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Use for excess clean energy at home (lemmy.world)

submitted 6 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I have a 100 W rigid solar panel including a charge controller that I currently only use for camping to charge batteries (also useful in an emergency at home). It strikes me as a waste that I could be generating more clean energy with equipment that I already have, but I don't have anything in mind to use this energy for.

Obviously I could try to tie it into my home to run more of my household on solar, or buy more/bigger batteries to charge, but with 100 W of generation, it's probably not worth it without a significantly increased investment.

I tried searching around online, and I found plenty of discussion for what to do with a whole house that generates excess capacity (mainly sell to the grid), but nothing really on what to do with small scale DC generation.

Anyone here have thoughts?

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I'm no expert, but I'd imagine figuring out a (safe) way to use it with your water heater would be the low-hanging fruit, in terms of least-complexity for the amount of grid consumption you'd potentially save.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago

That's an interesting idea. A water heater is a really underutilized battery that most households have. I suppose you could hook it up to a thermostat with a set point a couple degrees higher than the mains (or gas) powered thermostat.

A quick search says in my location with a 100W panel, I'll generate 400Wh as my daily average (1.44 MJ). With a 150 L tank, that gives you about 2.25 K increase in temp for a day.

That's not nothing.