121–130 of 432 posts
Regardless, it's excellent news. Coal is godawful stuff and we'll be much better off leaving it in the ground where it belongs.
I’ve always wondered about something, yet have never found anyone discussing it online. So maybe some smart people can help me out: a lot of people install solar on their rooftops. Much of the time this is done with the assumption that it will pay off financially because energy prices are currently at a certain rate and will continue to rise. But here’s my question: If its financially advantageous to install solar on…
Based on my loan, my current cost of energy is much lower than if I bought it from the grid. (About 4-5 cents per kwh, instead of 20 cents per kwh.)
My monthly payment never goes up, but it's unlikely that my cost of grid electricity will fall below 4-5 cents per kwh during the lifetime of my loan.
Remember, the cost we pay for electricity includes the cost to run and maintain the grid between the generator (or battery) and our homes. The system in the article is a little more than 3 seconds per kwh BEFORE the costs of the grid are involved.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah I'm renting a house in central NC and May-September our power bill skyrockets from AC. The windows are not insulated at all and we have a lot of them. Even the floors, walls, and ceilings leak heat like crazy, you can feel it just putting your hand close to the wall or ceiling. We run AC to get it down to 76F and it's still crazy expensive and using a lot of unnecessary power. We need to encourage insulation, es…
If the window is in the sun, your major problem is unlikely to be window insulation. It’s solar heat gain. Sunlight carries a lot of power — about 1 kW per square meter. If your window lets all of that power in, then your AC needs to consume a couple hundred watts to send it back out again. What you need are windows with low solar heat gain coefficients (SHGC), which is mostly independent of insulation. Or you can ge…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Peak solar power output and peak air conditioning load line up pretty well, so that doesn't need storage. In general, yes, but if you look for a term called the duck curve which characterizes that frequently the load comes up after peak output, or even after sunset. For coastal CA wind often helps fill that offset as winds frequently come up near sunset, but it's not always a guaranteed thing. So there does need to…
Yeah. I keep an eye on ISO-NE's (New England's grid) real-time charts (so as to reduce my impact on peak load days), and the daily peak load in summer up here is typically 17:30-18:30 or so, not the middle of the day when solar is peaking. https://www.iso-ne.com/isoexpress/web/charts
As an individual then yes you can reduce your peak load on the grid by reducing power in the evening. But that is only the case because other people have already massively reduced the peak during the day by installing solar, see this graph they provide:
https://www.iso-ne.com/about/what-we-do/in-depth/solar-power...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> $0.02/Kwh for the solar part is pretty good. What's terrible is that PG&E charges the end customers $0.28-$0.42/kwh even though it purchases even the most expensive wholesale power below 5c/kwh
Typical PG&E rates are US$0.12/kWh, which includes not only buying the energy (at prices ranging from -$0.05 to $1.50 or more, depending on supply and demand) but also maintaining and constructing the transmission and distribution systems, as well as incidental additional costs like black start capacity, loan interest, and investor profit.
Typical PG&E delivered power rates are $0.28-$0.42/kwh.
PG&E charges about the same for transmission and delivery that providers outside California charge for transmission delivery and the power itself.
Meanwhile in Iowa, Mid American Energy is well on their way to 100% renewal by 2021 with an endless array of wind farms. Their final phase of the project started in 2018 with a $922M investment. Iowa Public Radio toured one of the windmills back in January. https://www.iowapublicradio.org/post/skyscrapers-fields-wind...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There should be also more focus on proper thermal insulation of houses in warm climate, which is something that is not often mentioned. Lots of energy gets lost on AC simply because heat easily enters the houses.
Yeah I'm renting a house in central NC and May-September our power bill skyrockets from AC. The windows are not insulated at all and we have a lot of them. Even the floors, walls, and ceilings leak heat like crazy, you can feel it just putting your hand close to the wall or ceiling. We run AC to get it down to 76F and it's still crazy expensive and using a lot of unnecessary power. We need to encourage insulation, es…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> $0.02/Kwh for the solar part is pretty good. What's terrible is that PG&E charges the end customers $0.28-$0.42/kwh even though it purchases even the most expensive wholesale power below 5c/kwh
In my area, the energy is generated by another company for 0.02/kwh, but PG&E charges a 'transmission charge' for use of their lines that brings the per-kwh price to their generation price. Okay, you think that that's their right, and transmission does cost money. However, if you decide to use their generation (dirty of course), they conveniently 'waive' the transmission fee. I spoke with my legislator about this and…
$0.02/Kwh for the solar part is pretty good. A reasonable short-term goal: get 100% of US peak air conditioning load south of 37° N on solar. That's the line from the Virginia/North Carolina border west to central California. Peak solar power output and peak air conditioning load line up pretty well, so that doesn't need storage. Storage is more of an issue for wind, which varies about 4:1 over a day over large areas…
There should be also more focus on proper thermal insulation of houses in warm climate, which is something that is not often mentioned. Lots of energy gets lost on AC simply because heat easily enters the houses.
I have lived in building The energy bills aren't so bad that middle-class renters are going to differentiate which apartment they choose based on the potential energy bills. (Whereas a homeowner who has already settled down into that house/condo has an incentive to reduce bills). So the heating/cooling energy is just going to keep getting wasted.
I’ve always wondered about something, yet have never found anyone discussing it online. So maybe some smart people can help me out: a lot of people install solar on their rooftops. Much of the time this is done with the assumption that it will pay off financially because energy prices are currently at a certain rate and will continue to rise. But here’s my question: If its financially advantageous to install solar on…
* less transition losses
* the "land" to put it on is free and not being used for anything else
That said, here in Austin they have been shifting some of the tax dollars from home-solar incentives to large scale solar farm incentives instead.