[iSoron]

Instead of consuming the extra energy, OP could also provide it to another customer through the grid, by selling it back to the utility company. This would reduce the total amount of energy that needs to be generated from non-renewable sources. If OP increases their own consumption instead, those non-renewable kWh are still being generated and causing environmental impact somewhere.

[traverseda]

This is being mounted on an RV, which is explicitly off-grid, and would only be intermittently connected at best. In my municipality they only do power buy-back from larger generators.

Also most of it isn't going through an inverter, I'm using direct DC-DC, which is much more power efficient for what I'm doing. So that means more cost for inverters, which I'd consider paying even if at the scale I'm working at it would take years for the equipment to pay for itself, but...

You can't simply tie an inverter into the grid and sell back to the power company, as that could mean that during repairs lines they thought had no power were energized by some residential customer. You need special hardware that the power company can shut down remotely, and that's only available for larger customers.

Also I'm not sure if the price I'd be getting for that power would actually offset the monthly connection fee, making connecting to the grid and selling back extra power very likely cost more than just wasting the power, which is unfortunate.

So unfortunately grid-buyback that isn't really an option for me.

Which is why I'm looking at other options. I like the wood pellet one, in an ideal world I'd be able to do some kind of carbon capture or something, but I'm not seeing any good power-to-gas tech right now.

[yourpalkeith]

Thanks for the reply - makes perfect sense in your case.