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Solar power system on village house

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  1. #31

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    Quote Originally Posted by emx:
    @Titus - any update on how the PV system is working so far?
    So far I've generated about 1.5 megawatt hour from the system. According to the most polluting way of power generation by burning coal, I have stopped about 3000 pounds of carbon from entering the air.

    Surprisingly even on cloudy days, it pulls about 900-1100 watts from the sun. The benefit from a more numerous panel set up is that not just the peak power produced during full sunlight but even during cloudy days you get more usable amounts produced.

    1.5mwh would be about 20 recharges of a Tesla 85kwh model (there's a buffer of about 10kwh that never full discharges or charges). Considering I get 270 km in real world driving from a full charge/discharge, I could have travelled 5,400kms on that power with family and luggage lol

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    As for the power buy back, the wheels are creaking very slowly... I chased up with the installer the other day but still waiting for the inspection appointment. But hopefully within another few weeks. About the payment details, you have 2 options, to have credit going back to your CLP account. Or they will issue a check to the registered owner of the CLP account every month. I chose the cash option in case I leave HK and the buy back amount is over the actual consumed amount. With a 5kwh system I'm hoping even with full usage during the day there's some left over to fund my evening usages.
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  2. #32

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    You said you are in CLP's area? then around 40% of your electricity is coming from nuclear, which means your carbon displacement is probably a lot lower than you thought.

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  3. #33

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    Quote Originally Posted by HK_Katherine:
    You said you are in CLP's area? then around 40% of your electricity is coming from nuclear, which means your carbon displacement is probably a lot lower than you thought.
    Yea true, it will be even lower in coming years as they get onto more natural gas.

    Then there goes all my hoity toity moral superiority LOL!!!
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  4. #34

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    Quote Originally Posted by Titus:
    Yea true, it will be even lower in coming years as they get onto more natural gas.

    Then there goes all my hoity toity moral superiority LOL!!!
    It was interesting though. It's actually pretty rare to find people in Asia who care about carbon. I was at a huge electricity conference in Europe two weeks ago and there it's rare to find anyone who doesn't care about carbon. Mind you, they are pretty much destroying their system in an attempt to irradiate it, making it much less stable and increasing the cost to all the consumers. There are also bunch of really interesting technology-driven "solutions" to the problems that are being created. It will be fun to watch if the solutions become viable fast enough to prevent the outages.
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  5. #35

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    Quote Originally Posted by HK_Katherine:
    It was interesting though. It's actually pretty rare to find people in Asia who care about carbon. I was at a huge electricity conference in Europe two weeks ago and there it's rare to find anyone who doesn't care about carbon. Mind you, they are pretty much destroying their system in an attempt to irradiate it, making it much less stable and increasing the cost to all the consumers. There are also bunch of really interesting technology-driven "solutions" to the problems that are being created. It will be fun to watch if the solutions become viable fast enough to prevent the outages.
    I'm making an offer on a 30 acre vacant land back in Canada this week. Maybe PM you later this year or next for some fun ideas; there's a creek that perhaps would be fun to do a small hydro on =) The lot has power to the property line but building off grid stuff is fun

    On that note, an interesting story; I was browsing property online for backcountry Canada and saw a property agent surnamed Wong. She had an interesting listing and we end up talking on the phone about her transition from HK to Vancouver to Kelowna and then Horsefly BC over the course of 10 years. She and her husband and a 8 year old stayed on a 160 acre off-grid lot for 4 years. I was like wow how did your daughter take that transition and she said they had lots of books and solar set up. Husband was more busy tending to the 160 acres making sure the access roads are in good condition. But yea there is an alien part of the world/existence beyond what most people believe in Hong Kong =)
    Last edited by Titus; 03-07-2018 at 08:54 AM.
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  6. #36

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    btw. regardless of whether from taobao or from elon musk, i don't think any rechargeable batteries based on current technology are going to last you 10 years.. look at the mobile phones. the good ones like apple or samsung.. after 3 years the battery get bloated and charge span reduced by half or more...

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  7. #37

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    Quote Originally Posted by freeier:
    btw. regardless of whether from taobao or from elon musk, i don't think any rechargeable batteries based on current technology are going to last you 10 years.. look at the mobile phones. the good ones like apple or samsung.. after 3 years the battery get bloated and charge span reduced by half or more...
    Tesla battery packs are based on lots of small cells, which look like like an AA battery, all jammed in next to each other. They base their guarantee on the fact that they will replace any cells that fail - on the basis that by the time they need replacing the cost of batteries will have fallen so much it won't be that expensive. [as quoted by Tesla in a conference presentation].
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  8. #38

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    Quote Originally Posted by freeier:
    btw. regardless of whether from taobao or from elon musk, i don't think any rechargeable batteries based on current technology are going to last you 10 years.. look at the mobile phones. the good ones like apple or samsung.. after 3 years the battery get bloated and charge span reduced by half or more...
    Also - we have marine batteries in the boat all the time for boat reasons. We had to replace a few of them last year - so they'd been going for about 9 years at that point. Not all batteries are Lithium.
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  9. #39

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    when will ikea hk sell solar panels and installation packages? if they are considering, hopefully they will create more competitive price than CLP and HKE

    https://www.ikea.com/gb/en/ikea/solar-panels/

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  10. #40

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    Original Post Deleted
    It will depend I think on their actual performance and the falling price of batteries. They showed tests in the presentation which highlighted that cells do last 10 years on a once a day charging cycle (which is normal for solar). They were guaranteeing longer than 10 years with the replacement programme. Basically using falling costs and time value of money to justify it. Hard to say how silly the idea is - if it brings revenue forward and allows more R&D to allow better performance and lower cost, plus kickstart an industry that they are in the middle of. May be a risk worth taking.