My First Solar Customer to Ditch the Grid

September 29th, 2016

Disclosure: I sell solar power systems in New Zealand.

I just sold my first off grid system to a customer with grid power available at his house. He’s going pretty small (2 kW array, 4x 230AH 12V AGM batteries, 4kW/48V pure sine wave inverter), but he said he’s fed up with dealing with electricity retailers here. His loads are a high efficiency fridge, two laptops, Internet/wi-fi router, LED lights, water kettle, water pressure pump. House hot water will be via on-demand/tankless gas system. He’s going to wait to eventually add an evacuated tube direct solar water heater, and then use the gas heater to boost the temp when necessary. 2kW petrol generator backup.

In a decade or so, when his AGM batteries are on their way out, future iterations of Aquion’s 48v stacks (usable depth of discharge: 100%!) will probably/finally be cheap here and he’ll be able to drop those right into his rig without any modifications.

Anyway, I tried to talk this guy down. I really did.

I offered much cheaper grid tie alternatives that wouldn’t restrict his load size or duration of use, etc.

Not interested.

Are you paying attention, NZ electricity retailers? Your high prices and hostility toward solar power just lost you 100% of this family’s money forever.

Have a nice day.

4 Responses to “My First Solar Customer to Ditch the Grid”

  1. bloodnok says:

    I live in Wellington now and use around 16kWh/day. I’m considering a small capacity of solar not as a middle-finger to the power companies (although that’s a good reason), but as some sort of backup if/when we get a big quake.

  2. djc says:

    bloodnok – if a big quake hits then your solar set-up could or would be a casualty too. If you want juice in that situation why not buy a generator to use ?

  3. bloodnok says:

    djc: yeah, good point. I need to threat-model this properly. A quake large enough to interrupt power would have already taken out water/sewerage, so the priority would be getting the family out of the city (if possible, our current roads out are vulnerable to quake-induced slips). Our house seems to perform fairly well in quakes – things shake but where we are doesn’t get the same magnitude of motion that the CBD (on reclaimed land) does. We didn’t even have anything knocked over in the quake that knocked a decent amount of glass off buildings in the CBD (http://www.geonet.org.nz/quakes/region/newzealand/2013p543824).

  4. Kevin says:

    From a cost perspective, solar is a poor choice for backup.

    Enphase has done a lot of market research on this and the TLDR summary is: Buy a $400 generator, and I’d agree.

    https://enphase.com/en-us/blog/understanding-your-emergency-power-options

    That said, I’d suggest switching over all emergency lighting, headlamps, flashlights (aka torches in NZ) to models that use 18650 lithium batteries. Get an inexpensive 18650 charger with 12v input and a cheap solar panel and your emergency lighting issues are sorted forever.

    A few months ago, I bought a Fenix HL55 and it’s probably the last headlamp I’ll ever buy.

    http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00N7QLTMC/ref=nosim/cryptogoncom-20

    Ridiculously long run times, waterproof, metal body, pleasant neutral color temperature. Insane output modes if necessary.

    18650s can be charged and left on the shelf with very little self discharge. There’s a lot of Nervous Nellieism out there around 18650s. See Jehu Garcia for 18650 truth:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAcgld6gtyo

    Keep a couple of 9kg bottled of LPG and a BBQ with a stove sidecar attached or some other campstove and you’ll literally be, “Cooking with gas.”

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