ElectricIslander
Solar Enthusiast
Very nice diagrams that you made! I like drawing in .ppt and excel as well.
We have a rather energy frugal friend in Lynn Valley with 6 kW of roof panels. She offset her entire annual electrical consumption before she got a heat pump this year. She now still has a rather low hydro bill, even with the heat pump.
Unlike with net metering, which has a goal of offsetting annual use, we aren't so much concerned about annual generation. Our average daily household load as measured is around 4 kWhrs (fridge, lights, washing, computers etc.). This comes from a H2200 inverter generator at the moment, but we plan to rely on only solar as much as possible next year.
Since we are off-grid and have no net metering we have to design for winter low light conditions so as to have enough PV (7kW) and battery (30kWhr) to keep minimum systems alive (unavoidable loads such as fridge and inverter tare etc.) over 4 or 5 days of no real PV input during typical cloudy winters.
For that I modelled solar harvest with PVWatts vs an energy load spreadsheet that considered minimum, average and maximum loads. 7kW is the maximum amount of PV I can get on our south facing unshaded roof so that is pretty much set which determined PV sizing.
We have a rather energy frugal friend in Lynn Valley with 6 kW of roof panels. She offset her entire annual electrical consumption before she got a heat pump this year. She now still has a rather low hydro bill, even with the heat pump.
Unlike with net metering, which has a goal of offsetting annual use, we aren't so much concerned about annual generation. Our average daily household load as measured is around 4 kWhrs (fridge, lights, washing, computers etc.). This comes from a H2200 inverter generator at the moment, but we plan to rely on only solar as much as possible next year.
Since we are off-grid and have no net metering we have to design for winter low light conditions so as to have enough PV (7kW) and battery (30kWhr) to keep minimum systems alive (unavoidable loads such as fridge and inverter tare etc.) over 4 or 5 days of no real PV input during typical cloudy winters.
For that I modelled solar harvest with PVWatts vs an energy load spreadsheet that considered minimum, average and maximum loads. 7kW is the maximum amount of PV I can get on our south facing unshaded roof so that is pretty much set which determined PV sizing.