In this final installment of the project that I have been sharing in «walk the talk» style, I share the experience of the start-up of the project, the closing of a cycle for the beginning of the commercial operation with the Distributor, and thus the beginning of the contribution to Sustainable Development Goal No.7 «Affordable and Clean Energy».
Today I started up the installation of 10 solar panels, an inverter, with total installed capacity of 2.9 KWe to inject to the grid; yesterday they finished the assembly at night and authorized me to energize it first thing today, I made a kind of vigil to wait for the first rays of sunlight to test the equipment, however it took me a while to «set up», configure the wifi access of the equipment, update the app, understand the error codes of the control panel, and from there ready to close the switch.
With the joy of beginners I watched the process of «self-testing» the equipment and then started to generate clean energy – I confess that I consider this a great milestone in my personal and family life, even though I have already participated in my professional life in many corporate energy projects and commissioned power plants with much larger capacities, the joy I have felt has been even greater in this renewable energy project at home – it is a wonderful experience the feeling of changing the world with affordable and non-polluting energy from my home!
I closed the switch, observed the first kilowatt being dispatched to the grid and then turned off the equipment, since there is no authorization to inject energy permanently to the grid yet, -it is only possible to do so for this testing phase called «commissioning»-; in two days the engineers from the distribution company will come to change the energy meter to the grid, they will check the installation, until that moment the project will start to run commercially and the business will start to roll.
I announced the start-up to the «stakeholders» -my family- , and then sharing the joy came the comments and questions, one of them was «now you can tell there is an Electrical Engineer at home» – which took me by surprise by the way but I reflected that you don’t need to be an engineer to do the project, probably just a good guide like this blog!; the questions were interesting so I decided to call them «FAQ: Familiar Asked Questions» and I decided to share them here from the family chat:
Why does the Distributor have to check the installation?
A/ The Distributor is responsible for the quality of service and electrical safety of the network, they must ensure that our equipment meets the electrical safety standard, then they will put the bidirectional meter to count the energy that is injected into the system, not only the energy that is consumed.
And now that we have solar panels, can we use them when the power goes out?
A/ Currently No, since our installation is designed to supply the grid when solar power is available. If we want to use it when there is no availability of energy from the grid, we will have to install additional equipment, an automatic switch to incorporate it properly to the grid, storage banks such as batteries to maintain availability for when energy is demanded, control equipment capable of adjusting the supply parameters to the demand we have in our home, among other equipment.
So now we are using the panels to sell power to the grid?
R/ Technically NO. Our business model is autoproducer, that is, we supply part of our consumption, the surplus we supply to the grid, but we do not make a commercial sale of energy to the distributor – we will never invoice them ourselves – but we deduct from our consumption what we produce, it is a «net» effect.
What happens if we generate more than we consume?
A/ When we generate more energy than we consume, we supply the difference to the Distribution Company’s network, which recognizes this volume of energy to discount it from future consumption, that is to say, it has a kind of «current energy account» that we can use in the future.
I kept thinking about the comments of my family to develop a next stage of the project, perhaps expand the capacity – my first feeling was to wait to confirm the results of the first stage and keep in mind that I can only do it for the difference between what I consume and what the current project generates- , another option that came to mind is to seek to be able to supply us with solar panels at home when there is no power in the grid of the distributor – here my first impression was that the network is very reliable, and with so little need and likelihood of using equipment for that, it is a phase that would not be unnecessary-, in the end I decided to freeze those ideas and projects not having overcome the «hunch» phase, I will leave it noted for future revisions, meanwhile, I will continue to share other interesting topics on the blog!.
By the way, what a joy! Now, as a consumer, I am part of the energy transition to zero emissions in the world, through Sustainable Development Goal 7 «Affordable and clean energy».
Graphic of the «App» that monitors the equipment in its first production of clean energy:
