Share Your Home Electrification/Efficiency Improvements

The one thing this Mr. Cool mini split does is generally keep my bedroom warm down to single digits, usually without supplemental heat needed. It seems as if a breeze blowing on the outdoor unit will help it provide heat, while still, frigid air raises the temp at which it needs help. It also seems to provide more heat if I set the blower to Medium instead of Auto, before the temp drops below the twenties.

If I install one more bedroom split then the old centeral A/C is pretty much unnecessary.
Just use it to cool off the kitchen area.
Think of all the energy I would be wasting by keeping the centeral A/C off 20 to 25 days per month.

Well I switched on my 9.45kw array at 0915L this morning, everything was going great until it clouded over by 1500L, still made 49kwh.
Roof is sloped about 10 degrees to the west so by best production is in the afternoon.
I think my target of up to 70 kwh per day at the height of summer on a clear day is in reach.

That's a pretty impressive amount of energy production. Do you have any home storage? (other than your Leaf)

Got 65kwh the last 2 full days with some clouds later in the after noon both days.
I also haven't seen it make over 7kw at any given time.
Even at 8am they are barely making any power so I'm thinking add a few kw of east facing array.

coleafrado said:

That's a pretty impressive amount of energy production. Do you have any home storage? (other than your Leaf)

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I have a 24v 6kwh warehouse tug battery, with outback inverter. Then a little 17.5kw and a smaller 7kw gasoline powered generator.

What charge controller / inverter are you using? Is it maxing out at 7kw?

I'm using enphase micro inverters.
I checked it again today and only peaking at just over 7kw.

That's what I get for putting them on a roof that is not south sloped. Oh well, they provide shade to a good portion of the house, so that's saving some air conditioning.
I have a south sloped roof but I can only fit about 3 or less kw on there depending on the panel size and it's a detached building so I will at the very least have to trench it and run wire in conduit to the combiner panel.

What I think is crazy is the inspector signed off on a up to 10kw tie in going into a 125 amp sub panel.

Hit 7.3kw peak and made 69kwh on a nice cloudless day, according to my enphase account.
That's alot easier than hand written kwh numbers and opening the disconnect box and amp clamping the wire and testing voltage.
Peak production levels off from 1100 to 1530.
If I was south facing it would be more like 1000 to 1400 plus or minus 30 minutes.
I remember one of our often wrong and never in doubt members told me I didn't know what I was talking about when I said peak roof top solar panel production only lasts 4 to 5 hours in summer. That person also claimed to have solar panels I'm pretty sure they are/were full of sht.

Our system: About 11 KW of solar array, small windmill, li-ion battery storage @24VDC, grid-tie inverter, Leaf charging at either L1 or L2 (we use almost exclusively L!). Mini-split, heat pump hot water, clothes dryer is posts and rope or hanging rack in winter. Max output at this latitude between 12 and 5 PM this month. Max hourly power sold back (net, after providing all of our needs) about 9 KW, max daily about 60 KWH.

Well tomorrow is June 16th very close to the longest day of the year. With my 0 degree south sloped panels it should be my highest Kw and KWH day, I better go spray the dust off my solar panels with my gasoline powered pressure washer and cut down some trees.
At about 1800L solar power just drops like a rock, got a tree shading some panels at the end of the day. I could get another kwh or 2 if a put the saw on that tree.
Need to get absolute peak power available on the longest day of the year so I can plan the next build out.

The last 2 weeks I'm only peaking at 7.4kw.
I didn't realize how fast they get dirty. I cleaned them off twice.

Got my first power bill. It's down at least $150.
But the payment is a little over $200. So it's not going to save any money till after its payed off and that's fine with me.
After 18 months, the loan "remonetizes" which gIves people plenty of time to spend the federal tax credit return money on other sht.
That's your chance to give the solar panel finance company the federal money and keep the loan at around $200 per month (for me), or blow the federal tax credit and the loan payments goes up to around $350 per month.
So I'll probably put the state credit, fed, plus an additional $8k to $10k and see if I can get a lower interest rate and a shorter loan.

Ahhh 2 summer months in a row my Power bill was knocked down to just the surcharge.
But power is so cheap here it will never pay for it's self. The solar panel bill is about $50 more than my power bill.
But in the winter it's really going to hurt. The solar panels won't produce squat and I'll have my full January and February power bill.

September looks like it will be a good month. Hardly any A/C use, solar panel production is down around 4% compared to july for clear days, but there's been so many cloudy days I'm down 30% compared to the same time in august.
September could be a surcharge only month if the sun comes out.

Replaced my electrical panel in my workshop, added a type B GFCI

Before:


After:


More details here: http://www.japtoys.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3613&start=135#p71844

Dala thanks for sharing. As an electrician it's interesting to see different codes,equipment, wiring method. So at what voltage and amperage do u charge your leaf at?

Looks like thermal only breakers used in industrial equipment.

Steelcity said:

Dala thanks for sharing. As an electrician it's interesting to see different codes,equipment, wiring method. So at what voltage and amperage do u charge your leaf at?

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Thanks! Yeah I charge at 3.3kW, 230V*16A. I upgraded so that I got a 3-phase outlet, so that I can charge with 11kW (3*230V*16A) once I get the upgraded on-board-charger retrofit installed.

Is 230 your line to neutral or line to line voltage?

Oilpan4 said:

Is 230 your line to neutral or line to line voltage?

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It is the line to neutral, so quite powerful stuff. The European AC system is a 230V system. Cabling for 1-phase systems is L+N+PE (Line+Neutral+Protective Earth). In 3 -phase systems there is L1+L2+L3+N+PE. Even the most basic electrical install is 3-phase minimum, so you can power quite the amount of heavy machinery.