dose any one know any information on this? like making a mini soler /wind farm. im aware of some regulations that state a residential lot can only produce a capped amount. so you would have to own a larger chunk of property and zone it off in to small lots.
could this not be feasible as half the cost of a soler/wind system is the battery's but that would not be needed as you would be selling the power and not needing to store it.
I'm dealing with something similar, one of my clients is looking at putting solar panels on the roof's of all their buildings and selling the power back to the grid.
The payback period on these systems makes installing them unattractive really. The systems we're looking at putting in have a payback period of about 23 yrs. And that's taking into account the increased rates being offered by the government of ontario as part of the feed in tariff program.
The problem is that you have to go big or go home, the equipment cost doesn't stop at just throwing a few solar panels or a windmill on your roof. To "sell back" you first have to cancel out you own usage, the average household with a furnace, fridge and not much else will use more than an experimental setup will produce.
But you can save some money offsetting your usage. Be aware of some of the things most people don't think about though. First off, you need an automatic electrical isolation setup, which will automatically disconnect your main electrical service in the event of a power failure. This is to keep you from backfeeding the grid; if the power company has to work on a downed line, you don't want to be feeding power to a line that has been disconnected from the upstream side. This equipment has to be installed, inspected and approved and all components have to be CSA approved (ie no cheap Chinese eBay crap). This is a must; they can cut off your power and fine you if you are found in violation of code. So you have to account for the equipment and inspection fees that will wipe out most of the savings that can be made for the next 8 years.
Then you have to have the equipment to match the phase/frequency of your incoming line so you don't change line power factor.
And then lastly is the generation equipment.
And all this doesn't take into account maintenance and wear and tear; since the breakeven point right now is sitting at 20 years for a decent system, you have to hope that the equipment you buy will last that long trouble free.
do yous have any good links to more info
Jmountney1,Nov 27 2009, 06:35 PM Wrote:do yous have any good links to more info
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Not sure where you live but search for other groupls like this one.
http://www.agenergy.coop
Also, some residences started up a group locally to help get systems onto properties and help with zoning, electrical permits etc.
wasn't there a dairy farmer in Ontario somewhere that was trying to sell methane produced electricity back to the government. If I remember, he had everything set up out of his own pocket and was just waiting for the connection to be made Hydro, which were screwing around with him about the whole thing. It was all on some documentary on CBC I saw last year.