Grid-tied solar

[sdkubota]

Burning wood is extremely harmful to the atmosphere and release numerous carcinogen contaminates..

 

[dave1949]

Burning wood is extremely harmful to the atmosphere and release numerous carcinogen contaminates..

Yes it does. I burn less than a cord of wood per year. Aside from the tractor and chainsaw fuel used to harvest it, it has the virtue of being carbon-neutral.

You, on the other hand, need your own coal mine. Don't get mad at me, look into your usage.

 

[sdkubota]

Geez. No BS here, I'm too old to start lying to strangers or anyone else. But I do remember suggesting to you that you investigate your extremely high usage. Several others too, tried to tell you it doesn't seem right. The average electricity usage by Maine households is ~600 kWh per month.

My usage has now been measured with three different utility meters, our old analog, the smart meter that replace that, and now the in and out meters that replaced the smart meter. They all agree with each other, so it is what it is. If my inverter was over-reporting it's output, that would show up in my electric meters as unaccounted for consumption.

Just my wife and I live here. We don't have air conditioning, our heat comes from sunshine and a masonry wood stove, no blowers, pumps or burners to power. Our lights are almost all compact fluorescents, they were purposely located to be most effective, ie, we are only lighting the area we use, not making the whole room bright. We have a dual-fuel range, propane burners and electric oven. Electric dryer and, now an elec. water heater which added about 100 kWh per month to our usage. We are on a well with an electric pump. I use a power tool now and then, but I don't often run things like my welder or a large air compressor.

Other than those things, what should I use power for?

Today is good solar day, I have an hour of decent daylight left and have already generated 22 kWhs. What can I tell you?

So your water heater runs 15 hrs/month then or 1/2 hr per day. Do you bath with a wash cloth and wash your clothes in the river?

 

[madmax12]

Yes it does. I burn less than a cord of wood per year. Aside from the tractor and chainsaw fuel used to harvest it, it has the virtue of being carbon-neutral.

I have a fairly new stove. My understanding is that it burns much of what used to go up the chimney. Some stoves even have catalytic converters. Are you sure the new wood stoves are bad pollutants? I thought it was different now.

 

[sdkubota]

I have a fairly new stove. My understanding is that it burns much of what used to go up the chimney. Some stoves even have catalytic converters. Are you sure the new wood stoves are bad pollutants? I thought it was different now.

You're killing Mother nature...

 

[EE_Bota]

So your water heater runs 15 hrs/month then or 1/2 hr per day. Do you bath with a wash cloth and wash your clothes in the river?

Let's determine his element size based on your assumption:

If he says it is 100kWh per month, and you say that is 15 hr per month, then 100kWh/15h (cancels the hour unit out)= 6.66 kw element (6666 watt element.) Most heaters I have ever seen have something closer to a 1500W element(s) or less, and they run one at a time. Based on that, then

100kWh / 1.5kW (cancels the kW unit out)= 66.67 hours of element run time, or a little over 2 hours a day in a month.

I'm not really trying to be a smarty pants. I am trying to show you some of the stuff you may need to use to figure out why your electricity usage is quite high. I hope I have not made any errors...I'm tired and my eyes are dry.

 

[madmax12]

You're killing Mother nature...

Mother nature isn't real. So, I can't kill her.

 

[RobertN]

Dudley Doubter,
Bring something more to the conversation...

Data on your household maybe? There are some cheap power meters out there that will get you in the ballpark.

You're killing Mother nature...

 

[dave1949]

So your water heater runs 15 hrs/month then or 1/2 hr per day. Do you bath with a wash cloth and wash your clothes in the river?

Actually, the 50 gal. water heater, which is very well insulated by a foam jacket encased in some sort of vinyl skin, has a max power usage of 3800 watts, which means it could run at it's max rating for 52.6 minutes per day, assuming 100 kWh per 30 day month. I don't believe it runs at its max wattage rating. It might come close for a short time when it first turns on an element at the start of a heating cycle, but I don't have the meters to find out.

100 kWh / 30 days = 3.33 kWh/day average usage.
3.33 kWh / 3.8 kWh = 0.876 hours X 60 min/hr = 52.56 minutes

If the element operates at 75% of its max rated power (.75 X 3.8 = 2.85) most of the time:
3.33 kWh / 2.85 kWh = 1.168 hours X 60 min/hr = 70.1 minutes

Somewhere between 52 and 70 minutes of operation time per day is enough for a couple of showers and hand washing. Our dishwasher heats has its own water heater and has only a cold supply line.

 

[Redneck in training]

Thanks for the report. I just finished and put on line 7.5 kW array yesterday afternoon and need to finish wiring of second 8.25 kW array tomorrow and put it on line. So far I don't have production data due to issues with the Envoy monitoring system apparently due to distance from the arrays.