allthegearandnoidea wrote:. Solar works wonderfully during a nice cloud free summers day in.... sunny Queensland. In Melbourne it's as useful as tits on a bull.
I thought so too but after moving to regional Victoria and living off grid for 18 months, we have power feeding in from the panels even on cloudy days
Surprisingly, overcast and sunny days seem to be roughly same. Very dark rainy days will suffer but our batteries last several days so we rarely run a backup generator- maybe once or twice a year
Are you down south, like Gippsland?
We're off-grid, which works really well during the warmer months, but you still need huge battery storage to make it through weeks of bad weather, much more storage than you would if it were always "summer" weather.
And it's very expensive, so you have to be dedicated to long-term saving, as the initial outlay takes years to recover in not paying for power. By the time you've recouped the outlay you're just about up for new batteries and panels anyway. Maybe over a lifetime you might be ahead a bit though. But they might find something better that makes your solar storage system redundant.
It can be argued that staying on grid at least you're supporting all the local people and industries that keep that grid pumping power. Going off-grid I think you're really supporting the overseas factories that manufacture the panels, batteries and control systems that a handful of local sparkies get sent out for a few days every ten years or so to maintain, with new parts from those overseas manufacturers.
With the recent storms there were teams of electricians everywhere repairing the grid, and earning their incomes doing so. None of them had to visit us...how long until we no longer need grid maintenance workers at all?
