Its looking like PV panels make about 10% of the rated power on a cloudy day like a typical winter day that south western B.C gets for months at a time in the winter, Lots of cloudy wet weather over here from the end of January to march/April.
I will need about about 10,000 watts in PV panels and some battery storage too run the house. If the heat pump uses 750 watts i can make it work.
about $15,000 for the panels, inverters including a few grand worth of batteries.
I will have to buy the land (a semi isolated acreage) and build the house with $175,000. I am hoping to spend $75,000 on land and use the rest on building supplies and expenses.
The Cinder Block walls with foam/cement exterior is looking like the way i am going to go, with the relative ease of insulating it to my specs, combined with a lower cost as compared to tilt up or pre-fab ICF panels.
I still need to figure out the right material to break the thermal bridge between the foundation and the cinder block walls, I have seen a video of a air-filled concrete that is used on foundations of passive houses in the UK, it is full of voids that break the thermal bridge. I am beginning to recognize that i should have back up heat/ wood furnace, but i am not giving up. A lot of people do not have a large PV systems and are somewhat dissatisfied with it, 10,000 Watts should pull me threw a winter ?
What the _____ am i going to do with 10,000 watts of power in the summer ?? I can see the benefit of being grid tied if only to sell them the excess power.
Our solar panels are 14 Sungrid panels at 215W each giving a total potential output of 3010W (3.01kWp) The SAP 2009 annual yield was quoted at 2479kWh.
Quote from link:
So far as of 13 July 2012 we have already generated 1972kWh of electricity in one of the worst British summers since records began with the wettest April and June since 1910. Extrapolating the generation figures over the next few months we could well see a total for the year of 3000kWh.
http://uk-solarpanels.blogspot.ca/20...1_archive.html
I found this video that is worth a watch, if you like 3 thousand watts of PV system.