What is required to connect solar panels to my home without connecting to the grid?

Question

My household has a base power consumption of approx. 200W-300W. I am considering if it was possible to get a reasonably sized solar panel to cover its needs when the sun is up, with a seamless transition to the grid for spikes / low light times.

As I am a complete newbie to solar energy, is a solution like the above feasible? What kind of device would I need to interface, let's say a 300W solar panel to the rest of my system? I am not interested in energy storage / delivery back to the grid, I am just after supplementing my current supply with a bit from the sun.

Answer 1

In stark contrast to some statements seen here, in parts of Europe it is a big trend even for non-electricians to put 1 or 2 photovoltaic modules to the balcony or elsewhere with an on- grid converter. Those are plug- and-play- systems which are easy to install via a connection to the 230V net.

Feed back into the grid is economically useless since the additional costs (an additional or special meter is needed to be rent from the power company, tax declaration needs to be considered, feed-in fee is only 30% of the feed- out fee ) are not worth the feed-in fee.

A typical system with two  Trina HoneyM 335 Watt modules and a Micro inverter Envertech EVT-560 incl. cables and special wall outlet, but without mounting system costs 600 Euros.

There are also special offers with older 300W modules for 500 Euros.

It is recommended to adjust one module to South-West and the other to South-East to optimize the match power consumption - power generation.

With electricity costs of 0.30 Euro per kWh and complete DIY-installation, those "balcony power plants" can have an ROI of under 10 years.

Some users who can adapt the homework to their systems to some extent (sunshine day = washing day, vacuuming day etc. ) report an ROI of only 5 years.

Warranty time is normally > 15 years, often 20 years and more.

Of course, power supply companies are not amused by this trend and are sometimes giving doubtful or wrong information about the technical possibilities or legal situation.

Although not in English, there are tons of information in some facebook groups, f.e. https://mobile.facebook.com/groups/644592795726938_rdc=1&_rdr.

EDIT: This is a question from 2014, when the equipment was not yet available (micro converters) or was still too expensive.

Answer 2

Typical grid connected installs of solar panels on homes need a couple of items to get them to work (it's not just lets slap some panels up there and wire it into the house). Solar panels are DC (direct current), your house is AC (alternating current), so a inverter is needed to create the AC current. Also that AC current needs to be synced to the same wave form that is being feed from the grid, another device (or sometimes packaged in the inverter). Then the new solar AC is then tied into your main panel, typically requiring another box. Also depending on the install, the panels might be electrically separated from each other (a good thing) requiring another device. Once connected, excess power from the panels will feed back into the grid and in some areas this will be credited back to you on your bill.

All said, this work needs to be done with a permit, typically with buy off from the power company on size of panels. Also for most DIY'ers, this is out of their scope of skill. Get some quotes from solar panel companies and electricians in your area to get an idea of what you are looking at.

Also look at the cost of the system and how much it is going to save you each month. Solar is popular here because power goes up to .30 a kWh depending on usage. But for my energy usage, I'm only sitting at .11 on average making solar unreasonable. My last bill was under $2 after energy program usage credits where applied.

Answer 3

There are plug-in solar kits available. A house ring main system either has an electrical drain on the ring main because you are using electricity or a surplus because putting electricity surge into in. Bear in mind it is AC power from an AC to DC inverter you can simply just plug it into a household socket. Run a waterproof extension lead out of a window. Preferably all your converter gear in a waterproof box and just connect it all up and switch on the switch at the socket. If you pop a circuit breaker you know you have gone wrong. If done correctly switch off all the other circuit breakers in the house so just the one you are using left and the meter should start running backward. Is that simple enough? Solar panel to a diverter is good and a car battery good for simple storage through the nighttime ad any high and lows or clouds going over. Connect that to a DCand AC inverter and connect the inverter to a household plug and plug that into an extension lead and run that to a household socket Can still get professionally done "plugin solar". Search for that exact term on a search engine.

Remember your meter measures power drain one way or power surge to run backward. If you take power from the ring main of the house that is a drain ad put power into the ring main then that is a surge. Simple enough answer?

Answer 4

What you propose is technically possible, but probably not worth it. The major is problem is that generation must always equal load. Let's say you're using 300 watts, but your panels are generating 1kW. Where is that excess power going to go? You can't just turn off the sun. You would need something like a "dump load"--basically a giant resistor to turn the excess electricity into heat. You could turn this into a water pre-heater by immersing the resistor in a waterproof coating in a tank where incoming water can be pre-heated before it reaches your actual water heater. The electronics needed to do this kind of thing are called a charge controller, commonly used in off-grid installs.

Charge controllers typically work in conjunction with batteries, so you'll need one specifically for a battery-less install, if such a thing exists, or need to modify it accordingly.

Next, you need to modify the board to switch back to grid power when the panels aren't producing enough power (nighttime, cloudy day, high load, etc). Again, since charge controllers don't typically do this, you'll be looking for a very specialized piece of hardware, or need to make it yourself, with all the attendant dangers and liability issues involved with diy high-voltage electronics.

This is all going to be very complicated and probably not worth it compared to selling electricity back to the grid with a legit, aboveboard, permitted system. If you want to avoid that, the past of least resistance is to to use batteries to get through the night, not grid power.