68 replies to this topic

[IanC]

Planes have got a long way to go. To get to carrying 300+ people https://youtu.be/7N-mmQF1JEE

[Uncle Chop Chop]

I was speaking to somebody who decided to tow a boat with an EV. The rated range was around 500KM, but it was dead after 160 with the boat on the back. The rated range is always measured at a constant speed, whilst unloaded. Which is not what I do on a daily basis.

[IanC]

1.958 billion tons of crude steel was made world wide last year. I couldn't find a figure for Green steel production. But I did hear somewhere that Whyalla make the same amount of steel per day as the rest of the world makes Green steel per year.

[yel327]

You are thinking now. Green steel is coming, its just not here yet. Same with Hydrogen power production, it will come but not yet.

[Shiney005]

 By then we'll have so much daytime renewables it won't be funny, the power will be free. It just has to be stored somewhere.           

I reckon what needs to happen is large scale investment (via tax incentives) at large workplaces in EV charging made free for workers, or at least very cheap to be a no brainer. This way the excess renewable grid energy can be stored in EV's. They are big mobile batteries. So all those worker cars left parked at work during the day become an energy sponge.

I know I'm just being stubborn, but the only reason I haven't got solar panels on my house and sheds is because the WA government won't allow me to disconnect from the grid.  I don't see why I should be providing the infrastructure to feed "free" power to the government, just so they can sell it to someone else. I believe this has been their plan all along. In the early days of household solar, the government provided an incentive to get everybody on board. (payment for power put into the grid) Then the payments stopped, but the "save the planet" indoctrination started. People kept on installing panels, and the problem of daytime storage became an issue. Then, as Byron points out, the government pushes for everybody to own a mobile battey, so they don't have to build huge ones themselves and become responsible for recycling it in the future.

The whole thing stinks to me.

[yel327]

You don’t really want to disconnect, means bigger batteries and more solar plus requires a backup alternator. If you can the better way to do it is stay grid connected and use smaller battery, then use off peak periods to buy cheap energy to top up the batteries.

[Rockoz]

Ive got a theory on the whole solar push from its inception.

The government worked out that they needed to have much more base load power available as the population increased.

In NSW AGL started some planning and bought a couple of properties in anticipation of supplying the needed base load power.

A friend of mine owned one of those properties near Campbelltown NSW.

The criteria was accessibility to HV distribution lines as well as a gas supply.

My friends property met the criteria.

AGL bought it and put in the DAs to get it approved.

 

In the interim the government decided that rooftop solar could fulfil the needs at a cheaper cost overall.

So with incentives hundreds of thousands of home owners became small scale power generators.

They were paid way under market prices for the power they exported as well.

With the uptake of solar, the need for the extra baseload power was covered.

 

Lots of people didnt realise that they wouldnt be using a great amount of the power they were generating.

And that they would be charged for any power they drew from the grid.

They thought that what they generated would offset what they used.

Another friend of mine went solar on his house and was scratching his head over how much he was still being charged.

He thought his 15kW system would mean no more bills.

But with nobody home during the day, he got credit for what he exported, but was getting charged for his imports when everyone was home in the evening.

His family had all the new mod cons so were pretty high energy users when at home.

I fixed part of his problem with adding a timer, reprogramming another, and giving him better advice on a few other things nobody told him about.

He still has a small bill some quarters, but it worked out it would take him more than 5 years to recoup his costs.

 

There was lots of untruths told to boost the uptake of rooftop solar.

There were also lots of things that werent told to the public.

Then the greens got on the bandwagon and made it worse.

 

With the sale of the generators and wires to private entities, they have all colluded to ensure that they make maximum profits to their shareholders and pay big bonuses to their executives.

 

Im going solar shortly. My quarterly bills have started exceeding $800. And I have gas hot water.

As most of my power usage is during the day, I can see a reduction in my bills.

My pool increased my bill by a bit over $100 a quarter, but in 2 years, my bills have gone from around $500 a quarter to more than $800 a quarter.

But that is primarily the NEM at work I reckon.

Even though renewables are supposedly cheaper, and a becoming a larger percentage of distributed power, the bills continue to rise.

Someone is pulling the wool over everyones eyes.

I looked at installing a battery as well and going off grid. But that was another $15k or so at the time.

 

So we are well and truly screwed currently with electricity.

And if we continue with the push for more EVs, the current infrastructure wont be able to cope.

The energy companies will need to increase the number of transformers in each street, and will likely have to upgrade the wires as well.

Who will pay for that? The consumer will pay for it with even further price rises for their energy.

The private companies wont want to reduce their profits.

 

I wanted 3 phase for my shed.

It used to be that it would cost a few hundred to get the wires from across the road to the point of attachment on the house.

I was estimated that the cost would be 15k for about 15 metres of overhead cable that I could buy for a few hundred.

 

As we push more and more for this fantasy future, we are going to be priced out of a decent lifestyle.

This country is going really stupid in this regard.

 

Cheers

 

Rob

[Bigfella237]

That whole business of FiTs (Feed in Tariffs) angers me, it varies from one supplier to another but mostly it's something like one-fifth of what they charge you for power they supply.

 

Assuming they only want to buy back from the householder at the same rate as they purchase from the generation companies, that just shows you how much profit they're making on every KW/H they sell you!

 

I'm looking at solar right now as well (should really have done it years ago), our quarterly bills have been $900-$1000 lately (electric everything including off-peak EWH). I set about tracking down where all that power is going and our biggest single consumer is the damn turd tumbler... er, sorry, "bio cycle", that we are forced to have nowadays by the damn greenies. Bloody glorified septic tank costs us over $300 a quarter in electricity alone! (And you can add $200 a quarter for the guy to come around and drop a pellet in it every few months.)

 

We have a reasonable draw overnight as well with a heap of computers/servers/NAS/CCTV equipment etc. running 24/7 so solar panels alone is just not gonna cut it for us. There's no way I'm willing to pay 30c a KW/H (or whatever it is) to power everything overnight but only get 5c a KW/H for what I feed back in during the day, I'd need to generate over five times more energy than I use just to break even!!

 

So I'm definitely going with batteries, no matter what the upfront costs. I'm looking to eliminate power bills altogether, which means putting roughly four grand a year towards repaying the cost of the installation, so it ain't gonna take long until we're in profit, even with the additional cost of batteries and even if they only last 10-12 years.

 

I may not be allowed to disconnect from the grid altogether but I can make it pretty-much redundant. I'd be absolutely ropeable if I spent a bundle on solar and still got electricity bills.

 

Plus, I'm really looking at protection from brownouts/blackouts, which seem to be getting more common by the day around here. I'll also be installing the blackout protection relay thingy (can't remember it's proper name) that isolates us from the grid if their supply goes down. Buggered if I want their grid draining my batteries during a nighttime blackout.

 

On a side note, I've decided on an Enphase micro-inverter system, more costly initially but so much more efficient and you can monitor each panel individually and even replace one panel at a time without having to match strings of panels and all that crap, Plus they're apparently much safer as you don't have huge currents flowing around thick cables on a tin roof!

 

I'm in the same boat with 3 phase too. They want a squillion bucks to run it here so I'm looking at a 3 phase solar inverter (if such a thing exists) and/or a big arse diesel 3 phase generator in my new shed as well.

 

[yel327]

I have Enphase 3phase and 3phase feed off the grid. If I install batteries I need 3 of them, one per phase. 3 x Tesla Powerwalls will cost about $40k-$45k, simply not worth it. You are limited in battery choice if running an AC coupled solar setup like Enphase.

 

Your Enphase system will all be single phase but you just balance them across the 3 phases, but you need a 3 phase grid connection for it to be installed that way.

 

I have looked at 3phase diesel alternators, they aren't cheap. You want a water cooled one, 1500rpm and in a silenced box. A decent one of those will be $10k+. But no point if your grid connection is single phase, you want it all to work the same whether it be grid or generator fed. 

[axistr]

When we built our new house (2012) we put in a 3 phase inverter 5.5kw system. Also added a 24 evacuated tube solar hot water system. Hot water generally equates to 40% of electricity bills so the experts tell me. Both systems north facing. Our house is 550sqm so it does suck a few kw on hot & cold days. My bills were averaging $300-400 per quarter after solar feed in credits. I estimated we covered my initial costs of both systems in 6-7 years. When we recouped this cost I decided to fit a 3 phase15kw system to the shed (east/west facing panels). The decision was made easy when we were all getting 0.01% for our money in the banks.

 

The 3 phase 15kw system cost me $14,000 If I didn't have any solar systems at all then I estimate my quarter electricity bill would be around $1,000.00 - 1,100.00. The combination of north, east and west solar panels gives me a long duration and high yield of electricity supply. We try and use the washing machine, dishwasher and my welding/machining in the shed between 9am-4pm. On a good summer day I can generate 150kw. On a shit cloudy rain winter day I still get 35-60kw. My daily average buy in is 11kw per day. After paying the almost $1.00 charge for the electricity going past your property ect, over the past three years I was getting just over $1,000.00 credit per quarter and banking the money from AGL. We were on a 18c feed in, unfortunately the last two quarters AGL has dropped that to 5c per kw feed in. In a 3 1/2 year period I was saving 4k and earning 4k total saving $8,000.00 per year. If you do the sums I was getting $8,000.00 interest per year on my $20,000.00 investment. Try getting that interest at one of the banks. I suppose I just fluked it with good timing. However my outlay has paid itself off and now I'm still saving over $1,000.00 per quarter with the 5c feed in.

 

Next decision, there is talk of governments planning on charging small scale electricity solar generators to feed in there excess electricity to pay for local battery storage systems. When they do I'm thinking of buying a good cheap second hand EV, Tesla of similar. I looked on car sales yesterday and there was over 800 Tesla's listed for sale on car sales alone, so it's only a matter of time before these things start going for less than a two year out Kia. We can use the car, charge it from home using our excess electricity and draw from the connected car during the evening and times of low generation and also have power backup during blackouts. If I get a 75kw Tesla car then It will be much cheaper than buying seven batteries to have the same battery storage. And the Mrs can drive the EV to shops for nothing except rego and insurance per year. Might even charge the Neighbours EV as well for $10 saving him $30 and I can put ten buck worth of fuel in the Torana to drive it around the block once a week.

 

Hmm let's see what happens.

[yel327]

I recently bought some myenergi gear for my house, a solar diverter and the associated gear to make it work on 3 phases. Going to use it initially on the HWS but when we get an EV will get the charger for that too. I have about 13kW of solar on my shed. Normally import about 15-20kWh per day and export between 10-55kWh, at 7.5c

[hanra]

Our house has 4 GREE solar hybrid air cons. Obviously we use the air con a lot up here. They have 1kw of panels each. Pretty clever idea. Plus we have a 6.6kw solar system for the pool and the usual day to day stuff. And a solarhart HWS.

[RallyRed]

Back when solar was firs topical, we had a little 1.5kw solar, when we could get 66c/kwh FIT.  Paid for itself in about 4 years.

Never had a bill during that time, was in credit due to the 66c rolling in.

 

As the FIT dropped off, we ditched that system and got a 6.75kw system.  Theoretical bills are around $820 p/q., but in reality drop to a typical $80 p/q.

 

Happy with that. Not the perfect outcome, but pretty good. 

Edited by RallyRed, 22 April 2023 - 08:29 PM.

[Rockoz]

When I first looked at solar, the Enphase stuff got me very interested.

But when I bought this place and talked to the local solar guy, he convinced me to not go with the extra expense.

He isnt tied up with any provider of gear or supply companies.

He is still going around 3 years later getting rid of Enphase gear.

Most of it being paid to do it by the Enphase suppliers because the faults make it not fit for use.

 

I will look at a battery setup once I get the system installed.

I was involved with solar powered equipment around 30 years ago.

Auctions of ex Telstra gear were great for panels and batteries back then.

Even with 10 year plus warranties on BP solar panels, and an expected life of 20 years, Telstra were replacing them at roughly 3 to 4 year intervals.

They had failures early, and it was cheaper for them to replace them early rather than go and do breakdown work.

So they were auctioning off stuff that if you bought a group of them you had trouble free stuff with about 90% of the gear.

 

Cheers

 

Rob

[yel327]

I looked at all the options and the only viable one was Enphase. Once you get reasonable amount of kW you don't want it all on one phase and most dc coupled setups are single phase inverters. You can get three phase inverters but they are not generally economical and the DC current is quite high for something like a 15kW system although some of the better ones allow for multiple strings of inverters. You can of course run 3 x single phase inverters but again not cheap. For someone like me that doesn't like cheap Chinese junk it's a $8000 exercise in inverters. I ended up with LG 365W panels and the higher power Enphase micro inverters. The other complication was my meters are at the front of the block in a metering enclosure, and I have 3phase feeds to both the house and the shed from there. Solar is on the shed, so it is hard to measure import and export. The Enphase system allowed me to do it using the Ethernet network across the block.

[Shiney005]

. If I get a 75kw Tesla car then It will be much cheaper than buying seven batteries to have the same battery storage. And the Mrs can drive the EV to shops for nothing except rego and insurance per year. Might even charge the Neighbours EV as well for $10 saving him $30 and I can put ten buck worth of fuel in the Torana to drive it around the block once a week.

 

Hmm let's see what happens.

This sounds like the best idea I've heard. Is it really as easy as leaving the car plugged into the charger or will there need to be another "box" to wire up and plug into?  

[yel327]

The system you want is active in the UK but not here yet. Once it is you’ll be able to do exactly that Laurie.

Not a new idea though, a few of the old NSW 38 class locos ended up parked on rail sidings and used as boiler for industry.

Couldn’t find the image of a 38 but here is a pair in the USA

 D38955C9-3C96-4438-860C-47B0335614F2.jpeg   86.54K   1 downloads

Edited by yel327, 23 April 2023 - 10:38 AM.

[Rockoz]

Because of the cost of the upgrade to 3 phase Im stuck with single phase.

Im doing roughly 10kW on the roof of my shed at the rear of the property.

I liked the idea of Enphase when I first started looking into it.

It appealed to my tech head.

The local installer was using Enphase for a bit, as he thought it was a good idea too.

He did a few large jobs for commercial customers.

He had replaced them all within 12 months due to reliability issues.

He has a good reputation locally, and only uses what he considers to be quality gear to minimise any warranty issues.

He certainly isnt the cheapest around, but having talked to him and a few of his customers and suppliers, I will go with his recommendation.

I could probably do the job myself and save some money even after paying for the courses, but couldnt be bothered doing it.

 

Cheers

 

Rob

[skap]

I know I'm just being stubborn, but the only reason I haven't got solar panels on my house and sheds is because the WA government won't allow me to disconnect from the grid. I don't see why I should be providing the infrastructure to feed "free" power to the government, just so they can sell it to someone else. I believe this has been their plan all along. In the early days of household solar, the government provided an incentive to get everybody on board. (payment for power put into the grid) Then the payments stopped, but the "save the planet" indoctrination started. People kept on installing panels, and the problem of daytime storage became an issue. Then, as Byron points out, the government pushes for everybody to own a mobile battey, so they don't have to build huge ones themselves and become responsible for recycling it in the future.
The whole thing stinks to me.

How will they not allow you to disconnect from the grid? Stop paying ya power bill, you will be disconnected! 😂

[Uncle Chop Chop]

Another friend of mine went solar on his house and was scratching his head over how much he was still being charged.

He thought his 15kW system would mean no more bills.

But with nobody home during the day, he got credit for what he exported, but was getting charged for his imports when everyone was home in the evening.

His family had all the new mod cons so were pretty high energy users when at home.

I fixed part of his problem with adding a timer, reprogramming another, and giving him better advice on a few other things nobody told him about.

He still has a small bill some quarters, but it worked out it would take him more than 5 years to recoup his costs.

 

Cheers

 

Rob

 

I am currently renting, so I won't be going solar for a while yet. What I wouls like is a bit more detail on your fixes.

[RallyRed]

Real world. Tonight. Country NSW.
Walked past this Tesla, charging station said 12minutes ( assume that was how long it had been connected).
We went into pub, had a few beers and dinner, came out and it was still there, this time with owner sitting in it waiting for it to finish. Sounds like fun.

Attached Files

•  Screenshot_20230423_205835_Gallery.jpg   159.09K   2 downloads

Edited by RallyRed, 23 April 2023 - 09:02 PM.

[Shiney005]

When they plug in at the 1 station available here in Jurien, a Kubota genset as big as the car fires up behind the servo.

[Bigfella237]

Just out of curiosity... do you have to pay for these public recharging stations (like a fuel bowser)?

Edited by Bigfella237, 24 April 2023 - 09:48 AM.

[Shiney005]

This one is privately owned by the bloke who owns the servo. 50 bucks per recharge. The next closest one is 250 kays away.

[Bigfella237]

Wow, so not all that much cheaper than a tank of LPG (and a tank of LPG will probably get you a lot further).

 

Apart from "saving the planet", where's the advantage of an EV there?

 

Do they even get 250kms on a charge? How do you carry a jerry can of electricity?

 

Which brings up another interesting question... How do roadside breakdown guys get you going again if you run out of juice in the middle of nowhere? I haven't seen any of them towing Kubota generators around behind them!