Self-sufficiency energy

ADOX Fotoimpex

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Two years ago ADOX and FOTOIMPEX started an investment programm to become independant from the public grid and in the mid term CO2 neutral. We installed a combined heat and power plant (blue energy in the long term green running on H2), a giant hot water tank, a 60 kWh buffer battery and today a 70 kW solar power plant on the roof. When all components are wired up we can basically cut the factory off the public grid.
In times when there is no sunshine we can run on the battery or the gas turbine kicks in. With the heat of the turbine we run the kettles and the general heating system.

The battery buffer is evening out the night-hours without sunshine.

Acording to our simulation we will be 80% independant with electricity over the spring-summer-fall period and achieve > 50% over the entire year just on the PV (100% with the remaining gas use).

Next to the environemental aspect this is ofcourse also helping us to control costs (energy prices got out of control in Germany).
Compared with the current electrical prices in Germany we will save more than 80% (the remaining 20% are the costs for the gas).
The setup was not cheap and we are somewhat pioneers. In the future the components hopefully become more affordable. We think this is the way to go foreward. The public grid does not have enough capacity for the green transformation as it is planned by our politicians and we cannot see how they will change this in short time. If every factory does what we did industrial CO2 emissions can be substantually reduced in short time and capacities can be freed for the citys where there is not enough space to install these things.
 
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Donald Qualls

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Good job for doing it, but I can't fathom how high your electricity costs must be to justify that large a capital installation. Here in the US, it doesn't even make economical sense for homeowners to install their own solar roofs, except in the highest priced markets. That's much of what makes the green conversion such a hard sell here.
 
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ADOX Fotoimpex

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We currently pay 59 cents per kWh due to a ripp off by our supplier who raised prices during the peak period. Before the energy crisis we payed 12 cents for years. Currently we can close for 3 months on 29 cents. This is all crazy!
What I like is the independancy. There are some maintenance costs but at least we are back in a planable state!
 

brbo

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ADOX Fotoimpex said:
Click to expand...

I admit that I hoped to coax a bit more, erm, extensive reply from you (some of us have been counting days from the end of February which was said to bring some new development in the Helios project)

Anyway, this is about your German operation and Helios would be coated in Switzerland, right?
 

Donald Qualls

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Honestly, I don't even know for sure what I'm paying per kWh in North Carolina -- but my home energy bill (heat pump, all-electric including well pump, plus three computers running 24/7 and a salt water aquarium) runs between $130 and $230 a month, depending on the degree-day conditions. Our power here is mostly coal-fired, with a growing amount of commercial solar farms feeding the grid during the days.

I'd be happy to pay a little more in monthly payments for a solar roof, but my partner keeps saying it's a rip-off (and we'd have to remove a couple trees to get all-day sun).
 
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ADOX Fotoimpex

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Exactly. There energy prices are more stable. We really want to release Helios for this season but its not here yet.
 
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ADOX Fotoimpex

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Germany is passed this state. We have a lot of renewable energy in the electrical mix but the problem is evening out the volatility (day/night and more importantly summer/winter). This is what puts the price tag onto our "fully self sustained" setup. If you have solar farms feeding the grid the question is which coal power plant can go up and down to compensate sunshine intensity. There is a limit onto how much renewable energy the classic grid with classic power plants can compensate. Your trees might not be so bad btw. Solar intensity is one thing but having to clean the modules from dust is something else. We are located in the forest which is perfect for the later.
 

Donald Qualls

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I live on a dirt road, so cleaning the panels would be a major consideration regardless of trees -- but the trees I'm referring to would completely shade the panels for nearly half the day in the "good" solar season (though they're deciduous, at least, so they throw little shade in winter).

Of course, if I had solar capacity, I'd want batteries, too, so the house could run off-grid 24/7 most of the year, and excess solar capacity so I could sell power to the grid at least a few days a month in the sunny season.

And then I'd want a Leaf to drive back and forth to work...
 

MattKing

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By way of comparison, in BC we pay $0.0975 /kWh for the first 316 kWh each month and $0.1408 /kWh thereafter. All prices in $CDN.
Most of our power is hydro power, but we are reaching capacity there.
 

ant!

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MattKing said:
By way of comparison, in BC we pay $0.0975 /kWh for the first 316 kWh each month and $0.1408 /kWh thereafter. All prices in $CDN.
Most of our power is hydro power, but we are reaching capacity there.
Click to expand...

Quebec here, 99.9% hydro (province owned): 6.704 Canadian $cent (0.046 €) for the first 40kWh/day (averaged over the payment period), above it's 10.342$cent (0.071€). This is residential & farm use, industrial differs. Cheapest electricity in North America, and highest gas prices (lingering around 1.65$/l at the moment, so still much cheaper then in Europe). Since the prices are so low, there isn't much wind or solar. The hydro plants are in the sparsely populated north, and built a long time ago. Selling much electricity to the US as well, e.g. NY state.

Home heating is basically all electric, while in Europe it is often gas. House insulation is bad, even though winters get cold. We just bought an electric car.
 

pentaxuser

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MattKing said:
By way of comparison, in BC we pay $0.0975 /kWh for the first 316 kWh each month and $0.1408 /kWh thereafter. All prices in $CDN.
Most of our power is hydro power, but we are reaching capacity there.
Click to expand...

BC may not be as cold for as long as most of Canada or for that matter large swathes of the U.S. but it seems to me that commercial energy prices are largely geared to what the market will bear

Only a very small percentage of the U.K. population could ever afford to pay for the amount of energy that must be needed in those areas I mention above at U.K commercial energy prices

Necessity is truly the mother of invention when it comes to adopting "green" energy. Certainly industry will convert faster than the general population and it is it who will be the driver of change in terms of speed of change and capital cost reduction Many people who want to convert in the U.K. to green energy cannot afford to due to the initial capital cost of such as solar panels and efficient heat pumps to replace natural gas. Turning green will have a cost to all of us in the U.K. even if the government subsidises the conversion

I await the real light to shine on the road to Damascus to give us our Damascene Moment of Conversion I fear it is still a flickering battery torch as of now but well done to ADOX and, dare I say it, to someone quite a bit further East whose actions put a "shiver down our spines"

pentaxuser
 

juan

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P?ease keep us posted on how this works out. I'm not sure what our energy future will be, but I'm thinking it will be a diverse mix. A problem for solar farms in my state is that so much of the land is better used for growing food.
 
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ADOX Fotoimpex

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juan said:
P?ease keep us posted on how this works out. I'm not sure what our energy future will be, but I'm thinking it will be a diverse mix. A problem for solar farms in my state is that so much of the land is better used for growing food.
Click to expand...

Land should always be used for growing food if it is fertile. But in our case we have now populated only 1/3rd of our roof with solar cells and we already reach >50% of self sufficiency. This is somewhat a sweet spot in respect to investement and savings. We could go 100% but then we would need to feed substantually into the public grid in the summer which I consider counter productive from an environmental standpoint. There is no solution yet for the summer/winter volatility but in the countryside each roof is large enough to reach similar numbers like us if you combine it with a battery smaller than the battery in an electric vehicle. This does not consume any space used for growing food
 

MattKing

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pentaxuser said:
BC may not be as cold for as long as most of Canada or for that matter large swathes of the U.S. but it seems to me that commercial energy prices are largely geared to what the market will bear
Click to expand...

Our electricity provider - BC Hydro - is a Provincial Crown corporation.
They actively trade in the overall energy market - selling power when they have excess, and buying it when the demand exceeds production.
 
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ADOX Fotoimpex

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MattKing said:
Our electricity provider - BC Hydro - is a Provincial Crown corporation.
They actively trade in the overall energy market - selling power when they have excess, and buying it when the demand exceeds production.
Click to expand...

Very good. We folks of the countryside might become the new oil Scheichs
 

mshchem

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ADOX Fotoimpex said:
Very good. We folks of the countryside might become the new oil Scheichs
Click to expand...

Brilliant!

Looks great. Being less dependent on grid is a great reason to do this. Here in Iowa everything is wind power and converting corn to alcohol for fuel, not sure how I feel about ethanol for fuel but it's an immense industry here.

Good job on your investment!
 

Mick Fagan

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I don't see why that would hold you back, exporting power to the grid can be controlled by the inverter(s). Essentially you have what we have on our house, photovoltaic (PV) cells on the roof and batteries around the property. When we first put PV on the roof, our system was small and we exported anything we weren't using. Some years later we added more PV to a couple of rooftops of our house and added 20kW/h of flow batteries. By this stage in Melbourne Australia, conditions had changed and we now are required to restrict our export possibility to 5kW/h.

As there is a possibility in the near future that we may be charged to export our excess power to the grid, we will just shut export to the grid if this happens. Currently we are virtually self sufficient between mid October to mid April.

Are your batteries Lithium Ion, or Sodium Ion? Our current batteries are hybrid flow batteries, if we add more batteries, I'm fairly certain we would endeavour to use Sodium Ion.

Regardless, congratulations on your efforts to help the world and at the same time, dramatically reducing your running costs.
 

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Germany has been hit hard by the war in Ukraine. they were planning on buying cheepgas from Russia, which is no longer available until the war is resolved. Plus, after the Atomic Power issue in Japan, they decided to shut down all their nukes. so they are not as well prepared to have cheep power.
Here in Ontario, we dumped coal, and 60% of our Power (we call it Hydro) is from CANDU reactors. Most of the rest in hydroelectic, wind solar and some Gas peaking plants which run on Gas from ALberta and saskachewan. SO I am not surprised that Solar and Storage is ecconomical their many years before it will be in North america.
 

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That's awesome, especially in a country not known for it's sunny climate.
 

Craig

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MattKing said:
By way of comparison, in BC we pay $0.0975 /kWh for the first 316 kWh each month and $0.1408 /kWh thereafter. All prices in $CDN.
Most of our power is hydro power, but we are reaching capacity there.
Click to expand...
That is cheap. Next door in Alberta I was paying over 20 cents through much of the winter and last summer was over 30 cents. Much of that was due to the coal plants being phased out and not enough gas fired capacity to replace it. There is wind and solar, but that is obviously not dependable sources of energy.
 
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