[walrus01]

In my opinion the greatest benefits for large numbers of discrete small PV installs (with battery) is in places where it's uneconomical to extend the grid.

I'll use some hard to reach parts of WA and BC and OR and ID for example. You might be able to build a nice house/cabin on a piece of rural land and find that setting the poles and running lines to bring basic 100A or 200A service to that house will cost $40,000.

For 40k you can build quite a large off grid PV system that will have a reasonable ROI on it to serve the same loads, vs. spending 40k one time on construction costs for grid and then $50 to $200 monthly electric bills recurring for a long time after that.

As far as grid tied decentralized power systems do I agree with you 100%. It is VERY COSTLY in labor and complications to do something like cover the roof of a Home Depot or similar warehouse-sized structure in grid feeding PV, as compared to doing medium-sized to massive scale ground mount PV on empty land somewhere.

[oceanplexian]

Unfortunately, banks don’t finance anything “off grid” with conventional financing. There are some banks that do, but you’re going to pay a premium compared to a standard Fannie/Freddie backed mortgage.

That’s the biggest issue with this plan, which can be fine for a certain kind of person but not 90%+ of the market of potential people who inevitably have to finance a home.

[walrus01]

It can sometimes be "good enough" to check the box for bank financing that electrical service is available at the county maintained road which is the mailbox/street address location for the property... Something with a long or difficult driveway could easily be 30-40k to extend grid service from road to house.

[seanmcdirmid]

My uncle in Newport WA, close to the Id border and pretty isolated (although the house has electrical service now) used a solar shower for a long time. But there wasn’t actually enough sun to be off grid all that much, and unless you have running water to build a water wheel, some grid access is needed. You could probably do more with solar in scrub areas, but you might need some kind of diesel generator back up for the dark winter.

[walrus01]

Yeah one of the big challenges with off grid at that latitude is that your december and january kWh cumulative production (per month) will really suck. It's not as bad as it used to be with panels available at $0.40 per STC watt rating.

If you go to the NREL pvwatts calculator and plug in a theoretical 20kW STC rated system at his latitude/longitude you'll find that the Dec. and Jan. production will not be very much at all.

Sometimes it can be more affordable to significantly over-size a system to product enough kwH per month in mid winter vs. spending $4000+ on a generator.

If you can get 360W 72-cell panels at $150 a piece in whole-pallet quantities, 4000 bucks buys a lot of panels... Not counting the mounting and cabling and junction box cost.

As a budgetary figure, can easily spend $4000 on a small Generac propane generator and wiring/transfer switch.

At other times it can totally make sense to have a small generator to run 2-3 hours a day in mid winter, feeding a charger that can add a constant 1500W into a battery system to keep up the battery string voltage.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

> For 40k you can build quite a large off grid PV system that will have a reasonable ROI on it to serve the same loads, vs. spending 40k one time on construction costs for grid and then $50 to $200 monthly electric bills recurring for a long time after that.

Why would such an off-grid system have any monthly electric bills? Are you just pre-amortizing the cost of replacement batteries?

EDIT: I'm an idiot. The bills are for the grid-tied option.

[bombcar]

They’re saying that it’s 40k once for PV or 40k once for a grid connection, but then you need to pay the grid operators monthly.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

Ah, thanks. I didn't read carefully enough.

[debo_]

You are not (necessarily) an idiot. Misreading something doesn't make you stupid!

[PaulDavisThe1st]

I said I was an idiot, not a stupid person :)

[debo_]

I knew that was coming.