What would it take for our home to be Solar Self-Sufficient?
Work in progress, but I think I have the answer.
🏠 I live in an ordinary house in suburban London.
☀️ Our solar panels generate 3,800kWh per year.
🔌 We use the same amount of electricity per year.
After crunching the numbers:
🔋 Capturing all our solar excess needs a 1 MegaWatt-hour battery.
Assuming the intention is not to simply store it all and never use it
Our graph of solar export is probably similar to yours.
But our consumption graph is the other way - high in winter (when there is little sun) and low in summer when there is plenty.
The battery helps in winter and in effect offsets some of our daytime consumption to night time cheap rate.
Going entirely off-grid, for us, would require an extremely large battery!
If your electric network was like USA, California, you could sell back the unused electric to the grid at wholesale rate in the summer, then buy your electric it from them at market rate in the winter. "Grid tie interconnect" or some other tech sounding phrase.
TOO , Caliornia method doesn't pay you. You'd get a "credit" you can spend down during future use, not a check in the mail.
I sell the excess at 12p/kWh and buy back at variable rates.
The selling goes as bill credit which I could, if so minded, refund into my bank account.
Problem in south UK is summer/winter solar yields are about 6:1 so you have to oversize your arrays for winter use but you can put the panels vertically on a south facing wall which works well in winter.
@Edent@mastodon.social what’s that in AAs?
As it happens, we're *below* average usage!
https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/information-consumers/energy-advice-households/average-gas-and-electricity-use-explained
Even if the batteries were free, where would I put them?
Given that 1MWh is currently a 40 foot container and I live in a flat.
We are a network of scientists, developers and organizations building the next generation of digital spaces for open science.
