I can't speak for the rest of the nation...
But out my way, if the AHJ ever find out that you've gotten tricky with field engineering...
Your tax subsidies are TOAST.
Here's the problem. Trust.
The Poco has already decided that it doesn't trust contractors to engineer failure proof systems.
As for economics...
If the grid is actually down... who wants their power to be backed up ONLY during daylight hours? Around my house, power NEED (as againt use -- we'll bear up under a hot day) is at a maximum after dusk... unless it's an insanely hot day.
True back-up power has to be available right through the night. In which case, the cost per kWHr is trivial. The money is all expended by the capital budget. (the shear cost of installation)
The ding to one's wallet from diesel/ natural gas/ gasoline use is utterly trivial. It's only ever going to happen on a very occasional basis.
No.
The Poco has it right: the sole economic value of PV arrays is to displace retail demand during ordinary operations. There is no merit to messing around with even the slightest mistakes -- backfeeding the grid -- from an errant installation. The threat to their line crews is way to high vs the trivial -- and imagined -- gains from using PV to power the home during outages. They're just too rare, too brief. You'll NEVER recover the expense of the complications -- in a century of use.
It flat out doesn't pencil out.
Last edited by Tesla; 11/26/13 04:16 AM.
