I thought about installing a system that is larger then my normal daily need. A hybrid system will supply your home until the batteries are discharged. When there is no more battery available you will need to buy some power for Noreco. My thinking is going oversized is a waste of money as the extra investment will not provide a return on most days. Cloudy days are not that common here so the excess capacity will usually sit there doing nothing.
I hope you take this SOUND advice in the best possible way - but have you thought of attaching solar panels to those ears?
Buy an EV, Cool the bedrooms during a hot sunny day with air_conditioning. I'v over sized with my solar panels, very cheap at this time. 9 am on a sunny day my 12k wh batteries are full. I tell the wife to use the electric cooker and kettle during sunny days.
Getting a modern hybrid car with a ~20 kwh battery is also in the back of my head. Especially if it has V2L (vehicle to load) capacity that might be a good plan to mitigate brownouts.
Obviously, yes, hybrid (solar + noreco) is the way to go in a situation without a generator. And even if Noreco is a lousy supplier, the noise from a generator is a dealbreaker for me. Even when getting batteries to supply your normal night time use, you're still depending on the weather and season. We have the advantage of being close to the equator here, and the average peak sun hours for Dumaguete are relatively favourable at 5.2. However that is still an average, In January you'll get 4.5 (the worst month) and in April 6.6 (the best month). As you can imagine on a day to day basis the difference in output from a solar installation can vary a fair bit more than these monthly averages. This makes me think that some oversizing (my guestimate 20% or so, but am curious about others experiences) might be the way to go, with panels and with batteries also. Beyond that I would agree that it doesn't make sense because of Noreco's policies regarding very low compensation for delivering excess electricity back to the grid.
5p per KWH and it's a long drawn-out experience with net metering involving lots of forms and engineers inspections. I gave up. Unless you have a very large roof or large plot of land to install all these panels. On a side note, you can get inverters that don't need batteries and not bother with net metering if you just need power during the day!
My wife enquired to Noreco regarding moving our meter to our gate post from it's present location which is a post with a transformer around 100m down the road. The outcome was that we would pay for it being moved and the wire and materials needed, this would be ok until they told us that after the move we are then responsible for the upkeep of the wire from the transformer post to our meter, that was the deal breaker as the reasons we wanted it moved was our present wire being routed through many trees which will eventually cause damage and also that the post with our meter has many other meters and a mass of spaghetti wiring which makes it impossible for my untrained eye to see if anyone is tapping into our line. I don't think Noreco really care about illegal tapping as in the end someone is paying for the electricity stolen.
