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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

#121

Post by testing22321 »

SackSolStr wrote: post #102
testing22321 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those numbers sound wrong. I have 7.8kw in Canada, and if I paid out of pocket payback would be 6-7 years. We pat $0.13 per kWh from the grid, get a one for one credit on anything we feed in. System makes 7.8Mwh in a year. What are your friends numbers? Grid price is also pre-approved to increase not less that 5% a year forever, so it will only go in my favour.

In spain he pays more than that on average, and only gets €0.04 for sold KWH. If it was one-to-one credit offset, as you have in Canada, it would certainly be very profitable.

So then just use most of your power during the day and you’re better off than Canada.

It’s not hard to use heavy power appliances only during the day.

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

#122

Post by magicalhippo »

kragen wrote: post #108
magicalhippo wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the probable answer is that your relative paid 25× the current market price Where do I get 450W panels for $12 each?

pvXchange, but they're €23 because you fucked up the math: https://www.solarserver.de/photovoltaik-preis-pv-modul-preis... €12 would be 44× cheaper (7000/6000/(12/450) ≈ 44). Maybe in a couple of years.

I assumed 7k installed, so roughly half for the panels.

So how many do you need to buy to get that €23 price?

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

#123

Post by stephen_g »

SoftTalker wrote: post #7
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.

Most people aren’t interested in being responsible for their own electrical generation. Especially with payback still being on the order of decades

Visit Australia, plenty of people are! When the real paybacks are generally 4-8 years (depending on what we're talking about) why wouldn't people be? We have 4.2 million solar systems (for reference there are almost 11 million dwellings). Just this year the Federal Government started giving out grants for home batteries and over 55,000 people have already taken that up and at least 90,000 home battery installations exist so far according to these stats: https://cer.gov.au/markets/reports-and-data/small-scale-inst...

Even if people don't go to the lengths I do (I like to watch the current generation and will slightly delay my use big loads like the washing machine, dishwasher, dryer etc. to try and use as much as my solar as possible), it's still very common for people to choose to do things like set the dishwasher timer in the day to use solar - which is great because it's also taking load off the grid.

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

#124

Post by ssl-3 »

Havoc wrote: post #101
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…

Did whoever named those streets have a stroke? 20, 23, 25, 27, 28, MDR 7, 32, 33, no name at all, 39, 40 And they're not even unique...they recycle them a kilometer further. WAT

It appears that the recycled street numbers each appear on different blocks.

Street 6, for instance: I've found it twice so far.

But they're still distinct, in that one Street 6 is within Block M 3 B, and another is within Block M 7.

Which appears to suggest that blocks are more important at identifying an address than a street name is, and if that's the case then that works just fine.

And indeed, a distinct address appears to be something like this: Plot 15, Block M 7 Lake City, Lahore, Pakistan. Plug that into Google Maps and you'll see what I'm seeing (and note that the string doesn't include a street name at all).

It does seem weird to my wee little Ohio-trained brain to identify a building by what block it is on more than the street it is facing, but then: Canadian post codes and Hungarian addresses also look weird to me, and also work fine in the places where they're used.

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

#125

Post by sagarm »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #55
PunchyHamster wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if the same solar also had enough battery capacity, sure. But they do not, they still need to buy at out of solar peak and that just causes problems for both sides. I think grid should start moving into selling storage as a service. Just put a bunch of bulk storage at every transformer station and buy solar from consumers at solar peak, sell them back say 80% of it (or whatever margin is required to pay for it) off p…

LFP chemistries are approaching ~$50/kWh, and CATL's sodium chemistry is supposed to be ~$40/kWh (per CATL); soon it will be more expensive to ship the battery storage than the storage itself. "Watershed moment:" Big battery storage prices hit record low in China auction - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44504630 - July 2025 (4 comments) IEA: The battery industry has entered a new phase - https://www.iea.org/com…

Sodium batteries have significantly lower round-trip efficiency, so they have to be cheaper to win against LFP.

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

#126

Post by purerandomness »

Havoc wrote: post #101
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…

Did whoever named those streets have a stroke? 20, 23, 25, 27, 28, MDR 7, 32, 33, no name at all, 39, 40 And they're not even unique...they recycle them a kilometer further. WAT

Reminds me of "Falsehoods programmers believe about addresses" [0]

[0] https://www.mjt.me.uk/posts/falsehoods-programmers-believe-a...

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

#127

Post by SECProto »

Havoc wrote: post #101
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…

Did whoever named those streets have a stroke? 20, 23, 25, 27, 28, MDR 7, 32, 33, no name at all, 39, 40 And they're not even unique...they recycle them a kilometer further. WAT

You have an inbuilt assumption about the purpose of a street name. Compare it with addresses in Japan [1], where some streets don't even have names. I don't know anything about Pakistan, but i wouldn't be surprised if the street name is solely to differentiate within some small geographic area. Looking at street view[2] from a nearby real estate development supports this

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_addressing_system

[2] https://maps.app.goo.gl/sfoKSP5yRU41yS8w5

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

#128

Post by NedF »

ZeroConcerns wrote: post #4

Excellent results, even if the source article is a bit government-optimistic-press-releasy. The less-good news is that, even with abundant solar, you still need a functional grid (even more so than in traditional top-down energy distribution schemes) in order for everyone to take advantage of it, but this is a problem that lots of rich nations are working through right now, so affordable off-the-shelf solutions are b…

[dead]

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

#129

Post by abdullahkhalids »

ssl-3 wrote: post #124
Havoc wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did whoever named those streets have a stroke? 20, 23, 25, 27, 28, MDR 7, 32, 33, no name at all, 39, 40 And they're not even unique...they recycle them a kilometer further. WAT

It appears that the recycled street numbers each appear on different blocks. Street 6, for instance: I've found it twice so far. But they're still distinct, in that one Street 6 is within Block M 3 B, and another is within Block M 7. Which appears to suggest that blocks are more important at identifying an address than a street name is, and if that's the case then that works just fine. And indeed, a distinct address…

That's correct. In Pakistan, typically cities are broken up into housing societies. Each society is broken up into sectors/blocks, which are typically indexed by the alphabet(A, B, C, ...), but occasionally, one will see block M7 or sector B2 etc. In each such sector, each house has a unique numbered address.

Some larger societies are first broken up into "phases" and then into sectors/blocks.

Street numbers are typically not required in an address, but are often provided as helpful guidance.

Not a great system, but still better than Calgary's system (where I studied), which might be the worst system I have ever seen. You can't navigate at all without a map.

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

#130

Post by miguelxt »

ssl-3 wrote: post #124
Havoc wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did whoever named those streets have a stroke? 20, 23, 25, 27, 28, MDR 7, 32, 33, no name at all, 39, 40 And they're not even unique...they recycle them a kilometer further. WAT

It appears that the recycled street numbers each appear on different blocks. Street 6, for instance: I've found it twice so far. But they're still distinct, in that one Street 6 is within Block M 3 B, and another is within Block M 7. Which appears to suggest that blocks are more important at identifying an address than a street name is, and if that's the case then that works just fine. And indeed, a distinct address…

In Costa Rica, they don't even use street names. For instance, "50 meters down the old store, with a green door" is a valid address.
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