u/Excellent_Antelope85

Bit of a thought experiment and I’d be interested to hear what others think.

We’re considering staying on a power plan where we don’t export any surplus solar back to the grid. We have a home battery, so we capture excess solar during the day, and we can also use it to heat the spa and hot water cylinder.

Our plan with Contact gives us a three-hour “free power” period from 9 pm to midnight. I know it’s not really free, as it’s built into the pricing of the plan, but it’s a useful way to describe it. During that window we can charge our EV, heat the hot water cylinder, top up the spa, and most importantly, fully recharge our home battery so it supplies the house overnight. We might use 30kw in this time.

The trade-off is that we can’t earn anything from exporting excess solar. Based on our calculations, we’ll probably use around $2,000 to $3,000 worth of electricity during that three-hour period each year.
The other factor is that our daytime electricity use is already quite high. With the battery capturing our excess solar during the day, the chances of having significant surplus to export are fairly low, except perhaps during the peak of summer.

For those with solar and batteries, how much do you actually earn from exporting to the grid each year? Has anyone compared the value of export credits against the value of a plan with a three-hour free power period? I’d be really interested to hear your real-world experiences and whether you think giving up export income is worth it.

As noted, just a thought experiment.

We’re getting solar installed in about three weeks. Earlier this year I treated some lichen on our roof and I believe it is now dead, but it hasn’t actually come off.

I’m wondering whether it’s best to water blast the roof before the solar panels are installed, or simply leave the dead lichen in place. The roof is a pressed metal tile roof that’s about 15 years old, and I’m a bit reluctant to water blast it because those roofs can dent easily and I don’t want to damage or remove any of the chip coating.

My concern is that once the solar panels are installed, any dead lichen underneath them is unlikely to come off naturally.

Has anyone been in a similar situation? Would you:
• Water blast and remove the dead lichen before installation?
• Treat it again just to be safe?
• Leave it alone if it’s already dead?

I’d be interested to hear people’s experiences and recommendations.

Been playing a lot of games over the past three years on my Gigabyte 3050. I know it’s not the fastest or the best, but I’ve still been able to play games I’ve always wanted to experience, like Forza Horizon 4, Red Dead Redemption 2, and Far Cry 4 and 5. There are so many great games to play that I missed out on after I stopped gaming following the PS1 era.

I know this is a first world problem. But this app is so bad. I’ve had to login each time to use it over the past few days. It doesn’t save what you’ve watched. And the entire design is just worse than what it was. Who the heck designed this and didn’t test this before pushing it out…