A friend is considering putting solar at his farm. He is a modest user, no big power uses. But he has to fix "his" wires to the meter on his property as they were deemed a fire risk very recently, so needs to spend some money there. The distance is about 250meters from his meter box to the road supply which has a transformer there.
The work required is to retension the wires as they are sagged below standard and probably replace the last pole with the meterbox. Interesting that the several poles in the string were put in by the supplier years ago, before his time, but are now deemed to be private poles and his responsibility, as is the last one which is marked as such.
He asked the supplier what the max he can feed in for grid connect and was told 8.3Kw but due to the 250m to the transformer it will in reality probably limit to about 3kw. Does this sound correct. I guess the rural grid is not as robust as in town to receive power. It does mean that putting in a big system will be a waste of money if it cannot feed the power into the grid and earn some money. It is a rural area with small grazing farms sprinkled around.
He could go off the grid but is reluctant to do that first up. Partly due to the fact he is planning on a large shed which would provide a suitable roof but it is not built yet. He would review the position of that shed to provide better roof orientation and distance to the house if he was off grid. Decisions decisions !
Ideas ? Answers ? Supplier ? Bulahdelah area NSW !
Jaahn
He says the wires are OK anyway and not below standard. But he is qualified to do that at a cost of about 1/10th of the suppliers charges !! And he appears to be well regarded and knows the answers.
