[ExI] Whatever happened to peak oil by 2020?

[Eugen Leitl]

On Tue, May 14, 2013 at 07:10:40AM -0700, spike wrote:

> His operation is a few hundred kWp.  I would think there is some economy of
> scale as you go up, with respect to power conditioning.  In this particular
> special case, the power does not need to be particularly clean.  If the
> power to the house is completely separate and the PVs are only running
> massive electric motors, I would think there should be some way to take
> advantage of the huge inductance of all those motors to help stabilize the
> PV power.  Failing that, perhaps he could use DC motors to run the pumps?
> Those things should be more forgiving and perhaps result in lower
> power-conditioning losses.

I think this requirement profile and size (several 100 kWp is pretty
big for a single private installation) does ask for a custom design.
There's no grid, so going DC all the way appears useful.

I would consider using capacitor banks to provide current for 
motor startup. In general starting and stopping large motors is
a different design space, so I would consult a specialist.