Article: The Audio Impact of Solar Panels and Battery Backup: Introduction, Installation & Initial Listen

[jcbenten]

Cool writeup.  

Different topic but would be interested in what made the decision to go with Tesla.

Luckily I live in Williamson county (surrounded by Austin/Cedar Park) and will not have to deal with city utilities when we decide to go the solar route.

[jcbenten]

4 hours ago, Jud said:

"... The house is very tight: During spring winds that can reach 60 mph out of a clear sky, if you weren’t looking outside you wouldn’t notice...

 

 

 

I assume it is dry there...At least one house in my neighborhood was 0-valued due to mold and another two doors down had the same issue but caught in time.  The closer neighbor mentioned they had to open the house up a bit to breathe.

 

Sorry for the off  topic...

 

chris

[jcbenten]

10 hours ago, cjf said:

Hello @austinpopand great article.

 

I was curious of a few details on the 12kW system you described. Was this figure based on your daily usage and if so did you use your Pre Solar utility bill averaged out over several months or more to come up with this size system for your house?

 

I'm also curious to know what the expected run time is of the system powering the home after grid power goes out?

 

I suspect that at some point in the near future I may be considering a full solar setup without grid to power a house I plan to build located deep in the Colorado wilderness. There is grid power available to my 20acre parcel there but based on a recent estimate from the power company it will cost about $20K to pull a line about 700ft onto the property. This is a tough pill to swallow when Solar power potential in that area is very high also. My concerns with a full solar only setup though have always been a big question mark due to this crazy audio hobby of ours. One fear being how big of a system it would take to maintain the usage of my current system without compromises and if that dollar figure would far exceed the cost to just have grid power pulled onto my land.

 

Anyway, thanks for the write up of your journey, it was interesting to read.

 

About 5-6 years ago, prior to the Powerwall/battery storage units came out,  I met with a couple of the solar providers during an open house of my electric co-op.  Since I am on propane for heat, I only really use electric for the AC and appliances (dryer is electric), they targeted 100% for winter/cooler month and 50-60% of the summer months.  Their reasoning is not to over generate because the utility buys back at wholesale costs (~$0.03) vs the my cost (~$0.11) and the goal was to minimize capital costs.  

 

Now I think the economics have changed due to the rise of the battery storage and the cost of going down like we did during the storm last winter (notifications for cost increases have gone out to the consumer) and due to utilities shutting down coal/gas plants to use solar and wind. I would target 100% generation and a week of storage.  If I could talk my wife into it, I would do solar and a couple of wind hydrofoils and battery packs.  Oh, and a hybrid F150 with 7KW powerpack.