Cheap solar power is sending electrical grids into a death spiral
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Re: Cheap solar power is sending electrical grids into a death spiral
#2Re: Cheap solar power is sending electrical grids into a death spiral
#3I mean, what power grid provider makes it easy to work with them to sell solar back to the grid? Bogus fees, negative rate metering, and lobbying against the consumer drives consumers to ever-cheaper solar and storage options.
This is self inflicted behavior from monopolies that ignore user research.
Re: Cheap solar power is sending electrical grids into a death spiral
#4I mean, what power grid provider makes it easy to work with them to sell solar back to the grid? Bogus fees, negative rate metering, and lobbying against the consumer drives consumers to ever-cheaper solar and storage options. This is self inflicted behavior from monopolies that ignore user research.
It depends on the utility company. Some are better than others.
The grid is a utility. They weren't originally built with the idea of customers sending power back at a small scale. So it's tricky to maintain power fluctuations when you have all these extra data points. Plus considerations for the quality of consumer hardware. So naturally companies would prefer to have solar installations at scale as opposed to by residential basis.
Re: Cheap solar power is sending electrical grids into a death spiral
#5I mean, what power grid provider makes it easy to work with them to sell solar back to the grid? Bogus fees, negative rate metering, and lobbying against the consumer drives consumers to ever-cheaper solar and storage options. This is self inflicted behavior from monopolies that ignore user research.
ComEd, the main electrical provider in northern Illinois, actively encourages homes and businesses to install solar power and offers net metering to solar-equipped customers.
https://www.comed.com/smart-energy/my-green-power-connection...
Re: Cheap solar power is sending electrical grids into a death spiral
#6Re: Cheap solar power is sending electrical grids into a death spiral
#7I mean, what power grid provider makes it easy to work with them to sell solar back to the grid? Bogus fees, negative rate metering, and lobbying against the consumer drives consumers to ever-cheaper solar and storage options. This is self inflicted behavior from monopolies that ignore user research.
ComEd, the main electrical provider in northern Illinois, actively encourages homes and businesses to install solar power and offers net metering to solar-equipped customers. https://www.comed.com/smart-energy/my-green-power-connection...
> After ComEd receives confirmation that the project has passed municipal inspection, it can take anywhere from 6 to 18 weeks to complete the permanent residential electric service and up to 6 months for a permanent industrial electric service, depending on the amount of work required.
6 month turnaround sounds pretty weak.
https://secure.comed.com/MyAccount/MyService/Pages/RequestIn...
Re: Cheap solar power is sending electrical grids into a death spiral
#8Hopefully what's dying is the concept of privately owned utilities. Everyone knows that, unless they're properly regulated, these eventually turn into a rent-seeking behemoths that corrupt the government (or vice-versa).
However, what will likely happen is that these private utilities will see the writing on the wall and instead do what PG&E is doing in CA and just start charging "transmission fees" to keep their rates even higher despite massive daytime solar abundance.
Everywhere there is state/municipal owned utilities it's almost always considerable cheaper than private.
Re: Cheap solar power is sending electrical grids into a death spiral
#9> "lots of self-generated power will ultimately be wasted."
This is sunlight falling on a roof. If you convert it into electricity but then don't use that electricity, is it really a waste? It's like saying that the overflow from my water tank that collects rain water off the roof is 'wasting' water.
It could be argued that it's a waste in the sense that the generated electricity could have gone to someone else if there was a grid, but if the grid operator isn't allowing excess to be put back into the grid (e.g. because there's no demand at that time because it's sunny and everyone is using solar), then the grid operator needs to solve that with some form of energy storage (e.g. batteries).
Re: Cheap solar power is sending electrical grids into a death spiral
#10Just make roof solar panels with tiltable shades that limit the incoming sunlight for this kind of situations. This is when there is no battery storage involved.
If the solar-roofed house can involve home batteries, problem solved.