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

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

#111

Post by jandrese »

throw0101c wrote: post #48
pjc50 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once you've bought the panel, unlike oil, that's it. The panel doesn't remember its national origin.

> Once you've bought the panel, unlike oil, that's it. The panel doesn't remember its national origin. Until there's a geopolitical event occurs and your supply chain gets cut off so any expansion, warranty, or replacement units cannot arrive, so you're stuck at the your current level of deployment (which may or may not be sufficient for your needs).

That is a problem. The only way it could be worse is if your technology required a constant supply of input from a foreign country...

From a geopolitical standpoint running a country on locally produced renewable power is obviously the least risky approach, even if you get cut off from further expansion of your renewable production.

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

#112

Post by jandrese »

glimshe wrote: post #47
pjc50 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once you've bought the panel, unlike oil, that's it. The panel doesn't remember its national origin.

And panels last forever, ensuring that Europe won't have to deal with panel manufacturers ever again.

Historically panels are generally considered to be exhausted after 30 years of service, although even that means they're down to 80% of their original capacity.

The more failure prone component is the inverter, by a huge margin.

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

#113

Post by horsawlarway »

friendzis wrote: post #25
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.

> 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. When solar OVERproduces you have to literally pay someone to consume that energy, most probably wind farms, which could be producing energy instead. So you pay actually twice. When the solar underproduces, you need to bring in alternative sources, but those now have to c…

Home installations just cut it off. In both of these cases.

I did my own battery backed installation. When I'm underproducing I can shed load (I turn off my AC - almost always that's enough, and it's automated by relay). When I'm overproducing (ex - my battery is full and my load is still not enough to consume input) I just don't let the panels generate more current than I can consume.

Managing grid scale power is different concern, and not particularly relevant to small household generation. Especially not relevant in the 800W category for "balcony solar" (which is much smaller than what I'm working with).

Solar is fucking coming, whether you continue to shove head into the ground or not.

It's just way more affordable. Getting easily more affordable as batteries continue to improve.

I honestly doubt I'll still be connected to a local utility grid for electric 10 years from now, and I live in a region of the US that has considerably cheaper grid power than most areas.

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

#114

Post by labcomputer »

oliwarner wrote: post #77
pjc50 wrote: post #8

Fairly boilerplate article, but the bit that is news is the UK balcony solar permitting. Better longread: https://solarenergyconcepts.co.uk/post/plug-in-solar-uk/ Government press release with a long list of pull quotes: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/government-to-make-plug-i... (I note that in the alternate universe where Ed Miliband became PM because he didn't eat a bacon sandwich, we could have had this a dec…

British industry and standards bodies think this is an unsafe plan. Of course they would because it's work being taken away from them but it would be allowing people to plug generators into ring finals with unidirectional breakers. It's not even guaranteed that the circuit is protected by anything newer than fuse wire or an MCB. No guaranteed earth leakage detection. No guaranteed surge protection. Relying on the che…

“Unidirectional breakers” aren’t a thing for AC circuits.

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

#115

Post by MagicMoonlight »

friendzis wrote: post #25
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.

> 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. When solar OVERproduces you have to literally pay someone to consume that energy, most probably wind farms, which could be producing energy instead. So you pay actually twice. When the solar underproduces, you need to bring in alternative sources, but those now have to c…

No you don’t, you could just ground it. Paying them is a choice.

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

#116

Post by msandford »

conorcleary wrote: post #67
raverbashing wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"If you find dollar bills on the ground you need to pay someone to collect it as litter" Charge batteries, do electrolysis, or a multitude of other uses (I know some companies do that already)

Used 240w modules built in 2010-2012 are worth $60-100 CAD at the moment in small quantities. There will be hundreds of thousands hitting the market (as long as they didn't hit the ground with careless removals) in ~2030+ as microFIT contracts in Ontario expire. There is no clear path to switching these arrays to Net Metering, as of yet. Prepare for all sorts of unrecycled solar panels and potential loss of renewable…

Net metering is really, really smart when the installed base is small relative to the fossil fuel power plant capacity. But it doesn't scale forever. Once it gets up towards 20-40% of the fossil fuel capacity, it goes from an asset to a liability.

Suppose I have a 100MW gas turbine. And suppose there's 1MW of solar installed in my generation network. I don't really care if I sell 80MW at noon and 90MW around dinner time and 50MW through the night, or if instead it's 79MW at noon and 91MW at dinner and 51MW at night. The gas costs about the same irrespective of when I burn it so a bit of a fuel shift doesn't really matter.

But take that 1MW and turn it into 20MW and suddenly we go from 80MW at noon to 60MW at noon, 90MW at dinner to 110MW at dinner and uh oh. You see the problem? Whatever losses I endured at noon I don't get to make up for at dinner because my plant only goes up to 100MW and now we're not just shifting when we burn how much fuel, we're literally having to shift the power generation to a different plant.

Is this example precisely accurate? Absolutely not. But it helps you get a feel for the problem of net metering at scale. The grid can act as a battery for a few % of total generation, but by the time you hit some number, maybe 20% maybe 40% net metering turns from a cool math trick to a real cost on the grid.

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

#117

Post by jonatron »

labcomputer wrote: post #114
oliwarner wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

British industry and standards bodies think this is an unsafe plan. Of course they would because it's work being taken away from them but it would be allowing people to plug generators into ring finals with unidirectional breakers. It's not even guaranteed that the circuit is protected by anything newer than fuse wire or an MCB. No guaranteed earth leakage detection. No guaranteed surge protection. Relying on the che…

“Unidirectional breakers” aren’t a thing for AC circuits.

https://www.bgelectrical.uk/uk/circuit-protection/devices/rc... Right there, both bidirectional and unidirectional breakers.

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

#118

Post by wat10000 »

msandford wrote: post #116
conorcleary wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Used 240w modules built in 2010-2012 are worth $60-100 CAD at the moment in small quantities. There will be hundreds of thousands hitting the market (as long as they didn't hit the ground with careless removals) in ~2030+ as microFIT contracts in Ontario expire. There is no clear path to switching these arrays to Net Metering, as of yet. Prepare for all sorts of unrecycled solar panels and potential loss of renewable…

Net metering is really, really smart when the installed base is small relative to the fossil fuel power plant capacity. But it doesn't scale forever. Once it gets up towards 20-40% of the fossil fuel capacity, it goes from an asset to a liability. Suppose I have a 100MW gas turbine. And suppose there's 1MW of solar installed in my generation network. I don't really care if I sell 80MW at noon and 90MW around dinner t…

Net metering only makes sense as a way to incentivize solar installations. Looking at the economics, it's not something any utility would offer willingly.

It's like if the grocery store let you give them milk for a credit at full price. (Let's ignore the sanitary/health/quality issues that would come up.) You decide to buy a cow and you drink that milk. Sometimes you need more than your cow can give so you buy extra from the store. Sometimes you need less and you sell the extra to the store. Long term, you use as much as your cow produces on average, so you pay the store nothing. But the store has provided a valuable services to you and has incurred expenses in doing so. They have to keep the lights on and maintain a building and pay workers to handle your transactions but they make no money from you. The only way it would work at all is if they made enough money from their non-cow-owning customers to make up for it, and that can only take you so far.

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

#119

Post by CobrastanJorji »

roysting wrote: post #42

[flagged]

"We periodically need replacements for our magical energy making machines" is a problem, but it is orders of magnitude less severe than "we will run out of fuel for our furnaces tomorrow."

That said, "running out" of oil isn't necessarily a real problem for the US, as we're net exporters of oil. The oil we export isn't the same kind as the oil we refine, but we could build refineries to refine our own oil and achieve "independence" that way. It'd just be less profitable.

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

#120

Post by mytailorisrich »

tim333 wrote: post #79
mytailorisrich wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the same time they are banning wind turbines leaders (Chinese companies) from opening factories in the UK... [1][2] [1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c995xjxk97mo [2] https://www.energyvoice.com/insights/energy-opinion/594763/m...

That seems rather dumb. I wonder why they blocked the Ming Yang thing in Scotland? The UK seems to make quite a lot of dumb energy decisions like blocking UK North Sea gas and then buying North Sea gas from Norway.

Yes it is rather 'dumb'. Apparently the policy is to reset relations with the EU so perhaps selling out to Siemens is deemed preferable, or perhaps they got the usual friendly phone call from Washington D.C, it is difficult to follow. And that's the point: Where is the plan? Where is strategic thinking?
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