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Author Topic: Real-Time Power Consumption  (Read 2245 times)

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Offline NHSparky

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Real-Time Power Consumption
« on: April 01, 2012, 10:04:40 AM »
Granted, it's only California, and it's only those utilities covered by the ISO (Munis are exempt) but it gives you a pretty good idea how clueless the hippies really are:

http://www.caiso.com/Pages/TodaysOutlook.aspx
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Offline Wineslob

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Re: Real-Time Power Consumption
« Reply #1 on: April 02, 2012, 01:59:53 PM »
Not sure how to make heads or tails of those charts.   :???:



Kinda on the same topic, we now have a "sustainability" person. He thinks we can put a solar array on the roof (100K sf building) and power the facility...............................480V 3 phase............really?    :rofl:
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Offline NHSparky

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Re: Real-Time Power Consumption
« Reply #2 on: April 02, 2012, 02:21:56 PM »
Quote from: Wineslob on April 02, 2012, 01:59:53 PM
Not sure how to make heads or tails of those charts.   :???:



Kinda on the same topic, we now have a "sustainability" person. He thinks we can put a solar array on the roof (100K sf building) and power the facility...............................480V 3 phase............really?    :rofl:

Uh, yeah, no.  It'll help, and if he can get tax breaks, might even break even on the project eventually.
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Offline Wineslob

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Re: Real-Time Power Consumption
« Reply #3 on: April 02, 2012, 04:14:04 PM »
Quote from: NHSparky on April 02, 2012, 02:21:56 PM
Uh, yeah, no.  It'll help, and if he can get tax breaks, might even break even on the project eventually.

I never get an answer as to how you get 3 phase, or at least enough amperage, to actually power a facility.

I never get an answer to: "What exactly will a home solar array run?" The whole house? Or just lights?..... :???:
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“The national budget must be balanced. The public debt must be reduced; the arrogance of the authorities must be moderated and controlled. Payments to foreign governments must be reduced, if the nation doesn't want to go bankrupt. People must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance.”

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"Practice random violence and senseless acts of brutality"

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Offline obumazombie

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Re: Real-Time Power Consumption
« Reply #4 on: April 02, 2012, 06:20:31 PM »
Quote from: Wineslob on April 02, 2012, 04:14:04 PM
I never get an answer as to how you get 3 phase, or at least enough amperage, to actually power a facility.

I never get an answer to: "What exactly will a home solar array run?" The whole house? Or just lights?..... :???:
They place the solar array where the sun don't shine.
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Offline NHSparky

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Re: Real-Time Power Consumption
« Reply #5 on: April 03, 2012, 09:08:14 AM »
Quote from: Wineslob on April 02, 2012, 04:14:04 PM
I never get an answer as to how you get 3 phase, or at least enough amperage, to actually power a facility.

I never get an answer to: "What exactly will a home solar array run?" The whole house? Or just lights?..... :???:

http://www.nmsea.org/Education/Homeowners/Buying_Solar_Systems.pdf

Typically you'll get about 8-10 watts per square foot, peak.  Figure a 1000-watt peak will give you about 4.5-5 kWh USEABLE power per day.

So if your buddy is going to try to cover 100K sq. ft. (impractical) he could reasonably achieve 800 KW peak, giving him about 3200 KwH per day.  But a building that large is going to use a lot more than that.  Also consider that the cost for your typical 200 sq. ft. house system (giving us about 1800 watts peak) goes for about $25-30K, meaning that you friend wanting to cover 100K square feet would cost on the order of $2 MILLION, just for the PV stuff.
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Offline Wineslob

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Re: Real-Time Power Consumption
« Reply #6 on: April 04, 2012, 09:37:35 AM »
As I thought. Just like the post I made about a Jr. College going "solar", it required the taxpayers to dish out over 12 million dollars. No tax break = no solar.

More junk science.
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        -- Marcus Tullius Cicero, 55 BC (106-43 BC)

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"Practice random violence and senseless acts of brutality"

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Offline NHSparky

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Re: Real-Time Power Consumption
« Reply #7 on: April 04, 2012, 01:15:36 PM »
Not necessarily--solar and wind most definitely have their places in the grand scheme of things, but at least for the time being, their best/most effective use is in remote location applications where tying into the grid simply isn't feasible.

But if you were to live on a mountaintop 20 miles from the nearest power line, I guess that feasibility ain't that big a deal.  You would, however, probably still have to have some sort of storage application (battery) and inverter setup to go between the two.

What I would probably do if I had some sort of solar/wind setup if using them in parallel is set up a larger wind turbine so that it would minimize chances of reverse powering the wind turbine and "motoring" it, which would be bad.  Set up a simple sort of switching panel to allow paralleling/splitting as necessary so either source could supply your battery/inverter.
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Offline Wineslob

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Re: Real-Time Power Consumption
« Reply #8 on: April 04, 2012, 02:03:20 PM »
I think my main question is still: I see homes (not many) with solar panels. Do they power, during the daytime, the whole house, or are there only certain systems, lights, AC, dryer, washing machine(s) etc... that they do, within a practical size (the roof area)?  I'm also talking about the TV ads I see where they "sell back during peak" or is this smoke and mirrors or are they assuming that no one is home at that time so the "excess" power is sold back?
 They are also so expensive (?/maybe?) (your link is several years old, hard to use against Chi-com pricing) that they now offer to do essentially a 30 yr loan for the system and "take you off the grid and pay less than your old electric bill per month". From the ads this says to me that the home is independent from the power grid, 100%.
I want to know about a "normal" home (10-40+ yrs old) , not a new one. They seem to like using that (new) as an example.


Call me very, very sceptical.
 
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“The national budget must be balanced. The public debt must be reduced; the arrogance of the authorities must be moderated and controlled. Payments to foreign governments must be reduced, if the nation doesn't want to go bankrupt. People must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance.”

        -- Marcus Tullius Cicero, 55 BC (106-43 BC)

The unobtainable is unknown at Zombo.com



"Practice random violence and senseless acts of brutality"

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Offline obumazombie

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Re: Real-Time Power Consumption
« Reply #9 on: April 12, 2012, 03:12:40 PM »
Some solar roof panels are nothing more than solar water heaters.
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Offline NHSparky

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Re: Real-Time Power Consumption
« Reply #10 on: April 13, 2012, 09:24:25 AM »
Even in summertime, assuming you covered your entire southern roof with photovoltaics, I rather doubt you'd be able to handle the starting surge of a large appliance like a central A/C unit.  If you have an electrical stove, there's no starting surge since the heating element is resistive, but a 2 1/2 ton AC unit will have a normal running power consumption of about 3500 watts.  Assuming you had a 30 X 15 array, you'd be getting about 4500 watts.  No problem, right?  Not so fast.  That AC unit has a starting surge from 5-8 times normal running current, for a momentary power consumption of upwards of 20,000 watts.  Whoops.

And again, remember, most photovoltaics only calculate USEABLE power for about 5 hours per day.

So smaller loads would be okay, but you're still going to need the grid power to kick in when you start or run large loads like your dryer, well pumps, furnace, water heaters (especially "on demand" water heaters), or air conditioners (even window units suck up well in excess of 12 KW/hr.)
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