Comment by bluGill 16 hours ago
Why go for a bigger battery when you can just put more panels on the roof to cover those winter days and waste the power the rest of the year?
I suspect the answer is somewhere in the middle - maybe two weeks of storage. Though of course prices change all the time so the correct action will change and you need to rerun the numbers as things degrade to decide your next action.
Depends on the part of the world, but in northern/central europe the production of panels from september/october to march is zero, 0, according to my colleague in his roof and many others have said the same. It is cloudy, it will rain a lot and during winter if there are no clouds then there are only.. a limited number of sunglight possible, and the sun is low, so most of the "power" is already absorbed by the atmosphere
I'm not sure how far up north you're talking about, but solar production in Stockholm (and I'd argue anywhere north affects so few people that we can completely ignore it for a general discussion) is about 10% of summer production but certainly not 0.
In our part of the world, solar production during winter is incredibly low or 0 due to it being very cloudy, days being much shorter, sunlight angle on the panel very suboptimal. No amount of additional panels will get you through that streak.
It also depends somewhat on how much energy you use. I live in the Netherlands where everytime I bring it up, I'm told "that's just not possible, you will never make enough in winter", but these same people have no idea how much energy I use. On a bad day, I use maybe 10kWh and that's running the AC with the thermostat set to 19c overnight and a bit during the day at 22c. I don't have a giant fridge, I don't have any gaming PCs slurping 200W on standby, etc. My baseline usage is around 300-400W to run the old freezer that never turns off (70W), my network equipment, a fan in the garage to prevent moisture buildup, and some lights.
My 1.8kWh system at 20% output covers a great percentage of my baseline usage during the day! I'm probably going to add a small battery so I'm not penalized for sending energy back to the grid, but I'm not gonna need much until my kids get older and want new gadgets. The cool part about modern electronics is that we're generally getting more efficient too with newer tech. If I replace the old freezer, my baseline usage drops 20%+.
I don't disagree with your point that sometimes nature is simply just working too hard against your efforts, but I also wrote all this to say that some people need to really do the math and not rely on "common knowledge". Energy efficiency has come an extremely long way in the past decade and much of what was true when residential solar first started popping off is now outdated.
> I'm not gonna need much until my kids get older and want new gadgets.
FWIW, a MacBook Pro in active use uses like 45 watts max and an iPhone really like 2-7 depending on the use. I wouldn't worry too much about gadgets.
while that's true, getting close has major benefits. adding extra capacity for the winter also adds capacity for fall and spring. that production will reduce how many weeks the battery is needed for
(Author here) My roof is full on both sides. There simply isn't any more room.
I do say:
> As solar panels increase in efficiency, it might be more sensible to replace the panels on my roof, or add some onto a shed.
Even in the darkest days of winter, they still generate something (unless they're physically covered in snow) - but they'd need to be 20x as efficient to power my typical winter usage.