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Cheap solar power is sending electrical grids into a death spiral

economist.com

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Re: Cheap solar power is sending electrical grids into a death spiral

#41

Post by Dylan16807 »

r00fus wrote: post #21
PlunderBunny wrote: post #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 th…

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…

> 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

I don't think that moving the generation around is really an "instead", because the problem at hand is that distribution is expensive and someone has to pay for it if you want a grid. And most of that cost is the local stuff.

So how do you get everyone connected that wants to be, without it costing them a ton of money? You might have to make the grid cost into a mandatory tax.

Whether the electric company is private or state-owned is mostly a separate issue.

Re: Cheap solar power is sending electrical grids into a death spiral

#42

Post by PlunderBunny »

YurgenJurgensen wrote: post #12
PlunderBunny wrote: post #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 th…

Solar panels use energy to create, and have a finite lifespan. If energy is generated but not used, it makes the average lifetime efficiency decrease. This does result in wasted energy.

Understood, and I agree. We could make this argument about other utilities too, e.g. mains water vs having your own water tank, public transport vs private cars. I guess municipal water supplies don't face the same 'existential' crisis, but public transport certainly has suffered with the rise of private car ownership, irrespective of the benefits that the latter has bought to individuals.

Re: Cheap solar power is sending electrical grids into a death spiral

#43

Post by snailmailstare »

strken wrote: post #26
4d4m wrote: post #3

I 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.

What's wrong with negative electricity pricing? Are utilities meant to let consumers overvolt the grid and use their industrial customers and utility-scale generators to counteract it without any compensation or disincentive?

I have no roof but I would happily have a day of battery around in the bad weather and use it to drastically cut my electricity costs in good weather. In a world with competitive grids or grids that couldn't charge negative, I think some regulatory complexity would suddenly evaporate and someone much like the paradoxical utility sponsored energy saving consultant might show up to help me do that.

Re: Cheap solar power is sending electrical grids into a death spiral

#44

Post by belorn »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #41
r00fus wrote: post #21

Earlier 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…

> 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 I don't think that moving the generation around is really an "instead", because the problem at hand is that distribution is expensive and someone has to pay for it if you want a grid. And most of that cost is the local stuff. So h…

This is almost what is happening. Rate payers are paying less and less in order to compensate for production cost, and increasingly more in order to be connected to the grid and that the grid is stable. For the moment that cost is mostly attached to how much energy is consumed as a matter of billing, but that can change.

Re: Cheap solar power is sending electrical grids into a death spiral

#45

Post by Marsymars »

bb88 wrote: post #38
Vecr wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The electricity is switched off. If the system is fancy, maybe it's on a lower duty cycle. The panels just sit there, rotting, wasting their embodied energy.

I thought OP was saying there was actual damage to the solar cell if voltage is being generated but current isn't flowing causing lower efficiency. This is like saying, "I bought a car and don't drive it." -- which people do.

> This is like saying, "I bought a car and don't drive it." -- which people do.

Well, it is, but in the same sense, if you own a car for a long time and don't drive much, your per-km costs end up high (due to car components wearing out from age rather than mileage) and your essentially fixed costs (insurance, etc.) end up proportionally greater compared to truly variable (gasoline, etc.) costs.

And if you really don't drive much, you get additional problems; the typical recommendation is to drive a car a minimum of a continuous 20 minutes every couple weeks.

Re: Cheap solar power is sending electrical grids into a death spiral

#46

Post by Zigurd »

justlikereddit wrote: post #15

Anyone who paid some attention saw this coming. You can't run a grid with maxed out cheap renewables. It's like having a society where the police and prisons staff closes shop and goes home when the sun sets and still expect law and order to persist.

NYPD tried that. Law and order persisted.

Re: Cheap solar power is sending electrical grids into a death spiral

#47

Post by Dylan16807 »

belorn wrote: post #44
Dylan16807 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 I don't think that moving the generation around is really an "instead", because the problem at hand is that distribution is expensive and someone has to pay for it if you want a grid. And most of that cost is the local stuff. So h…

This is almost what is happening. Rate payers are paying less and less in order to compensate for production cost, and increasingly more in order to be connected to the grid and that the grid is stable. For the moment that cost is mostly attached to how much energy is consumed as a matter of billing, but that can change.

And the "almost" is the problem. Making the grid fee semi-optional based on how much electricity you buy is a massive destabilizing factor.

Re: Cheap solar power is sending electrical grids into a death spiral

#48

Post by johnea »

The existing comments here already capture most of my thoughts on the subject: users reap benefit + shareholder loose revenue = disaster!

Disaster for who? Not the users that's for sure.

Another aspect of this in the US electric utility context is that if more power is genrated locally, and exxcess is distributed as locally as possible, then long distance distribution is reduced. THere aren't as many needs, and certainly this reduces planned expansion of long distance distribution.

However, this is also a "disaster" as defined above, since construction of those long distance transmission facilities are also payed for with public bonds and therefore direct taxpayer funding.

The economist never ceases to amaze in this twisted logic...

Re: Cheap solar power is sending electrical grids into a death spiral

#49

Post by Marsymars »

r00fus wrote: post #8

Hopefully 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 rat…

> Everywhere there is state/municipal owned utilities it's almost always considerable cheaper than private.

Not everywhere, it's really the regulation that matters, not just the ownership - here in Alberta we've got a market where we get municipally-owned utilities where we still get high rates comprising of energy fees + transmission fees + distribution fees.

Re: Cheap solar power is sending electrical grids into a death spiral

#50

Post by stephen_g »

r00fus wrote: post #8

Hopefully 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 rat…

Yeah, I'm fine with there being a market where private generators can sell power to the grid, but the poles and wires need to be publicly owned.

I don't know how there are still some that haven't worked out that a privatised natural monopoly is one of the worst ownership structures for anything important - as if multiple other companies could ever build a other electricity transmission networks on top of each other in the same area (or water and sewer systems, etc.) and provide actual competition! It's impossible and ludicrous.

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