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0 pointsjacquesm16y ago0 comments

I wasn't aware the 'towel rail' was a new measure of power consumption, would that be the bath-towel rail or the toilet one ?

Seriously though, how many KWh do you go through in a day ?

We managed to get by on 1600 W of solar panels in Northern Canada, which in some weeks was touch and go on battery depletion (you really don't want to get below 70% or so).

That's what kept us going in the dark of winter:

http://pics.ww.com/v/jacques/renewables/batteries/IM000398.J...

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gridspy16y ago

Yeah, the towel rail is for the people who don't understand kWh.

That is 3.5KWH per day, powered using a 640W solar array and a petrol generator when there are several days of particularly bad weather. The battery bank stores 1200AH at 24V, and like you we try to keep it at 70% charge or above.

Gridspy was born out of monitoring power usage at the house both while there and while back in Auckland (90km away).

Read more here (should probably add more numbers to this blog entry) http://blog.gridspy.co.nz/2009/08/the-barrier-house.html

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