91–100 of 216 posts
Estimate for a house in SF with a typical roof and typical electric bill. $20k upfront cost. $4k in savings over 20 years. That's an implied rate of return of 0.9% annually. No thanks.
Plus, are you counting in inflation of electricity prices in those 20 years? I'm sure electricity isn't going to get cheaper
Your energy bill is about 1/4 or 1/3rd distribution. As you take less power from the grid because of the solar on your roof, that proportion grows larger and larger.
At the same time, the power company makes less money off of you, because you are using less power. Therefore, they have less money to invest in distribution, which means they must increase distribution fees further to stay a going concern. This is to say nothing of the ballooning costs of distribution in general (nimbyism, permitting fees, can't build jack shit in this country for no good reason etc.).
Therefore: in the hypothetical where everyone has solar rooftops, we all effectively pay the grid operator only for dirty/offpeak power. This makes the grid operators look bad to everyone (they're using dirty power, aren't we trying to fight climate change!? Why is my electricity bill astronomical, even though I only use a tiny bit of power!?) and puts them in an impossible situation -- they're stuck between capped profits, creating expensive clean power at off-peak hours, and limited cash in general, since their expensive power plants are dormant half the time. Yet they still must deliver power to their customers, 24/7.
People have to have 24/7 electricity, even though the solar on their house does not cover them 24/7. It's illegal to sell a house that is not connected to the grid in most areas. Therefore, consumers must pay for the option of using electricity in off-peak hours. Everyone will be upset. The grid operator, who is constantly thrashed by politicians who insist on their using clean power, their customers who are enraged at them for the seemingly exorbitant electric bills (which are mostly distribution).
The upside is that the grid is more resilient, but as others have mentioned, only if significant investments in local distribution are made (i.e. the ability to very dynamically/granularly pump power back up, from house to grid). Which is a big capital investment that the grid operators will not be able to afford.
All this is downstream of the fact that it is hugely inefficient to put a ton of tiny solar panels all over the place, where they cannot be installed, cleaned, maintained, replaced cheaply. It's just way less expensive per watt to put a bunch of solar panels in one spot on cheap land in the desert and pipe it through the existing distribution network.
Everyone will pay for that resilience, in their electric bill, one way or another.
This is fine and all, but each individual having a solar panel introduces a lot of issues. Your energy bill is about 1/4 or 1/3rd distribution. As you take less power from the grid because of the solar on your roof, that proportion grows larger and larger. At the same time, the power company makes less money off of you, because you are using less power. Therefore, they have less money to invest in distribution, which…
Would it make sense for local electricity companies to go full solar with large battery backups? Or are batteries too expensive, or don't last long enough, for this to be feasible?
What about a wind+solar combination? Both of them are unlikely to go offline at the same time.
I see articles that the cost of wind and solar keep going down every year at a rapid rate, and the same for battery tech too. How far are we from where the costs are low enough for cities to have their own reliable grids composed of renewable energy?
This is a very neat exercise but I don’t think it’s going to create change. These models already exist and I’ve never met anyone who said their reason for not investing in solar is because they felt the accuracy of existing models is not good enough. I say this as someone who lives on a part of the world where a large % of the inhabitants could have solar but do not - and I find it sad, frustrating and puzzling. Bigg…
Gov subsidies are the government giving the tax money of poor people who cannot afford houses to rich people who have houses. Highly regressive. Your PV system should stand on its own merits without holding out your hand to other taxpayers to fund you.
This is a very neat exercise but I don’t think it’s going to create change. These models already exist and I’ve never met anyone who said their reason for not investing in solar is because they felt the accuracy of existing models is not good enough. I say this as someone who lives on a part of the world where a large % of the inhabitants could have solar but do not - and I find it sad, frustrating and puzzling. Bigg…
This is really incredible. If they could plug in local utility prices and come up with estimate for dollars saved per year, that would be an incredible conversation starter for homeowners who might not have considered taking on a home solar project otherwise.
Once you do the math in a Northern country (sans subsidies) it's not as compelling as you might think.
This is fine and all, but each individual having a solar panel introduces a lot of issues. Your energy bill is about 1/4 or 1/3rd distribution. As you take less power from the grid because of the solar on your roof, that proportion grows larger and larger. At the same time, the power company makes less money off of you, because you are using less power. Therefore, they have less money to invest in distribution, which…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Interlinking local capacity Is this a thing IRL? Every system I've looked at stops feeding the grid as soon as the grid goes down
They have to. Feeding your own home needs some setup but is fine. But electricity companies require you to disconnect generating capacity from the grid when the grid is down to make it easier to effect repairs. But that's more a policy decision than a technical restriction. We could change it so power can flow on both sides of a fault instead of only the "upstream" grid side.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
i've heard of some business models that install these and have you pay what would be the difference to your electric bill to the company until they pay themselves off, not sure if the panels last long enough to make that work though
One of these wouldn't sign me up as they couldn't offer any savings (92% of my use is off peak, around 16ct NZD (9 USD) / kWh). A lot of the time such companies pray on people on stupid plans (or those paying thru the nose for "exclusively renewable") power.
(9 USD / kWh sounds terrifying. Not only an electric kettle begins to cost you; probably playing computer games at high quality / resolution comes with a noticeable price tag in electricity that the GPU would eat.)