@joacchim
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Registered: 4 years, 6 months ago
I'm a retired EE and a lifelong do-it-yourselfer. Since retiring in 2006 I've designed and installed over 16,000 watts of grid-tied, battery backup PV on my house and barn. My house is 50% surrounded by trees so I can't get off the grid - yet! We heat burning dead wood that I harvest from our property. Heat is via an indoor woodburning stove, and an outdoor woodburner that circulates hot water through 2/3 of the barn floor, and also to a heat exchanger in the house furnace plenum. But both house and barn are equipped with air source heat pumps as well - I installed the barn mini-split myself. Battery backup for the barn is for the hydronic heating pumps and associated lines, plus a few lights. In case of a grid outage, the pumps need to stay on to keep the lines from freezing. House battery supplies the well pump, sump pump, fridge, computers, microwave, some lights and the entertainment system. Barn battery is LiFePO4, and house battery is FLA. Wife and I both own electric bikes, which are a blast to ride. I just replaced my 2014 Nissan Leaf with a 2020 Chevy Bolt that has about 3 times the range of the Leaf. Wife still drives an ICE vehicle but I hope to convert her to an EV one day. I retired after 32 years working in and around fossil electric generating plants, so I know firsthand how polluting they are. Early in my career I became the first plant environmentalist at what was at the time Cleveland Electric Illuminating Company's largest coal plant. I went on to many different positions throughout the Company and through several changes in management, but was able to retire at age 55, and was glad to do so! Here's the story of how I built my PV systems, as posted on the ASES virtual tour in 2020: https://youtu.be/EBJsfM1KiL0
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