We are out of Colorado and I would encourage you to keep the discussion on
wrenches because it will trickle our way in some form. Quite a few of our
small cooperatives and Xcel are moving to TOU as well. CA is a huge market
affecting everyone and driving solar technology as well as utility policy.
I will post a synopsis of the situation a little later today.
William Miller
Miller Solar.com
805-438-5600
www.millersolar.com
On Tue, Jan 14, 2025 at 4:30 AM Mac Lewis via RE-wrenches <
re-wrenches@lists.re-wrenches.org> wrote:
> We are out of Colorado and I would encourage you to keep the di
Sure count me in ! I like to learn as much as possible of how not to be
like California. Most everyone who has left there tells me this also.
Northern Nevada is 11.7 cents per KWH and is looking at new transmission
lines to be independent of the folks to the west.
Avoiding the NEM3.0 is prett
This list focuses primarily on solar and ESS technology and what is
happening in California is going to drive that technology to do far more
than its current, primary purpose of emergency backup. I live in Montana
and it's only a matter of time before our utility adopts some form of
time-of-use an
Hello Ron, I've got 9 systems that fall under this category. Beginning with
the Outback Energycell 200 RE installed back in 2015 to the newest Outback
rebranded Northstar Blue batteries. No C/5 charge limitation solved some
array expansion issues too. For a while the price per watt hour metric was
Good day Wrenches,
2025 looks to be the year for installing more grid tied (GT) battery back
up hybrid inverters on new and existing GT PV systems in a whole house
backup scenario
i.e. Utility - Hybrid Inverter - House Loads
With these newer GT hybrids so 'sensitive', any fault on the PV side can
Jim:
I am familiar with this case having worked with you on it. The client is
an off-grid public school and reliability is very important to avoid
disruption of curriculum. Various factors (tree cover on the site, maximum
needs occurring during winter, proximity to the ocean creating frequent
This is an obscure PG&E NEM 3 related question for the California Wrenchers,
since no one out side CA - PG&E land might be able to answer this.
I have a client with a 25 year old grid-tied system. When PG&E went to smart
meters they declined (worried about EMF) and have been able to hold on to
David:
I suspect it will be sooner rather than later the client will have to
accept the NEM3 rates and a Smart meter. NEM3 is a time of use rate
(metered down to the hour for export) and you can't do that with a
mechanical meter.
I imagine the concern is about RF data transmission. They may
The official name is no longer NEM3.0. That's the unofficial term.
It is no longer "Net Energy Metering", and is officially "Solar Billing
Tariff" (SBT).
The problem isn't TOU so much as no longer compensating at retail rates for
exports. As related above, the compensation is supposed to be at s
Hi Stuart,
The Kohler RDT switch is a much better switch for what you are doing; it is
a power seeking switch with no accessory device communication needed. It
is more expensive than the RXT switch because it has its own brain board.
A Kohler tech can adjust the delays for you if needed but the d
Asco and kohler both are good, and have used them on AC coupled systems
with great success. Ya l know AC coupled is not the ideal but in
retrofitting it's very common unless you also can replace the inverter with
something like Solark.
On Tue, Jan 14, 2025, 11:10 AM Stuart Kriendler via RE-wrench
Stuart:
I understand the concern and appreciate the consideration to provide more
reliability. The approach you suggested sounds like a band-aid, not a
cure.
I do not know if this complete shutdown is required by the listing (a
feature) or is just a bug. Does anyone have information on this
Hi Stuart,
Got it, now I see you're working with the MidNite AIO. This ATS topic came
up not too long ago and I posted that we used to have success with Briggs &
Stratton ATS units back when we were installing SMA Sunny Island systems.
The Briggs unit does not need a control from an external sourc
William - I believe the chart you included is EXPORT rate only. So customer
will not PAY > $3/kWh from 6-8 pm in Sep but whatever the TOU rate is as I
think NEM3 customers are forced onto TOU - I think somewhere from
$0.55-$0.60/kWh. (If they can dump their battery into the grid from 6-8 every
Thanks Jerry, very good to know.
So the Kohler RXT ATS would automatically switch from Primary to Back up as
soon as power is lost of primary?
The documentation suggests that it 'must be connected to a generator set
equipped with the Kohlerr RDC2 or DC2 generator/transfer switch controller'
which
Much appreciated August,
Yes, that fancy Enphase System Controller is a nice piece of kit, overseen
a few of those and it is nice they pass through the grid power if there is
an issue, most of the time.
;-)
I'm in love with the MN AIO, the build quality is impressive and great
value for money, wit
I would also add that the Generac ATS is not made for this application,
it is made to work with their generators only. It connects to the
generator control board for its voltage sensing, etc. It can be "hot
wired" to work with solar, but I had to add a small battery ( for 12 v
power) and a sm
Hi Stuart -
Many grid tied PV/ESS manufacturers (Enphase, SolarEdge, Franklin, Tesla to
name a few) now have a Microgrid Interconnect Device (MID) that essentially
acts as a smart transfer switch thus eliminating the need for a 3rd party
automatic transfer switch. What brands equipment are you loo
I’ve been doing this for a few years now, but not on every install. They’re
pretty expensive, more labor, one more component to fail, and takes up
significant wall space/aesthetic factor.
GENERAC transfer switch requires you to rig a separate 12v power
supply, (normally this 12vdc comes from th
We tend to do this on every install in the Bahamas, except that we install
a manual transfer switch instead of an automatic one.
It's a bit of a (minor) pain for the customer, but a very reasonably priced
add on as "emergency" backup. We haven't had any trouble selling the logic
of it to the client
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