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Satellite powered estimation of global solar potential

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Re: Satellite powered estimation of global solar potential

#211

Post by s1artibartfast »

bokohut wrote: post #210
s1artibartfast wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was commenting on the sentiment of sitting back and relaxing watching your neighbors struggle. I don't think revenue relates to it

Electricity is not free and when one really needs something money talks right? Given the distance from my home to others some people I cannot help because the voltage drop would be to great over the needed corded run. Those within proximity to me that would not suffer voltage drop and undue strain on my own storage system I would gladly help but my own storage is finite and if I help just one person then... My proact…

Thanks for confirming that I'm glad not to be your neighbor.

Last time we flooded, they came over and helped us bail water. When power was out, we helped them power their fridge with a spare generator. We generally help each other when we can, and enjoy doing so.

Nobody enjoys relaxing while watching others stress out and panic.

Re: Satellite powered estimation of global solar potential

#212

Post by therealdrag0 »

bokohut wrote: post #208
buckle8017 wrote: post #50

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.

I find this argument short sighted time and again based on personal life experiences as a former electrician given the life impacting results I have witnessed from power losses. My electrical experiences are regional to my area in the NorthEast US where long duration events have caused many thousands of US dollars in lost food, tens of thousands of dollars in losses from flooded basements, and when temperatures in Wi…

My plan is just to use my EV with generator interconnect to house with V2L. No color or gas needed. Ioniq can run house for like 5 days.

Re: Satellite powered estimation of global solar potential

#213

Post by jillesvangurp »

xnx wrote: post #182
jillesvangurp wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on your cost of electricity. In most places, a solar setup pays for itself long before the warranty runs out max 5-10 years typically (depending on a lot of factors). Even in the US which has a lot of extra cost related to people making things needlessly complicated and costly, lots of people are installing solar and earning their money back. I can actually get balcony solar here in Germany for about 240 euro…

Balcony solar sounds brilliant and probably has clear ROI. Rooftop solar is an awkward middle between grid-scale solar and balcony solar. Rooftop solar might only make sense in developed countries through subsidies.

Actually, there's a lot of unsubsidized solar popping up in a lot of developing countries all over the middle east, Africa, etc. Anything from villas to shanty towns. Reason: local grids are unreliable and solar is affordable enough. Add some batteries and you are pretty much energy independent. Most of that solar goes on people's roofs.

The reason that's affordable there and requires subsidies in wealthier nations is all the nonsense the nanny states we live in come up with to over complicate things. You need certified this and that. Only people in possession of a special license can plug component A into component B, or strip some wires. And then there is the local grid monopoly that throws up all sorts of obstacles.

There's a way around this. Just buy some panels and batteries on amazon and wire up your shed, boat, cabin in the woods, etc. It's all plug and play. You don't need any permits, special skills, etc. And you end up with a system that can provide a couple of KW of power. Not that hard. There's nothing special about a rooftop. You might need a ladder to get there and you might want to take some safety precautions to avoid dropping off.

Re: Satellite powered estimation of global solar potential

#214

Post by XorNot »

ben_w wrote: post #166
XorNot wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Watt-hours is a perfectly pragmatic unit. Measure instantaneous power and multiply by a common human unit of time. It's easy to compare.

Part of me is tempted to suggest kilograms as a unit of energy. 428.6 kg relativistic mass-energy equivalent: https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=10.7PWh%2F%28c%5E2%29 But then, I am a silly person.

Call the unit "Kilogram-Joules", abbreviate as KgJ and it works pretty damn well and unambiguously.

The problem is we don't live in a society powered by matter-antimatter annihilation reactions, or black evaporation so it's not really useful - unlike say, the electron-volt which at least serves physicists nicely.

Re: Satellite powered estimation of global solar potential

#215

Post by specialist »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #164
xnx wrote: post #12

This is a very impressive refinement of their existing tool, but is this type of advanced calculation of roof-pitch (etc.) still relevant? Haven't we more or less concluded that a million piecemeal rooftop installations of solar are about the worst way to do it? More complicated and expensive to permit and install, less efficient operation, difficult to repair, difficult to insure, difficult to upgrade, inefficient t…

Yes it's relevant and no we didn't all agree it was a bad idea. It generates power at roughly the cost of nuclear. It's distributed and resilient. It works around sluggish government and/or corporate monopolies. It reduces transmission requirements. It enables and encourages electrification and time-shifting of load. Adding it at build time can be cheaper than tiling. It’s generally a good thing and we'll see even mo…

[Given your comment history, as you surely already know...]

Yes and:

With the rise of "virtual power plants" (VPPs), "all the above" (PV, batteries, EVs, water heaters, HVAC, residential geothermal) will be stitched together to create decentralized, more resilient power grids, capable of peer-to-peer power sharing.

Analogy:

Remember the term 90s "convergence" (turrible term)? Describing how the computer (digitization) was becoming the everything tool? VPPs (turrible term) is just the electification of "all the things", unifying all energy (heat, electricity) stuff (source, sink, storage).

It's a good way to anticipate this interation of "convergence". eg VPPs' analog to "traffic shaping" is "load shaping". eg Just like internet is a network of networks, the "intergrid" will be a network of grids. Etc.

It's really easy to see the rough outlines (age of renewable energy) once a person learns of the 100s (1000s?) of puzzle peices currently being assembled. Just reflect on the internet and superimpose those notions onto energy.

Thanks for listening.

Re: Satellite powered estimation of global solar potential

#216

Post by specialist »

rgmerk wrote: post #203
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes it's relevant and no we didn't all agree it was a bad idea. It generates power at roughly the cost of nuclear. It's distributed and resilient. It works around sluggish government and/or corporate monopolies. It reduces transmission requirements. It enables and encourages electrification and time-shifting of load. Adding it at build time can be cheaper than tiling. It’s generally a good thing and we'll see even mo…

Hate to sound like a broken record but the barrier isn't the technology, the barrier in the USA is permitting and soft costs.

True. The opportunities are insurmountable. h/t Yogi Bera
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