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Comment on Rooftop solar eats up all demand in South Australia, world’s most renewable grid

So, we have a “tiny roof project” on our rooftop.

For 9 hours a day (in winter - more hours in summer) they produce four times more power than our peak consumption. When it’s cloudy… it produces about twice our peak consumption. In hindsight, we probably could have saved money with an even smaller system… but a bit of headroom is nice and it wouldn’t have saved much money, since wiring and the inverter were about the same (we installed the maximum number of panels our inverter can handle).

We also have power now even if the grid goes down during the day, which is nice we live in a hurricane area and a few times in my life the grid has been down for weeks.

It reduces our electricity bill by between $3 and $9 per day depending on the seasons. We sell between $1.50 and $3 per day to the grid.

At that rate, it will only take two years to pay off the upfront installation cost… the inverter has a 10 year warranty and the solar panels have a 30 year warranty. So I’m fairly confident it will last longer than two years.

If we couldn’t sell power to the grid, it’d still pay for itself in less than 3 years.

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vividspecter@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Adding onto this, there’s a benefit to decentralisation of the grid in general in making it less prone to grid wide problems, and cutting back on the need for transmission as you said (a big deal right now, given conservative farmers have been throwing a tantrum about it of late).

And home and vehicle batteries will help move demand to the middle of the day, meaning less supply needed at night.

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- SnipingNinja@slrpnk.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  I wonder how much effect reduced transmission is having on various things like efficiency because you’re using most of the energy where it’s being generated.
  
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  - vividspecter@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    It’s definitely more efficient to use energy close to where it’s generated although I’m not sure by how much.
    
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    DogMuffins@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    I think the answer is very complex and will depend on many factors.
    
    It kinda becomes irrelevant if you’re comparing solar to coal or something anyway. Who cares if solar is “inefficient” if you’re replacing coal
    
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Taleya@aussie.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
We have a powerpal (measures grid usage) and i gotta say, it’s absolutely orgasmic seeing that shit show zero grid power used in the middle of winter XD XD

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