Technology Ramblings

In part 1 of the Journey to Solar - I discussed getting a good understanding of what your energy needs really are and where you should make investments in efficiency to change your consumption model and potentially reduce the size of your solar solution. For Part 2 let's assume you've done your homework and made your investments to improve your efficiency and your ready to start designing your system. Where do you start ?   How do I size my system ?   Do I want Storage ?   So let's start with an example set of criteria.  You added up your total annual kWh usage is it's around 20,000 kWh.  You've also determined that your maximum kWh consumption during any one hour in the year is 10kWh and that your daily maximum total consumption is about 100kWh and your maximum monthly usage is about 3000kWh - with a range of 1500 -> 3000 during any one month.  Finally let's say for that 100kWh day - 60kWh is during daylight hrs and 40kWh is evenings/over...

I manage a group of homes/ranches as a side hustle - and recently started down the path for one of my clients of researching the aspects of adding solar power to the home. The solar market has really matured in the last 5 - 10 years.  Prices for PV Panels has dropped considerably and there are a wide range of both DIY and One-Stop shop companies to choose from. For residential energy alternatives - especially here in AZ - solar seems to be the obvious choice and with the addition of storage capabilities like Tesla's PowerWall - you can seriously start to look at the potential of minimizing your reliance on the utility grid for energy.  To me the combination of Solar Generation plus battery storage is potentially very compelling. With that said - there is a lot of due diligence and additional expenditures in preparing for solar that I learned and will discuss here While you can go to many sites and just enter a monthly bill amount and have a tool spit out a system size and pric...