Bruce's Journal

[Baymule]

Politics as usual. Screw the little guy, cut deals with the big companies.

Our DD is on her second Chevy Volt and loves it. I would consider an electric car, but for now, mine still runs, so we will keep it. LOL

 

[Bruce]

I just did a little looking:
"or your net metering system is older than 10 years or has been amended (increased by more than 5% or decreased by more than 60%), net metering credits cannot be used to pay “non bypassable charges” on your bill."
So my "grandfathered" bit is only good for 5 more years and if I add any panels I'll lose it immediately.

GMP has a "Resilient Home" program which makes little sense to me. For $30/month or $3,000 up front they will put 2 Tesla Powerwalls in your house - actually I think the homeowner has to pay a ton of money for an electrician to install them. Once installed you can use the power to run your home during an outage and they will pull power from them during peak usage. They own the batteries and the program runs 10 years. After that time you can keep the batteries until they cease to be reasonably functional (about 5 years according to the Q&A). Seems like a lot of money/month unless the power goes out frequently so the homeowner can pay to provide "housing" for GMP's batteries.

They also have a Bring Your Own Device program where they will pay money upfront per kW enrolled for either 3 or 4 hour discharge. It basically caps at $9,500 and based on the amount they will pay I think 10 kWh per day. So the money up front sounds good but they get to use your charge/discharge cycles which aren't infinite. If my guesstimates are correct that means if you have 14 kWh of battery storage (2 Tesla Powerwalls) and let them take 3 kW every hour for 4 hours, you have NO power you can use during the period since the batteries should never be fully discharged. And if they are using all your battery storage to feed the grid during peak periods are they just turning at some of it around and putting it back into your service panel to provide the power you need?

 

[Bruce]

Well the fun never ends here

I noticed yesterday that the click on the fence charger was weak, no flashing light. Web check says replace a fuse in it. The fuse looked good today so I'm thinking there is a problem with the charger. Later this afternoon I wanted to use the planer in the barn workshop. No power. Lights in the workshop working though. None of the outlets in the workshop have power. No lights in the drive bay. No power in the outlets down in the barn alley but the lights down there work.

Broke out the multimeter and took the cover off the panel. 9 breakers in there, 5 reading maybe 5-10V. The 40A for the level 2 EV charger read OK ... I thought. DW's Leaf needs to get charged and thinking about @rachels.haven comments about peak power usage decided to set the timer to start at midnight. I took the car down to the barn, figured out how to set the timer .... no lights on the charging station. This is not good. Thinking I had properly tested the breaker I tested the outlet for the charger, one side read 120V, the other 5-10V. So I went back to the panel. One half of the breaker reads 120V the other reads 5-10V. So I guess I had only tested the top half of the breaker and ASSUMED that since it was good the entire breaker was good. Guess not.

So I moved my car and took the Leaf up to the house where I charge on 110V, got the Leaf's charge cable out and hung and the car is charging s-l-o-w-l-y. It will probably take at least 3 times as long on 110V. I know that is the ratio for my car. Glad I decided to charge overnight tonight because if I figured this out tomorrow night there is no way the car would have time to fully charge. It would still have been OK since it has 55 miles of range, even at 110V it would have added plenty for DW's 75 mile round trip commute Monday. And of course she does still have her Prius.

Hopefully Ace has the GE breakers in stock tomorrow or I'll have to wait until the electric supply company opens on Monday morning. I might just get 9 new breakers given only 3 are currently working now. Those can be spares for the future.

I have no idea what the heck happened. We did have a big T storm a couple of nights ago and one strike was FLASH-BOOM, not even 1 second between them so it was close. My guess is some of the breakers, being old, fried. BUT the 40A was new 14 months ago AND I used the EV charger yesterday so I know it was working then. I don't recall when I last used any power other than lights in the workshop, certainly several days ago at the most recent. Likely before the T-storm but I wouldn't swear to that in court.

 

[farmerjan]

WOW, good thing you found it now. I am tea totally scared of electricity. Don't understand it much and have gotten hit enough times on electric fence to make me wary of any and all electric anythings.....Oh well,,,,,, guess I can't like everything or be even somewhat proficient at it either. Electricity is for the experts..... of which I AM NOT.

 

[Baymule]

WOW, good thing you found it now. I am tea totally scared of electricity. Don't understand it much and have gotten hit enough times on electric fence to make me wary of any and all electric anythings.....Oh well,,,,,, guess I can't like everything or be even somewhat proficient at it either. Electricity is for the experts..... of which I AM NOT.

X 2! Me too! We can't all be experts on everything.

Bruce I guess the only way to come out ahead is to not be connected to the grid on some circuits and use those circuits for certain things.

 

[Bruce]

That was my thought Bay. Add batteries and more panels but don't connect those to the grid, at least not for the next 5 years when I lose the grandfathered "non bypassable charges". Move most of the house onto the panel connected to the batteries exclusive of hogs like the electric range, floor heat in the one bathroom, the pool pump. We can do without those, the pool pump is only May-Sept anyway, and I have the propane 1931 stove if I don't have power for the electric oven. It is the cooktop regardless of the status of electric supply anyway.

 

[Senile_Texas_Aggie]

Dang, Mr. Bruce! That is a bummer on your flaky power. I hope that Ace hardware has the breakers you need and those fix the problem.

Clever idea on having some of your solar panels and batteries not connected to the power grid. How will you separate the different appliances so that they are off grid?

 

[Bruce]

You need a separate panel. What I don't know, and why one does need a real electrician, is if it is possible to have a switch between the batteries and the grid for that panel such that one could choose grid or battery but the batteries wouldn't be chargeable from the grid. From my reading that is actually a requirement to get a federal tax credit for adding batteries - that they can't be charged from the grid and there must be a new solar installation feeding them. The tax rules around solar seem meant for lawyers not for functionality or decreasing fossil fuel use. I think one could "switch" between grid and batteries the same way you can switch from grid to a generator that is hardwired into the panel.

When the house was worked on before the electrician ran a wire from a new 70A breaker in the main panel to the existing panel in the barn. I guess before that it was run straight from the meter even though it wasn't a separately metered panel. The panel in the barn has a 50A main shut off breaker. I don't know if it is better to have a bigger breaker feeding a smaller one or he just left the preexisting 50A in there and it COULD be a 70A. I also don't know why it is better to have a breaker in the main panel than run directly from the meter. Beyond my knowledge level!

 

[Bruce]

I called Ace, asked if they had the GE breakers in the store. The guy says I'll go check, comes back and says Yes. "GE breakers?" I asked. Yes.

Before I headed off to the store I did a little more testing and investigating. What I found, and maybe would have noticed if I knew what all was attached to each breaker and could test those, was that the left leg is dead. The way the panel works is that as you go down one side each "next" breaker is on the alternate leg. That is how a single 240V breaker works, it gets 120V from each leg because it takes up 2 vertical slots. I was able to move the breaker for the workshop outlets (yes ALL on the same 15A circuit and run with 14 gauge wire . (*) ) and et voila, the tester worked in them. I moved another breaker and got lucky, it was the one the fence charger is on. Click-blink, click-blink Can't move any more, there isn't enough wire length.

So I tested the 50A Main breaker. Power in to both halves, no power coming out of the lower half, the left leg of the panel. I shut off the 70A breaker in the house, disconnected the wires from the 50A pulled it out and took it to ACE where they do NOT have any GE breakers at all :mad

I put the 50A back in, turned on the 70A and will go to the electrical supply house in the morning.

* I already knew the guy we bought this place from was an electrical moron. I discovered early on that even a monkey would have gotten lucky and not wired up over half the outlets with the hot wire on the neutral screw and the white wire on the hot screw. It REALLY isn't that hard!! The hot (black or red) wire goes on the brass screw (often labeled Black) and the white wire goes on the silver screw (often labeled White). And NONE of the outlets in the workshop were grounded, he'd cut the ground wire in the first outlet box (just above the service panel) rather than connecting it to the wire coming into the box thus no ground on any receptacles further on.

 

[Hens and Roos]

Never fun repairing someone's work