It's fantastic that everyone here is sharing articles and information.
What I really, really want to figure out is how to adapt my home both for efficiency and alternative energy sources. I know that people will suggest that we add more insulation to our house, add a ground-source heat pump, and so on...
These are all great ideas, but I'm trying to put them all together and it always seems to require a bespoke solution.
Of course every situation and geographical location are different. But there should still be a standard for a household system, that can: accommodate solar panels and wind generators, batteries (a little, or a lot), and connection to the grid (or not).
Ontario, Canada had a generous Feed In Tariff (FIT) program that paid generous amounts for energy fed into the grid by residential solar. I was not in a position to take advantage of this AND I wanted the option to first charge local batteries before selling the surplus to the grid.
We need better off-the-shelf solutions for people that want to power their homes with renewables while remaining connected to the grid without each person needing to explore individual solutions.
The problem is that it almost always is a bespoke solution, because ever building is built differently, everyone wants different things out of their system, and your energy useage is also going to be different to your neighbors.
This is going to be a lot of research, but not an insurmountable amount, though keep in mind that you don’t know what you don’t know, so looking around and asking specific questions in places like diysolarforum will help. We all started somewhere, and when your looking at spending this sort of money the research time is worth spending.
From someone who is also on this journey, here are some things to keep in mind with this sort of thing.
If you’re sizing an solar system, look at your power company’s website for the last year or so of useage data to get a rough estimate, but you’ll need to keep in mind that adding an heat pump or ev will noticeably shift the neddle up. Personally, i can recommend an iotawatt for loving both how much energy your actually using, and tracking down what’s drawing power, though I have it set up to feed into home assistant.
Wind turbines are cool, but almost always not worth it on a personal scale unless you’re going entirely off grid or get really, really consistent wind. The laws of mathematics and PiR^2 means they just don’t scale down cost wise, and are thusly far more expensive per kwh of output compared to more solar.
While there are a lot of solar calculators out there, at least in the US PVwatts is pretty detailed, once you have a rough idea of the system you’ll need I recommend going finding a weather site that gives you your average monthly illumination in watts/m^2 and calculating out what the system will actually produce month to month, using the number, size, and efficiency of the specific panels your going to get to get a better estimate.
For your solar system, it sounds like you want an inverter with an SBU(solar, battery, utility) priority configuration. These exist but you’ll have to make sure that the inverter your solar provider gives you can be set to work this way, as most tend to save the battery in case there is a black out.
For estimating a heat pump, see if your thermostat logs how many hours it has run in the 12 months, and make get one that does if it doesn’t. Multiply that by the energy consumption of the heat pump to get an estimate of how much power it will consume.
You’ll also want to do or have someone do a hearing block load calculation, as well as bids from insulation contractors who do thermal camera surveys.
I also recommend watching this classic video by Technology Connections if you haven’t seen it already.
To my knowledge, most of the big names in traditional PV "string" inverters have a hybrid/battery option configurable for backup power or self-usage with varying degrees of control. Lots are even configurable for efficiency with time based electricity cost fluctuations.
I appreciate your thoughtful response. Kinda buried in there was the reference to an SBU inverter configuration. Now when I read about that and the different configurations, this helps provide the background knowledge I need to ask the right questions when talking with contractors, etc. Thanks!