solar hook up

[woodgeek]

Joking aside @joop, your best bang for the buck will come from getting a place with decent insulation and airsealing. If I were buying a house, I would want their utility bills from the previous year before I signed. My place cost me $5k to heat (with oil) the year after I bought it, no fun. It now costs me about $1500 to heat with electricity.

With your cheap hydro power (if you confirm its 7 cents/kWh on your bill) and iffy solar resource, its unlikely that solar would have good payback.

If you are worried about reliability in a back-woods situation, solar is not cost effective for that either, I would look at a woodstove for backup heat and a small genny or EV or PHEV hookup for electricity backup (which is what I went with).

 

[joop]

more for stability,not about to bury lines even in new developments were road is open to lay the lines won't do it they like to chase their tails in this province

 

[woodgeek]

My power has been out for about 20 days total in the last 15 years. EVs and PHEVs have the ability to make about 1800W at 12 VDC, which a $200 sine wave inverter (and a couple jumper cables) can convert to 1500W at 120V AC. This is more than enough to run all of most peoples small appliances. I backfeed the 120V circuits in my house with that, and can run 4-6 days on my fully charged Bolt EV. With a PHEV, you can run as long as you have gas in the tank, and it is both quieter and more efficient than a normal genset.

Other choice would be an EV with built-in V2L vehicle to load. Like the F150 lightning or some Kia model EVs.

After that, you are looking at a Tesla PowerWall, with or without solar. But all that is expensive compared to a genset.

 

[Ashful]

more for stability,not about to bury lines even in new developments were road is open to lay the lines won't do it they like to chase their tails in this province

Buried lines are less susceptible to minor storm damage from falling branches, but they aren't exactly maintenance free. When there is an issue the repair time can be weeks or months, versus line strung from a pole, which is usually fixed in hours.

My neighborhood has all buried utilities, with initial install in the mid-1980's, and many upgrades and additions in the mid-1990's. The common conductor had a major failure three years ago, and it took the utility company 4-5 months of planning, plus another month of on-site with equipment, to replace it. We each had to deal with vehicle-sized holes dug in our yards, from which these guys could do the work of replacing the line. We also had to drive over wire troughs and mow around wiring strung along the street and our lawns for the entire 6 month duration of the failure and repair project.

 

[stoveliker]

I'm sorry, but that is only evidence of the lack of technical capabilities of the power companies in this country. Incredibly backwards.

I grew up in the 70s and 80s and power lines had been buried already for decades, except for the 100,000 V (of that order of magnitude) major transmission lines. Failures are almost non-existent, and if someone breaks one while digging in the road, it's fixed in a day or two.

Seriously, all arguments against underground power lines are completely nonsense, except for the financial one to get them there.

 

[joop]

the cost is always the excuse,but whe your making a new development the worlds your oyster.they still don't do it quebec a third world country waiting to happen

 

[Ashful]

Yeah, I agree with most of what you said, stoveliker. You know I've worked in Europe for many years, I'm familiar with their buried systems. I also hate looking at utility poles and lines, so my admiration of buried utilities has always had a strong cosmetic justification.

But there's an enormous difference in net population density between any European nation and our US of A. Even where I live, just 30 - 40 minutes drive outside of one of our largest and oldest cities, houses are at least 300 - 600 ft (100 - 200 m) apart, and they might sit on 5 - 15 acres each. This might make the cost of buried utilities almost completely infeasible.

 

[joop]

when they repave the older roads gas lines are checked water pipes sewer drains,i hope but thats logical lol.while they prepare to do the job plan it out no ,a few roads every year will add up over time. viola its done.they were supposed to build a highway near us in early 60's said it was to expensive a couple of billion later they built it in early 2000's hows it to expensive .no forward thinking.granted no one thought in billions back then but things only get more expensive over time

 

[joop]

i don't know about your area's,but our way of paving roads is to do a nice job and then come back 2months later and tear it up to fix old pipe or gas line.honestly thats what happens .just don't trust them want to be a little less dependent on them

 

[stoveliker]

Yeah, I agree with most of what you said, stoveliker. You know I've worked in Europe for many years, I'm familiar with their buried systems. I also hate looking at utility poles and lines, so my admiration of buried utilities has always had a strong cosmetic justification.

But there's an enormous difference in net population density between any European nation and our US of A. Even where I live, just 30 - 40 minutes drive outside of one of our largest and oldest cities, houses are at least 300 - 600 ft (100 - 200 m) apart, and they might sit on 5 - 15 acres each. This might make the cost of buried utilities almost completely infeasible.

I agree, hence "all is nonsense except for the financial argument".

The technical issues (as in half a year with holes in the neighborhood...) is not needed. Sure, the density of connections is higher (though I grew up with only double the density you describe, lucky me), but that in itself does not make something a weeks/months project.
In fact, in high-density areas, fixes are done in the same couple of hours as the pole-strung infrastructure here. And then you'd have a (speed...) bump in the road covered with re-used old bricks, waiting for new asphalt for a month or three, but the power was done quick, and the road was functional right after.

 

[Ashful]

i don't know about your area's,but our way of paving roads is to do a nice job and then come back 2months later and tear it up to fix old pipe or gas line.honestly thats what happens .just don't trust them want to be a little less dependent on them

Same here. As soon as you see them re-paving a road, you know they'll be tearing it up a month later. I suspect they submit the requisitions to have utilities inspected, and subsequently repaired or replaced, when the decision is made to re-pave the road. But then if the utility takes longer to get to that work than the private paving company contracted to do the road, these things happen in reverse order.

It's one of the glaring examples that make people think government can never work efficiently. It's not that they can't, but it is true that they don't.

 

[joop]

just got bill for 62 days ,usage 11,443 kwh

 

[Ashful]

just got bill for 62 days ,usage 11,443 kwh

That's a lot of juice. What's your $/kWh? Around here, that'd around $1k/month, all-in.

 

[joop]

told ya lol,still plugging holes been here 9yrs now.plug one find another

 

[joop]

37,409 kwh for 369 days.3888 dollars.like i said better than when we first moved in

 

[joop]

our price for hydro is not that bad ,thank goodness

 

[maple1]

just got bill for 62 days ,usage 11,443 kwh

That's huge. We average maybe 40kwh/day when the heat pumps are running. Yikes.

 

[joop]

old stone house no isulation

 

[stoveliker]

That's huge. We average maybe 40kwh/day when the heat pumps are running. Yikes.

That's huge. I average about 15, max 25 kWh/day with the heat pumps running...
Before heat pumps I had 10.5 kWh a day...

 

[begreen]

With energy consumption on that level, insulation would pay for itself quickly.

 

[Ashful]

With energy consumption on that level, insulation would pay for itself quickly.

So would ditching the ASHP for the coldest months, I suspect. With average daily lows in the single digits for 2-3 months per year, he's not exactly in the most ASHP-friendly climate. Heck, he'd almost surely do better burning oil in January and February.

 

[begreen]

So would ditching the ASHP for the coldest months, I suspect. With average daily lows in the single digits for 2-3 months per year, he's not exactly in the most ASHP-friendly climate. Heck, he'd almost surely do better burning oil in January and February.

I thought he was burning the Roby stove then. Regardless, it just proves that it's costly to try to heat outdoors in winter.

 

[joop]

baseboard heaters never stop lol bing bing poing bing lol

wife likes the stone walls what can you do. the roby was going 24\7 for the first few years,got lazy getting old lol

 

[Ashful]

Stone walls are actually very efficient in very cold weather, I doubt they're you're biggest problem. Shoot them with an IR thermometer, and you'll likely find them holding near 50F. Hell, shoot them today, they're probably still holding near 50F. The beauty of stone is that you're never heating against a wall near outside temperature, you're always heating against 50F. The down side to stone walls is that... you're always heating against 50F, even when your friends with insulated houses are heating against 65F walls at 35F outside.

If you see your energy usage spiking when the mercury dips into single digits, it's your roof, windows, and doors... not your stone walls. Stone holds near constant temperature, as outside swings up and down, and no drafts get thru 20 inches of stone and mortar.

 

[gthomas785]

Stone walls are actually very efficient in very cold weather, I doubt they're you're biggest problem

That's not right. Natural stones have about the lowest R value of any solid material (edit: other than metals, of course), usually less than 0.1 per inch. Don't let the thermal mass fool you.