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‘Energy independence feels practical’: Europeans building mini solar farms

euronews.com

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Re: ‘Energy independence feels practical’: Europeans building mini solar farms

#31

Post by tialaramex »

pjc50 wrote: post #20
tjansen wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As soon as everybody is paying spot prices, balcony power stations are not economically viable anymore. Even today, on a sunny day, spot prices for electricity are either very low or even negative. The more solar power is available, the lower these prices will be. So your balcony power station is replacing electricity you could get for free anyway. At night, when you are not producing electricity, you still need to b…

> spot prices for electricity There are various good websites for showing the UK generation mix, but pricing seems less public. A lot seems to be done on day-ahead, which is pricing for the whole day not minute by minute. Is there a minute-by-minute ticker? Tariff? (the reason I'm asking is that I'm skeptical as to how true this is for places that aren't California)

You can see spot prices at the top of grid.iamkate.com for example.

It would be nice to have some belated insight into how the bids look. Like maybe a few random hours released from a week ago?

Oh, and it's half hours. You can't buy or sell five minutes of electricity, just half hours, which is why your smart meter also thinks in half hours. 48 periods per day.

Re: ‘Energy independence feels practical’: Europeans building mini solar farms

#32

Post by vrganj »

dust42 wrote: post #19
vrganj wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thinking of this in terms of markets is the real ideologically driven inefficiency.

You can spend every euro or dollar only once. If you consider CO2 emissions a critical problem, then you should spend every single dollar as efficiently as possible. Obviously independence of fossil fuels has a value too, as the current situation in the middle east shows. It would make much more sense to import (renewable) electricity from Spain to Germany than strawberries.

You shouldn't be spending euros or dollars at all. The economic system is the ideology holding us back.

Re: ‘Energy independence feels practical’: Europeans building mini solar farms

#33

Post by canpan »

misja111 wrote: post #27

Can anybody explain how these plug-in solar panels work? I am suprised that it's possible to just plug them in to your wall socket. For instance, isn't it complicated to have their output be in perfect sync with the frequency that comes in via the electricity net? Because to me it seems that if they won't, you will have lower benefits or even a net minus after plugging it in.

Not a specialist, just from what I heard: There are two things that make it work. First they are not really "independent" like the title says. They sync with the grid frequency. If the grid is down they shut off for safety. The other reason it works is that the grid power inside the home is just what you get as incoming power 〜230V. For example, I think in the US you get 240V or so delivered to your house, but 120V from the plug.

Re: ‘Energy independence feels practical’: Europeans building mini solar farms

#34

Post by myrmidon »

dust42 wrote: post #19
vrganj wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thinking of this in terms of markets is the real ideologically driven inefficiency.

You can spend every euro or dollar only once. If you consider CO2 emissions a critical problem, then you should spend every single dollar as efficiently as possible. Obviously independence of fossil fuels has a value too, as the current situation in the middle east shows. It would make much more sense to import (renewable) electricity from Spain to Germany than strawberries.

No this would not make more sense.

Grids are not set up to move significant percentages of national consumption over longer distances, and expansion is slow, expensive and prone to nimbyism.

Countries already struggle to move electrical energy inside their own borders (e.g. Germany: north=>south), shifting double digit percentages of national consumption across Europe is not gonna happen any time soon. Germany alone plans to spend at least ~€100bn over the next decade on this (internally, not on connecting Spain!).

Much more effective to focus on local generation first than to try and rely on slightly better conditions for solar panels half a continent away.

Re: ‘Energy independence feels practical’: Europeans building mini solar farms

#35

Post by mytailorisrich »

misja111 wrote: post #27

Can anybody explain how these plug-in solar panels work? I am suprised that it's possible to just plug them in to your wall socket. For instance, isn't it complicated to have their output be in perfect sync with the frequency that comes in via the electricity net? Because to me it seems that if they won't, you will have lower benefits or even a net minus after plugging it in.

My understanding is that plug-in solar inverters do sense what is coming from the grid and phase-sync to it with a PLL, and also adjust voltage accordingly.

Re: ‘Energy independence feels practical’: Europeans building mini solar farms

#36

Post by 9wzYQbTYsAIc »

metalman wrote: post #5

to answer the first question in the article "Many consumers want to know how long it will take them to make back the upfront costs of solar" my answer is that the payback is imediate, right from the first moment watching as energy is generated out of thin air, and the sudden relief from getting off the energy angst missery-go-round, and the sheer borring inertness of solar pv as it does the thing with zero detectable…

The mindset shift towards “how many hours of computer usage did that one panel enable” is like the mindset shift from learning calculus, in some ways. Not quite a paradigm shift, but you gain a new appreciation for conservation of use when it’s a difference between choice of $/kW/hr and “wow, the panel powered that for most of the day”.

At the same time, many people will just use a solar calculator or watch or yard lights etc, oblivious to it all.

Show people a solar powered laptop, a solar powered phone, or a solar powered tablet, then they will be impressed.

Remember the craze about solar powered car competitions?

permacompute + solar would make for quite the $100 laptop competition.

Re: ‘Energy independence feels practical’: Europeans building mini solar farms

#37

Post by 9wzYQbTYsAIc »

te_chris wrote: post #26
theshrike79 wrote: post #2

Distributed energy production / storage is the key for resiliency in the future. Every solar farm doesn't need to be China Size - it doesn't even need to be a "farm", just put them on roofs. And don't let perfect be the enemy of good. Yes there are times when solar doesn't produce energy, but there are also times where it OVERproduces.

Wild that you're getting downvoted for saying something so obvious. Weird.

Politics of solar, at work

Re: ‘Energy independence feels practical’: Europeans building mini solar farms

#39

Post by stuaxo »

tialaramex wrote: post #31
pjc50 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> spot prices for electricity There are various good websites for showing the UK generation mix, but pricing seems less public. A lot seems to be done on day-ahead, which is pricing for the whole day not minute by minute. Is there a minute-by-minute ticker? Tariff? (the reason I'm asking is that I'm skeptical as to how true this is for places that aren't California)

You can see spot prices at the top of grid.iamkate.com for example. It would be nice to have some belated insight into how the bids look. Like maybe a few random hours released from a week ago? Oh, and it's half hours. You can't buy or sell five minutes of electricity, just half hours, which is why your smart meter also thinks in half hours. 48 periods per day.

Wow, £100 per MWh and 12% is fossil fuels in the mix at 10:48am ... a bit more Solar adoption and maybe that 12% could go away, it's morning after all.

Re: ‘Energy independence feels practical’: Europeans building mini solar farms

#40

Post by coryrc »

watwut wrote: post #9
dust42 wrote: post #6

I once read an article that in Berlin the sewage system is flushed with fresh water because too many people have installed water saving toilet flushers. So plenty of people bought these water savers and now the price of water has gone up because the water that is directly flushed needs to be paid too. The 'balcony power stations' are the same thing. They get subsidised, and you even get a fixed kWh price when pushing…

> I once read an article that in Berlin the sewage system is flushed with fresh water because too many people have installed water saving toilet flushers. So plenty of people bought these water savers and now the price of water has gone up because the water that is directly flushed needs to be paid too. What is this supposed to mean? You flush less water, therefore water price is more expensive, because flushed water…

GP is partly right. Most of the cost of sewers is fixed cost: employee salaries, building and maintaining X kilometers of sewers, etc. Some is variable: chemicals, but a small part.

If you, a single person, cut your water usage in half, you pay half as much. But if everybody uses half as much, the system still needs about the same amount of funding. So now you double the per-unit price, and everybody pays the same they were before spending money on water saving features. In this case, even if each person used half as much water, the total water needed isn't cut in half because the sewers need more water to function.

(Also, water isn't "used"; most of it's transported, cleaned, transported, dirtied, cleaned again, transported)

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