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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

#81

Post by ifdefdebug »

Animats wrote: post #68

Average US home power consumption: 30 KWh/day. Assuming an average of 4 solar hours per day, you would need a solar system capacity of approximately 7.5 kW to 12.5 kW. Individual solar panels produce 250-400 watts. So, conservatively, 50 panels. Installed, that's currently about $25,000, including inverter but not battery backup. Battery backup will cost maybe $15,000 more. So, the whole installation is about $40,000…

Your numbers are way off (at least for Europe). Panels are 580 W peak now and cost < €150. Battery < €1000 per kWh. Prices still dropping.

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

#82

Post by knappe »

Animats wrote: post #68

Average US home power consumption: 30 KWh/day. Assuming an average of 4 solar hours per day, you would need a solar system capacity of approximately 7.5 kW to 12.5 kW. Individual solar panels produce 250-400 watts. So, conservatively, 50 panels. Installed, that's currently about $25,000, including inverter but not battery backup. Battery backup will cost maybe $15,000 more. So, the whole installation is about $40,000…

We are in the process of installing a 13 kwH system which is 31 panels at 430 watts with two Tesla power walls. Total cost (with snow guards) is just shy of 60k. The backup batteries are where this really shines. Our power provider had a blackout of 25 hours in April and if we were 6 blocks south, it was an entire week. The true cost of the system will be approximately half this after rebates and is more like 32k. The rebates are so good between Fed, State and the power company that we almost got the backup batteries for free.

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

#83

Post by noahjk »

bdhdbebebeb wrote: post #76
theturtle32 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"pay to feed in the surplus"? In my U.S. context, this sounds surprising: are you saying that sometimes the energy utility CHARGES you money when you feed solar energy to the grid? That sounds... bizarre?

If I were to deliver you 1000 gallons of milk that expires in 10 minutes*, would you pay me or want to charge me for that priviledge. Assume you have enough milk already. * (< 1 millisecond for electricity but hey for the milk analogy say 10 minutes).

This is the only reply I understand, so I’ll follow up here - in this case, is the end user paying to push the energy into batteries that the power company owns? Or is the extra energy just dissipated somewhere? Or does the power company stop producing their own energy once the grid is saturated? (I believe that electricity doesn’t actually flow like water, so it’s not the exact same electrons that the solar panel is producing which would be stored on batteries or dissipated somewhere)

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

#84

Post by orwin »

noahjk wrote: post #83
bdhdbebebeb wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I were to deliver you 1000 gallons of milk that expires in 10 minutes*, would you pay me or want to charge me for that priviledge. Assume you have enough milk already. * (< 1 millisecond for electricity but hey for the milk analogy say 10 minutes).

This is the only reply I understand, so I’ll follow up here - in this case, is the end user paying to push the energy into batteries that the power company owns? Or is the extra energy just dissipated somewhere? Or does the power company stop producing their own energy once the grid is saturated? (I believe that electricity doesn’t actually flow like water, so it’s not the exact same electrons that the solar panel is…

[edit] if you don't produce the exact amount consumed at the exact same time, the current will loose its phase and the effective energy transported will be reduced, while producing surtensions at different grid points (don't quote me on that, but accumulator try to keep the phase, and too much divergence can cause their failure from what I understand. But I'm no physic major and I might be completely wrong). Grid coordination is vital.

The main issue with consumer solar connected to the grid is the lack of predictability. The reason why we charge if you put electricity on the grid when too much energy is produced is because we did not plan on offsetting this production, and the network people have to keep it balanced. Reducing the output of thermal fossil plants is usually free, but while we can module nuke plants, it's best and way cheaper when that is predicted (also, opportunity cost is high, so for privately owned nuke plants, it cost even more. EDF is the bitch of the European electricity market so they eat the opportunity costs, but they are the only plant owner who does it (and I won't talk about ARENH here, but again, EDF is the bitch of the EU). Then, when really to much shit is on the grid, and you have reservoir space, you pump the water up the STEP (batteries, but better). Up to 4500€/mwh if unpredicted (it's never actually that, but it's the price seer in the SPOT command order). And lastly, if it's the only solution, wind/solar farms are shut down. Again, if predicted, good time to do the maintenance.

In the future consumer grade installations will probably come with a lot of stuff to help with the lack of predictability. I don't love it, but that's actually my current job (well, I actually love the actual job, really interesting shit, I'm not so sure about the moral implications of even more surveillance. Because we do have the geoloc of the newer installations. We don't link it with anything relevant yet, and it's anonymous for the moment, but will it stay that way?)

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

#85

Post by racked »

coumbaya wrote: post #67

I wish regulations where more lax in France. It was a battle with the town council to install 3.2kw of solar panels on the ground, I want to install 10 more but it looks like the ground option which is cheap will not be approved, I would have to out them on my roof which is costly and is not true south (and arguably, more visible).

What are their reasons for not allowing it?

Sounds stupid on many levels to forbid it.

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

#86

Post by defrost »

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…

> This is in the Netherlands. It's kind of sad to see all that electricity unused in summer,

This is literally what local and state government is for; talk to others and get policy moving on excess energy being used to generate bulk stored energy at scale for winter months, be that gas, deep thermal storage, tradable goods to offset winter costs, etc.

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

#87

Post by racked »

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.…

So what are these 'whites' supposed to do in your opinion, quit denying their wealth and just go live in a nice suburb, big house, big car? You propose no solution, it's only bitterness.

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

#88

Post by EasyMark »

Larrikin wrote: post #46
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.

Could you just use Home Assistant to do this?

True hacker would use web scraping to get the rates and a bash script to turn the switch on and off based on rates

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

#89

Post by toast0 »

noahjk wrote: post #83
bdhdbebebeb wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I were to deliver you 1000 gallons of milk that expires in 10 minutes*, would you pay me or want to charge me for that priviledge. Assume you have enough milk already. * (< 1 millisecond for electricity but hey for the milk analogy say 10 minutes).

This is the only reply I understand, so I’ll follow up here - in this case, is the end user paying to push the energy into batteries that the power company owns? Or is the extra energy just dissipated somewhere? Or does the power company stop producing their own energy once the grid is saturated? (I believe that electricity doesn’t actually flow like water, so it’s not the exact same electrons that the solar panel is…

When there's too much energy available for the grid, and the price goes negative, producers are paying for someone to use that energy or paying another potential producer to reduce their output.

Some industrial users have variable demand, and a lower (or negative) price could encourage them to use more. A multi-region internet service might send more traffic to a datacenter with negative electricity prices, even if in increases latency for users.

Some producers need time to modulate output, and stopping and restarting can be expensive. Solar and Wind are at least technically easy to start/stop, but subsidies may make it economic to pay the grid to deliver electricity; either because of contracts/subsidies, or because the expense to deliver unwanted electricity is less than the expense to monitor pricing and reduce production.

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

#90

Post by EasyMark »

skybrian wrote: post #28

> Electric vehicles are mainstream and last longer than their gas engine counterparts, with an estimated lifespan of 200,000 miles. What's this based on? Don't many gas cars last that long? It seems like it depends very much on how well you maintain them.

Most cars now can easily last 15 years/200,000 miles with maintenance. Obviously a few will fail, but I’ve done it a few times now (miles wise), 200k seems like a cut off, transmission can fail, various chassis parts worn out, etc. Some people even get 300-400k miles out of some of the more reliable brands like Toyota/Honda/Subaru
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