My parents have solar panels, A/C, and a heat pump pool heater and their electric bill is practically nothing in the summer.
Comment on The Amount of Electricity Generated From Solar Is Suddenly Unbelievable
br3d@lemmy.world 1 day agoSolar and AC is a great combo. Almost by definition, when you need AC you know the sun is shining and so the energy to run the AC is therefore free
Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Korhaka@sopuli.xyz 1 day ago
This sounds like a level of rich I was previously unaware of. Pool heater?
Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world 1 day ago
It’s not uncommon in the Northeast. It lets you get more use of the pool earlier and later in the season. You can start swimming in mid May and go right through to the end of September.
Korhaka@sopuli.xyz 1 day ago
I live in the UK and have been swimming in the sea since April, main limitation I find is if it’s a warm day or not as getting out to cold wind is pretty miserable. Water temperature is just a suggestion - double digits is optional. Though yeah 8°c usually means it will be a short swim.
Currently the water is 19c in the sea where I live, never seen it this warm, so I guess thanks global warming?
Korhaka@sopuli.xyz 1 day ago
I live in the UK so no AC and tbh not really worth bothering with it. What really could excess solar energy be used for in summer? Also don’t drive so no car charging, got a heat pump for heating and hot water but heating is unused in summer and hot water isn’t used much either. Just a little for showering but even then not very much as I go for cool showers.
Skydancer@pawb.social 17 hours ago
Dehumidifier if it’s wet or you have a basement. Washing machine. Clothes dryer on a timer if you don’t hang dry. Dishwasher if you have one (uses more power than you think - they start with cold water and electrically heat it even if you have a water heater). Pump water to a cistern if you have a well (or lake if you’re on a bit of land - good for irrigation and even pumped hydro). Any tool that uses a universal motor. EV charging (including bikes).
Look around your house - anything that you only do once a day or less is fair game.
Korhaka@sopuli.xyz 16 hours ago
Sadly I think none of those options really apply to me. We don’t usually have basements here and dehumidifiers are more commonly used in winter rather than summer. Washing machine I do have but run it on a low temperature so while that would work it isn’t going to be making much difference. Clothes dry outside, don’t have a dishwasher, water is from the mains, no EV to charge.
A well could be nice for garden water rather than using the mains but I live in the middle of a town and my back garden is only around 50m², that said I just looked it up and apparently you don’t need permission if you extract less than 20m³ a day. So from a legal standpoint I could do it and there is no way you could use that much water for a residential property unless you have a large pool that you are regularly filling and emptying for some reason.
WoodScientist@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
On our forever home, I want to install solar panels and a redundant AC system, or maybe just a backup AC system in a single room. We’re in the US PNW. Here, heat waves are becoming more and more a threat to human life. Where we’re at, we can get rare heat waves that go up to 112F, and that’s in an area where historically AC wasn’t common. It’s only in the last decade or two that it’s started to be viewed as a necessity. But thankfully when we get more of a dry heat, and the highest temp days are win the Sun is shining brightly. So I would like to have a setup where our home was essentially equipped as a lethal heat wave survival shelter, where we would be fine even if the grid fails. And part of that would likely just be keeping a duplicate AC, maybe just for a single room to shelter in, in the event of a lethal heatwave.