Good Morning all!
44F in Libby and clear
You know how you fill up a cart at the store, then empty your wallet of $200 ( or more ). Well, we went to USFoods and filled up the Santa Fe about 3/4 of the way to the roof and emptied about $1200 from the wallet. We now have 0 room in the 3 freezers which was the plan. Decided we need another refer for the big bottle/box stuff as the kitchen one is usually packed. Gawd, what a PITA. Get to cut meat today/tomorra, vacuum bag meat, frozen veggies and stuff like that. Should help with the impending doom. Butter has doubled in price, Milk not quite. $6.90 for strip steak, $2.80 for Pork Tenderloin, $1.90 for Pork ribs and $9.25 for Beef Rib. Note that I do not buy cut meat when doing stuff like this, but whole rib, strip and pork. 20Lb hamburger chubs were $35; got 2. Also got a couple bags of shrimp $15.something for 16 - 20 count, and a $85 bag of scallops about 1 inch square-ish; these need split up and vacuumed. 50Lbs of flour and sugar, 15Lbs of muffin mix. They did not have elbow macaroni so we will watch for that in the local store and buy when it is under $1.00 Lb; usually get a 25Lb box which just fits in a 5 gallon bucket. Then we went to CostCo - more stuff and pretty much got food. Chicken, sausage, bagels and muffins; plus other stuff I don't remember just now. Chicken and sausage is a no brainer, cut the packages apart and toss in the freezer as they are already vacuumed. Wife did buy some sheets and I found a heck of a deal on storage bins. 4 2x8x11 with compartments and see through; $13.
Onward -> we started looking into a generator, batteries and solar panels. BOY the don't give this stuff away. So our though is to take baby steps getting the generator and associated magic widgets the power company requires to get us started. They won't let me install anything connected to the grid, has to be done by a power company certified electrician. Guess that I really don't have a problem with that. After that is done, then everything on my side of that box is mine and I can do what I please. By my head scratching calc's, we need almost 40KW to duplicate what we are currently using. That is gonna change as we have too many call home devices and all of us leave stuff on at any given time. For now, we want to be able to hold up the freezers and refers and will turn down the temp on the hot water. Actually, for summer we could do a roof water heater with PVC - more on that later.
Batteries - Tesla and Generac are the most expensive; both have a 10 year ( 4000 cycle ) warranty and cost more than all of my vehicles combined. With my quick seat of the pants number crunching, we would have a net savings of about 100.00 per month using the lessor power bill ( $220 per month ). ROI probably will never happen or really be out there beyond my sun orbits. I am gonna have to setup a spreadsheet and compare to deep cycle marine batteries to see what shakes out.
One thing I do like is now you can get small inverters. Used to be that a solar array was plugged into one honker inverter that was spendy. The little guys are made for 2 - 5 panels ( power depending ) and cheaper. That in itself lends to easier maintenance as you can take down one array and not the whole nine yards.
I have not looked at PV yet, but know that they are better and cheaper than when I looked 5ish years ago.
Anybody else going down this road?
Later
We have 29.6kwp, with the grid setting a 25kwp invertor limit, we keep cruncgtenumbers but to date none of the battery options are economical as their life time is just not enogo take the risk, we would like an. Off grid option as well, but we got the lasts of the governments fits payments which pays us to
produce power
and use power ourselves
as well as send power to the grid
fits=feed in tarif
we have a so 7th facing array, plus an east west array, technical the east west array gets less sun,but we get it earlier in the morning and later at night when we use it, the most power from the south is okay for higher numbers but all comes in at high noon time, the stretch gives us better coverage for ourselves.
we original had a 12 year payback set of figures,the first year came in better than the calculations so reduced the payback,that was 2019 origination and we are continuing to produce more than predicted, and the higher bills are making our payback faster, I think we’re down to 8 years when I last ran the figures,the Fits is for 20 years - if the government do not welch, the income is quarterly and offsets our bilings. but cone autumn winter the solar is pitiful. The wood burner stove is due to be fitted soon and we can dry wood from our trees with the solar power anhave room to store, so winter cooking and heating cabe reduced as well.
Wegavetwatch each wood we use, confers are best avoided because of the resin and potential chimney fires, the willows are not the best wood but grow fastest and dry ok, sone better wood grows slower, there will of course be ash and dust in the kitchen, but the room is the end of the bungalow, we have 2 additional open fires with chimneys for wood or coal burning if bills get silly,we just need to store the wood and keep the moisture below 20 percent or risk carbon monoxide poisoning! FYI our alarm wentfavouple ofwinters ago and the fire brigade turned up! they said we were w percent from being kicked out if the house, they were there a couple of hours all windows open despite cold and asked for all fans to be turned on to push the art.
Have considered the older japanese Nissan technology as you. Can to car and back from car, but their vehicles have very limited range so not great. Tesla could add the technology apparently it’s capable but he would undercut his own other sales and seriously p off the electricity companies so is not; likely o ‘turn it on’.
Our array had one spare panel not connected as it would have exceeded the 29.6. we were never convinced over the hot water options and stuck tio straight electricity.
The boat style batteries seem the most versatile, and as smaller if one goes bang less loss cost wise, he Tesla wall is likely to exceed the expected lifetime, but we hesitated and then the grid refused permission for us to add one, thereby forcing us to export to them at low cost and then make a profit selling it on, doh! we may let wise have fitted 3 but we’re still dithering over the cost against the potential return and if any failure on tthe equipment. If your going off grid, and we may yet do this as well, then they are go f…. Themselves.
. They also explore all sorts of new ways to use nano particles. One thing they were testing was with fuel cells and also with hydrogen electrolysis for creating fuel for hydrogen cars. Pour water in the tank and run. They were able to greatly increase the efficiency of the process though it was still inefficient. But it got efficient enough that it was worth further development. I'll have to ask him what happened to that research. This was a couple years ago he was telling me about it.
bugs, home.made is best, and sone of the food you guys show from home cooked bbq is superior.