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Building my own solar power system

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Re: Building my own solar power system

#101

Post by b112 »

Teever wrote: post #52
calgoo wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally feel there should be more allowance for small personal wind generators in sub-urban areas. That would offset a bit at least in winter for places like the UK. Not sure what the actual laws are, but I can assume councils wont be too happy about someone putting one up on their home.

I was under the impression that small wind generators at the scale of suburban backyards are really uneconomical and don't produce sufficient energy for anything of practical use.

I wonder what studies may exist on this. Were they all funded by Big Wind?

Re: Building my own solar power system

#102

Post by cyri »

yvan wrote: post #92
pingou wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you do with that much electricity? Was it necessary to over-dimension for winter?

If you have an EV that can be charged only at night, a big battery is required.

For solar excess charging I use evcc.io

When I charge the car via battery then only down to ~75% for now. The remaining energy is needed by the house during winter months.

Re: Building my own solar power system

#103

Post by ta1243 »

pjc50 wrote: post #80
alex-moon wrote: post #10

Having done some work around net zero policy I am increasingly convinced that this is the way forward, and indeed that this will be the way things are done normally maybe 10-20 years from now. The concept is called "distributed generation" and in UK each distribution network keeps an "embedded capacity register" which is basically all the distributed energy resources that are connected to the grid at distribution lev…

One of those areas where policy action is desperately needed but no attention is paid due to media dysfunction. I think the UK would benefit from region-specific pricing, to move the datacenters closer to generation rather than urban environments. It would also encourage more embedded generation in expensive areas.

Politics however them collides, with "postcode lottery" headlines

Democracy really limits governments

Re: Building my own solar power system

#104

Post by ZeroGravitas »

BrtByte wrote: post #77
sneak wrote: post #7

It’s a true shame that the public utility commission is so corrupt that we lose the obvious economies of scale from grid-scale installations of same in favor of expensive rent seeking by a state-sanctioned monopoly. I also have 60kWh of batteries in my kitchen, but for the average person who doesn’t want to deal with this stuff, having to admin part of the power grid is a tragic waste. If the PUC and power company we…

The fact that so many people are turning their homes into mini power plants is less a triumph of individualism and more a symptom of a broken system

Abstracting away from any particular grid regulatory environment, distributed solar and batteries make sense and make more and more sense as the cost reduces.

Another way of saying that, if we were playing a city simulator as a disembodied beneficent dictator you'd want distributed generation and storage as part of your grid.

In reality there's all sorts of complications, compromises, trade-offs, graft and politics but on balance those factors are working against distributed solar which is succeeding despite them.

Some people have a knee-jerk reaction to anything that requires legislation, regulation or subsidies which clouds the issue though.

Re: Building my own solar power system

#105

Post by sneak »

looofooo0 wrote: post #35
sneak wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many office parking lots would be covered in solar carports immediately if the corrupt PUC paid reasonable rates for generation? This solves the T&D problem too, as generation remains distributed. It’s the money.

Not so easy to reduce the grid load all the time, needs a big battery for every night and for multiple dark days you still need the grid a lot.

Paying reasonable rates for generation also incentivizes distributed storage for anyone who wants to buy batteries and help load shift.

Large neighborhood batteries seem to make a lot more sense to me than batteries in every home.

Re: Building my own solar power system

#106

Post by jaapz »

sneak wrote: post #8
9dev wrote: post #4

I'm still curious what you'd need a rack consuming 1kw for… in your garage. From the photo, it looks like lots of storage(?).

1kW is less than a toaster, fwiw. I draw 1-1.5kW for my servers in a spare bedroom. It’s not a lot of spindles/cores, just a few dozen.

1kW continuously is 8760kWh per year. To compare, my house used 6200kWh in total over 2024, including heating.

Your toaster draws 1kW for maybe 5 minutes a day, which is maybe 30kWh per year.

The power in this comparison is not important, it's the total energy consumed (which is what you are billed for in the end).

Re: Building my own solar power system

#107

Post by ta1243 »

matusp wrote: post #69
pjc50 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Subsidy causing high prices? You're going to have to explain that.

Customer is willing to pay 10k. Supplier will charge 10k. Customer is willing to pay 10k, state is willing to pay 5k. Supplier will charge 15k.

That applies with inelastic goods - land for example - where supply can't increase

Assuming the base cost is 8k

Supplier A and Supplier B charge 15k and have 100 customers between them, making 350k each

Supplier B decides to undercut Supplier A, and charge 14k, and get all the customers, making 600k profit

Customer might be willing to pay 10k, but if there's two identical quotes, one for 10k and one for 9k they'll go for the 9k

Re: Building my own solar power system

#108

Post by sneak »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #104
BrtByte wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that so many people are turning their homes into mini power plants is less a triumph of individualism and more a symptom of a broken system

Abstracting away from any particular grid regulatory environment, distributed solar and batteries make sense and make more and more sense as the cost reduces. Another way of saying that, if we were playing a city simulator as a disembodied beneficent dictator you'd want distributed generation and storage as part of your grid. In reality there's all sorts of complications, compromises, trade-offs, graft and politics b…

There’s distributed and then there’s piecemeal. It doesn’t make sense to try to fit large energy storage safely inside every residential building.

You could build fireproof mini storage substations in blocks or subdivisions to load shift, but taking a chunk out of everyone’s garage space and forcing every person to do inverter and battery maintenance is silly.

Re: Building my own solar power system

#109

Post by genericresponse »

acatton wrote: post #86
pjc50 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Subsidy causing high prices? You're going to have to explain that.

There was a study in France showing that for rent subsidies.[1] In France, the state pays max(rate * rent, cap) for apartments for students, unemployed and poor workers. Usually people don't qualify for ratio of the rent, because it's way over the cap for the subsidy. To keep up with inflation, the state re-evaluate the cap of the subsidy almost every year. A french economist showed that there was a correlation betwe…

The key difference in the markets is that it takes a very long time to build more apartments and houses, especially in France. There also isn't an option to not have housing. (Low elasticity) That keeps the short term supply effectively static. Same amount of supply, increase in money spent, inflation.

In a market like solar, there is production of more solar systems. There are also multiple readily available substitutes. (e.g. on-grid power) The effect of the subsidy should drive increased volume from manufacturers, keeping net price stable.

Re: Building my own solar power system

#110

Post by 9dev »

sneak wrote: post #8
9dev wrote: post #4

I'm still curious what you'd need a rack consuming 1kw for… in your garage. From the photo, it looks like lots of storage(?).

1kW is less than a toaster, fwiw. I draw 1-1.5kW for my servers in a spare bedroom. It’s not a lot of spindles/cores, just a few dozen.

> 1kW is less than a toaster, fwiw.

Odd argument. A cheetah can run up to 110kmh, but that doesn't mean they can cross 110 kilometres in an hour.

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