The Greening of Gavin

Power Thoughts

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Long time between posts, however still have a good time with visiting relatives.  Anyway, I had a bit of a suprise in the post this week.

During the winter quarter, my electricity usage was zero!  Partly because Mr Power metre reading man couldn’t be buggered reading my metre the quarter before, therefore a massive estimate was calculated by my power company, however, we did make quite a bit of our own electricity via our Solar PV system.

Here is an edited copy of the bill details.

But here is the rub.  Even though I used no electricity, I was still charged for 25% Green power (which somehow miraculously appeared after an absence of two bills).  Also, as you can see I was charged for the normal Service to Property charge of 56c per day and therefore will always have to pay something even if I use no electricity.  So, I rang my energy retailer to seek an explanation.
It was a half sensible explanation, whereby even though I pumped as much electricity into the grid as I used, the power I used at night was supplied from the grid and 25% of that was from renewable wind. I understood their logic, and I didn’t dispute it.  I have to get my evening electricity from somewhere when the sun sets.
During the same phone conversation, I once again converted back to 100% renewable wind for the power I draw from the grid at night, and paid for carbon offsets for my natural gas usage for the next year.  By doing this the energy retailer increases the kWh tariff rate from our normal 19.74c per kWh to 25.24c per kWh, so that if my electricity usage is zero as it was last bill I will not be charged an extra “green” tariff.
I was then transferred to a Solar Specialist, who was very informative, so I could enquired about the Premium Solar PV feed-in tariff that should start early November.  It has been passed as law and once all set up, I will receive 60c per kWh for each one I feed into the grid.  However, I have to get my PV installer to send an Electrical Work Request to the energy retailer to get a bi-directional meter installed at a cost of $350.  This is something my installer should have arranged back in 2007!
Anyway, sometime this week I will arrange the meter swap over (ensuring to take a final reading myself) and sign the feed-in tariff contract with my energy retailer in readiness for the new tariff to commence.  I have had confirmation that the energy retailer will not remove any accumulated credits at the end of the 12 month period, so that is an added bonus.  The legislation in Victoria does not stipulate that the credit must be carried over, but upon digging a little deeper with during the phone call, the main reason they are not going to remove the credits is because I could actually sue them for doing so! 
So it pays to find out as much info as you can before getting Solar PV grid tied installed, and ensure that your installer does everything they are supposed to do.  As as many questions as you can during the installation, because otherwise you will have to do the hard yards like I have and do all the research and running around yourself.
Even when you have your own power station on your roof, there is no such thing as a free lunch!

Solar Power Pitfall

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I had a phone call from my friendly Powercor Australia representative today. It was a very interesting call.

Unbeknownst to me, I was informed that I have to fork out A$299.20 for the privilege of putting clean renewable energy into the neighbourhood grid. This ridiculous amount is apparently for some bureaucratic project paperwork and some stickers (I couldn’t quite hear the lame explanation as I was at school picking up Ben during the call), that has accompanied an application by my Solar PV installer. This has all occurred over seven months after the installation of my PV system! I am quite pissed off.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I would be happy to pay something if they were actually going to do something for me. The fact that I have now been feeding power into the grid for over seven months, without receiving one single cent from any power company, wholesaler or retailer, and now they want money from me. What a joke!

On top of this travesty of errors, I now have to pay for a bi-directional power meter, which will be installed by my energy retailer, Origin Energy. I don’t mind paying for this, because I am receiving a good or a service in return. This meter will come in handy, when some wise official in government decides to implement a renewable energy feed-in tariff (note intended sarcasm), so in the longer term it should pay for itself.

So, the action I have taken so far, is to call back the representative, left a message that I require a full breakdown of this so called “Project Fee”, and then I will work out what the next steps are from there. From what I can tell the Powercor website, I am not even supposed to have my system turned on (see step 12 at the link). Just imagine if they had invested over A$21,000 on a solar PV system and they couldn’t turn it on because of a $299.20 project fee. I think they would be just as upset.

Too bad I have already generated over 3 Megawatts of clean, green, renewable power already, that might, just might, help save us all from catastrophic climate change! Think about it Powercor, instead of worrying about small fry like me trying to do the right thing by the world, start worrying about the massive GHG’s caused by the brown coal fired generators pumping power into your transmission lines! Put that in your power grid and smoke it.


The Solar Revolution – Hot Water

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Just after we finished planting in the vegetable garden (May 2007), Kim and I decided to install a Solar Hot water system to lower our natural gas usage. This was because we had learned that heating water made up 16% of the Greenhouse Gas Emissions of the average Australian home. We knew that because of our weekly monitoring that our daily average gas usage was 55 MegaJoules (Mj). This was the non-winter average (we have gas heating), and it still seamed quite high to me. My existing hot water system (HWS) was a 6 star rated AquaMax 340 litre natural gas system, which I purchased about 18 months before hand. At the time it was more efficient than the previous HWS which used double the amount of gas. Not efficient enough, as far as I was concerned!

I was browsing through the Origin Energy website and found out that Origin advertised that they could “solarize” your existing HWS for approximately A$2100, and be fully installed by a licensed plumber. Not a bad price as I had seen other systems for over $4000.

After discussion with Kim about the pro’s and con’s, we decided to sell some shares that I had saved up and buy the system from Origin Energy. I would get a far better return on investment from a solar HWS than I would the shares. The proposed system had one large collector, a 300 litre pre-heat tank, a low wattage pump and a temperature sensor (located in the collector).

On the installation day, two plumbers arrived at 0830 in a Land Cruiser with a huge box on the roof and another in the back of the truck. After a quick inspection, they recommended that the collector be placed on a west facing roof. This was because the copper pipe run was about 8 metres shorter than where I wanted it, which was a north facing roof. The reasoning behind this was that during Winter the heat loss from the pipes would be greater than the heating value of the collector. Therefore there would be no heating effect. Also in summer the water would get so hot (99 degrees) that the safety valve on the tank would activate and then dump half the water until enough cold water entered and cooled it down. So being a wise man, I took his expert advice and let him install the collector on the west facing roof.

The plumber was three quarters complete when the electrician arrived to install the general purpose outlet. It was a simple job as there was already a 15 amp cable run that was the remains of a previous electric HWS. The cable run terminated in our fuse box and therefore only took them 20 minutes to complete. The electrician left as soon as his job was finished. Then something crazy happened. About 15 minutes later another electrician arrived to install a GPO! He was so surprised when I showed him the newly completed GPO from the previous electrician. He had just driven 80 Km from Frankston. Now that is what I call service!

Soon after the second electrician departed, the plumber announced that he was finished the job. He now showed me how it worked. The mains cold water entered the pre-heat tank. When the sensor on the collector determined that the collector was hot enough, it started the pump. The water was drawn from the bottom of the tank to the collector and returned to the middle of the tank. The pre-heated water was then fed on-demand whenever the existing gas HWS required a top up. Fairly simple really!. As the water is already heated when it enters the gas HWS it does not required to be reheated by that system.

My experience so far has been that the solar HWS is reliable. For five months of the year I have turned the thermostat of the gas HWS to zero, effectively only leaving the pilot light on. I did this so that if we had more than four cloudy days in a row, I could turn up the temperature of the water quickly to one and a half on the dial which equals about 40 degrees C.

Since the installation in July 2007, we now average 17 Mj of gas per day in the non-winter months, which is all taken up by our cooking needs. During the 3 or 4 colder months of the year we now average about 26 Mj, which is still greater than a 50% reduction in natural gas use. This we considered a great result, and the cost avoidance of gas purchase will pay for the solar HWS in approx three years. After that we technically have free hot water for 75% of the year.

You have just got to love the Sun!