoky Mountains Tennessee to the foothills of the no-longer Blue Mountains of New South Wales-that's quite a span. Anyways, I like your soap-box.

Hi Again guys
Yes here in the West we can buy a 6.65 kw system of 19 panels at 350 W for $3299. installed with a 5kw inverter(we are not allowed more than a 5kw inverter on a domestic home) or the same system with a 6.5Kw battery for $7990.00.
My problem is that the battery is reportedly only good for 10 years and on my calculations it would only give me saving of about the extra cost of it so adding the battery at the moment would be of no gain and one battery of that size most likely would not be big enough.

Hopefully some smart person will make a battery that is cheaper in the very near future.