New solar thinking

Complications, yes. Additional expense, yes. But it can be done. I wish I could draw and then I could show you how it is done, but let me try and describe it:

Picture this: You have your solar panels tying into the power lines and the power lines feeding the Electric Service Panel in your house. That is where the power company stops their jurisdiction and it is up to the homeowner to ensure that no power feeds backwards into that Service Panel, (and thus into the lines).

At that point there are commercially available switches, manual or automatic or even built into high end inverters, which will allow you to connect a generator or battery power to your in-house circuits when the grid is down. For me, I had a bank of batteries, connected to an inverter, that automatically kicked in when the grid was down and then they automatically recharged when the grid came back on. Thus, when the grid comes on during the day, it is your solar power recharging those batteries. However, if the grid comes on at night you will automatically recharge those batteries from the incoming power lines SO it may be desirable to shut off the auto-recharge at night. Up to the individual.

There is a learning curve. Much of this has to be installed by yourself or by a highly skilled and intelligent installer.

 

Living in an insulated house in PH and not having the need to cool down a CHB heat sink is a great saving in the long term, perhaps this cost me more per M2 to build, that I do not know? it is not perfect, as during the day it does absorb the ambient temperature and can hold that temp for a long time, long after the evening ambient temp has reduced, I sometimes wonder if I should have installed a small 1/2hp AC unit in a central location to the house to have it run for an hour in the evening and likely that would be enough to cool the house a few degrees for it to stay that way?

As to solar I did consider a small stand alone system with one 400watt panel and decent battery just enough to power the Fridge a few LED lights the WI-FI and a fan or two.

Back here in Scotland my 4kw system was installed 8yrs ago this was predicted to give an ROI in 7.5yrs the same system in London would give this ROI in less time, having read something quite recently about the efficiency of the panels, there it was said they perform much better in cooler temperatures way down to minus C and perhaps below? I do now wonder if a solar system in the Philippines would perform any better than its counterpart installed in UK, it is my experience that Solar needs a kick start to get it going, on a bad day with cloud cover for the duration, sometimes the system will just not start, however with just a 5min break in the cloud the system will get its kick start and remain this way even with full cloud cover, of course it does not produce that much on these days.

With the above in mind I do wonder if in the longer summer days we have in Scotland where the kick start comes early and the system can produce at high efficiency for up to 16hrs, if over the full year, it has the potential to outperform the same system in PH? where my house in PH is situated it takes a good hour and perhaps more for the Sun to get above the Coconut trees, maybe this is not all that bad as the early and late hours of the day are not so important, however perhaps the hot midday period has some negative effect?