Grid-Tied Solar Energy is the inevitable future

• Author: DigitalMind
• Filed under: Solar Power and Off-Grid Living
• Date: Jul 14,2008

Simon Stapleton recently wrote a few posts on the subject of IT being green.  He questioned many people in the field about their environmental considerations while at work.  Long story short, most people are aware of it, although not doing anything about it yet.  He brought up the points of tele-working,  virtualization technologies, and using alternative energy sources.

In the past I have written a few articles about Solar Power, and about how IT people have a certain amount of leverage to make the business’s they work for “greener”.  Although Solar Power is a GREAT method of generating your own environmentally friendly power, the panels and batteries can get VERY expensive.  This article is about Grid-Tied solar energy systems and how they can help you save electricity, save the future of man-kind on this planet, and not go broke getting enough panels to power ALL your needs in one shot.

The key is to do it step by step.

What is a grid-tied solar power setup exactly ?

Basically, a grid-tied solar power setup is when your house/office/cottage/whatever gets it’s power from a combination of alternative energy setups (such as solar power or wind power) and regular grid power from your local electrical company.

All the solar setups i’ve spoken about before involve the solar panels or wind turbines charging a set of batteries, which are connected to an inverter, which in turn is connected to the house wiring.  Grid Tied systems don’t need any batteries at all, although the money you’re saving on the batteries you will need to spend to get a grid-tie inverter.

Grid Tied solar energy systems have special inverters that are connected to both your alternative energy source, and the conventional grid power source.  This means that when the sun in shining, you’re powering your stuff directly from the solar panels.  At night, or when there is no sun or you’re pulling a lot of electricity, you’re using grid power.  All this is done seamlessly by the inverter.

Why Grid-Tie systems ?

Most power companies have special programs for people that generate their own electricity.  They will buy back any surplus power that you generate.  So lets say you’re not home for a week : All the power you generate that week will feed back into the electrical grid, and will make your electrical meter spin BACKWARDS to credit you !

Also, lets say you don’t have anywhere NEAR enough panels to power your daily electrical needs even when the sun is shining brightly, you still will be generating power that will be fed back into the system to credit you for whatever power you DO generate. You can buy 1 panel at a time and just slowly add it onto your alternative energy system, until one day you’re not using ANY grid power except for maybe at night ! (At which point I would suggest getting a battery bank and planning on going off-grid all the way!)  In a perfect grid-tie setup, you would be generating more power with your solar panels and/or wind turbine during the day that what you actually use, to off-set the power from the grid that you’re using at night.  So during the day you sell your 5$ worth of extra power to the electrical company, and at night they basically sell it back to you, which means a big fat ZERO on your electrical bills when they come in.

So ?

I like the way Simon said it :

The general feel I got is that to the general IT worker, green IT is still a fad. This is a real shame. People don’t believe in it enough right now. The ones who do are the vendors, and there is a nicely painted bandwagon they’re riding to capture the attention and imagination of IT execs. If only we (as an industry) could adopt green IT as a philosophy fully and with integrity. May you could by raising awareness in your organization (by taking a look here ). It’s your duty, isn’t it?

In conclusion, you don’t need to spend $20,000 all at once to power your house on solar.  You can split it up amongst 20 years of adding $1000 panels once a year.  Every panel you add, even if it’s just one, will be helping you and will help man-kind slow the eventual destruction of the conditions we need to survive on this planet.  (Notice i’m not talking about “saving the planet” anymore?)  If everyone did this, by the time future generations are our age they will have free electricity, (almost) and the world will be a better place.  Switching the world to alternative energy sources isn’t going to happen overnight, we’ve got to start somewhere and stop leaving it to “others” !  Think of how much money it cost to originally setup the power grid we have. (The posts, the wiring, the centrals, etc)  It’s nothing compared to what we actually pay now.  It’s the same and BETTER with Solar Panels : large upfront cost, but really pays off afterwards.  WE CAN DO IT !