Clarence Dold - Member - The Prepared

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Reply to: Going solar with my home (maybe): a diary Posted July 25, 2020

The Solar Project pages all say the same thing: Insulate, reduce usage, then solar PV.Friends of ours had a beautifully cool house on top of a hill with no tree coverage in an area where 100° was a nice summer day, because they paid the money to insulate their house beyond recommendations.Put the $40k that you could put down on solar into better roofing. I just read about an Enphase IQ-8 that allows you to use solar as grid backup without batteries. That might not be enough to keep the A/C running, but “needs” depend on what sort of Armagedon you are expecting. During power outages, we used to run a horribly loud generator to pump up our well pressure tank, and cool the freezers and fridge, and then shut it off, only running about four hours per day. We had about a 100 foot rise on our property, and I always intended to put a 5000 gallon tank on the hill for gravity feed, but that was money I didn’t spend. With that, we could go a couple of weeks without running the well. Last year, I powered the house from a Nissan LEAF during power outages. Minimal house usage averaged 600 watts, and we shut down at night. I had enough battery for several days, and I could drive to somewhere else to recharge.

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Reply to: Going solar with my home (maybe): a diary Posted July 25, 2020

The Solar Project pages all say the same thing: Insulate, reduce usage, then solar PV.Friends of ours had a beautifully cool house on top of a hill with no tree coverage in an area where 100° was a nice summer day, because they paid the money to insulate their house beyond recommendations.Put the $40k that you could put down on solar into better roofing. I just read about an Enphase IQ-8 that allows you to use solar as grid backup without batteries. That might not be enough to keep the A/C running, but “needs” depend on what sort of Armagedon you are expecting. During power outages, we used to run a horribly loud generator to pump up our well pressure tank, and cool the freezers and fridge, and then shut it off, only running about four hours per day. We had about a 100 foot rise on our property, and I always intended to put a 5000 gallon tank on the hill for gravity feed, but that was money I didn’t spend. With that, we could go a couple of weeks without running the well. Last year, I powered the house from a Nissan LEAF during power outages. Minimal house usage averaged 600 watts, and we shut down at night. I had enough battery for several days, and I could drive to somewhere else to recharge.