Guru
Joined: 03/06/2019
Location: AustraliaPosts: 1584
| Posted: 09:02am 24 May 2020 |
No, Dad has mains power as he's only 200M from the road and has his own pole.
I have put in a solar set up for him and am about to upgrade that. He's using less than $150 worth of power in summer and not a lot more in winter over the " Supply" charges.
Come summer he'll be able to run all his AC units and pay even less. I'll have to teach him how to read the meters so he doesen't go backwards.
What the guy was describing was their new strategy to save the power co money of putting in the poles and wires on new remote connections.
Not even that remote really. I have read of lots of people that have had land for years and they want to build on it for retirement and getting the power connected is a real nightmare. There can be power in the street but if they have to extend it all the way down a road for one new house, they try everything to get out of it. Same as if your house is set back. Some places it's the power co whom are responsible to the building and some they are only responsible so far from the street.
One of my mates was asked to pay $40K to upgrade his connection to 3 phase because the existing transformer that serviced the road wasn't up to any more load. Turned out others in the street also wanted more power than the 50 yo transformer allocation and had also been told they would have to foot the bill even though once done everyone else could then benefit.
Mate Put in massive cables during his major Renos the 150m back to the road and a big Board in the shed with sub boards for the house, Garage, stables and the plant room.
He argued that he shouldn't have to pay for their equipment and equipment that everyone else used.
He conspired with a bunch of the other neighbours at his far end of the road to Turn on all the loads they could at a set time to purposefully take out the Transformer. Mate even set up large motors and heaters for the adjoining neighbours from his work to suck all the power they could. They left off water heaters day before and other things then manually kicked them in and everything they had and promptly blew the snot out the 50 Yo transformer. Mate was surprised. He said in less than 10 Min everything was over. I was surprised it just didn't take the fuse out, maybe there wasn't one?
Power co had to come along and replace the tranny with a new unit at their cost that day. Mate and other neighbours were then able to get the power supply they wanted. :0)
No way in hell my mate would get buy on a battery unless they wanted to replicate the one is South Oz. He has so much on his property between machinery, multiple residences, pools and spa's and every other mod con he likes to use and then there would be the problem of an array big enough to keep up. He won't have panels on the ( shaded) Shed roof never mind anywhere they could be seen on the ground.
Then of course there is the winter weather problem that would be impractical to overcome with panels and even if they did supply a genny, who is going to pay for the fuel?
Lots of people ( like my Dads Neighbour I am helping) want to go off grid but i'm more than happy to stay on it while I can keep the cost down with solar and reap the benefits. Wouldn't be easy to run my big AC for heating in winter off panels and battery's that's for sure and I wouldn't want to be watching the loads I was running either.