Our home is not energy efficient as it was built cheaply in the 90's without insulation. We have since insulated ceiling, subfloor and installed thick curtains. But a large west facing wall always radiated heat well into the evening causing excessive air-conditioning bills. The cost and inconvenience of insulating the west wall was never truly resolved.
But the advent of higher powered solar panels (440W) and inverters designed to take higher input load than output 2:1 ratio allows for always ensuring significant excessive power generation. Our 19Kw 45panel solar system is feeding a 10KW inverter so even during winter we generate significant power with the inverter automatically clipping any excess above the inverters 10Kw capacity.
Any excess power generated beyond the house requirements is fed to the grid and automatically curtailed when feed-in tariff pricing goes negative. Our house now has significant excess power availability so we have purchased a 13Kw battery and an electric vehicle to absorb some of this, producing additional savings and independent power supply into the evening and even in the event of a blackout.
We are preparing for retirement and using the excess power generation to quietly remove future household expenses so that we will have NO power bills from electricity, petrol, or gas when we do retire.
