Genuine question. Have seen lots of videos of people putting just one or two solar panels in their garden, on a shed or even on a van and using tech called a grid-tie inverter to plum it into the mains electric. Its started to make me wonder if we should all do this. Just a few hundred watts each from a percentage of homes around the average town or city would surely make a dent into carbon, meaning less oil and gas were burnt.
Obviously there are people who cant afford the tech or the space, but from just looking online the inverter is a couple of hundred quid, a 2-300w solar panel is 150 quid each. Cables not much. Talking to an electrician friend most homes have fuses here that can take a maximum of 30-50amps (in and out), so if your set up is small its not going to blow the electrics out.
Thoughts?
Yes and even if it didn't if you lived in a good enough area for it it would also reduce your own utility bills which is nice - but of course the biggest polluters by far are things we can't even touch through individual action, like the military, oil drilling etc.
I think its worth asking about the durability of any new installation. Indie DIY electricity generation that rusts or falls apart in bad weather isn't going to be as efficient as just signing up for Green Mountain or some other dedicated green energy producer.
One big reason why I'm not falling over myself to install giant battery packs in my garage to try and optimize my electricity consumption. The installation/maintenance just isn't going to be worth it. Especially when I live in a state (Texas, funny enough) that has some of the highest green energy productivity in the country.
But if you can find a good rig that is durable to the elements and easy to maintain... please tell me about it. I'd be curious to try it out for myself.
Depends a lot on where you live and what kind of buildings your property has. The ideal would be, place that gets a lot of sun, relatively dry, mild winters, and a house or building with a flat roof that’s easily accessible. The gains are going to be more minimal if the locale is often overcast or doesn’t get much direct sunlight. And remember, solar panels need maintenance, parts go bad in them, especially as they’re exposed to the elements. So if you can’t get to them easily it’s going to make maintenance a pain in the ass.
I feel like the real ideal would be having them installed on larger commercial and apartment buildings that have flat roofs designed for maintenance access and there’s already a superintendent team handling maintenance issues.
One of these videos was from England, famous for our sunny weather. Ahem. Guy reckoned he's knocked a chunk off his bill (in the comments). How many people can get to their rooftop solar? If its on a shed or in a garden its accessible.
The answer is a solid maybe. In a vacuum? Yes it would be helpful. But I see a world in which private power companies lobby the government to make this illegal, or put some fee or tax on it, or literally do anything possible to stop people from cheaply generating their own power. If everyone did this and cut their power usage from the power company by even 1% that would represent a significant chunk of lost revenue and they, being the capitalist assholes they are, would do literally everything in their power to stop that from happening. Punishing people for generating free sustainable power would make this completely unfeasible.
I know today they buy the extra power and resell it, so that might also be what they do...just act as a middleman to mark up the power we're generating for free to resell it to people who aren't generating it. Which is also a total bullshit move but is a best case scenario in a private power market
It irritates me that solar water heating isn't standard in the US. Your hot water should be routed through a heat exchanger on your roof prior to going through the water heater. When it's hot enough, the heater won't kick on. When it's not, the heater will kick on as normal. It would cut down on a lot of energy consumption without impacting hot water availability
