Thread: The next nuclear plants .The answer to our climate goals.

Originally Posted by bob10

Thank you for that. Will contact FALLON solutions to have a chat. Cheers.

No worries Bob. Have a great day.

Originally Posted by DiscoMick

I scrubbed our panels and the solar hot water two weeks ago and got a lot of crud off.
If the dirt washes to the bottom and sticks, blocking sunlight to the lowest section of the panel, that can cause some panels to reduce their total performance, even of the upper sections, I'm told.

Was up on the roof cleaning the gutters and noticed lichen growing over my panels. Gave em a good clean down last night so hopefully I'll see a gain in output.
I've only got 1.5 KW but am on the old PFIT (72 cents feed in) in Victoria so not changing anything till 2024 when it expires.

Originally Posted by Fattima

Was up on the roof cleaning the gutters and noticed lichen growing over my panels. Gave em a good clean down last night so hopefully I'll see a gain in output.
I've only got 1.5 KW but am on the old PFIT (72 cents feed in) in Victoria so not changing anything till 2024 when it expires.

Do the calculations- 1.5kw at 0.72 likely doesn’t come close to what you could be getting with higher outputs and a lower feed-in.

Originally Posted by Tombie

Do the calculations- 1.5kw at 0.72 likely doesn’t come close to what you could be getting with higher outputs and a lower feed-in.

All well and good if I had the cash to upgrade the panels/inverter. This setup was on the house when I bought it so I'll leave it for now.

Originally Posted by jonesfam

Now this tread seems to have turned to Solar Pannels instead of nuclear power (I would love a Nuclear Power Plant) I have found out something interesting.
When we first put Solar on the Roadhouse I would walk out the back door for the 3 meter walk to work on a hot, sunny morning & think "Great, we are making power."
But I noticed as the day got hotter & our power usage went up the power the solar produced leveled off.
How can this be? Its 40 odd degrees, the suns overhead, no clouds & the power produced is not going up?

So I phoned the suppliers & was told "Yep mate, once the pannels get hot they decrease in efficiancy!"
What the?
So solar is great as long as it's sunny, but not to hot, or cloudy, or raining, & they are clean, none of the inverters go US & so on.
We save about a 3rd to a half of on our previous power bills which is a substantial amount of money but it is not as much as I thought we would save considering the investment.
We are running 39 A/C units alone, with all the other stuff we do pull a lot of power but free it ain't, especially this time of year!

Jonesfam

I've been told their peak efficiency is at about 25 degrees.
One trick is to hose them down about midday.
We have solar hot water on the main house, so that's free hot water during the day.
The studio has gas instant hot water.

Originally Posted by DiscoMick

I've been told their peak efficiency is at about 25 degrees.
One trick is to hose them down about midday.
We have solar hot water on the main house, so that's free hot water during the day.
The studio has gas instant hot water.

It’s not a trick, it’s a waste of water!
They will cool for all of about 10 minutes after 100 litres of water.... and then be up to full temp again!

We have instant gas HWS and Cooktop and won’t be looking at any alternatives until they tell us we can’t get gas. The bill is never over $90 a quarter.

Our installer reckons hosing them down should keep them in the peak efficiency range for about an hour, which is worthwhile.

Originally Posted by DiscoMick

Our installer reckons hosing them down should keep them in the peak efficiency range for about an hour, which is worthwhile.

Your installer is wrong! We used a Flir camera... tested if it had an effect. It lasted about 10 minutes and then heated right up again.

1 hour @ the high feed in tariff of $0.50 per kWh equates to roughly $1.50 to $3.00 depending on the system size. For the hundreds of litres needed to cool it down how could you suggest it’s even remotely worthwhile?

Better off turning the AC up 1 or 2 degrees, turning something off for an hour etc and saving the water!