Ted & Nancy’s Glorious Rooftop Photo voltaic Journey

Many individuals assume mounting a rooftop photo voltaic system on their house is an enormous deal. You want a photo voltaic firm, educated installers, financing, allowing, and a blessing out of your native utility firm. However generally, if the moon and stars align good, you are able to do it your self.

Ted and Nancy are my neighbors in Florida, the place “snowbirds” collect each winter to flee the chilly within the Northeast and higher Midwest. Numerous Canadians make the trek south as effectively. However there’s a corollary to that time period. There are numerous Floridians who escape to cooler climes to keep away from the blistering warmth of summer time. Let’s name them “sunbirds.” My spouse and I decamp yearly in late June to Connecticut, the place we go to household and pals and renew our acquaintance with Cape Cod, Ogunquit, and Vermont.

Ted and Nancy head north to New Jersey to spend the summer time at their lake home in a seasonal neighborhood. It sounds moderately idyllic, from what they inform me, apart from one factor. Not one of the 80 or so properties across the lake are related to {the electrical} grid. They function plenty of wooden stoves, propane cooktops, and gasoline-powered turbines, however there aren’t any air conditioned 5,000 sq. foot McMansions.

This lakeside neighborhood dates again about 100 years to a time when individuals had been searching for a spot to spend the summers away from the warmth of the cities. Initially, tents had been the shelter of selection. The Jersey shore is good, however it will possibly get crowded and costly if you wish to keep for greater than per week. Dwelling on a lake gives a way of tranquility that’s arduous to search out close to the ocean.

Within the Sixties, Ted’s mother-in-law found this summer time retreat and started renting one of many 87 campsites dotted across the lake. In 1988 the Kean household — Tom Kean was the governor of New Jersey on the time — put all 600 acres of the campground up on the market. The 87 households who had been paying annual lease for his or her campsites determined to band collectively and buy the land for $2.2 million — simply over $25,000 every.

“Everybody had their little wood cottages constructed largely from scrounged supplies for years,” Ted instructed me. “No electrical energy, no working water. Then the likelihood opened as much as put money into and enhance our plots, topic to strict city ordinances and common constructing codes. We had been deemed to be a non-conforming use by the city, a lot of what we did needed to go earlier than the Board of Adjustment for a variance.” They went earlier than the board in 1989 to get permission to rebuild a rickety shack that was positioned on a fantastic piece of land.

“The City mentioned we couldn’t rebuild and wouldn’t give us a variance. So we constructed half of the brand new cabin in a single 12 months, then constructed the opposite half the subsequent 12 months, as a result of rebuilding half solely required a constructing allow, not a variance. So we took the good distance round but it surely bought us to the identical place,” Ted instructed me, which proves you can struggle metropolis corridor in case you are affected person and decided.

Just a few years later, Ted began a marketing campaign to carry electrical energy to the neighborhood, however the house owners voted it down. Not lengthy afterward, the primary photo voltaic panels started arriving in the marketplace. Nancy’s father grew to become an early adopter 20 years in the past when he put two way-too-expensive panels on the roof of a shed. Ted and Nancy put in 4 photo voltaic panels on the roof of their lake home a number of years after that. They’ve been enhancing and upgrading their rooftop photo voltaic system ever since.

A Rooftop Photo voltaic Champion

Ted is the casual chief of an off-grid solar energy motion amongst his neighbors on the lake. “I’m neither an electrician nor {an electrical} engineer — only a well-read fanatic of solar energy functions. There are actually about twelve PV techniques on homes across the lake, a few of them fairly substantial. Right now, nobody is asking to be related to {the electrical} grid.”

Right now, Ted and Nancy have 8 photo voltaic panels on the roof of their 1200-square-foot lake home in New Jersey, the place they spend about 5 months of the 12 months. Ted put in the panels himself and constructed the battery storage and management techniques as effectively. The rated output of the 8 panels is 2400 watts. On a sunny day in late June, the system can provide 7 kWh of electrical energy. That drops to about 5 kWh because the solar will get decrease within the sky round Labor Day.

The rooftop photo voltaic system powers all of the lights, costs computer systems and different digital units, retains the web router powered, runs the tv and different gentle obligation home equipment and yard tools, and retains the ceiling followers in the home transferring. Usually, the house makes use of between 2500 and 3000 Wh of electrical energy every day. For sure, he and his household are keenly conscious of their power utilization in a method that folks related to the grid seldom are.

Photo voltaic & Power Storage

Till just lately, power storage for the rooftop photo voltaic system consisted of 6 AGM 105 amp/hour lead acid batteries mounted within the shed. Ted has stored them correctly maintained since they had been put in 5 years in the past. They’re working effective however had been getting close to the top of their helpful service lifetime of about 900 cost/discharge cycles. Changing them with new lead acid batteries would price about $1800.

Two new 280 amp/hour lithium iron phosphate batteries from EcoWorthy price $800 on Amazon, so Ted ordered and put in them this 12 months. Not solely had been they much less cash, they’re rated for 6000 cost/discharge cycles. At 150 days a 12 months common occupancy, these new batteries might final for about 40 years!

There are different vital benefits to lithium ion batteries. The previous lead acid batteries don’t perform effectively under 50% state of cost. The brand new LFP batteries can perform all the way in which right down to a zero state of cost, though doing so regularly isn’t really helpful. Consequently, extra of the photo voltaic power captured in the course of the day could be accessed after the solar units every day.

“With the brand new batteries, I’ve almost doubled my day by day energy accessibility because of the excessive depth-of-discharge tolerance of lithium batteries,” Ted instructed me. “I don’t count on to have energy issues in the course of the scorching and humid days of August when my visiting youngsters and grandchildren are working followers all evening lengthy!”

The battery improve was the right time to replace the inverter as effectively. The previous inverter equipped electrical energy at solely 120V. The property has a deep effectively with a 240V submersible pump. Till now, Ted needed to fireplace up the gas-powered generator to energy the pump to fill the water storage tank. That typically wasn’t an issue until you had been standing within the bathe when the water within the tank ran out!

Ted changed his 5-year-old 120V pure sine wave inverter (2500W regular state, 7500W surge), with a 120/240 break up section pure sine wave inverter (4000W regular state, 12000W surge) from AIMS Energy — $1370 on-line with free delivery. The entire price for the battery and inverter improve was greater than it might have been to interchange six lead acid batteries, however now there aren’t any worries about working out of water at an inconvenient time.

I do phrases; Ted thinks in numbers. He likes to calculate stuff, akin to the price per kWh of his previous and his new batteries. Listed here are the numbers he shared with me:

• Lithium batteries price $800 for the 2. Lead acid batteries price $1800 for six.
• Value per accessible kWh (DoD 60%) for the AGM batteries is $1800/380kWh=$4.74
• Value per accessible kWh (DoD 90%) for the lithium batteries is $800/504kWh=$1.59
• Value per rated cost cycle for the six AGM batteries $1800/900=$2.00.
• Value per rated cost cycle for the 2 lithium batteries is $800/6000=$0.13

In contrast to the previous lead acid batteries, the brand new lithium batteries have a Bluetooth-enabled Battery Administration System app for studying battery standing and obtainable capability. “It’s fairly neat to have the ability to examine the standing of my batteries anytime on my cellphone, even when I’m not in New Jersey,” he says. “Because the improve was accomplished in early June, the system is performing flawlessly!” It will not be attainable to place an actual value on peace of thoughts, however it’s value so much.

Ted freely admits he isn’t an electrician or engineer, however all the knowledge you’ll want to design and construct a rooftop photo voltaic system of your personal is obtainable on-line or at YouTube College. Don’t imagine it? Try this video, considered one of many obtainable on-line.

It helps that Ted and Nancy’s lake home isn’t grid-tied, which simplifies the entire course of, since there isn’t a must get approvals for the rooftop photo voltaic system from the city or the native utility firm. No costly computerized switch change is required both to isolate the system from the grid throughout energy outages. It’s wonderful the issues we are able to do after we put our minds to it!