The Economist, a journal that speaks for the British millionaires
Cheap solar power is sending electrical grids into a death spiral
111–120 of 121 posts
Re: Cheap solar power is sending electrical grids into a death spiral
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
The hubris in this article is unreal: it's posing that privately owned utilities are a good thing and that bypassing them is some crime that's done by ratepayers. I hope that business model dies in a fire. Instead the entire paradigm of centralized generation may need to be called into question and we should instead be focusing on a hybrid centralized baseline + local generation and storage. Places like China do fine…
Wow. Did you read the next three paragraphs to the end of the article: | Policymakers are now attempting to come up with solutions. “You can make solar play nice with the grids,” ... | Yet the best solution would be for energy firms to respond to the competition and sort themselves out. The article is talking about: * how solar is disrupting the traditional utility model * in countries where the utilities provide a p…
You forget that governments built the grid. Then they sold them, usually for far less than they're worth to "friendly" companies to get some money to spend. These companies, in a complete baffling coincidence then provided a suspicious number of those politicians with board seats after they retire from government, or "government liason director" positions and the like. Now the government is forever paying interest ... well, not so much the government, of course, the customers are. You and me. The government got the money, spent it, it's gone.
BUT, a while ago rich people started to get off the grid. And this has advantages, such as much greater flexibility in where to live, so they did.
Middle class people could get off the grid, which ironically the government paid them for. So they did.
Companies largely got off the grid (it's more complicated, they built solar plants, then sold the electricity for electricity at night or somehow traded with grids, and locked in these contracts for decades). So they're effectively off the grid.
So who's paying this eternal interest that keeps increasing?
Who isn't off the grid? The governments themselves, and poor people. Governments have, of course, decided they don't pay for the grid themselves (not even for maintenance). It's in your electricity bill ... which due to government financial responsibility (such as the previous German government entrusting all this ... to Putin. Yes, really, that Putin) ... is climbing fast. One might add that one story is that the head of the government that entrusted German energy to Putin was threatened during an official visit to Putin ... by Putin setting dogs on her (he had read she was terrified of dogs) ... she STILL went through with entrusting the energy infrastructure to Putin. Then Ukraine blew up a major part of the infrastructure Putin built. You can't make this up. Personally, I'm the sort of person that if someone sets dogs on me ... anything after that is going to be a tough sell.
So now poor people effectively have an extra tax in high electricity prices that are climbing fast (the increases are now down to 5x the rate of inflation. Yes, DOWN, that's correct). Oh and to make matters worse, as the article points out, it's become ever easier to get off the grid. Which means the people served by the grid ... still dropping. Not just houses in suburbs are disconnecting, but city houses as well. And there may be other reasons. It's green. Or my favorite: the Israeli reason (these people are brilliant and insane). Convincing people to buy solar power because ... it does not disconnect in case of war. Apparently it's popular in Arab countries too.
Since this allowed past governments to spend more money, they now have no problem spending a less, or paying that money back, of course. Yes, that last sentence was a joke. No, in reality they're coming up with ever crueler and more forceful methods to make sure poor people pay the extra tax, such as making it non-dischargeable. Making it a crime to disconnect from the grid. To take it out of unemployment benefits before the person sees the money. To threaten everything a person has in case of non-payment (e.g. school subsidies for their children). Etc.
It isn't working.
Oh and that this debacle, which is entirely the decision of the currently in power party, even if the head of the government was swapped, is driving people in droves to other parties (ie. AfD), is the fault of Zelensky, Putin, Musk, Netanyahu ... and frankly everyone ... except of course the party that actually did it.
Re: Cheap solar power is sending electrical grids into a death spiral
#113One Jack Rickard, RIP, who was quite an opinionated jerk imho, coined the concept of "selfish solar." The idea was that solar was on its way to becoming so cheap that one should just install enough panels and batteries such that you basically never use the grid, it's just a backup for uncommon events. Basically grid use drops to that 1 or 10% of the time the sun doesn't shine for days. I think we are there on the pan…
That might work in southern latitudes where the seasonal change in solar irradiation isn't much different. In the North, like in Canada, there's just not enough solar in the winter. We really need a way to store excess solar from the summer into the winter. Like on the scale of a 500 gallon propane tank.
There is a finish company working on something that might fit this need: domestic sand batteries.
Re: Cheap solar power is sending electrical grids into a death spiral
#114One Jack Rickard, RIP, who was quite an opinionated jerk imho, coined the concept of "selfish solar." The idea was that solar was on its way to becoming so cheap that one should just install enough panels and batteries such that you basically never use the grid, it's just a backup for uncommon events. Basically grid use drops to that 1 or 10% of the time the sun doesn't shine for days. I think we are there on the pan…
That might work in southern latitudes where the seasonal change in solar irradiation isn't much different. In the North, like in Canada, there's just not enough solar in the winter. We really need a way to store excess solar from the summer into the winter. Like on the scale of a 500 gallon propane tank.
doing fine @ 45°north thank you, and know people living and making all of there income from solar
even further north, with I might add equipment that is now outdated, but was much more expensive
than what is availible now, which has almost doubled in efficiency, and is less than half the price, retail, with palet loads becoming bizarly
cheap.
When combined with a new build semi passive solar house, conventional heating systems can be omited
entirely.
There is a comming "solar divide" ....those who pay energy bills, and those that dont.
Re: Cheap solar power is sending electrical grids into a death spiral
#115One Jack Rickard, RIP, who was quite an opinionated jerk imho, coined the concept of "selfish solar." The idea was that solar was on its way to becoming so cheap that one should just install enough panels and batteries such that you basically never use the grid, it's just a backup for uncommon events. Basically grid use drops to that 1 or 10% of the time the sun doesn't shine for days. I think we are there on the pan…
That might work in southern latitudes where the seasonal change in solar irradiation isn't much different. In the North, like in Canada, there's just not enough solar in the winter. We really need a way to store excess solar from the summer into the winter. Like on the scale of a 500 gallon propane tank.
Or a big deep hole full of pipes circulating water making dirt hot.
Re: Cheap solar power is sending electrical grids into a death spiral
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you get more can't you disconnect from the grid? Then they can't stop you. You need batteries of course. Or stay connected with existing system and have more solar that is only connected to batteries separately, no grid.
Some places will condemn your house (or at least threaten to) if you don’t have an active grid power connection. so yes, they can stop you.
Wow interesting, which country/juridiction? Seems pretty extreme
Re: Cheap solar power is sending electrical grids into a death spiral
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
Some places will condemn your house (or at least threaten to) if you don’t have an active grid power connection. so yes, they can stop you.
Wow interesting, which country/juridiction? Seems pretty extreme
Most cities require a grid electrical connection as a requirement for habitability. The codes all refer to ‘utility providers’ for building permits, and require utilities (including electrical, water, etc.) be present and provided before the unit is considered ‘habitable’. Even temporary power (required to start construction before you could even install a solar installation, with the way most permits are done) has to be permitted and done a specific way.
Here is one example code from Arizona [https://law.justia.com/codes/arizona/title-9/section-9-467/].
And a lot of unclear discussion [https://www.reddit.com/r/phoenix/comments/4ugdtu/is_it_illeg...]
At a state level they’ve been making it clearer that it is technically legal - but it’s still hard to actually do.
There has been a lot of controversy on this topic, with permits getting denied in cities when the plan was to be off grid (and people just caving), and some utilities explicitly raising connection fees to ensure zero-usage customers were still paying them.
It gets people really angry too of course (at least in the US) because ‘what do you mean big government won’t let me do what I want on my own land!’.
The reality is, the types of folks who actually want to go truly off grid (and don’t feel the need/prioritize the backups provided by an optional grid connection, or think it is too expensive) probably already live far enough in the boonies that building codes are largely optional anyway.
It’s pretty rare that a random city dweller is going to be trying to go 100% off grid in their condo, or would have the physical space or legal ability to do so, regardless of what the city says.
And code enforcement looking too closely at things way out in the sticks tends to find itself in some very dangerous situations - the type people just disappear from sometimes and are never found - especially out in the remote parts of America’s deserts/woods.
Re: Cheap solar power is sending electrical grids into a death spiral
#118> "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 th…
Over-produced electricity can be stored by the private party in a local vehicle/wall battery.
Through a grid it may be sent to a plant which will produce green hydrogen, or to a dam (pumped-storage hydroelectricity)... or sent to another region (even quite remote, via some (U)HVDC line) which will use/store it.
Re: Cheap solar power is sending electrical grids into a death spiral
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wow. Did you read the next three paragraphs to the end of the article: | Policymakers are now attempting to come up with solutions. “You can make solar play nice with the grids,” ... | Yet the best solution would be for energy firms to respond to the competition and sort themselves out. The article is talking about: * how solar is disrupting the traditional utility model * in countries where the utilities provide a p…
You forget that governments built the grid. Then they sold them, usually for far less than they're worth to "friendly" companies to get some money to spend. These companies, in a complete baffling coincidence then provided a suspicious number of those politicians with board seats after they retire from government, or "government liason director" positions and the like. Now the government is forever paying interest ..…
How can you write so many words on the subject with zero mentions of neoliberalism?
Re: Cheap solar power is sending electrical grids into a death spiral
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
Fair enough. I think this is true of a lot of things that are 'in our house' (or on our property). A fatuous hypothetical example might be a large central refrigerator shared between multiple properties. The apartment building I live in has large central boilers for the hot water, to save space in the apartments. This benefitted the property developer, and is probably more energy efficient (although, just like our so…
What's the downside of the central hot water? (Or heating.) I've lived in buildings with this, and others (houses) without, and I much prefer the former. There's nothing I need to maintain, and the 'big' version seems to be more reliable than the single-house-sized heating equipment. The one time I remember the hot water being repaired, the janitor stuck up a note explaining that due to some sort of redundancy we'd s…
This wouldn’t be true in modern buildings, but in our case the hot water supply isn’t reticulated, and I’m at the ‘end of a (pipe) line’ so if no-one else sharing the same hot water pipe as me has run their hot water taps for a while, it can take 4 minute to get hot water in the shower.
This was bought up in a body corporate meeting several years ago. The cavities that the pipes run through are small enough that a reticulated system would be hard to retrofit. The suggested (tongue-in-cheek) solution was to “wait until you hear your neighbour showering before you have your shower.” Haha - thanks.