That's why when we see countries like Germany (not so much sun) going strong for solar Spanish people complain and try to change a corrupt government that passes laws that strongly favors utility companies. Not to say that some of this government relatives work in these utilities.
And it adds "under no circumstance a generator will be connected to the inner network of several consumers." This rule would have helped neighborhood communities.
Expressly forbidden. This law is a custom suit for electric companies.
Now, if you could somehow form a grid with people on the opposite side of the globe...
BTW I like the idea of hydrobatteries: hydroelectric power stations sometimes pump water back up into the resevoir. One could do this with local water towers; perhaps even dual-purpose existing rain tanks, per house. Maybe not large enough; haven't done the math.
> The new law also prohibits PV systems up to 100 kW from selling electricity. Instead, their owners are required to donate the extra electricity to the grid for free.
http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/articles/2015/10/spain-a...
http://cleantechnica.com/2016/01/15/solar-policy-spain-still...
During the summer, rain water, solar power, cooking over a wood fire and walking or cycling to the beach means you can actually live at entirely carbon zero. One of the kids was fascinated by the idea that his iphone had been powered up using on energy from the sun.
Kudos to OP for doing all this in a city apartment!
That's not enough. You need to also do something to offset the carbon dioxide that went into manufacturing everything and the transportation for it. Make sure you plant a few hundred trees if you want to be at carbon zero. You also need to plant trees to replace the wood you burn. And you need to offset the CO2 from process of making any food you bring in as well. Otherwise it's an unjustified feel-good exercise to claim you are living at carbon zero.
Come on. Acting as if any "carbon positive" living is immoral, is insanity.
trees have a lifecycle, and for the time the tree was a live, it was sequestering carbon from the atmosphere. firewood needn't come from a living tree. and cutting some down can leave room and nutrients for others to grow.
Good point about the food though.
Not even close. You're still eating something. Unless that came from a magic farm, fuel was used to generate/transport that food. And to complete the picture, you still have all the external resources provided by a very carbon-hungry society. That includes everything from health and education to military infrastructures ... all of which burn carbon in epic amounts. Carbon zero is an idea, not something that any one person can every accomplish.
The costs and emissions of solar-derived electricity may be lower than alternatives but they are most certainly not free.
This is somewhat justifiable for the panels since they have a 25+ year life.
Less so for the batteries, which have maybe an 8 year life with good care. We try to burn power as much as possible (e.g. running the water pump) when the sun's up, so it doesn't have to pass through the batteries.
That could be nearly carbon zero (I don't know the contributions from soil and what mass remains as ashes, etc..), except when you consider the opportunity cost.
That burned tree, presumably healthy just prior, loses the ability to sequester any more carbon. A burned tree puts carbon in the atmosphere AND removes a carbon sequesterer simultaneously. That act is removing X amount of future sequestration until the tree would have naturally died and turned to soil. At that point most of that carbon would still be in solid form and not in the atmosphere.
I'm nitpicking at this point, but I lean toward burning wood as not carbon zero for the sake of opportunity cost.
Friends have a 10kW system which in summer provides plenty of power for a sump pump for water, a big TV, espresso machine, etc. etc. In the winter they have to watch what they use, and they usually run the generator for a couple of hours a week to keep the batteries at a healthy level.
> For lighting, it's impossible to fall back on grid power because I had to cut the power cords of all lamps to make them compatible with the 12V DC grid
Why not get a cheap-ass car battery charger? He's using lead-acid batteries anyway, and a charger for these is approx. 50 €.
Or bypass the battery entirely and use a 12V 200W power supply instead of the battery voltage (to avoid overloading your PSU with powering the equipment AND simultaneously charging the battery).
You could try washing your laundry by hand. It isn't as much work as it might seem if you have never tried it. There must be something magical in the detergent because I can get clothes cleaner than I ever had with a washer back home with little work.
For example, to wash a shirt I just put the water / detergent mix in a basin and agitate the shirt with my hands for a couple minutes. Leave the shirt in the basin for 15 minutes for the detergent to do it's work. Agitate for another few minutes and then hang. First hang in the bathroom or outside for 20 for the shirt to quit dripping and then I put in front of a fan. The shirt is dry within a couple of hours.
Pants can be a bit more work depending on the material. Denim is heavy and eats up the dirt. I do the same as with the shirt but I use a tide bar to spot soap areas which get more dirt (bottoms of the pant legs) and brush those areas.
This does take longer than using a washing machine. But the clothes last longer and get cleaner. You aren't using electricity, buying an appliance and birthing a hung of metal and plastic that you may one day have to dispose of.
One weird effect that doing laundry by hand has for me is that it sort of puts me closer to my stuff. It's too easy to get something dirty, throw it in the washer and forget about it. Hand washing makes me more aware of how what I own also owns me and the energy it takes to maintain and carry this stuff around with me.
http://johnquiggin.com/2012/05/03/housework-in-utopia/
http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_and_the_magic_washing_...
But it does do a number on your hands.
POTS often had 36V on it to power the ringer on phones so you could potentially up the power transmission by running your system at 14V. Some devices which consume a fixed amount of power would use less current, other devices would just use more power at higher voltage.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plain_old_telephone_service [1] http://www.powerstream.com/Wire_Size.htm
But AWG24 cable also has a resistance of 0.08Ω/m (0.024Ω/ft). With a 10m (33ft) cable this amounts to (current has to travel both ways): R=2⋅ℓ=1.6 Ohms, at 3.5A this drops 5.6V. So, in the end you'd loose RI²=19.6W in the cable and only get 22.4W (3.5A at 6.4V) in the load...
You can draw a tiny current without triggering the "off hook" detector, but that is miniscule.
The POTS lines would have ~50V on them in normal operation so they'd be insulated for 48V. However, V=I/R, and the lines have a constant resistance so if you can raise V and lower I you can get the same total wattage for a lower line loss. This is also why distribution networks are at 11kV and up.
Modern switching converters are pretty efficient, and you can also tailor them for the device so you don't have to double convert.
there is a good reason why we use 110-240VAC to distribute power in houses.
Is 16 ohms per thousand feet really that high?
Even if you do get it tied in any new changes require recertification. I can understand the position of the ILEC. The homeowner just wants to get up and running quickly. The electric company wants to ensure the stability of the grid.
It's not necessarily. If you use solar cells in your home, CO2 emission is something like 180g per kWh. In that case you'd be better of getting you power from the grid, if you can buy power from wind farms or nuclear power plant. It's better than coal, but only marginally better than natural gas.
If you happen to live in a country where you'll need heating for large parts of the year, it also pretty hard to beat the efficiency of a large district heating plant.
Sure making your apartment energy independent doesn't have to the romanticism, but it still has the engineering problem.
Ok, if I max out my stove completely it could _theoretically_ reach around 10 kW, but only if all four burners AND the oven are turned on at the same time.
It feels like it would be a better idea to install a battery in high-effect appliances to spread out the consumption over the day, than having a guaranteed 11 kW effect available 24/7/365 just in case... (and not everybody needs a stove with four burners, or even reliable power)
The most common amperages (15, 30, 45) use the same plastic housing, so you can connect a 15A device into a 45A rated power source. The higher amp rated power poles are are 75A, 120A, 175A, and 350A. These are more commonly seen on trucks and commony used to attach things like a winch. I have a set of 175A power poles attached to my Prius to run an inverter, and I have a long set of heavy duty jumper cables that I split near one end put a 175A powerpole set inline (so I can connect my inverter (or my prius) to almost any external source.
https://powerwerx.com/anderson-powerpole-connectors-15amp-bo... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anderson_Powerpole#De_facto_st...
It takes a bit of money to get into using them (you need a set of crimpers, and the insertion/extraction tool is a lifesaver here as well). Unless you buy in a lot of bulk, you can expect $1/end you make. If you're in an a club (amateur radio/model trains/rc), someone might be able to lend you a crimp tool or make up some adapters for you. But once you start replacing ends and seeing the usefulness of it, you'll probably want to put ends on everything 12V. I've got pretty much everything 12V of mine switched over, and a handful of adapters to go from power to: alligator clips, ring terminal, bare wire, car DC socket (cigarette lighter), bananna clips, trailer connector.
What would be the most cost effective way to use solar instead for heating/shower? I was thinking about putting a 100-200 litre insulated tank either inside or outside, and heat that with solar to about 70c, to use for both heating in the winter, and showers. I don't need cooling in the summer.
Has anyone done this?
If you want to achieve X, it is ultimately best to spend your time convincing a certain number of local businesses to do X, or petitioning governments, etc.
Implementing these ideas personally is more than just collecting knowledge -- it's contributing to the desired effect.
To boot, in a conversation where you'll subsequently advocate for energy consumption, one of the easiest ways to build trust will be to speak from a position of experience -- to know what probing questions to ask about your audience's life experiences that will help them build a future story in which they're enjoying conserving energy.
You should really read into your batteries and your charge controller specifications before doing anything like this.
Other than that, this looks great!
It depends on the usagepattern. Not printing enough would dry up the ink. Printing to much could be to expensive or to slow.
But heating dust up with a laser to melt it down on paper seems to be very inefficient in terms of energyefficiency.
You could consider doing this with "19.5V" (popular with laptops), although many will work just fine from 12V, or power-over-ethernet's 48V.
