Chiming in from Japan

K

ken morgan

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Joined
Feb 24, 2022
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Two solar setups, one with battery one without. Main sticks and bricks is 8kw of grid tie with no storage as of yet. Retirement house is a cabin on the NW flanks of Mt. Fuji. Cabin is offgrid with solar. 7.2kw of panels, and 30kw of LiFePo4 calb cells. possibly adding another20kw this year depending upon cash flow.

I was thinking about adding 20 or 30kw to the main sticks and bricks but I have to figure out the rules for japan as they are really flaky about letting you DIY anything electrical.
 
OffGridInTheCity said:
Welcome! Will be interested to learn about the rules in Japan - is the tone Solar friendly? or more controlled by power companies?
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very controlled by the power companies. My main sticks and bricks grid tie system cost me 34,000 USD about 8 years ago to install. about 10k USD of that was a give away to the power company TEPCO. In another 3 years it should be paid off.

My off grid system at the cabin was much cheaper as I bought used panels from a damaged solar farm. Since it is not a grid tie, (and really in the boonies) there was no permitting needed.
 
Welcome to the forum @ken morgan ... 34K$ is a load of money, where I am there was a decade of speculation around solar systems, too. Now (some) people learnt the true cost of solar; ...and grid-tie always seemed a bit of a rip-off to me, ate least over here in Italy!

Now that you said it we want to see photos of Mt.Fuji LOL:D
 
italianuser said:
Welcome to the forum @ken morgan ... 34K$ is a load of money, where I am there was a decade of speculation around solar systems, too. Now (some) people learnt the true cost of solar; ...and grid-tie always seemed a bit of a rip-off to me, ate least over here in Italy!

Now that you said it we want to see photos of Mt.Fuji LOL:D
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well the payback rate is not bad, we got our locked in at close to the going rate for sellback and the excess we produce through the day has been paying the loan off for us along with cutting our power bill by about 60%. If you take the savings we have had on electric bills combined with the fact that we have been paying the loan for the last 10 years with the excess power payment it is already paid off. I will get some photos when I am at the cabin in a couple of weeks and post them up.
 
italianuser said:
Welcome to the forum @ken morgan ... 34K$ is a load of money, where I am there was a decade of speculation around solar systems, too. Now (some) people learnt the true cost of solar; ...and grid-tie always seemed a bit of a rip-off to me, ate least over here in Italy!

Now that you said it we want to see photos of Mt.Fuji LOL:D
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sorry was attaching files and the inter webz said screw you hippy Marine.
 
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snowy, two weeks ago...
 

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italianuser said:
Welcome to the forum @ken morgan ... 34K$ is a load of money, where I am there was a decade of speculation around solar systems, too. Now (some) people learnt the true cost of solar; ...and grid-tie always seemed a bit of a rip-off to me, ate least over here in Italy!

Now that you said it we want to see photos of Mt.Fuji LOL:D
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without snow last week... it appears that attaching images is interesting to this forum. it keeps jumping to he top of he tab.. hard to describe when you cannot see what you are writing.... several different photos. we are going into spring real soon. we have power here, but it is going to pay to play this year, due to lack of customers, the current lines requires a buy in and all users are directly responsible for any upkeep as of last year. me going stand alone has saved me about 5k this year alone in repair fees. it will only get worse as the user base diminishes.

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ajw22 said:
Welcome. Seems some people overlook this: Have you changed to a time-of-use tariff? Ie. pay a higher rate during the day (when you have solar power), in exchange for a much cheaper night rate.
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currently the Japanese system has always been a time of use tariff. so, for the sticks and bricks for instance, we originally ran hot water at night to save costs with no AC. by having 8Kw of solar we now run for free in the day and still run heavy use at night so it balances out. heavy cooling in the daytime is free thanks to solar. light cooling at night is cheap due to daytime tariffs we got rid of hot water and went on demand propane hot water as it was cheaper.
 
BTW, the difference between snowy and no snow was only 2 weeks. even during full snow my genset never started. I got down to about 40% on the battery packs about 6 times this winter but no genset start (30% start point). this was when the panels were covered for more than a day or two.
 
Looks great man, I must say! And that snow, just love it. I don't think we'll have snow this year in Calabria... when you wake up at home and everything is silent, covered with snow, and you think "Yeah! I won't go to work today"... (after 1/1000th of a second)... "Ah no, I work from remote" LOL

You seem very organized with all your solar devices, very good(y)
 
italianuser said:
Looks great man, I must say! And that snow, just love it. I don't think we'll have snow this year in Calabria... when you wake up at home and everything is silent, covered with snow, and you think "Yeah! I won't go to work today"... (after 1/1000th of a second)... "Ah no, I work from remote" LOL

You seem very organized with all your solar devices, very good(y)
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Calabria is one of those places on the bucket list to visit when I retire. A beautiful area, and being that its in Italy I bet the Food and wine are awesome!

In regards to the cabin: thanks, it is a work in progress. my plan is to retire there in about 10 years or so. so house is fully solar powered and I have plans for two more renewable energy projects.

One is a geothermal heat pump system that I am designing and building myself and the other is a large (12kl) hot water tank.

The geothermal system is simple bury about 400 meters of black pipe 2 meters down and run coolant through the lines into a heat exchanger that my current split pack system will use in a water to air system vice the current air to air. that should raise my efficiency considerably from what i have researched.
The hot water tank will be a diversion load for my current panels and an extra 4 or 5 kw of panels I want to install. that will be a heated floor/hot water system.

I buy all of my panels used from solar farms. the current panels are all 7 years old but I got them for pennies on the dollar when an earthquake loosened a boulder that came screaming down a hillside taking out half of a solar farm. it was cheaper for them with insurance to replace with all new top of the line so they did. I reaped the benefit of getting quality panels that were only 5 years old at a fraction of their new price. the plan is to make it so I have no power heating or cooling bills in my old age, and that the wood stove I currently use gets replaced with a smaller unit for aesthetic purposes only.
 
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