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All the electricity you'll need for 40 years

innerpathing.com

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Re: All the electricity you'll need for 40 years

#31

Post by alamortsubite »

ramesh31 wrote: post #11
EQYV wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honest question, why is this your reaction? Why are people on this forum so unwilling to be happy for others? I have noticed that this attitude is extremely prominent in tech. Everything is either perfect (according to the person making the judgement) or it’s utterly worthy of ridicule. I am growing very, very tired of seeing this throughout tech.

>Why are people on this forum so unwilling to be happy for others? It's a particularly offensive part of white culture that fetishizes a "return to the land" while billions around the world are trapped miserably eeking out that existence with literally zero opportunity to ever have anything else. The only reason you feel "happy" for them is because you know its a cosplay charade they could walk away from at any time.…

It sounds like you may be conflating wealth with consumption. What these people have, and what billions around the world do not, is financial freedom.

Re: All the electricity you'll need for 40 years

#32

Post by jjtheblunt »

ccozan wrote: post #21
spacesanjeet wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't there a way to sell the unused solar power to the grid in summers and during winters the grid sends back the power needed to you at a discounted price?

or you get a battery. Is just great. I have 3.5kw solar power witha 9kwh battery. Very very seldom it switches to power line. And this is in south Germany, maybe a bit sunnier than north but still - it rains a lot/cloudy, sun is sparse.

Any advice on battery brands and features you could share?

Re: All the electricity you'll need for 40 years

#33

Post by kleiba »

sdk77 wrote: post #29
itishappy wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ... in summer I might need to pay to feed in the surplus. You're allowed to just disconnect solar panels. It's free and does not damage them.

Sure. Of course. Not being allowed to disconnect them would be ridiculous. But do you want to keep an eye on the market every day, and run to the breaker to turn on an off your inverter? No. So you need a solution for that. Then a battery is much more interesting.

This seems like a problem that should be relatively easy to solve with technology.

Re: All the electricity you'll need for 40 years

#34

Post by quailfarmer »

This is cool, and I wish I had a setup like that, but the premise seems a bit hollow. Do they grow all the food they consume? What about the energy needed to produce the electric car, host the Substack? What about when they get sick? Do they stay off-grid, or do they go to a modern hospital, which can only exist because of urban industrial buildup.

It’s cool to live off grid, but solarpunk-libertarianism is a vibe, not a meaningful policy direction for modern society

Re: All the electricity you'll need for 40 years

#35

Post by [deleted] »

sdk77 wrote: post #20
spacesanjeet wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't there a way to sell the unused solar power to the grid in summers and during winters the grid sends back the power needed to you at a discounted price?

Well, until '27, I'm allowed to use the grid as a free battery, basically, this is a kind of government subsidy. But that will end, and the contracts available will be fixed price with a feed in tariff or dynamic (realtime) market price, but then prices can and have been negative during peak solar hours. A battery can solve this only for a bit, and maybe with smart algorithms it can be trading on the electricity mark…

[deleted]

Re: All the electricity you'll need for 40 years

#36

Post by fallingsquirrel »

bitmasher9 wrote: post #22
spacesanjeet wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't there a way to sell the unused solar power to the grid in summers and during winters the grid sends back the power needed to you at a discounted price?

If every household did this we would have massive problems. We would still need a base load amount in the winter, and in the summer there would be an over abundance. The price of electricity would swing between essentially free in the summer to higher than normal in the winter, because the cost of operating base grid power would be about same but they would need to cover all operating costs during the winter.

Utilities should charge a separate connection fee and per-kWh rate if that's what matches the economic reality of their business. I don't see the summer abundance as an issue. It means we get to shut off the fossil fuels 8 months out of the year. The remaining 4 months, everyone pays a little more per kWh, averaging out to the same cost over a full year. What's not to like?

Re: All the electricity you'll need for 40 years

#37

Post by titanomachy »

candiddevmike wrote: post #3

This seems like a "green brag" without much substance. Great that this person is privileged enough to afford solar panels, I guess. Nothing to be learned here though: no wire diagrams, placement schematics, or BoM. Just someone telling everyone how green they are.

It doesn’t sound like it’s that expensive. Certainly less than most households pay for electricity, although I imagine they also use less than most people judging by their very tiny house. Probably some kind of financing available to reduce the initial capital outlay.

Unless you just mean they’re privileged in the sense that most Americans and Europeans are relatively well-off and secure by global standards, in which case sure, but what’s your point?

Re: All the electricity you'll need for 40 years

#38

Post by haccount »

churchill wrote: post #17

I live here in Nigeria where electricity has been epileptic since I was born (I'm 23 now). Like, I live in one of the nicer suburbs in my state, but 12h of power isn't guaranteed. So, last year, I spent $7k on 8.4 KW of panels (400W * 21), an inverter, and 20KWh of batteries. It's been life-changing. I've been able to go completely off-grid. Like, I disconnected from the grid (i.e., my meter) completely. And my usage…

This compared to my own experience shows how much location matters for these things.

I live in a place with cheap and stable hydropower. There's winter time price spikes but average solar earnings compared to grid cost from solar during sunny months would be pocket change. In winter solar would give virtually nothing.

The overwhelming conclusion was that instead of buying a pile of hardware to install, configure and maintain I will earn more by clicking a button that puts it as a financial investment into anything with more than 2-3% annual yield and just paying the electricity bill and reinvesting whatever is left over.

I wanted to find an edge case that would make me feel smart for buying a multi kWh home battery but with the exception of a market apocalypse or the likes every outcome suggests that I just put it in dividend stock, high interest savings accounts or whatever else until either power prices increase tenfold or $/kWh for batteries drop tenfold.

Re: All the electricity you'll need for 40 years

#39

Post by WJW »

kleiba wrote: post #33
sdk77 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure. Of course. Not being allowed to disconnect them would be ridiculous. But do you want to keep an eye on the market every day, and run to the breaker to turn on an off your inverter? No. So you need a solution for that. Then a battery is much more interesting.

This seems like a problem that should be relatively easy to solve with technology.

This is in fact what my home installation already does.

Re: All the electricity you'll need for 40 years

#40

Post by quailfarmer »

sdk77 wrote: post #8

It's nice to have solar panels, I have them too and while they do generate even more electricity than I need, they do so in around 6 to 7 months peaking in July. So in winter, it's grid power and in summer I might need to pay to feed in the surplus. This is in the Netherlands. It's kind of sad to see all that electricity unused in summer, and knowing I could have enough for all of the winter if only there was some wa…

All modern inverters have control interfaces that allow them to fold back their power output on command, this can be set up to track feed-in rates going negative.
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