The homeowner who pays to install photovoltaic “solar panels” for their own personal use could technically be “Off-The-Grid”. How would this homeowner deal with the intermittency of the sun, while still having household electricity?

Answer 1

n the ongoing debate over whether Feed-In Tariff’s (FIT) are justified for residential solar PV one issue seems to be overlooked completely. And this is, who is responsible for the upkeep and maintenance of these household solar systems?

Answer 2

Homes with solar panels generate electricity during daylight hours only. That electricity goes into the grid, into household batteries, or both, but during daylight only. Power from the grid comes during both daylight and night time.

The set of solar panels on my house provides all the electricity that my entire house uses. But it always gets all that electricity off the grid. No I'm not double talking here.

What happens is that my house pumps all the electricity it will ultimately use into the grid only during daylight hours. But it will use grid power both during daylight and night time. So the equation looks something like:

100% solar power to the grid during daylight = 40% grid power used during daylight + 60% grid power used during night time.

In essence the grid acts as a huge capacitor that gets charged during the day by my grid stored solar power. But then my house uses some of that stored energy during the day and later during the night as well. My electricity bill is $10 per month and not for electricity used...that's some sort of "fee."

Some houses also have backup batteries that get charged by their solar panels. But they are "backup" only. None is sufficient to provide whole-house electricity and none lasts for more than a few hours before they are totally depleted.