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Rooftop solar power may be flooding the grid

smh.com.au

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Re: Rooftop solar power may be flooding the grid

#41

Post by llukas »

gregoriol wrote: post #37

Renewable energy is quite predictable: there is sun during the day, and no sun during the night. Wind is a bit less but could be too. Why not organise accordingly? First, there are batteries: solar roofs should come with batteries, than will power the house during the night. Authorities could enforce that, and could also build larger energy storages with batteries at a region level (see recent examples from Tesla). T…

We're trying to fit square peg into round hole - after 50 years of centralized grid with one type of predictable demand curve now we got all those people that dare to install their own solar.

I'd wish that utilities would stop fighting and accept inevitable.

Re: Rooftop solar power may be flooding the grid

#42

Post by terminatax »

StreamBright wrote: post #36

People finally starting to realise that energy systems and grids are more complex than just put a solar cell to your roof. There is minimum level of service has to be provided (even over night) and the balance of production and consumption has to be kept in balance otherwise very bad things happen.

It’s called battery storage of excess energy

Re: Rooftop solar power may be flooding the grid

#43

Post by MattHeard »

gregoriol wrote: post #37

Renewable energy is quite predictable: there is sun during the day, and no sun during the night. Wind is a bit less but could be too. Why not organise accordingly? First, there are batteries: solar roofs should come with batteries, than will power the house during the night. Authorities could enforce that, and could also build larger energy storages with batteries at a region level (see recent examples from Tesla). T…

Your question about the grid and the roof "talking" is exactly what was described in the article about "curtailment".

The problems with curtailment are:

1) The management of roof solar output is currently in the hands of solar roof owners, not grid operators, so the grid operators cannot easily "reject" the produced electricity. 2) Solar installations are often financed with expectations of savings and/or revenue, so if the grid operators curtail the solar generation, do the solar roof owners have a right to be compensated for their lost revenue? How is this compensation managed fairly across all solar roof owners?

Re: Rooftop solar power may be flooding the grid

#45

Post by jlebrech »

t0liman wrote: post #22
jlebrech wrote: post #20

home appliances should be aware of the home's solar panels somehow. you could fill a washing machine and have it wait a few days and turn on if the solar panels are at full usage. other things could operate at peak hours (dishwasher) you could also pump water into a silo when it's bright outside.

>home appliances should be aware You mean IoT installed into wallplugs and whitegoods appliances, pool pumps, heaters, washers, heat pumps/air conditioners, hot water systems, etc. Yeah. If there was only an IoT standard that worked to allow for usage to be monitored and devices to be switched on/off in a standard way ... sure. There are "appliances" like HomeAssistant.io and OpenHAB and Domoticz out there to micro-m…

it's better to spend the energy directly than to sell it cheap now and buy it expensive later.

Re: Rooftop solar power may be flooding the grid

#46

Post by theshadowknows »

D_Alex wrote: post #33

Please note that there are powerful lobby groups in Australia that have interests in fossil fuel businesses and promote journalism that exaggerates problems with renewable energy. Eg see this: http://artsonline.monash.edu.au/climate-change-communication...

I thought exactly the same thing. It looks like the power companies want to have more control over individual homes’ solar panels and they are inventing a “crisis” as a way to do it.

Re: Rooftop solar power may be flooding the grid

#47

Post by slavik81 »

llukas wrote: post #41
gregoriol wrote: post #37

Renewable energy is quite predictable: there is sun during the day, and no sun during the night. Wind is a bit less but could be too. Why not organise accordingly? First, there are batteries: solar roofs should come with batteries, than will power the house during the night. Authorities could enforce that, and could also build larger energy storages with batteries at a region level (see recent examples from Tesla). T…

We're trying to fit square peg into round hole - after 50 years of centralized grid with one type of predictable demand curve now we got all those people that dare to install their own solar. I'd wish that utilities would stop fighting and accept inevitable.

What's the inevitable?

Re: Rooftop solar power may be flooding the grid

#48

Post by donquichotte »

carreau wrote: post #21

"Monitor electricity 3600 times a second" in the video seem wrong, as AC is usually 50 to 60 HZ that would be measuring the consumption 60 to 72 times per period which does not really make sens. It's likely 3600/hour or 1/seconds. Immediately make me doubt the quality of the research. Edit: DC -> AC. was tired.

If you have distorted currents and voltages, you need to do this. 3.6kHz sampling captures harmonics up to 1.8kHz, which is the 36th harmonic. Power is 1/T \int_0^T U(t)*I(t)dt for periodic signals with period T, and if current and voltage cannot be assumed to be sinusoidal, faster sampling is needed.

Re: Rooftop solar power may be flooding the grid

#49

Post by blkhawk »

dsign wrote: post #32
D_Alex wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>liquified air energy storage. I wonder if this may be helpful. Let me answer this: No, it would not be helpful, because on pretty much all metrics (capital and operating costs, efficiency, flexibility, size etc) this technology is way worse than battery storage. Unfortunately - today - a lot of money which could be sensibly used deploying cost effective technology such as solar and wind power (and to a lesser extent…

Horse stables were in their day a cost-effective solution to transportation, and those steam engines had no chance of ever moving a couple of meters on the rails...

I think there a physics problem there. The efficiency is way worse than charging almost any type of battery. So unless material for any type of battery becomes completely unavailable (including say Iron and sulfur or lead), the power free and you manage to build your Air Liquifier with less resources than batteries it will always be a stupid way to spend resources.

Re: Rooftop solar power may be flooding the grid

#50

Post by ludston »

henearkr wrote: post #27
roenxi wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Solar isn't the problem, but the renewables situation is related. We had a Labor government with the Greens holding a balance of power from ~2010 to ~2013. The Labor party had, I believe, been opposed to a carbon tax up until that point. Then, likely because of pressure from the Greens, introduced a carbon tax. The lesson there will not have been lost on big investors. If anyone invests in fossil fuel generation (ie,…

Following your reasonning, there is no reason why investors should shy away from renewables. The Greens would not harm any project of additional large scale batteries, for example.

I think there are two main reasons whu investors would shy away from renewables in Australia:

1) Firstly there are no large well-known actors, so there is uncertainty around renewable energy companies are going to "win".

2) Secondly, Australia currently has a government that is hostile towards renewables. It could at any time introduce legislation that would make renewables economically untennable.

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