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.
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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
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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?
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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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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