Brrr that does sound cold. I grew up in Indiana, but have been here for about 30 years.
We have ‘net metering’ here, so the meter just goes back and forth at the same rate / kwh. However, you can never get paid actual $, and you can only roll it forward for 12 months. So the ideal financial result is to net to zero. I designed my system with a target 90% solar offset goal.
We don’t have a limit of which I am aware, but I do know the liability insurance requirement is tiered based upon size. I already had sufficient liability coverage so it wasn’t an incremental cost for me, but for some it would be.
I am in Estonia near Rakvere and my Farm (Miila Mahe Aed OÜ) is Off-the-Grid.
I run three Windmills iSTA-Breeze i2000/48, one Windmill iSTA-Breeze i700/48, one Windmill iSTA-Breeze i700/24 and 18,8kWp of Solarpanels (more are coming because I plan a Geothermal Energy Storage to heat in the Winter) with 140kWh of SOPzS cells
However, it is annoying, that if the Yarbo is standing on the charging station 100% charged and has nothing to do, the Stand-By Power Consumption is around 1kWh a day, hence IF for whatever reason the charger goes off, the Yarbo is self-discharged in 2 days.
This happen while I was in vacancy and even if the power came back, it does not more charge once it is Off-Line. Hence I had to run over the field with 100m extension cord and the mobile charger 2 weeks late when I came home.
It was a nightmare, because of rain and “NICE“ weather I got >30cm high grass.
The Yarbo is very nice, but there are some flaws and mostly software related.
However, being Off-the-Grid and use Yarbo is excellent
I know this isn’t exactly what you meant, but I am surprised no mower manufacturers incorporated solar into their robot, to at least partially charge while mowing. Or would the size of the panel that would fit give almost no gains?
There is no way that you can charge Yarbo while working.
If it has already a self consumption of around 1kWh a day, MrYarbo would need a Solarpanel of 150Wp minimal to compensate it which is bigger then the Yarbo.
I wish, there would be a Charging Station, which does not need 230V AC.
The use of 24/48V (Selectable and 24V in my case) would be much better in Off-the-Grid installations. All the Wireless charging Station would need are roughly 4-6kWh of Batteries, a Victron SmartSolar MPPT 150/35 and 1200Wp of solarpanels
I know it couldn’t cover all the power, but I wondered how much of a charge a panel that would fit could provide. I worked for a company that developed a heat to power circuit that recovered 3%. It was something, but probably not worth it in the end.
If it would just power a fan connected to a heat-sink that would be awesome! Next to general break-downs, cool-down time is my biggest productivity hit.
