Greece now has so much solar that they're starting to offer cheaper electricity between 11:00 and 16:00
Due to the high efficiency and large number of photovoltaic systems in Greece, it is becoming more and more common for these alternative energy sources to have to be temporarily taken off the network during the day in order to keep the electricity supply stable and to avoid power failures.
Greece has a further 16 gigawatts of renewable capacity currently under construction.
“The rapid growth of solar power led to a record-breaking year for clean energy generation in 2023, and the year is expected to mark the start of a long-term decline in fossil fuels”
A report on the global power system has found that the world may be on the brink of driving down #FossilFuel generation, even as overall demand for #electricity continues to rise. #SolarPower was the main supplier of electricity growth, according to Ember, adding more than twice as much new electricity generation as coal in 2023.
My electricity bill for last month: Import costs ~£50, export credits ~£90. Overall credit for April: £40 (including standing charges and running an electric car).
This is thanks to Solar PV, a House Battery and a flexible tariff from #Octopus (Intelligent Go) - all orchestrated with #HomeAssistant
Capital cost was high but well worth it 👍 #solar#solarpower#battery#solarpv#lowcarbon
I'm sure I'm not the only person in the world who has solar panels on their roofs who has wasted quite some time in the mornings watching the magic of the power coming on.
This smugness is matched by looking back at a bell curve graph of production for the day where you've used up almost everything that the panels have produced and yet drawn almost nothing from the grid.
Now that the longer days are here, solar production at the house has gone up a lot, compared to winter, even with one panel down, due to a broken microinverter. I’m glad Enphase and our local solar installer are providing good service and warranty repair. Thanks, Highpoint Solar. #Enphase#solar#solarpower#homesolar
Hidden Lotus Herbs is getting ready to move to our new #farm site and really ramp up our operations!
For some backstory,
I was the recipient of a fund from @coop to start a worker-owned #cooperative and decided to make it an herbal apothecary!
We've been operational for around six months and are now starting our regenerative agroecological farm and increasing the capacity of our free clinic.
However, the #renewableenergy systems we're building are more expensive than we budgeted for, and we could use some help getting the farm and clinic going financially.
We're really needing help from our community to make all this cool stuff happen!
If you can spare some $, please consider supporting our transition and future. If you can't, please share far and wide!
As of March 2024, the Golmud Solar Park in China is the world's largest solar farm, with 2.8 gigawatts of installed capacity. The park has more than 7.2 million solar panels that use photovoltaic (PV) technology to generate electricity.
#SolarPower is Earth's most abundant #Energy source. The Earth receives 174 petawatts (PW) of incoming solar radiation (insolation) at the upper atmosphere.
On April 25, 1954, Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey, publicly demonstrated the first practical silicon solar cell. The cell was invented by Daryl Chapin, Calvin Fuller, and Gerald Pearson.
"...solar roof tiles are solar panels that look like roof tiles.... Much like solar panels, they comprise semi-conducting materials that generate an electric charge and send it to an inverter and eventually a home and/or solar battery.
Unlike bolted-on roof panels, they take the place of the tiling on the roof and become part of the structure of the home."
「 California, which gets over a quarter of its electricity from solar, is generating more power than it knows what to do with. On sunny days, there's now so much solar energy being supplied that electricity prices can dip into the negative, The Washington Post reports — a preview of the economic and infrastructural problems that renewables will have to navigate 」
That's our biggest solar day so far. It's interesting, being as this is our first year, to see when the sun hits it early morning and late afternoon. Will there be more of a drop off later in the day as the leaves fill in? #SolarPower
A little more progress on our #SolarPower project..
Got a third battery now, but waiting for some bigger jumpers to come in the mail, I think we’ll be running full tilt by monday or so.
Got 200w coming in, need to test some yet but I think it’s a good match for the power coming in.
The mock-up on the shelving looks good, should be a clean looking setup.
How much did the solar eclipse whack our solar power generation over in California, three time zones away from totality? A significant amount, it turns out. Monday was the eclipse, Tuesday was a regular sunny day. #Eclipse#SolarPower
Solar panels + net metering is now starting to pay off. Our household’s March electricity bill was almost 6000 pesos ($105), but since net metering was enabled late last month, our April bill is now almost 2000 pesos ($35). Hopefully this will even be further reduced when we have a full month’s worth of net metering.
Yesterday I let my bot manage the inverter charging and discharging for the entire day. It did quite well! Our entire electricity demand was met for less than zero cost with solar and automated load shifting on the Octopus Agile tariff. #solar#renewables#solarpower
My solar panel system is ready for testing. Two "6V 3W" panels connected in parallel. This weird backplane is connecting them using the ancient Chinese technique of hot glue. Using that screw I should be able to mount them to something.
Initial measurements show that this gizmo is making 180mA at 6V (~1.1W) with light clouds.
I'm waiting for a USB current meter, and soon I should be able to continue my "powering Raspberry Pi Pico" blog series.