I gotta get a new roof put on.
All this hail caused more damage then I thought it did originally.
Should I have solar panels installed at the same time?
Discussion
Is your roof sturdy enough for solar?
Is your roof facing a good direction for solar?
Can you put enough panels on your roof to either eliminate or very significantly reduce your electric bill?
Are you concerned about power outages? (if so, you'll need storage, and storage costs waaaaaaay more than panels.)
Are you planning to sell back to the utility? If so, do you know the laws on how much you can sell back and the rates you can expect to get? Grid-interactive systems cost 3-10x more than off-grid systems.
If you care... What are local codes for solar? There are some legit concerns for the safety of any firefighters and some of the new code stuff is much safer all around, even for you if you ever need to get up on the roof for something.
These are all great questions.
I’m gonna have to do a lot of research.
What about wiring most of your house with 12v lighting and such like an RV?
DC LED wiring is cool. It can technically be more efficient due to not having to do double conversions (DC from panels to battery to AC through an inverter, back to DC in the bulb), but...
No one should be doing 12V storage in a house. (Yes, that's a strong opinion.) Minimum: nominal 48V systems. Copper is too expensive and also most 48V system stuff is significantly more efficient and can be less expensive per watt. You'd at least need one DC to DC converter for the lighting, and unless you get something that's not bottom of the barrel, it might not be any more efficient than using regular bulbs via 120V.
What about water battery type storage like building your own water tower or using a hillside if available for power storage?
Mechanical power storage is entirely possible, but, the scale of it is beyond the scope that most people can safely build. I might do something with that in the future since building strong stuff is totally in my wheelhouse.
I already produce "excess solar," but I've yet to find a very good way to shunt that into something like a water heater or non-typical battery storage. Yet. I will.
About water storage, specifically, an old school wind-powered water pump to lift well water into a holding tank (like you'd see out in the West of the US before and just after the turn of the least century) would be a really good use of wind power to provide a good way to lift water and greatly reduce pumping power required to maintain good pressure in your water system, mostly passively. (You'd need to maintain the windmill occasionally and make sure the system isn't leaking, but... Some of those setups are still functional after nearly a century with minimal maintenance, which is one of the things that I consider when pondering what to do as I build my home.)
Also, as a side note:
Reducing the need for electricity is a very good goal, in general. If you think about systems outside the literal box that most of us modern idiots have gotten ourselves into, you can find many ways to overcome the un-optimized lifestyle that most of us live. I don't want to build a direct replacement for most of the systems of a modern house, since, they are designed to be barely single use. I'm thinking about building for many generations.
I’m interested in “earthship” style building, partially buried in earth, waste materials for building, passive heating and cooling…I just really believe in water batteries 🤷♂️. But also, this may be too science fiction for now, there’s a book out there where they coil and wind springs which as they unwind produce mechanical energy…🤷♂️
We build such dumb and boring places to live these days
Yup. I know a bit about that style of house.
Very boring. 'built to code.' ugh.
If you have elevation, water is a really great way to power things.