Who says RE won't pay off?

[RandomJoe]

Okay, so economically it might take somewhere in the neighborhood of 65 years for my system to actually pay for itself.

But far as I'm concerned, it's already paid for itself right now! :-)  Got up early this morning, and was just getting into a new side project, when the power went out!  Sat for a bit, but nope not coming back on.  Okay, switched the main light in the room and the computer LCD screen over to the inverter, and continued on!

Went to the power company's website to submit an outage report - now that's too cool, this is the first time I've had 'net connectivity during an outage as well!  Checked their numbers, at that time there were 1500 without power.  Now, about an hour later, that's jumped to over 6,000!  No idea what happened though, they don't say...

So I have the fridge on the inverter now too, in case the power stays out too long.  Although that was a bit humorous/annoying.  The compressor ran a minute or two then quit, when I checked the thing was pulling about 4x normal.  Huh?  After a bit of worry, I realized the defrost timer must have kicked on.  Ah well...

At any rate, here I sit with apparently a good chunk of my side of town without power.  And I have lights, radios, a computer with working 'net connection, and a fridge that will stay cold.  Now, THIS is why I got started with RE in the first place! :-D

[Bruce S]

YES SIR!!

Had a similar event just a few months ago myself. THAT is when all the neighbors say, hey how come you got power and we don't

Me, I went down fliped a switch to turn on inverter for coffee pot and CFL to continue shaving.

Asked neighbors if they'd like some coffee.

GIVES you that warm fuzzy smile doesn't it )

Keep smiling

Bruce S

[zap]

"GIVES you that warm fuzzy smile doesn't it )"

... or is it part evil grin???  : )

[Bruce S]

Ahh you caught that part too?

The evil grin is while pouring the neighbor's coffee <:}.

[TomW]

Joe;

I figure you are an American.

We used to be quite self reliant in this country until we sold paradise to the likes of Wal Mart for cheap.

You have reclaimed some of that old time self reliance. Thats something you just cannot buy.

Its a great feeling well worth the effort / expense.

Thats my story and I am sticking with it!

Tom

[GeeMac]

Fabulous.  I don't worry about my system paying for itself. My great joy is seeing smaller and smaller bills, knowing that less and less is going to the greedy

$#@!ards at the power company. Great job! Never let up.

[SparWeb]

Congratulations!

Being the only one on the block with the lights on while everyone else bumps around in the dark must be very satisfying!

:-)

[RandomJoe]

Heh.  Yeh!  It's definitely a nice feeling to be on the other side.

The last outage I suffered through (that kicked off my RE learning) was an ice storm.  Power went out overnight, and I showered and dressed (and shivered!) by lantern light.  Went outside (still dark) to go to work, and the entire block was pitch black.  Except ONE house - an electrician who had a whole house generator.  Even the light on a pole in the front yard was on!  I grumbled to myself that he was "flipping the bird" to the whole block! :p

[Spdlmt150]

After the great windstorm of 08 here in ohio, I was the only one in a quarter mile radius with lights on. Ended up with outlet strips on my back porch to let neighbors charge their cellphones, laptops (yes my wireless was still up), and whatnot. Even kept my porch lights on just because I could. That single incident for me justified the time & expense of getting this system up & running. The financial payback I have never calculated, & honestly don't care. Every device running on my power system has performed flawlessly. No burned out tv's, computers running for many years with no issues, even cellphone batteries seem to last twice as long without all the electrical gremlins coming in on the power company's line.

Payback for me is knowing that it works... That I can count on it to work.... & that if it doesn't, I can fix it & make it work.

[richhagen]

I agree with that sentiment.  We used to be a pick yourself up by the bootstraps kind of country.  Some of us still try to be, but I hear so many whining of what they expect others to do for them.  I had two people complaining to me, yelling that the government didn't provide them with turkeys for thanksgiving, after they had utilized free housing paid for by there fellow citizens for the past years.  Some people are hopeless, but you probably won't find them on this site.  Rich

[zeusmorg]

 Yep I remember my first backup system. It just consisted of a 12 v battery and some lights about, all 12v, and I also rigged a blower motor to get heat out of my furnace.

 I had neighbors wondering why I had "power" and they didn't! The heat was definitely a nice side benefit too.

[dnix71]

Just having light at night makes it worthwhile. My street had no electric for 3 1/2 weeks after hurricane Wilma. Tornadoes in the storm snapped a lot of poles and it took FPL a month to replace everything. We had electrictiy at work within days, so coming home to a dark apartment wasn't a lot of fun. It was so dark at night for weeks we could actually see the stars at night.

[Ungrounded Lightning Rod]

At the townhouse we had a goose hit a primary line in our neighborhood.  The current through the goose at 12 KV was enough to melt through the #10 wire in several places and drop it.  (I figure the goose probably dissipated over a megawatt for a couple seconds.  If it had only pulled 30A for a dissipation of 0.36 megawatts the wire wouldn't have failed.  DON'T climb the pole and touch the primaries!)

Our neighborhood had about 100 houses on a bank of 3 (paralleled on a single phase) transformers and the primary lines went down BETWEEN the transformers.  So PG&E had to unhook the whole neighborhood from the grid before bringing the power back up on the rest of the outage block, then replace several dropped primary runs before they could hook the neighborhood back up.  Took from some time midday (when the goose hit) to after 1 AM.

I had a small gas genny which I used to power up the house by backfeeding the trailer outlet - AFTER dropping the mains breaker (and putting a piece of blue tape over the area where the toggle would be in "on" mode for a reminder not to turn it on until the genny was unhooked).  Used it for the refrigerator, a little lighting, and the TV.  Had the only lit house on the block.

Of course the linemen came by to make sure I wasn't backfeeding the transformer before working on it.  I was able to show them that I knew what I was doing and they would be safe, so they let me leave it running.

(This was the time I bumped the test button on the $80-ish trailer GFCI breaker while it was being backfed and discovered that this permanently demoted it to an overcurrent breaker.  B-(  So I got to buy another one.  But it's worth it to know WHY they say not to backfeed them.)

= = = =

At the Nevada place we've had a lot of outages.  Mountain storms, once a fire on our block under a transformer.  These can take a day or more to bring back.  When we're not there the 'fridge keeps the food cold long enough.  But when we ARE there heating by the milivolt-stat propane fireplace (with the blower non-functional), reading by candle-lanterns, and having only radio for news is a pain.

So when we move there for retirement we'll need a UPS.

And by doing the UPS - which we'd need whether RE or grid-tie-only - as a RE battery bank and grid-charging/bypass inverter rather than a purpose-built UPS-only device, we reduce the capital cost of a RE system to the generation system plus the premium on the inverter/battery above a UPS-only.  That should help get us closer to financial break-even, reducing the amount of "having fun building it" and "feel good having it" components of the value equation needed.  B-)

[oztules]

Well it's now over 5months since I built this Electric Vehicle  http://www.thebackshed.com/Windmill/FORUM1/forum_posts.asp?TID=1429&PN=2

It has clocked up over 1400kms in the paddocks so far, and saved about 50 bucks per week.... so it had saved more in fuel in the 5 mnonths than a new set of 6 T105 batteries.... so the new ones have arrived and are just installed.

What this means is that using your RE to power the EV makes/saves money hand over fist. I could replace 2 sets of battery banks per year and still be in front.

So I had no problems getting the war department to allow me to get the new batteries. The old ones go into the 96v bank for the UPS house backup (2kw pure sine from the tip). It then runs the house for about 4-6 amps@96v. This runs 1 double door fridge, and 2 freezers and the satellite and tv for that amount of current. The 8 year old batteries I pulled out of the EV (which I got for nix) run 6A for a long time (110ah@96v)

It doesn't take a genius to work out that I can soon have a fairly good set of ups batteries (if I can economically buy 6 t105's every 6 months... in a year and a half the house bank will have effectively free 16 t105's in 6 month old "virtually mint condition" )... ie 225ah@96v for nix. RE can pay.

I say virtually mint, as the ECV only does about 15km / day, and charges between uses when it is back at the house. Batteries never get below 36v unloaded.

Rather buy batteries from the USA than petrol from the middle east.

...........oztules

[Jason Wilkinson]

You just turn on   ALL YOUR LIGHTS  when the grid goes down  and look around at the darkness outside

  Jason

[DamonHD]

Well, we just got a cheque for our PV grid-tie generated electricity for the year up to April which is nice, which implies probably only a century for payback with a facile analysis!  B^>

Rgds

Damon