sagraiasolar's activity

Welcome to the good life. I've designed lots of systems just like you have described and the way it's done is pretty well established now.The trick is to get away from gas pretty much completely, if not absolutely, and a properly balanced set of solar panels with a wood burner can do this. It is now at the point where gas is just there for boosting and backup with a big question as to whether to have a gas boiler at all. So to answer your question about reducing the gas bills, the answer is that you can completely eliminate your gas bills except for cooking. Plugging in a wood burner can sometimes be almost free, just a matter of two pipes to the heat bank but only if the layout is carefully planned... a lot depends on the size of house and the general layout.. bigger houses sometimes warrant a wood burning furnace. You should probably be thinking about heat pumps too and PV panels - bigger up front costs but you can get well past the ZERO COST mark on energy and towards a PROFIT of €2,000 odd. Paying huge heating bills is entirely optional - there is a choice.

when surveying for PV panel installations I always find that access to the quadra from outside is all used up and costly digging up of marchepiedi etc is needed for the rather fat cables, SO always put a large piece of ducting from the outside possetto to the quadra and then another one for any comms wires that don't like sitting next to power lines. Inside you might consider - for the salone - a central switch that controls a socket in each corner of the room... that way all your table lamps, which always seem to end up in the corners, can be switched without trying to remember how each one individually works. Think out any spot lamps on beams and put in ducting anyway if in doubt ... beats having a jack hammer trenching the wall later.... and then there's the rear speakers of the home cinema kit; they will need ducting in place too. Back outside; ducting to security lights cameras etc on all outside walls will give you more choice for later. Finally make all this mouse proof or you could end up spending a fortune.

not sure I get the double counting bit.   There are two meters in the plot. One measures and pays the tariff on all production regardless of use and that's what the bank takes. The other domestic meter is upgraded to measure power sent to the grid and this is what kills off the electricity bills which are a completely separate issue. A comment on the high cost.  The panels are mounted on a rather smart car port which is included in the cost. Also because the comune restricted the size of the car port I went for the highest output Sanyo panels which are the most expensive... even so I'm sure you could do all this much cheaper now.

At he end of the 15 years the capital and interest will have been cleared from the bank and then all income from the panels becomes mine. The income does not fall year by year.... only newcomers to the scheme fix on a lesser amount each year. You asked what my bills would be over 15 years and the answer is that I estimate a coincidental 32,000.  There is, of course, an opportunity cost on the 10,000 deposit if the investment fails to pay for some reason but not on the 32,000 which was never mine to start with. So: If I didn't have PV: in 15 years time I would be 32,000 poorer and I would have spent my 10,000 on bills..... then I would still have mounting bills to face for ever. With PV: over 15 years I have no bills and then the bank gives back my 10,000 and I then get the income myself and I still have no electricity bills in succeeding years. A quasi pension. One other consideration that influenced me is that practically every man, woman and child in the western world shoulders about 30,000 in government debt there could be massive inflation. I also expect the Euro to be weak relative to GBP for a while so having EUR debt is a good thing. I also had another agenda which was to proove that one could heat a big house at ZERO COST and if you own a good proportion of your PV panels that is indeed the case.  What next? Anyone out there know about electric cars?

First of all I'm not in the PV business so I'm an impartial consumer. To answer the questions: the bank takes the income for 15 years - I can and probably will pay them off before that though -  The whole kit cost 32,000 Eur  - much  cheaper now I think. and the bank wanted us to lodge 10,000 in their fund ... yes of course if it falters we lose money. The fact remains that until we unwind the deal the electricity bills have gone away.  .. and when we do unwind it we get to keep the 3,000 odd generated each year.  As for electricity bills going down in the future.. that's a call you make by not having the panels... I'm more comfortable the other way. 

We have a small bit of wall with this problem. As we have a fan kicking around I'm going to put it on a time switch and dry off the wall for half an hour each day.... worth a try. It's already got a spray of anti-mufa to keep the mould from getting hold.

I think there two elements here that do not combine happily and would be best kept apart. Firstly the PV solar panels. These water cooled ones are readily available in Italy but the fact is they are not that good in the first place. My Sanyo panels are 19.5% better before any cooling antics get going and I'd bet on better winter performance anyway as both are cold enough then.... as Badger says - never mind summer performance, the heating is on in the winter. The wet panels would be better kept apart too because we are after really hot water from these and only dedicated panels can do this... the hybrid system leaves a gap there in the summer which could only be filled by some proper panels unless you wanted to pay for more energy.... more expense and complication.  In the end though I think there will be one limiting factor in this design. As this is a water to water heat pump using the wet side of the PV panels as a heat source there can be no comparison in heat gathering performance between a few square meters of panel in the freezing night air and the GSHP alternative of a few hundred meters of tube buried in warmer earth. Even the fan on an air source heat pump can flow masses of air past the evaporator with unlimited access to the ambient energy - such as it is.

With visiting guests to many houses and Agritorismos it is usual to leave the access to Wi-Fi unprotected and therefor open for anyone to sneak a free go. We have some friends who often park outside the house to use their laptop and make calls etc   If the modem is a powerful one as might be used to cover a borgo then free access can be gained from some distance. I know of a case where access can be had from about a kilometer away, right across a valley. You can buy wi-fi detectors or try for it with your laptop and eventually you'll find a convenient place to park and surf.

The easiest and cheapest way to get tyres is to order them on the internet from gommadiretto.it which is part of a big franchise - mytyres in the UK - ... my latest tyres came promptly from Germany and saved me 300 bucks.

The solar PV earnings are not quite as advertised above.  In fact you have 2 meters. The production meter pays you the tarrif regardless of where the power goes after that. Your old meter is replaced with a bi-directional one. So you get further credits for exporting and then bills as before for excess consumption. The latter two seem to roughly balance out.  Obviously you are better off by consuming as much as you can in the day time... if you are using electricity in any way for heating there is a strong case for having massive storage to cut down on night time consumption. I'll do a proper report on this forum when the full year is up. The reality so far is that enough money has been literally banked to make the repayments and the electricity bills have halved and that half is matched my export credits..