[LINK] Free Sydney Smart Home

[Richard Chirgwin]

Marghanita da Cruz wrote:
> Richard,
>
> Curious why you didn't connect to the Grid in wentworth falls. I'm 
> currently looking at PVs in Annandale - feeding the grid seems to make 
> sense (the sun will be shining somewhere on the grid) - though the 
> economics are still challenging.
That's easy: Not my house! ... It was, however, built and solared years 
ago, when there was no feed-in option. Both the off-grid and the water 
tanks were a conscious decision (the place is also built from mud bricks 
dug on-site).

RC
>
> With regard to the water tanks, I have oscillated. They aren't much 
> use in drought but seem to work well in Sydney's evenly distributed 
> rainfall climate. Ecologically it makes sense to try and maintain the 
> water level of a property with hard surfaces - through water retention 
> systems.
>
> Marghanta
>
> Richard Chirgwin wrote:
> <snip>
>> Solar became challenging. Dec-Jan in Wentworth Falls was wet as often 
>> as not; so you learned that batteries drain fast and charge slow! We 
>> had to run the generator on about five days (but the batteries were 
>> serving five cottages - the main house plus four holiday renters). 
>> Discipline with the lights became second nature (even though none of 
>> the lights were more than 11W fluoros).
>>
>> Doing some intensive computing work, I got a genuine shock at how 
>> much a MacBook Pro could suck from the batteries. I left a long 
>> calculation running overnight, and woke to find about 20% of the 
>> storage dissipated as heat. Luckily it was a sunny couple of days to 
>> follow ... My lesson, should I "go solar", will be to get too much 
>> battery storage.
>>
>> But as to a computer running the thing? OK, I'll go with Ivan that 
>> people need to learn what uses how much (although without aircon or 
>> flat-screen, my home is pretty simple to figure), but once you know 
>> what's going on, the system becomes a redundant user of power.
>>
> <snip>