Random Renewables Thread

It is, isn't it? December is the worst month for solar I think, so things are only looking up from now 😁

Don't sit on your hands though. It is not enough to just not use day rate electricity at all, all year round. Next you need to install more PV / battery so you can actually heat water / your house from PV and / or night rate as much as you can.

Looks like the neighbours panels are ice free now, cleared off quickly enough when they were getting direct sun

It'd be kinda cool to make a little PTC fan heater to sit at the bottom row of panels and blow some warm air up behind the panels. The space between the panels and the roof should form a nice chimney to carry the warm air up behind the panels

It wouldn't be particularly efficient but if you could warm the panels by a couple of degrees to get the ice off then it could be workable 🤔

I did get a heater out. Working big time to be fair :)

https://googlethatforyou.com?q=image%20of%20the%20sun%20in%20a%20clear%20blue%20sky

Was on here before with this https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2057174351/surface-power-hone-technology

LOL, not that one again 😂

They claim to get way more energy out of their panels than others because of some sort of nanotechnology, but they never go into the details. And then they use that house in Mayo as an example and it got an A1 rating but they don't really mention it has like hundreds of PV panels and thermal collectors? How's my memory? Is the owner a billionaire yet? 🤣

@graememk - "12 kw "Green" gas generator..."

Ah I didn't remember that one. Burning stuff for heating when it's cold and the sun doesn't shine. Now there's the elephant in the room 😁

Yeah that house was a good laugh, think it has 30-40 PV panels on the shed. Their big claim was that it got NZEB rating without adding any insulation

Turns out massive oversupply of energy makes things easy 😏

I think they claim to be 30% more efficient than regular thermal tubes. Let's say they're correct, is it worth it? Only seems to make sense if you're limited in roof space so you can get as much heat from the system as possible

Apart from not insulating properly wants the issue?

Nothing wrong with it at all. Like I said, it's easy to be an NZEB building when you're generating a ton of free energy.

But it does make you wonder if those nanotechnology powered thermal tubes were having much of an effect, or if the PV was doing the vast majority of the work

That's my main issue, and the way it's done like a sales pitch. They're presenting the tubes as a way to get a high BER by just generating a ton of heat locally.

An overpowered system to compensate for huge losses isn't very efficient

It's more of a way to just game the energy ratings

At the end of the day it's just a more efficient thermal panel, with a higher price tag to match

The question is, is it worth paying the extra cost when for most people you could just install more panels and achieve the same effect

3 but not using the Fluence Z.E. I should put it up for sale really. And the Red Arrow is used for only tiny miles for the 0.1% of the time both herself and myself need to use the main car. Which is doing close enough to 20k km per year, more than I've ever done despite both of us mostly WFH

Plan is to try charge the car almost exclusively from solar PV for most of the 5-6 "summer" months though.