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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

#121

Post by izacus »

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.

That's the same kind of problem solving that thought making self driving Teslas is the solution for infrastructure problems.

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

#122

Post by mrguyorama »

jandrese wrote: post #106
pjc50 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you elaborate on this? Why would people remove a working solar system?

Buildings get torn down. Roof needs a replacement and the owner doesn't feel like it is worthwhile to redo the solar install for panels that only have 5 years of warranty left, or maybe they want to replace them with higher power models with a fresh warranty. There are any number of reasons why someone might need to offload otherwise functional solar panels.

Currently used solar panels are a hot commodity, with many groups selling them by the pallet, because 10 year old solar panels are still efficient enough to easily pay for themselves. Very few installations will care about specifically how many panels they want, they just want a nameplate output per dollar figure.

Old inverters might not have a second life though.

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

#123

Post by mrguyorama »

michaelteter wrote: post #85
1970-01-01 wrote: post #61

"Suddenly" is horrific evidence that the government has no idea how to do long-term plans. Wait until you tell them you can run cars entirely on electricity from a solar farming. I'm sure they will ignore you until the price of diesel reaches four-digit territory. 1000p today? If only we didn't have to pay these incredible prices, what a miracle that would be..

It's not that government has no idea, it's that around the world, too many "leaders" are directly or strongly indirectly being enriched by the fossil fuel industry and their support industries. So politicians have a choice: do what's right for the people, or gain more power/money for themselves. Not every one of them chooses poorly, but enough do that it is difficult for real progress to be made.

Don't forget the truly staggering amount of voters who seem to be ideologically opposed to energy independence and self delusion to support those bought politicians.

People earnestly and genuinely spout "But the birds" to wind installations. Why are they so intent on taking any possible excuse? Why do they need to have an opinion on something they know nothing about?

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

#124

Post by teamonkey »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #14
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…

> 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 decade ago I read what is happening in exactly the opposite way. To me it shows that Milliand and the government at large do very little with no strategic thinking and no plan (same as the guys before in fairness but this government was supposed to be soo different...) and, in this case…

These policies were in their manifesto, they just take some time to enact, even with a majority government.

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

#125

Post by foxglacier »

zdragnar wrote: post #109
fnordpiglet wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it interesting because often the best way to achieve a safe building code is to learn by allowing with basic guard rails and iterating as things happen. This isn’t ideal for the rare individual impacted by the “things happening,” but collectively we refine and iterate. Our current standards weren’t arrived at by navel gazing - we got the codes we have by experience. It’s hard to realize that from the present t…

Are there lessons on safety that need to be learned here? We already know what the happy path looks like, and we've plenty of lessons on what the unhappy path will look like. It isn't as if electric charge coming from balcony solar panels is some new magical-seeming type of electricity.

Safety is statistical and depends on human behavior. Unexpected behaviors might appear. For example some places require a power outlet on kitchen islands because with out, people will use cords to the wall which creates tripping hazards.

Also, why do wires have to be fixed to joists every 300 mm? It's not about the electrons.

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

#126

Post by ben_w »

Ray20 wrote: post #64
ben_w wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While true in general, I suspect that this won't change house prices as (I think) those are more driven by supply-demand imbalances rather than the actual costs, and that the increase in costs will go into someone else's profit margin, which may be some mix of the builders (although they're famously opaque from all the sub-contracting) and the land owners.

Regulations like these make the entire renewable energy sector seem like a crazy scam and greenwashing. They might not have much of an impact on property values (certainly no more than the plethora of existing building regulations). But we shouldn't be surprised if as a result people vote for a candidate whose campaign promise consists of picking up a grenade launcher and blowing up windmills.

On the one hand, it's been obviously economically a good idea to require this for about a decade, both because PV is cheap and would pay for itself even at full price and also because doing it construction time is cheaper than doing it later.

Even moreso now, because PV is now cheaper per square metre than tiles or fences, even if you don't hook it up to the grid afterwards.

On the other hand, this is the UK so maybe. They did Brexit and somehow Farage hasn't been deported for the consequences.

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

#127

Post by jrmg »

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…

We just got solar panels and a battery installed on our house. I try to be hard-headed about the economics when planning, but I have to say the _experience_ of having done it is exactly as you describe.

The other thing it made me is angry at the political morass that these things seem to be in.

At a technical level I understand the ‘base load’ arguments, but we are throwing away _so much energy_ that’s just there for the taking by not having these everywhere. On most days, our house (in Western North Carolina) gets enough energy from the sun that we net-export to the grid - and we have an EV! There’s just no need for the massive amounts of carbon we are spewing into the air - the energy is just falling onto us!

In the future, providing we’re still around, we’ll look back at a time when we could’ve been getting all our energy needs from just the sun (and wind etc.) and shake our heads in disbelief at those who fought against the idea that we should even think about efficiently using it so viscerally.

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

#128

Post by theshrike79 »

horsawlarway wrote: post #113
friendzis wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 di…

My current EV has a 38kW battery.

When it's too worn out for car use (SoH around 60-70%), it's still perfectly enough to run _everything_ in my house for multiple days - except for the electric sauna, and I'm smart enough to turn it on if there are production issues :D

There's a reason why EV's will never be as cheap as the cheapest ICE shitbox. Just the bare metals in the battery are worth thousands when recycled, even more if the battery is still viable.

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

#129

Post by forgetfreeman »

izacus wrote: post #121
te_chris wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

That's the same kind of problem solving that thought making self driving Teslas is the solution for infrastructure problems.

I'm fairly certain securing one's household's access to energy independent of rate increases triggered by a combination of aging infrastructure and data center power demand doesn't have a lot in common with tech bros attempts at reinventing trains badly from first principles but I'm open to hear the argument. Care to unpack that?

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

#130

Post by theshrike79 »

raverbashing wrote: post #43
friendzis wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

"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)

This is literally the only sane usage for hydrogen outside of industrial uses, when you have a massive excess of renewables, use it to turn water into pressurised hydrogen.

And when the prices go up, you run that through a grid scale fuel cell and feed it back to the network.

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