My Convoluted Coffee Making Process...

...Because Java is Good

This is probably not the most elaborate way to make coffee, and I won't call it the best.  After all, the former assertion requires robust knowledge of coffee-making around the world, and the latter is a matter of taste (no pun intended).  However, this is what we now usually do every morning, and I'm recording (and sharing) it here for posterity - and just in case one day I lose my mind.

Beginning with the French Press

My French press holds about 750 grams of very hot water comfortably, enough to make two decent cups of coffee.  I use the French press' beaker to measure out water into my kettle, putting around 2.25 (two and a quarter) beakers-full of water in.  I then heat it up to 195 degrees F.  Use an instant-read thermometer, preferably a digital one, stuck into the spout to monitor the temp.

The Beans, The Grind

I measure around 38 grams of beans to my 750 intended grams of water.  Measuring the beans before grinding works fine.  This is about a 20:1 ratio of water to coffee.  The smaller your ratio, the more coffee you are adding to your water.  A 15:1 ratio will mean that you'll add 50 grams of coffee to the 750 grams of water.  You'll have to work out your favorite, or whatever gets you the most caffeine before your eyes start twitching.

Now, I realize most people use liquid measures for measuring water, but I do most of my measuring by weight, and it gives excruciatingly predictable and repeatable results.

We have an aging burr grinder.  But it works - for the moment.  I do a course grind on the beans, not the absolute coarsest setting, but just a little finer than that.  We've also used store-bought pre-ground coffee (coffee-maker grind), but it tends to be harder to press and might be a little more bitter.

Grind while the water is heating up, or during the preheating step (below) if you have decided to leave everything unattended until the kettle whistle blows.

Preheating the Beaker

By now, your water should be up to temp.  If it's too hot, that's fine.  If it's just below 190, that's probably fine too.  Now, you're wondering why I poured 2.25 beakers-worth of water into the kettle.  It's because now we're going to waste a little for preheating the French press' beaker.  

Pour in a good amount - since I heated up so much water, I pour in as much as I reasonably can.  Let the beaker sit for a few minutes to warm.  The glass will, predictably, get quite hot.  Do not touch it unless you need to wake up faster.  I will put the plunger in and slosh the water in the beaker around over the sink.  Sloshing too vigorously is a good way to test your pain threshold.

If you had heated the water to a full boil, you can either take this time to let the beaker get very hot while the kettle water cools down, or - to rush it - you can add cold water to the kettle until the temperature is around 195 degrees F.  Swirl your instant-read around in the kettle while adding the cold water, to help it mix and to not over-cool.

On my little portable induction cooktop, I often heat to 190, then fill the beaker and leave the kettle on the cooktop at the lowest level with the spout lid open - it keeps its temp and heats very slowly toward 195.

The Pour

Once the beaker is quite hot, dump the water down the drain.  Now add the grinds, zero your scale, and add water from the kettle - I aim for the aforementioned 750 grams.  The temperature should remain in the 190s if you pop your instant-read thermometer in there for curiosity's sake.  

At this point you can set the lid and plunger in place on the top of the press and set a timer for five (5) minutes.  At the end of that time, perform a standard very-very-slow-press (weight-of-hand / gravity-press, but I'm meaty) and pour the magical caffeine-laden tonic into a worthy and deserving cup.

Pouring for Two

I mentioned this makes two decent cups.  The grinds absorb about 50 grams of water in the process, so you can usually get out about 700 grams total.  I put the two cups on the scale and dump around 350 into each.  Or if I'm unsure, I'll shoot for 345 each and then start splitting the extra with back-and-forth pours between the cups.  This works well if the cups are different shapes, as most of ours are.

The Reasoning, and Variations

We had bought some special coffee once from a local bulk retailer, and the instructions on a couple of the bags indicated brewing between 190 and 200 degrees F.  After much playing with that, I now try to stay within that range.  Previously I always poured at 212 degrees and left it for four minutes, but it tended to leach out a lot more acidity.  There is a difference between excellent, dark, strong coffee and obliterated, dark, strong coffee.  Needless to say, I didn't realize what I was missing.

Brewing at or below 200 for the longer time seems to bring out significantly more flavor, without tasting watered-downed or harsh.  I have brewed for as long as six minutes, though I can't remember how I felt about it afterwards.

One site I revisited while typing this suggested pouring at exactly 200 degrees.  However, they did not appear to preheat whatever they were pouring into - which I think were the mugs themselves.  Maybe I skipped over that part, though.  Anyway, the minute the water hits the vessel, it loses temperature.  I did some informal testing of this back when I started preheating the beaker, and was astounded to find double-digit drops in temperature (say, from 190 degrees kettle temp to 160 degrees in the beaker, shortly after pouring, but don't quote me on that).

While we could get very scientific about all of this, and confirm my very impromptu and not very scientific findings, it also doesn't appear to hurt to preheat the beaker - aside from wasting a little extra water (hell, save it for tea later!).  The second pour with the grinds loses very little temperature, the glass of the beaker having already absorbed and not immediately lost much of the first pour's heat.  The result is a slightly lower-temperature water striking the beans, and a (probably) more sustained temperature throughout the brewing.

Also, in the past I used to stir the grinds right after pouring, and then right before plunging.  I don't do either of those now, I just make sure all the grinds are wet while I'm pouring.  A fast, dangerous pour will accomplish this.  

Stirring before plunging seems to just gum up the screen.  Stirring after the pour probably does no harm, other than dirtying another utensil.  And in the morning, I prefer not to have to wash extra things.

Further Study

There is obviously a lot more we could do to confirm all of this.  I could sneak in some temperature probes, monitor the water every 30 seconds for the five minute duration.  I could test also against a room-temp beaker, to see how the water temp varies.  I could try using a double-boiler with one of my glass measuring cups to maintain the brew at exactly 195 degrees, or exactly 200 degrees, or test with temperatures in between, although at that point I think we'd be splitting hairs...

One must also play with the concentration of coffee to water.  I find that - personally - pushing to 40 grams of coffee is just too much and I end up with shoulder and back pain from a strange muscle tension that has been too consistently observed after enjoying a delicious cup of intense java.  Dialing down to 35 produces quite acceptable results, also, so feel free to experiment.

Good luck!

Solar Panels and Heat

 Does Heat Impact Panel Production?

A friend asked me this question.  I felt compelled, as a result, to expound upon it here!

The short answer is: yes it does.  The more important questions:

• By how much?
• Are more efficient panels worth it?

A Tale of Two Panels

As I was doing my research, I wanted to know between the two candidates just how their panels would perform over the hypothetical long-run.  Actual production is affected by many factors:

• Overall panel efficiency
• Heat losses
• Age losses
• Soiling 
• Obstructions

Let's talk briefly about these.

Overall Panel Efficiency

The panels convert solar energy into electrical energy, but not at a 1-to-1 rate.  The photons striking the panel have to interact with electrically-complex junctions, and not all wavelengths are used evenly.  Beyond being a way to compare two panels for scientific purposes, this number is - to the consumer - little more than a curiosity.  

Most panels operate around 19% efficiency.  Some panels tout a 20% or 21% efficiency.  What does this mean to you, dear buyer?  Smaller panels, usually with a larger price tag.  A bigger 19% panel will generate just as much power as a smaller 21% panel.  Unless you're a solar farm and installing a cool million of them, those two percentage points probably won't be worth much.

Do we want more efficient panels?  Yeah, someday, when they're maybe closer to 40% or more, but only so long as they are still affordable.

Heat Losses

Panels lose efficiency as they get hot.  Conversely, they perform better as they get colder.  All panels are tested at a standard reference temperature - usually 25 C (77 F).  Most roofs during the day get hot, and that heat will belong to your panels after they're installed.  Some panels will advertise better resiliency against heat (lower losses).  Are they worth the superior price?

Age Losses

Panels also degrade over time.  This should be a no-brainer (Kansas nods slowly).  But the rate is usually guaranteed not to exceed some amount of loss over some amount of time.  A common standard is around 15% over 20 years.  The loss rate is usually given as a percentage of degradation per year, something like 0.8% per year.

Soiling and Obstructions

These two have no representation on the spec sheets, because the panels can't control where they're installed.  However, for the purposes of generating power effectively, these two factors must be borne in mind.  Panels need occasional cleaning (I'm told maybe once a year).  Obstructions, such as trees, clouds, and adjacent buildings, will affect their performance.

Evaluating

The last two losses - soiling and obstructions - we'll take as constants because no matter what panels we put on the roof, they're all going to be suffering the same fate.  In other words, there is nothing for us to calculate there.  We'll assume that all panels receive awesome, direct light, and focus on heat and age.

I punched in all the data from the data sheets, if for no other reason to see them side-by-side.  Data sheets, by their nature, do not make such a comparison otherwise easy.

The question under consideration, in my case, was "how does the SunSpark configuration compare to the REC configuration?"  We could argue fine points all day long, things like max power, overall efficiency, and annual degradation (which the REC panels all technically "won" on).  But our goal is to produce power over the long-run, and to do so affordably.

Considering Heat Losses

We're given that the SunSparks lose slightly more power (Temperature Coefficient of Pmax) for each degree C than the RECs.  How does this look for daily, monthly, and yearly production?  I present a somewhat unrealistic calculation below, since over the course of the year production varies with the sun's position and duration in the daytime sky.  I also hold constant the temperature through the "day", the "month", and the "year".

Is this a legitimate way to compare?  Well, panel temperatures are probably going to vary the same - or so we'll tell ourselves - no matter what panel we put up there.  Some might even be hotter from being placed directly on the roof shingles, but we'll assume the mounting is essentially identical.  So we can scratch hourly variation off the list.

If a panel is constructed in such a way as to not be as badly affected by the heat, that should be represented by the coefficient - and so there it is.

Second, panels are going to receive the same amount of incoming light no matter what panel is in place. The sun is the sun, clouds are clouds, and a panel can't make power out of nothing.  Even the most "efficient" panel won't convert darkness into power.  It'll just produce more in any light than a less efficient panel would.  For sake of comparison then, it seems fair to keep the incoming sun and the overall module temperature the same.

We see int he above that at evaluation temperature (25 C), our yearly production would provide 43,006 and 36,385 kWh for SunSpark and REC respectively.  Bear in mind there are two different panel populations, with two different costs and overall production targets.  But both arrays are intended to deliver 100% power replacement for my needs.

At 45 C (113 F), panel efficiency is predicted to drop by the given rates.  REC has better rates, slightly, but you can be sure a salesman will make sure you know it!  Our yearly production totals?  40,597 and 34,638 kWh, respectively.  SunSpark lost roughly 2400 kWh and REC lost 1740 kWh.

Considering Age Losses

The 5 year age loss estimate is listed in the table above, but for sake of reference here is the complete table:

At the toasty-hot temperature of 60 C (140 F), the arrays might produce 38,791 and 33,328 kWh for the year, respectively.  Our losses on the SunSpark are greater, but we're still producing quite a lot.  What's more, it hasn't dipped below the RECs, and of course it shouldn't given the specs.  But the aging effects are more considerable.

The SunSparks are expected to lose 0.8% per year, whereas the RECs should only lose 0.25% per year.  That will definitely be in the advertising slick.  But over twenty years, what are the results?  At the temperature we just considered (60 C), this comes to 32,585 and 31,662 kWh expected production for the year, SunSpark and REC respectively.

The Cost of Production

Ultimately, the question we find ourselves asking is: "Is it worth it?"  Over the course of twenty years, the slightly more-expensive array - at first glance - will still be out-producing the smaller, less-expensive array.

There are few things we could do here.  We could up-size the smaller array, albeit at a much more expensive price-point (a 22.4 kWh REC system, which is how large the SunSpark array is spec'd to be, would have cost around $69,753.60).  We could down-size the larger array (down to around $54,256.80 in case you're interested - remember these are rough estimates though).  We could even split the difference.

However, one thing to bear in mind is that panels that produce more watts are also usually larger.  Even with the slightly higher "efficiency," a 370 watt panel is going to be heftier than a 320 watt panel, which means potentially fewer panels on your roof.  Whether this is good or bad depends on your goals.  If you want to squeeze as much power as you can get out of your available space, larger panels might compromise that desire by being too large to fully utilize the available space - think having only a single row instead of a double row, or losing a few huge panels because of vent stacks, chimneys, roof joints, etc.

Another way to look at it is: are the cheaper panels a worse deal?  I think that is an easier to answer question, and the answer here is that they're not.  Yes, there are more of them.  Yes, they will degrade faster over time.  But they are not unreasonably priced and thanks to the larger overall system size, the long-term degradation is somewhat nullified.  That is to say, my overall needs will still be met, ideally, twenty years down the road.  Our goal is then to make sure we've received a good return on our investment, so as long as the system covers our power needs for the foreseeable future, that return will be solid.

Conclusion

This is obviously not a "you should buy this" article, and it wasn't meant to be.  It was only meant to explore and demonstrate some of the complexities when evaluating prospective panels and arrays, and to understand a few of the gimmicks that are used and based off of honey-colored statistics.  Overall, the simplest comparison for the price-focused consumer is simply the cost-per-watt, which is simple and direct to calculate.  If nothing else, hopefully the above shows that a panel can tout absolute awesomeness over the competition, and yes in the end it might not really amount to much.  

Maybe you're aesthetic-focused and can't bear the thought of panels on the front of your house: larger panels in the back might be superior for you.  Maybe a crazy roof is not conducing to large panels, and you need a more flexible layout.  Maybe you are driven primarily by price-point.  Maybe you want to check every efficiency box you can.  Those factors are going to drive your decisions more than the spec slicks probably will.

My First Solar Install - Notes and Experiences (Part 5)

The Ongoing Solar Install Journal 

This post is an update on how the system has been performing.

The Addition of Sense

Part of the way into March, I was talking with my solar company salesman and he mentioned whole-house power monitoring that included solar production - namely, Sense.  Since I'd been looking for a solution (and my desire to build one did not match up with my available time), I went for it.  About $400 later, we had whole-house power monitoring...again.  We used to, with the TED-5000, but it had died a few years ago after a very long and good run of monitoring.

Intense Tracking

Overall, I like it very much.  I prefer to warehouse my own data, which is the only detracting attribute of Sense: it requires a constant uplink and stores nothing locally.  Everything you do with your Sense, you tend to have to do via the webapp or the phone app.  The phone app is, however, very useful.

Aside from totals, it uses machine learning to identify device patterns and can detect when individual devices turn on and off.  With that info, it can tell you how much power a particular device uses over time.  It takes time to get a decent bunch of them found, but all in all it's pretty neat and quite functional.  But since this isn't a sales pitch for Sense (and they sure aren't paying me to talk about it), let's just focus on the graph above.  That's May's recorded usage, and for the most part (i.e. minus a couple hours one day when my firewall lost power before I woke up), it is a complete summary of our use (blue bars, green plug icon) and our daily generation (orange bars, sun icon).  

You can probably ignore the dollar figures - I do... it's based on a flat rate, so I punched in $0.12, which is in the neighborhood but doesn't account for the usage tiers my provider has.

May was, as you can probably tell, a good month.

Generated Credits

We have, so far, not had to pay for a single kWh since the February billing cycle.  We're already up to nearly a month's worth of kWh credits, or around 2,200.

I have been able to fill in a couple of months-worth of bills now, and here are the results:

Thanks to the detail that Sense captures, I can calculate what we would've paid if we hadn't had solar.  Basically, for May we saved around $80.  Once the system is paid off, that will look more like a $350 savings.

System Performance

So far the system is performing beyond expectations.  Lately the generation has been a little more spotty due to daily cloud-cover and thunderstorms, but even with those our worst day in the last seven was 52 kWh, our best 105 kWh, and the 7 and 14 day moving averages (as of today) were 81.8 and 95.7 (respectively).  The 14 day moving average for last week was around 105 kWh, and at the end of May it was 116 kWh.

I have a chart that tracks all of these figures, which of course I hand-enter daily from my inverters:

It's important to note that as long as we're generating more than we're using overall, we're in good shape.  A few bad days here and there does not break the bank, and right now we're continuing to increase our credits.

Our expected and actual power generation is tracked on the Sunny Portal (SMA's PV management site):

Note that for June, the month that we're in, obviously we're still in it and so the total yield bar is justifiably below the expectation.  Also note that January we were technically not online, and February we were turned on part-way through the month.

Comments, Considerations

The guy who came out to rebury our CATV cable had also used my solar provider, even the same salesman.  We had a good laugh and compared notes.  He managed to get his system installed during the 30% tax rebate days.

Overall, I am extremely happy and pleased with the system.  It is operating beyond my expectations and is now at the point of operating basically autonomously.  I only baby-sit it still because I'm neurotic like that.

Batteries

Would I invest in batteries?  At this time, no.  My situation unfortunately (or fortunately, given the cost of batteries) does not lend itself to such an investment.  For what it's worth, the power company is my "battery" and since I'm feeding in more to the grid than I'm using per day (most days), I really have no qualms about not running my own battery bank at the moment.

I would consider investing in them if the prices dropped dramatically, or an alternative energy storage solution (alternative to typical batteries) became readily available.  I've read about one that uses pumps and a special liquid, but the tech isn't really ready for production yet.  That said, the only time batteries would benefit me here is during a major outage.  So, let's hope we don't have one of those...

The Panels

Do I like my entire roof covered in panels?  Why yes, yes I do.  To be perfectly honest, I've never been a stickler for aesthetics, though I have developed a more critical eye in my older years.  That said, I want power...lots of power, and so I put as many panels up there as I legally could.  Given how much power we are able to produce, and the fact that we've zeroed our bill the last few months, I have no regrets.  And as long as we continue to zero our bill through to the end of the year, I will continue to have no regrets.

The Electric Car

I've had a few people now ask about our solar.  They also get excited when they see my little Focus Electric charging in the driveway.  "Oh man, and you charge this with your solar, don't you?" they ask.  No...not really.  Sorry.

The car doesn't care where it gets its power from, and my charger unit (an OpenEVSE box), runs off the mains.  The grid-tie doesn't give me the option to run separately, though I think SMA might offer some solutions to that effect.  That said, given the credit system with my energy provider, why bother?  Currently I don't drive it much, so it doesn't draw any more than what is necessary to keep the battery topped and cooled during hot days.  When I was driving it daily, I'd chew through the 22 kWh battery almost completely.  That said, it was probably more like 18 kWh, since you can't run it to zero.

18 kWh per day off our current generation totals would probably hurt a bit, but it looks like what we're generating would more than cover it.  Even if it didn't, even if we were breaking even with our usage and generation, and the car us over by 360 kWh onto the bill, that'd be only like $50 a month.  Still way cheaper than gas for doing 50 miles a day for 20 work days.

Other Solar Tech

One of the other companies I was looking into called me and wanted to know if they could close my file.  I'd already let the guy down once, but I guess he was a glutton for punishment.  And once again I filled him in on what I bought.  He let out a most annoying groan when I told him I'd gone with string inverters (his company does optimizers).

Now, here's the thing.  I've read the sales and specs sheets myself, I've studied the tech, and I've read what is apparently the only available research out there that bothered to compare these types of systems.  Obviously, the industry in general - and the solar research institutes in particular - need to do better here.  But given what I learned, and my specific situation of full sun all day long (barring clouds), I had and still have no reason to believe that optimizers or microinverters would win me much benefit.

For kicks I tried to figure out a way to perform a comparative calculation between the two proposed systems (the one I chose, and the one I didn't).  I decided that the two most sensible numbers to use were the system design watts, and the total expected production in kW.

Dividing total expected production by system design, we end up with two almost-dimensionless figures: 1.388 and 1.407 expected kW per design watt, chosen and not-chosen systems respectively.  What this basically says is that these two systems are nearly identical.  Over the course of a year, I should get almost the same kW per unit design watt.  In other words, the optimizers would have to do something very special to provide me additional benefit.

My system is the lower of the two numbers (1.388), and yet because we could afford more panels, we wound up with a better overall value.  We should generate around 4000 kW additional power over the course of the year, or about 1.6 months-worth.

Now, the problem with the above calculation is that I really don't know how well one can expected optimizers to...well...optimize panel output.  So many of the major worries that are thrown at prospective customers - such as "a single bad panel will take out a whole string" - are passe.  The better panels have bypass diodes, so that isn't a problem.  A weaker panel might slow things down a little, but the underlying question is: how much loss do you have to incur to make the optimizers worth it?

I won't go into a bunch of "what if's" here, if only to keep this readable and on-topic.  What I can say is that this is where we need more research, and unfortunately the only research I was able to find, when I made my decision, basically strongly supported the string inverter technology.  SMA also recently started advertising shade-fix boxes for individual panels, which are meant to act almost like optimizers but can be used on a panel-by-panel basis (instead of having to attach them to every panel in your array).  Do they work?  Are they worth the money?  I really can't say.

What I can say is that given the overall costs of the two candidate systems, and the expected outputs and performance to-date, I have no regrets with choosing the technology that we did.

Moving Forward

I'll update this blog again once a few more months have passed.  At this point, anyone following this should expect business to proceed as usual: the panels will keep generating power, my bill will remain practically zero, my electric car will be sitting in the driveway doing nothing much of anything.

Daydreaming

If I were to be in a position to build my own community, I would definitely do this:

• Put solar on every house and centralize the upkeep of them all - basically give the people living there nothing much to do other than enjoy the benefits.
• Work with the local energy provider to set up a local-to-the-community battery substation, sort of like what was done in Australia (though theirs was, like, state-sized).

The key benefits I'd be looking to extract from the above would be:

1. With solar on every roof, the community generation should be utterly fantastic - far more than what the community as a whole would or could use.
2. With a battery substation, we'd be in a position to offer community-wide power during outages, for as long as the batteries could hold out.
3. The battery substation could also be useful during brownouts or whenever the main energy provider needs a bit of a break on the grid, or to supplement the provider during the evenings/nights.

Of course, to achieve the above, you'd need the community to pay into it, either via HOA fees (egad, I hate HOAs), or as a community "power bill."  Without running the numbers on upkeep costs (mainly for the batteries), I couldn't say what that number would be.  But as soon as the solar was paid off, the batteries and other infrastructure would be all you'd be on the hook for - aside from the occasional re-roof job or when panels start to wear out.