There Is a Point At Which It Will Make Economical Sense To Defect From the Electrical Grid (qz.com) 494
Michael J. Coren reports via Quartz: More than 1 million U.S. homes have solar systems installed on their rooftops. Batteries are set to join many of them, giving homeowners the ability to not only generate but also store their electricity on-site. And once that happens, customers can drastically reduce their reliance on the grid. It's great news for those receiving utility bills. It's possible armageddon for utilities. A new study by the consulting firm McKinsey modeled two scenarios: one in which homeowners leave the electrical grid entirely, and one in which they obtain most of their power through solar and battery storage but keep a backup connection to the grid. Given the current costs of generating and storing power at home, even residents of sunny Arizona would not have much economic incentive to leave the electric-power system completely -- full grid-defection, as McKinsey refers to it -- until around 2028. But partial defection, where some homeowners generate and store 80% to 90% of their electricity on site and use the grid only as a backup, makes economic sense as early as 2020.
[A]s daily needs for many are supplied instead by solar and batteries, McKinsey predicts the electrical grid will be repurposed as an enormous, sophisticated backup. Utilities would step up and supply power during the few days or weeks per year when distributed systems run out of juice.
[A]s daily needs for many are supplied instead by solar and batteries, McKinsey predicts the electrical grid will be repurposed as an enormous, sophisticated backup. Utilities would step up and supply power during the few days or weeks per year when distributed systems run out of juice.
They're still going to want more money (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:They're still going to want more money (Score:4, Interesting)
Or they lobby to make it illegal, which happened in my country. Here, you can produce your own power, but you MUST feed it into the grid before consuming. Needless to say, the trade-in/out rates are so bad that it basically forces you to pay for your own produced power, it just is a bit cheaper.
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Then lobby to make it legal. It seems to me that a lot of people think they are powerless, which when you think about it there is truth to that. If people believe themselves powerless then they see acting as pointless and therefore don't bother.
A government can only rule with the consent of the governed. If you don't like having to feed your own power to the grid then don't do it. I thought that was the point of the article, that the utilities lose their power over people because technology has flattene
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Perhaps you can explain what I'm missing here?
That power = money and unless you have money you have no power. The ones with the money are the ones that would want it to be illegal.
Re:They're still going to want more money (Score:5, Insightful)
A government can only rule with the consent of the governed.
What? You think brutal dictators have the consent of the governed? You don't need consent when people are cowed by fear.
If you don't like having to feed your own power to the grid then don't do it. I thought that was the point of the article, that the utilities lose their power over people because technology has flattened that economics of scale curve. If enough people produce enough electricity that they utility is effectively doing nothing but collecting a fee for the grid tie, that no one uses, then the utility can do nothing if enough people stop paying the fees.
Did you read the part where the poster said it is illegal to not feed your power back into the grid? Just don't do it? Gosh, why didn't he think of that? It's not like the authorities have a means of compelling compliance with the law, or anything.
Perhaps you can explain what I'm missing here?
You are missing that governments can rule by force, without the broad people's consent, and that when something is made illegal, doing it anyway can bring on harsh consequences.
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Paying for the backup? (Score:5, Interesting)
Historically people paid for electricity. Now that they aren't paying for electricity, they will have to pay for the backup supply that they want - or they can go without. The idea that those who are 80% off grid should in effect be subsidised by those who can't leave it is unfair. Unfortunately the implementation of the transition - with a rather severe change in the pricing system to reflect the actual costs of keeping power stations available but not selling electricity - is going to be painful. This will be because the opposition will ally those who have got their solar power / wind power / other supplies to those who are campaigning against climate change, who will argue that the tariff changes will discourage low carbon solutions.
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I live in a town that's made the decision to not artificially sweeten the pot for getting rooftop solar (but they do have a pretty attractive 100% renewable grid price). Despite having had solar on my last house, I generally support their decision since it's unreasonable for non-solar rate payers to make up the costs of maintaining the grid.
The problem I see is that i'm now not looking at the breakeven on getting 80% of my power from solar, but the breakeven on getting 100% of my power on solar. Batteries a
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Like other businesses in a declining market. They will need to downsize their operation, find a new customer source, wining to the political powers to be (they could make a case for either side), or find ways to make their product more appealing.
I actually like the concept of being to go off the power grid as it will be one less service that I have little control over. Everything is so tightly regulated that going off grid and have a power source which I can maintain is appealing.
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^^ This ^^
I am making plans to prepare my home for off grid. It's not about the cost to me, but about control and self reliance. I'll remain grid-tied so that I can "lean on" the grid if required, but will size the system to support all of my day-to-day power needs. If/when I need to, I'll simply switch off the mains to the grid and go about my business. Sure, it's more expensive than buying electrons from most public power companies, but I don't care.
Re:They're still going to want more money (Score:5, Insightful)
This is just this morning's tidbit from BeauHD's seemingly endless supply of climate-crap. The dates are incredibly optimistic and the problems are minimized or ignored completely. Nonetheless -- barring running into some inherent limitation of battery storage -- many homes and businesses will very likely drop off the grid someday when it becomes technically and economically practical to do so. Many folks living in densely populated urban areas with multistory housing probably will never leave the grid. Not enough solar panel area to cover refrigeration, illumination, cooking, hot water, and climate control.
Hint -- watch Hawaii. Economically developed. Reasonable amounts of sunshine. Moderate climate, so minimal heating and cooling needs. High electricity cost because hydrocarbon fuels for electrical generation need to be lugged 5000km.from North America. It'll probably be one of the first "countries" to go renewable.
Re: They're still going to want more money (Score:2)
Re: They're still going to want more money (Score:5, Insightful)
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This never happened.
Mind like a steel trap, I tell ya.
Until they go bust (Score:3)
Actually the problems will start long before that; when a system doesn't pay for itself, system maintenance starts to be cut. They won't train up replacement skilled workers, then, one day, the grid will suffer a catastrophic failure and be an 'ex-parrot'.
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Will it go "FOOOM!" if you put enough volts through it?
Batteries and Control systems are expensive (Score:3)
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Charge controllers aren't that expensive. Batteries are, and they must be replaced after so many cycles
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I wonder how homes in temperate climates or warmer that have natural gas service to the home would do. In such circumstances it would possibly make financial sense to have a small generator for the little bit of nighttime power needed. The home would spend its days powered by solar, and possibly powered by natural gas at night. The natural gas could power the home during the day too, if the demand exceeds the panel capacity.
Many years ago, the house I lived-in was owned by my roommate's family, and the h
Re:Batteries and Control systems are expensive (Score:4, Informative)
You can buy fuel cell systems that run off natural gas now.
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What is the benefit of using the nat gas "grid" instead of the electricity grid
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the only reason to use gas service for other than cooking is if you can steal it.
look, you didn't think to install a few solar cells or fake cells, run the 100kw v8 at 100% ALL THE TIME and sell the electricity back to the grid?
the generator cost isn't an issue. 200 bucks buys you nowadays a small gene that could be converted to run on natural gas.
like, your plan makes complete sense until you consider that you could just chuck off the solar panels totally and just use gas, which if it isn't metered still s
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Domestic natural gas is also an excellent choice to provide emergency generation to cover power outages. The gas supply is generally essentially 100% reliable all the time, storms or not.
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The cost of new batteries is falling fast, and used batteries are becoming more easily available too. To give you some idea, in 2013 the UK market sold a few thousand electric vehicles, and in 2016 sold over 100,000. Each of those has 20+ kWh of usable capacity that will be available cheap in a decade.
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. . . until you find yourself living in an neighborhood whose Homeowners Association has determined that clotheslines are an eyesore, and thus are banned because they "depress property values". You had to sign the covenant to buy. . . and THEN they tell you the additional regs.
Seriously. We finally moved out and sold that place,
On the other hand, when it's cloudy, wet, and cold for a week or more. . . a dryer is a needed backup. . .
Extremely expensive (Score:2)
This is a very large batter bank, even if you omit high loads like A/C, dishwasher heated dry, electric dryer, and electric oven.
Re:Extremely expensive (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem is then A/C, the washing machine, dryer.
That battery system in the home has to cover the electrical draw as the dryer, washing machine, the A/C turns on.
Get new appliances that start up in a different way that will not cause any battery problems? Consider a gas dryer?
Move to a state with no AC cooling needed in summer?
New big battery pack, covered for power all year, no more appliance issues. Use gas and wood.
The utility has one final method of keeping its grid power connected and been paid for.
Government.
A house is not considered ready for humans until its grid connected.
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This isn't always an option. My sister and I live in what started out as our parent's retirement condo, in a gated retirement community. Not only is our condo all electric, the entire development is. That means that there aren't even gas lines underground that we could tap into. Unless you expect us to use propane for cooking and so on, our only choice is electricity, either from the grid, as
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And, as we'd have to get a permit from the Homeowner's Association to put in the propane (fat chance of that ever happening) even that's effectively impossible.
I have a question. What is easier to change, the laws of your HOA or the laws of physics? I ask because the ability to store propane for heat is a lot easier than storing electricity for heat.
The rest of the association might not like propane now but if electricity prices get high enough they'll change their minds. Is it that propane tanks are "ugly" to the association? Is that why they oppose them? Underground propane tanks are a thing, I hear. They won't even know the tanks are there.
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You are NEVER going to get either one changed. In both cases, you are fucked.
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You are right in a purely thermodynamic sense, though 4x seems a bit high. But that's assuming the heat comes from the same fuel that the used to produce electricity.
But the idea here is to stop using fossil fuels. And you can't easily turn hydro and wind into heat without electricity, solar is possible but not trivial, and I wouldn't recommend home nuclear heating.
Of course that's for resistive heating, not heat pumps, which are typically much more efficient.
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solar is possible but not trivial
Some of the first home solar systems were for heat, retro-fitted to hot water heat systems. Pretty trivial really, small pump, some insulated shallow boxes on the roof with dark pain inside, and thick glass plate on with a small air gap before another glass plate on one face. Sun heats the water, you pump the water around the interior of the building.
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You're a tad behind the times here. The Romans were using hypocausts [wikipedia.org] to heat public buildings (and occasional private homes for the wealthy) in late Republican times, and there's evidence that other cultures were using them centuries earlier.
A hypocaust consisted of a furnace under the building, a space under the floor filled with hot air and combustion products t
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If you cook, you don't move there.
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Then you can buy the portable tanks of gas and use those for cooking...
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Yup, that's what I do. I pulled the electric stove out of the apartment because nobody that cooks uses an electric stove. Now I just carry 25 lb propane tanks up 4 flights of stairs twice a week. I have to bring in the tanks at night because the landlord would freak if he saw what I was doing. I nearly asphyxiated before I figured out how to vent the kitchen. Yes, the landlord would freak if he knew. I know it's not very safe or very convenient but what I cook tastes better. You probably feel stupider just
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I used to to think that, too. Most people I know consider me to be a pretty good cook. I cook almost all my meals at home. I love my induction range, which has a resistance heat 'burner' for use with cookware that won't heat otherwise.
I would NEVER go back to gas. Gas frankly sucks compared to induction and its really not much better than modern electric burners with flat surfaces rather than the old calrods; unless all you care about is how fast you can boil water. Induction and electric give you hots
Illogical assumptions (Score:5, Interesting)
The utilities cannot exist as a backup for 3-10% power demand; the cost of delivery would far exceed the cost of energy. Most homeowners would quickly turn to a small natural gas or gasoline generator to recharge batteries. Fortunately, cities don't work especially well for off-grid, so there should be some form of baseload.
By my math, batteries at $250/kWh(B) are comparable to a generation cost of around $0.07/kWh when fully discharged each day. The problem for off-grid is that you are going to want enough batteries that you don't need to start your generator more than a few days per year, which almost doubles your battery count. It quickly becomes poor resource utilization.
I would think that it is far more likely that we will see variable voltage/variable frequency distribution circuits that allow opportunistic load management options: the lower the voltage/frequency the higher the cost, and the greater the incentive to feed back into the grid. With customers having a bi-directional inverter, it becomes easy to manage.
Cost of power is Transmission and Distribution (Score:4, Interesting)
+1.
Here in Oz, aboiut 1/4 of the cost is generation, 1/2 transmission and distribution, and 1/4 admin overheads, old solar subsidies etc. So the fixed cost does not even begin to cover the transmission and distribution costs.
The other thing to note is that home solar power needs to compete with the 28c/kwh we pay for power retiail, and not the avg 6c/kwh that is paid wholesale. So batteries start to become economical at about AU$1,000/kwh. And a natural gas generator will fill in the cloudy days.
So we are in for bg changes. And I think there would be a riot here if any government tried the US trick of forcing people to be on grid.
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Re:Illogical assumptions (Score:5, Interesting)
I believe you are correct that people would prefer a generator over having electricity from a utility. Where I think you are wrong is that people will want to run this generator as little as possible.
Natural gas is cheap and there is little evidence to expect the price to rise much. A large number of people in the USA already use natural gas for heating, cooking, and hot water. What is becoming more practical as technology marches on is the concept of residential combined heat and power (CHP). If people are burning this natural gas anyway for heating their homes and/or water then why not use a CHP unit to provide the heat and top off their batteries?
This CHP would need to be fairly large if relied upon for extended periods where there is not enough sun. In places where there is winter a natural gas furnace can run quite often, which if replaced with a CHP unit this can mean an abundance of "free" electricity too.
With this in mind imagine what an off grid electrical system would be made of. You'd have your battery pack, inverters, a CHP unit, and solar panels. When doing the math to size up the solar panels in this system how much area would it need? I guess that in many parts of the USA the size of the solar panels would have to be zero.
For giggles once I thought I'd compute the cost of fuel to run my own natural gas generator as opposed to buying electricity from the utility. The cost difference was very small. I don't run my own natural gas generator because then I'd have to put up with the noise all the time or invest in a battery pack so it runs while I'm not home. The need for batteries to keep the system efficient and (effectively) noise free puts the price well beyond the utility. If batteries get cheap enough to make solar panels on my roof viable then it also means that they'd be cheap enough to make a residential CHP unit viable. The noise problem could also be solved with proper mufflers and/or an unconventional engine design, potentially reducing the costs of the batteries needed as well since I'd have little fear of the noise from running at odd hours.
Solar power that is available only (maybe) during the day cannot compete well with natural gas available at all hours of the day. Improving battery technology does not just make solar look better it makes natural gas look better too. Nearly half of the households in the USA use natural gas for heat and very very few use solar. The switch to CHP would be nearly trivial for many where rooftop solar would need a roof properly oriented to the sun and free from obstructions from trees, other buildings, windmills, and nuclear power plants.
Taking this one step further we see a large cost of electricity in the summer being for air conditioning. What if instead of an electric motor the A/C compressor was turned with a natural gas engine? An engine that could also provide hot water and/or electricity? Now you are cooking... um, cooling with gas! Also, I get to keep my shade trees, meaning I would not have to run the air conditioning as often.
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Well, bully for you with your own natural gas supply. Ours partly comes from Russia - it's not too hard to imagine the price or scarcity of that supply going up in the near future.
Going off grid only makes sense if it's cheaper than the grid. The grid really ought to be able to do a better job of it than any of us can, especially if the whole customer base used (say) 50% less than they do now. At the moment, home carbon/pollution costs aren't really counted by anyone - if they were, then your generator look
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In the future most people will have electric vehicles, with big batteries that they can use to supplement their home battery. In fact vehicle batteries will be much larger than home batteries.
Re:Illogical assumptions (Score:4, Insightful)
I guess you live in America where typical things we consider to describe 'a civilization' don't exist?
I do live in America. Growing up on a farm we had sheds full of what many not familiar with the culture would call "junk". We kept this stuff around because it wasn't junk, it was spare parts. We could not just run to the corner store for something, work had to be done and get done while the sun shined. Even I was amazed at the tools, spare parts, and "junk" in a rancher's shed when on a school trip to South Dakota. I then realized that the stuff we had was what we needed when "civilization" was a half hour drive away. For these people it was two or three times that, and so they had to be prepared for that.
When you are that far from "civilization" and you have to drive an hour to get there in an emergency, can you be sure "civilization" didn't just decide to move another hour away? You can't. So you need something that can get you far enough, and back again, without having to stop for an hour to recharge. People out that far will have a 4WD truck and put spare fuel cans in the back. Also back there will be water, food, a tent, a change of clothes, and a tent. Oh, and a roll of toilet paper and a shovel.
And how many people in the world life at such a shitty place you do that their half full electric car wont bring them to a safe place, or that utilities, military or civilian aid organizations have not set up emergency power in hours?
I don't know for sure but I can imagine answering with "billions" isn't too far from the truth.
It will also require a change in law (Score:5, Interesting)
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In many municipalities, being grid connected is required for occupancy. In fact there have been a number of stories of governments condemning "off grid" homes even though the home had all the amenities that a grid connected home has.
how would the municipality know you are grid connected or not. You just call the power company and say you need power shut off because you are moving. They will shut it off almost immediately and you don't need to turn it back on ever
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What are the actual requirements for being "connected"? Wires going to the house but not attached to anything? Meter installed but not attached to anything? Do you have to pay the power company for service or can you just cancel it and let them turn your supply off at their end?
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I think you misread those stories.
Most of those laws are in place to prevent people from trying to live in or rent out storage units, sheds, tents and other improvised housing that isn't meant for human habitation.
Not being allowed to live in a building is not the same as condemning the building. Buildings are condemned when they're unsafe for anyone to enter it at all, not just unsuitable for people to live there. Municipalities have no interest in condemning every storage facility, garage and garden sh
Sunk costs (Score:2)
Keeping in mind that most grids have charge back systems where you can sell back excess electricity to the utility, and that the grid is already built, it may never be reasonable to leave the grid. Basically, the grid becomes your money maker plus back up supply.
For new housing, however, particularly in rural areas, simply having 48 hours worth of battery backup may make it viable to skip connecting to the grid. Instead add a back up generator connected to either the same natural gas pipeline you use for
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My city is mandating solar panels.
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My city is mandating solar panels.
Check out the solar interconnection situation in Florida. The GP's concerns are completely valid. They are coming true now.
Keep the grid. Lose the meters (Score:2)
There is no reason to meter electricity anymore. Just charge a flat maintenance fee for the hookup.
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What scares me about this (Score:5, Interesting)
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those who can't afford solar benefit from the electric grid.
So. . . people poorer than these people [cnn.com]?
People seem to forget about the incredible down scalability of solar and battery systems. . .
Re:What scares me about this (Score:5, Insightful)
Microgrids and community storage? Power co-ops?
Perhaps I'm overly optimistic, but I think the incumbent utilities do have a lot to worry about (in the long-term) since entire communities may decide that they can pool their panels and storage at a lower cost than the utilities can provide. It will make sense to have as many homes as possible be self-sufficient, but it will also make sense to have the capability for neighbors to share power resources. This process will be very complex to navigate, since it's unlikely that the utilities will be willing to just abandon their equipment and let it be used (and upgraded) by localities.
Also at some point, it will make economic sense to not only feed the grid with power when storage is full on a sunny day, but also feed the grid with stored power when you know it's going to be sunny tomorrow. That still doesn't solve the base-load problem (for when you know it's NOT going to be sunny for a week), but it's a start.
It may be that utility-scale power will eventually only directly serve metro areas. Maybe they'll like that? Not having to maintain roadside lines and domestic interconnects in the less populated places?
Solar only for the rich is indeed a scary prospect -- though if only the rich get solar, the utilities will still have plenty of customers, since the "rich" are, at most, 10% of the US population, and it's commerce and industry that use the lion's share of generated electricity.
Also, I'd bet at least half of those 1 million homes have solar city or the like, with no out-of-pocket expense by the homeowner. I'd expect that to continue, especially in areas with higher than average electricity costs.
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As a European it seems incredible that you even have to worry about vital utilities simply deciding to switch them off.
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It's typically not a simple decision, but there has to be some reason for people to pay their utility bills, and some reason not to wildly overconsume. There's often help for people in financial trouble, and it's illegal around here to shut off certain utilities in the winter, but there has to be some requirement for payment. We could pay utility bills out of tax money, but having people pay for very approximately what they use means that they aren't going to be utterly careless with power or water or wh
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So I take it you don't drive on the interstate? Or out of your own driveway for that matter? Or call the cops if you get robbed? And I'm assuming you are or are planning to send your kids to private schools, and will just leave them uneducated if you can't afford to do so when the time comes? I mean if they can't succeed its their own fault right? Got nothing to do with the fact that their parents left them uneducated purely because of stubborn adherence to a specific economic theory.
You _do_ pay for t
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In the UK solar has always been the purview of the middle class. Those struggling at the end of the week can't afford thousands of pounds to install a solar system, but those who have that lying around have been able to enjoy selling their electricity to the grid at hugely inflated prices, effectively subsidised by the increased energy bills of the poor.
From the point of encouraging solar and bringing prices down it's been very effective, but it is also yet another transfer of wealth from the poor to the ri
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We don't have gas lines here. People have propane tanks. Gas trucks roll through the neighborhood, it's a hassle. They could install gas powered generators, but in a scenario like that people would probably go with a diesel generator which is a more common way to provide off-grid power for people without solar.
That would make a lot more sense right now, since LPG and diesel fuel are at similar per-gallon prices, but LPG has a lot less energy density.
I'd be happy... (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd be happy if we could just get gov't out of the 'paying half the cost of every solar install in the US' business, and stop forcing my electrical supplier to pay a premium for unneeded electricity that homeowners solar panels generate...
It will always be better to share (Score:5, Insightful)
Have storage for multiple days if the sun doesn't shine.
Have excess generation capacity
Have enough power in my batteries to power all my appliances at once.
Now if I get together with a few neighbours I don't need as much excess, since the likely hood of us all turning on every appliance is low we wouldn't need as much absolute power, and we could share some costs of the circuitry. If my neighbourhood got together with another neighbourhood we could save even more and if we got together with neighbourhoods geographically separated from us it would be even better. Ideally we would create a grid stretching across the contentment so that we could share power with people in other time zones or to take advantage of things like potential energy in river water, or maybe a instead of putting our solar panels on the roof we could put them all somewhere more convenient that gets more sun. Maybe we could even pay someone else to manage all this stuff. Get them to do the research, borrow money to build the infrastructure, manage the lines between me and my neighbours,.. I wonder what we would call a company that would do all this for us?
Inconvenient truth about solar (Score:3, Interesting)
1) There is a maximum amount of solar energy available. In round numbers, it's approximately 1 kilowatt per square metre at the earth's surface... period... end of story. You're *NOT* going to see a "Moore's Law" boosting solar panels every year into infinity. Current solar panels are from 15 to 23 percent efficient, and degrade with age. Yes, there is room for improvement, but there is a hard ceiling.
2) Solar panels produce 300 times as much toxic waste per unit of energy output versus nuclear powerplants http://www.theenergycollective... [theenergycollective.com] Definitely *NOT* "green".
Re:Inconvenient truth about solar (Score:5, Insightful)
1 kilowatt per square meter is a huge amount of power. Assuming the sun only shines 6 hours a day (it's more of course, but less intense towards sunrise and sunset), that means each square meter gets 6 kWh of energy per day. Average consumption [eia.gov] for a US home is about 30 kWh per day. So just 5 square meters of perfectly-efficient panels is enough to satisfy their power needs. In short, there is no shortage of solar energy.
Re:Inconvenient truth about solar (Score:5, Insightful)
1) There is a maximum amount of solar energy available. In round numbers, it's approximately 1 kilowatt per square metre at the earth's surface... period... end of story. You're *NOT* going to see a "Moore's Law" boosting solar panels every year into infinity. Current solar panels are from 15 to 23 percent efficient, and degrade with age. Yes, there is room for improvement, but there is a hard ceiling.
Fortunately that's more than 160x the amount that the US currently consumes. Even assuming you made no efficiency improvements (reduced consumption, improved PV panels) you would only need about 0.6% of your land mass to provide all the electrical energy you currently consume (plus storage of course). And no-one is suggesting 100% solar, just to be clear, it's merely pointing out how much energy there is available.
2) Solar panels produce 300 times as much toxic waste per unit of energy output versus nuclear powerplants http://www.theenergycollective... [www.theene...lective...] Definitely *NOT* "green".
Long ago debunked.
Re: Inconvenient truth about solar (Score:3)
Re:Inconvenient truth about solar (Score:5, Interesting)
2) Solar panels produce 300 times as much toxic waste per unit of energy output versus nuclear powerplants http://www.theenergycollective... [www.theene...lective...] [theenergycollective.com] Definitely *NOT* "green".
That is wrong.
First of all except for some acids, there basically nothing toxic left in the production process.
And those 'wastes' are usually just collected and reused in the process of building more panels.
It helps to have some common sense an a clue about physics and chemistry, so you don't fall for such idiotic links.
Re:Inconvenient truth about solar (Score:5, Informative)
The simple fact that that study equates a pound of waste from solar panels to a pound of radioactive waste from a nuclear reactor shows that it is inherently biased and cannot be trusted.
PG&E is trying to make that... NOW (Score:2)
PG&E has started "estimating" my electric bills... at two to three times my actual kWh usage. So now we're having to dispute their bullshit with the CPUC. I have photos of the meter that prove that they have overcharged us by literally 1,200 kWh. But then, PG&E willfully kills people for profit, so this is a pretty minor shocker
Nope; not counting EVs (Score:2)
Utilities can use solar too! (Score:2)
Since demand follows the sun utilities can use on demand gas turbines instead of batteries. Before the batteries become cheap enough for the home owner, it would have become cheap enough for the utilities.
The Grid is not a static target for residential solar to take pot shots at. It
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Not if you need reliability (Score:5, Insightful)
The reason is that it's great running your own service when everything works. But when stuff breaks, *I* had to fix it. If I was waiting for an important email, I had to drop everything I was doing and fix it. If I was waiting for an important email and didn't notice it broke, then I blissfully continued waiting until a day later when a friend asked me "Why haven't you responded to my email?" The final straw was when it broke when I was on vacation, leaving me technologically incommunicado unless I abandoned my vacation to fix it. I already have a job, and it's not babysitting a mission-critical email server. So I switched my email service to one run by a company who monitors it 24/7, notices outages within minutes instead of hours or days, and has expert staff who are more skilled at fixing it than I ever could be unless I quit my day job.
Unless you're an expert at diagnosing and fixing home solar installations and batteries, and can drop whatever you're doing at any time of the day (or night) to run home and fix it when the wife calls to say the house has no electricity, you don't want to be off the grid. Sometimes the first indication you'll have of a problem with your array will be when your battery dies because it hasn't been getting any power from the panels all day. Then you'll be stuck trying to fix it without the benefit of having electricity (to, say, search the net to try to help diagnose what the problem might be). Even if you've got a backup generator, it requires at least annual maintenance and the fuel has to be refreshed (gas goes bad after about 6-12 months, quicker if it's an ethanol blend and your storage container isn't completely airtight).
Things that you use intermittently like a car or a washing machine, it's OK to own because you can survive a short downtime without it if it should break. Things that need close to 100% uptime like electricity or email or phone service, you want it provided by a company with staff on hand 24/7 dedicated to providing it and fixing it when it breaks. Solar panels on your home supplement this reliable power source, not the other way around.
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I see them as the opposite; depending on the home's energy needs a fuel that is capable of being handled by the end-homeowner might make for a good backup means of power production, or as a supplementary means of power production if the solar array is not up to the task during some times of year when an HVAC plant might need more capacity than the panels can generate.
If anything one should seek to run on solar first, as a system with no moving parts may well be a lot easier for the homeowner to maintain, bu
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That would be me :-)
The grid ends 600 metres up the road. the last quote to get to to my place was AUD$33K for single-phase, *excluding* tree-clearing costs - so imagine the reaction from my neighbours were I to propose cutting down a bunch of trees in the street......
Back on topic - ~26 degrees south latitude, ~9kWh/day consumption, no A/C (temperate climate, but seriously tempted to put in some A/C, last summer was HOT, it'll take a few extra PV panels to run it, 2.5kW panels on the roof, 5.5 kVA petrol
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I suspect the climate where I live is a little less temperate than yours.
I've got an evaporative cooler out on the patio to cool the 110 degrees fahrenheit (~43 celsius) temps so that the outdoor cats have someplace to go that's a little nicer, the air coming out of the evap is 74 degrees F (~23 C) and the water temp is 68 F (20C) in the sump of the evap cooler. A friend of mine cools his whole house for the bulk of the summer with an Australian-sourced Bonaire Durango system that works exceedingly well.
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Whether something is a scam or not depends on whether you take away people's money under false pretenses or give them the value you promise.
Right now, presenting solar as an economical alternative to fossil fuel is a scam. In 2028 it won't be a scam anymore for people in sunny parts of the US because then it will, in fact, be an economic
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Fuckin Nazis
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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. . .as opposed to those who believe technology does not advance, and something not particularly economically viable today, will always remain so.
Some of us remember when large-screen TVs and LCD monitors were not economically viable.. Heck I remember when personal computing was an expensive, niche hobby. . . .
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Yeah, yeah, "but solar isn't free market because subsidies" -- well sorry, but everything is subsidized. Fossil fuels are subsidized. Bad health habits are (arguably) subsidized [nih.gov].
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McKinsey has been accused of being many things over the years, but this is probably the first time they've been called "retarded progressives".
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Not really. Many coal plants are OLD and near the end of their lifetimes. If demand drops, they'll start closing older plants instead of replacing them. That will dial down the costs.
Re:not so simple an equation (Score:5, Informative)
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Triple whammy (Score:2)
I think you, too, are oversimplifying it. There's also the fact that less power being used on the grid means that supply increases, which should in theory lower price. Granted, there are also going to be some fixed costs, but I believe the bulk of those costs are already on the sources that are more grid dependent.
One of the last-mile "fixed" costs is the 'pole'. In many areas, the utility poles carry electricity, telephone, cable and internet. Telephone and cable are already fading into oblivion as people cut that cord. If people start defecting from the electric grid en-mass, that will take away all the other utility support for that pole and the price of your internet will probably just go up to make up the difference (just ask those google fiber folks).
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It would really help if you read the article.
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Nonsense. The cost of maintaining the gird is about 1/2 the total cost. Generation about 1/4. Batteries in your home compete at retail price, which is typically 4 times the wholesale price of power.
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Depends how much space you have for the panels...
Generally AC is more used in hotter countries with stronger direct sunlight, in colder areas with less sunlight you're less likely to want AC.
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Never let it be said that you let a lie or two get in the way of a good story.
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Coal is cheap, dependable, and a great way to mess up the climate. It also contributes a lot to local pollution - clean coal is really only clean in comparison with conventional coal, and a lot more expensive. You may have seen the Kemper plant story on Slashdot shortly after this one - five years late and four billion dollars over budget trying to make their clean coal systems work, and they finally gave up and converted it to run on natural gas instead.
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Coal is actually more-expensive than solar at this point. The range of costs to build and operate the facilities has overlapped for years, in favor of coal (some coal plants would have been cheaper than any possible solar plant per generation capacity); however, solar and wind power have hit parity, and slightly passed it.
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Unlike the actually-unreliable solar that requires complex processes to use its power, coal only requires them to clean it (an easy enough task without regulations designed primarily to kill coal)...
https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/17/06/29/2012207/75-billion-kemper-power-plant-suspends-coal-gasification
Oopsie!
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Its only drawbacks are political in nature
Sure, unless you like breathing, or dislike cancer.
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and don't fall for the "clean" coal scam - its not really and its expensive to even attempt to do. http://ngm.nationalgeographic.... [nationalgeographic.com]
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