Tweet
Nothing wrong with setting energy efficiency standards, is there?
Products save energy, save money, everybody's happy. No?
Products save energy, save money, everybody's happy. No?
-
-
It does not take the government to do that. Nor can the government make any manufacture do it. What it takes is the demand of the consumer who is wiling to pay for it. If you build a better mouse trap, the world will beat a path to your door. That is how a free market works, has always worked, and will always work. No government has ever been able to change that or ever will. Governments tries, but always fails.MSEE, PEComment
-
My post has evolved into something else ....Comment
-
The government absolutely can make manufacturers do that, and has, many times.
The US and state governments set efficiency standards for thousands of products.
See http://www.appliance-standards.org for a pretty good view of these standards and their effects.
People sometimes complain that energy efficiency standards increase the price of products, but that certainly hasn't been the case with e.g. refrigerators; see http://www.appliance-standards.org/s...ces_Report.pdf
IMHO companies just need a little nudge to make their products more efficient. The prospect of losing access to the California, US, or European markets gets management's attention, and they have their engineers fix the problem in short order.Comment
-
for 9 years now i have,
been using timers to pump water during the day when i am not home,
i run some dc equipment, pump, lights, clock,
run some equipment during the day, washing machine, pump, workshop equipment,
use suitable light fittings, some leds.
you will find that anyone who understands off grid/battery power systems will have been doing all those things for a very long time.Comment
-
Juju, can you give an example of how many kWh a "typical" home would use for that list you gave? For example, what is your electric kWh usage a month (or however you get your bill)? I understand your big requirement is not to go off-grid, but to provide electrical stability to deal with the frequent grid outages. As such, I believe a practical solution is to create a critical loads list, and determine what equipment must run when the grid is out, and what can turn off when the critical items are running off the battery. So simply changing the lifestyle to only running the washing machine when the grid is up, and reading a book via LED light instead of watching the big screen TV, or using your laptop instead of PC when the grid is down.
I have several customers in the Caribbean who are running mini split AC units on an off-grid solar system. Thermosyphon solar water heaters are cost effective way to replace your electric water heater in temperate climates such as yours. Replacing a 15 year old inefficient fridge with a new efficient one pays for itself almost immediately when going solar. As you said, a combination of equipment and lifestyle changes can be implemented to accomplish your hybrid solution.
Since your big requirement is battery backup, you are not able to compare your system with most of the USA or European systems, as they usually are simply grid-tied that turns off when the grid goes down, which doesn't help you at all.Solar Queen
altE StoreComment
-
Yeah, seems like there are three categories:
1. LED lighting and other very efficient and low-power things that have to run at night
2. HVAC and other very energy-heavy things that don't have to run at night
3. Things you eventually want to run at night, but use too much power for your current solar system
Go through all your loads, measure them (perhaps with a kill-a-watt meter)
and assign them to one of those three categories, and price out a solar
system that can power #1 and #2, and a battery backup system to power #1.
If the HVAC draws too much power to run from the sun at all,
consider getting a single 30 SEER minisplit and putting just that
in category 2. Then even if you're out of diesel, you'll at least
have some AC.
Do you have a particular house in mind to try this out on already?Comment
-
Last I checked, a Kill-a-watt meter only works on 120V 60Hz. Nigeria is 230V 50Hz. Efergy makes a European version. http://efergy.com/Solar Queen
altE StoreComment
Comment