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Pakistan says rooftop solar output to exceed grid demand in some hubs next year

reuters.com

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Re: Pakistan says rooftop solar output to exceed grid demand in some hubs next year

#11

Post by saidinesh5 »

riku_iki wrote: post #10
abdullahkhalids wrote: post #6

I would encourage people to go look at satellite view of random "rich" neighbourhoods in Pakistan, and note how many solar panels there are on rooftops. Here is the first one I scrolled to in Lahore [1], and one in Karachi [2] Pakistan's grid prices tripled or more since the start of the Russia-Ukraine war, because the extremely mismanaged and poorly designed electricity system+economy could not handle the energy pri…

> rich people just buying rooftop solar systems, which exacerbated the grid problems even more. how it exacerbated problems exactly?..

I'm guessing: fewer people buying from the power companies/grid => the fixed costs of these companies are pushed onto the poorer customers, who already couldn't afford much.

Re: Pakistan says rooftop solar output to exceed grid demand in some hubs next year

#12

Post by kieranmaine »

riku_iki wrote: post #10
abdullahkhalids wrote: post #6

I would encourage people to go look at satellite view of random "rich" neighbourhoods in Pakistan, and note how many solar panels there are on rooftops. Here is the first one I scrolled to in Lahore [1], and one in Karachi [2] Pakistan's grid prices tripled or more since the start of the Russia-Ukraine war, because the extremely mismanaged and poorly designed electricity system+economy could not handle the energy pri…

> rich people just buying rooftop solar systems, which exacerbated the grid problems even more. how it exacerbated problems exactly?..

The following isn't a grid problem (more of a demand issue), but maybe they're referring to this:

> But 45 percent of Pakistanis live below the poverty line, according to the World Bank, putting solar panel systems well beyond their reach. The pool of customers for the national grid has gotten smaller and poorer, and the costs of financing old coal-powered plants have increasingly been passed on to those who can least afford it. [1]

1. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/how-pakistan-s-solar-en...

Re: Pakistan says rooftop solar output to exceed grid demand in some hubs next year

#13

Post by UltraSane »

pfdietz wrote: post #3

What this shows is solar is increasingly threatening the electric utility business model. Even without net metering, demand destruction will cause the traditional model to stop working.

What will people do at night?

Re: Pakistan says rooftop solar output to exceed grid demand in some hubs next year

#14

Post by gus_massa »

saidinesh5 wrote: post #11
riku_iki wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> rich people just buying rooftop solar systems, which exacerbated the grid problems even more. how it exacerbated problems exactly?..

I'm guessing: fewer people buying from the power companies/grid => the fixed costs of these companies are pushed onto the poorer customers, who already couldn't afford much.

Don't they charge a minimum just for keeping the wires connected?

Re: Pakistan says rooftop solar output to exceed grid demand in some hubs next year

#15

Post by _trampeltier »

pfdietz wrote: post #3

What this shows is solar is increasingly threatening the electric utility business model. Even without net metering, demand destruction will cause the traditional model to stop working.

I think in most countrys, you already pay one bill for the grid and one for the used electric power.

Re: Pakistan says rooftop solar output to exceed grid demand in some hubs next year

#16

Post by hamdingers »

bitxbitxbitcoin wrote: post #9

How many years before this happens in parts of the United States?

In California, grid-tied rooftop solar was putting energy prices into the negative so often that they reconfigured the NEM to discourage export back to the grid and encourage battery storage.

Re: Pakistan says rooftop solar output to exceed grid demand in some hubs next year

#17

Post by idiotsecant »

more_corn wrote: post #8
pfdietz wrote: post #3

What this shows is solar is increasingly threatening the electric utility business model. Even without net metering, demand destruction will cause the traditional model to stop working.

There’s a business model where distributed solar production and storage is the norm and central grid based generation and delivery is the minority. Such a model is extremely resistant and there’s less system infrastructure necessary. It’s quite feasible to redesign the system around a “distributed first” model.

Where do the massive upgrades to the distribution system required for this kind of setup come from?

We simultaneously hate utilities and want them to redesign and pay for a distribution system that was not intended for bidirectional load flow.

Our municipal distribution systems are barely adequate. Net metering produces essentially no revenue but imposes a huge load on that infra.

Re: Pakistan says rooftop solar output to exceed grid demand in some hubs next year

#18

Post by kingstnap »

thfuran wrote: post #5
pfdietz wrote: post #3

What this shows is solar is increasingly threatening the electric utility business model. Even without net metering, demand destruction will cause the traditional model to stop working.

Will it? I’m not sure how the utilities structure their prices wrt the actual cost, but they definitely separate the baseline connection cost from usage on bills (at least in the US), so they may not be killed by people using very little power as long as the connection fee actually covers things.

The hardest possible demand to meet is random, reasonal, and spikey demand spread diffusely over a large area. Which is more or less homes.

Conversely the easiest possible demand to meet is localized constant and high demand. Basically AI datacenters or industrial users. These guys are basically paying for the grid and residential have it as a subsidy.

The supermajority of the price of electricity is fixed costs related to installing and maintaining capacity. The marginal problem of increasing generation or utilization is cheap. I believe it's like under 20% even for gas power where you have to buy gas. For grid solar it would be even crazier because marginally its basically free they really don't care how much you use it even goes negative but the fixed costs are everything.

So what causes a lot of social problems is when wealthy people get their own private solar because the whole current pricing structure revolves around wealthy people using a lot of electricity and paying down the connection costs for poor people. If they have solar the poor people are fronting the maintainence cost which destabilizes everything.

Re: Pakistan says rooftop solar output to exceed grid demand in some hubs next year

#19

Post by [deleted] »

gus_massa wrote: post #14
saidinesh5 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm guessing: fewer people buying from the power companies/grid => the fixed costs of these companies are pushed onto the poorer customers, who already couldn't afford much.

Don't they charge a minimum just for keeping the wires connected?

[deleted]

Re: Pakistan says rooftop solar output to exceed grid demand in some hubs next year

#20

Post by newsclues »

UltraSane wrote: post #13
pfdietz wrote: post #3

What this shows is solar is increasingly threatening the electric utility business model. Even without net metering, demand destruction will cause the traditional model to stop working.

What will people do at night?

Shift usage to daytime and rely on battery storage.
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