Best Posts in Thread: NGCP

LOL is this like "son when I went to school it was uphill both ways" seriously glad I was not here then..

 

Hello, great to meet you. Although you must be a nice guy, you are for some reason stalking my posts for and giving them troll ratings. Not that I care but now I have good reason to put you on my “ignore” list in an honest effort to avoid more stupid controversies. Have a great evening [emoji106]


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you doubted a member when he said he is virologist and say he might be office worker. in the laptop computer industry where you a cleaner?

 

Most likely constructed that way to provide structural strength.

 

I would be very careful with opting for a solution like that. I am not an expert in any way shape or form, but I wonder how those tiny batteries would be connected to each other, and what happens if a few of them fail or are faulty to begin with.

 

In many countries the "delivery charge" is charged as a flat amount for each connection, (modest for residential, higher for commercial, and even more for industrial) not as a variable amount tied to the amount of kwh that the customer uses. And then the kwh rate will be the generation rate, and utilities can do proper net metering for self generating customers, meaning that you pay only the net kwh that you use on top of the flat amount). Here there's no fixed amount per connection, so if your house sits empty you pay nothing, while the utility is still supposed to maintain their delivery system for you also.
And no, with Noreco it's not only a "delivery charge" that you pay on top of the kwh generation cost, you also pay a bunch of subsidies (e.g. for senior citizens) in the total kwh price.

 

Right, being attached to the grid without battery storage subjects you to the same brownout reliability problems as the grid. And there is a worker safety problem unless you have a transfer switch (generator owners are familiar with them) that disconnects your home power source from the grid during brownouts. Assuming you have that, you can have power during brownouts while the sun is shining but need battery storage for night and cloudy weather. The batteries can be charged by both the sun and grid power when available.

I agree that it is too costly now. Those Polaris panels may indeed last 25 years as they say and 50 of them plus inverters is probably cost about 500K. The batteries are another 500k.

1 million php seems like a lot but some of these expat houses are running 10-15 mil or more. Hey, if you retire here as a new resident with a fat 401k and of course are married to a citizen (to buy house and lot), I can see how people might go for if they know about the brownout problem and you do get some payback in power bills.

My problem is that even if the solar panels are good for 25 years and the inverters are simply a reasonable cost maintenance issue, the batteries are not going to last 25 years. I would guess that after an initial capacity of 100%, after year one there is a drastic decline down to 80%, then 60% and they are gone after 7-10 years.

If the battery tech improves in lifetime charge cycles and cost drop like the solar panels did, then there could be a mass movement to solar, not to save money, not because fuel is scarce but mainly because people want reliable power. You can do that now with generators and many do that but those are a pain to keep fueled and maintain. And noisy and unsafe when not handled properly. And we all have that free fuel source on our rooftops. If it weren’t for that battery problem...well, maybe in 15 years or so it will be a completely different picture.


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I was at Polaris today and I saw that they are selling, under Polaris’ brand name, 335 watt solar panels for 7k each. They advertise how the Palwa hotel in Duma has 100 of them installed for what they rate as a 25Kw power source (about double what a comfortable expat house would need). That hotel just connects to the grid selling unused power back to NORECO II and getting free power while the sun is shining.

What I am thinking is, the power infrastructure here is beset with problems, not due to a shortage of energy but a continuously failing distribution system. The Polaris product does not try to sell you a generation system meant to replace the utility but to save money. Maybe they have a financial case, maybe not.

I will say that this is a place where the infrastructure may never be reliable like the countries you mention. It may turn out that people here will eventually bypass the whole infrastructure with self-power generation, probably using solar.

Of course this idea is very old, going back to the 1970’s Arab oil embargoes. But today things are changing; solar panels are now reasonably efficient and reliable (Polaris has a 25 year warranty...though we depend on them existing that long). Inverter tech is more efficient and low cost. And today we have li-ion batteries whose costs are way down now due to electric cars. Polaris does not sell the batteries, just the panels and inverters.

Li-ion batteries are smaller than the old lead acid but still need lot’s of room in a separate structure for storage. That is probably what holds us back from being completely self-generating. The Polaris display still shows us relying on the grid, which by the way surprised me; are we sure that NOTECO II will allow everyone to connect to their utility and agree to buy back our power? At what price?

I understand that Tesla motors has a much better battery tech now. A different tech than li-ion. Elon Musk is a transformative figure and he releases his technology very quickly.

I have to wonder if the newer modern, cheaper solar tech will be the ultimate answer to power distribution problems here, simply bypassing that old grid in the same way that cellular technology bypassed the landline phones, allowing society to move in progress. My gut feeling is that the power grid will never get up to U.K., US, S. Korea, China and Taiwan reliability. Too expensive now because it has been ignored for so long. The people as a whole may simply turn to self-generation and bid the utility good-bye.


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sigh .... 2 12 hour brownouts in 30 days or so is a bit excessive... been here 4+ years and this is the first time this has happened to me.....

 

Very carefully.