8 ms·

The ironic part here is that the Nevada utilities are accelerating their own demise by opposing rooftop solar. In a few short years, batteries will be cheap and

by marvin 11y ago

The ironic part here is that the Nevada utilities are accelerating their own demise by opposing rooftop solar. In a few short years, batteries will be cheap and plentiful enough that it will be unnecessary to cut deals like these with the utilities in order to have a profitable solar rooftop installation. By removing the incentive for customers to cooperate with the utilities, the utility companies are further incentivizing the installation of residential battery storage, which will further reduce the utilities' influence down the road.

jacquesm 11y ago
It's not that simple. A system that is not grid connected will need a lot more than just a battery to make it as reliable as a grid connection. Those 'few short years' are more likely a couple of decades, in other words well over the horizon for the people that are currently trying to squeeze the most profit from those utilities. Residential battery storage is just one component is a complex chain that needs to be deployed for every house that could be off the grid, it actually side-steps the need for net metering (because you can simply store your own excess). For those use cases the grid functions exactly like a battery, only one with near infinite capacity. It also serves as a back-up, in case of system failure, extended lack of power from whatever sources you've got and so on. And that function is far harder to engineer around than the mere energy storage and recovery one.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- Symmetry 11y ago
  I think the idea isn't that you can go off grid but rather that you can now make use of the excess power that you would have been selling back to the grid during the night and so effectively capture the same residential rates through reduced use.
  - jacquesm 11y ago
    Sure. But that's effectively the exact same thing as net-metering, only with a lot more fixed costs. And batteries wear out as well. The grid is a lot better for this, unfortunately that requires cooperation of the grid operators and owners. There is an alternative to this, the equivalent of a credit union but for power where a number of people band together to do their own little grid, but the complexities and dangers involved make this a very difficult thing, especially once you factor in insurance and approval.
    - msandford 11y ago
      I've thought for a long time that a neighborhood 48V DC exchange might be viable. You'll have to pull thick copper of course, but $1/foot for wires is pretty cheap compared to battery prices. Here in the US the NEC says that anything under 50V isn't really regulated because they don't want to get involved in people's path lighting, phone, ethernet, doorbells, thermostats, garage door opener signaling, etc. The other thing that will help enable going completely off grid are things like inverter AC units (which draw a continuously small amount of power instead of 5 minutes at 3kw and 10-30 minutes at 0kw) and ice "batteries" to store power instead of lead acid or lithium. Ice batteries never really go bad either, at least not the way chemical batteries do.
      - jacquesm 11y ago
        You'll want to think long and hard about how you're going to deal with fuses. For the kind of currents that batteries can put out it can be quite expensive to properly fuse things. 50V was a fairly arbitrary voltage deemed to be 'safe', however there are cases known of people dying from 50V and even lower (in particular, one very nasty accident involving a Swiss ham in pre-internet times). A bus made of thick copper wire would be stolen here pretty much on the day that you installed it (copper theft is on the order of the day). I'm not convinced of the need to have any of this though, I got my power usage down to the point where a fair sized house ran year round from 16 solar panels and a small windmill. The year that we only had the solar panels we still needed the genset with some regularity but the year the windmill went up we used it only twice (when I was running a 12KW plasma cutter from the battery pack they tended to deplete a bit too quickly...).
- iamphilrae 11y ago
  Customers could keep their grid connection for backup purposes, but it should be rarely needed. Therefore if a customer is acting 99% self-sufficient, the grid operator is going to lose out. And this could happen within years when battery tech becomes cost effective. This change in legislation has just served to shorten that timeline.
  - jacquesm 11y ago
    Just keeping the grid connection is a major cost.
    - davedx 11y ago
      Taxes are the highest cost for electricity (here in NL). Grid costs ~EUR190/year, taxes and govn't surcharges are ~EUR618/year. I don't know if you still need to pay the taxes if you're not grid connected though?
      - jacquesm 11y ago
        No, if you're off grid those taxes are not there.
    - tobz 11y ago
      What cost? It sounds like the parent is possibly suggesting the opposite of a backup power solution: transfer switch where you're in solar mode 99% of the time, and if things break or you need to do work, you switch over to grid power. I've never lived anywhere where I used zero kWh for the month, so I'm not sure... but I have to imagine the cost would be pretty slow... save for getting such a system setup (transfer switches are common enough with backup generator situations so I can't imagine that portion would be very expensive)
      - jacquesm 11y ago
        They'll charge a fixed fee just for the hookup, and it can be quite a large percentage if your consumption is minimal.
- rsync 11y ago
  "It's not that simple. A system that is not grid connected will need a lot more than just a battery to make it as reliable as a grid connection. Those 'few short years' are more likely a couple of decades, in other words well over the horizon for the people that are currently trying to squeeze the most profit from those utilities." How are panels + battery not as reliable ? I think you mean they don't last as long, right ? As in, theoretically you could use up the battery before the sun rises again so it's not as nice as the utility ... As far as I can tell, panels + battery (properly sized, and admittedly expensive) are all you need. You can just cancel your electric service at that point.
  - jacquesm 11y ago
    No, it's a matter of coverage. Every year you'll have one stretch of 4 to 7 days without appreciable sun and this tends to deplete your batteries to the point where you will wreck the pack if you don't recharge. So you install either a wind generator, a genset or both. > As far as I can tell, panels + battery (properly sized, and admittedly expensive) are all you need. In some locations this may be true, in most it isn't. > You can just cancel your electric service at that point. As soon as you have backup power you can do that anyway.

by marvin 11y ago

jacquesm 11y ago

It's not that simple. A system that is not grid connected will need a lot more than just a battery to make it as reliable as a grid connection. Those 'few short years' are more likely a couple of decades, in other words well over the horizon for the people that are currently trying to squeeze the most profit from those utilities. Residential battery storage is just one component is a complex chain that needs to be deployed for every house that could be off the grid, it actually side-steps the need for net metering (because you can simply store your own excess). For those use cases the grid functions exactly like a battery, only one with near infinite capacity. It also serves as a back-up, in case of system failure, extended lack of power from whatever sources you've got and so on. And that function is far harder to engineer around than the mere energy storage and recovery one.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
Symmetry 11y ago
I think the idea isn't that you can go off grid but rather that you can now make use of the excess power that you would have been selling back to the grid during the night and so effectively capture the same residential rates through reduced use.
- jacquesm 11y ago
  Sure. But that's effectively the exact same thing as net-metering, only with a lot more fixed costs. And batteries wear out as well. The grid is a lot better for this, unfortunately that requires cooperation of the grid operators and owners. There is an alternative to this, the equivalent of a credit union but for power where a number of people band together to do their own little grid, but the complexities and dangers involved make this a very difficult thing, especially once you factor in insurance and approval.
  - msandford 11y ago
    I've thought for a long time that a neighborhood 48V DC exchange might be viable. You'll have to pull thick copper of course, but $1/foot for wires is pretty cheap compared to battery prices. Here in the US the NEC says that anything under 50V isn't really regulated because they don't want to get involved in people's path lighting, phone, ethernet, doorbells, thermostats, garage door opener signaling, etc. The other thing that will help enable going completely off grid are things like inverter AC units (which draw a continuously small amount of power instead of 5 minutes at 3kw and 10-30 minutes at 0kw) and ice "batteries" to store power instead of lead acid or lithium. Ice batteries never really go bad either, at least not the way chemical batteries do.
    - jacquesm 11y ago
      You'll want to think long and hard about how you're going to deal with fuses. For the kind of currents that batteries can put out it can be quite expensive to properly fuse things. 50V was a fairly arbitrary voltage deemed to be 'safe', however there are cases known of people dying from 50V and even lower (in particular, one very nasty accident involving a Swiss ham in pre-internet times). A bus made of thick copper wire would be stolen here pretty much on the day that you installed it (copper theft is on the order of the day). I'm not convinced of the need to have any of this though, I got my power usage down to the point where a fair sized house ran year round from 16 solar panels and a small windmill. The year that we only had the solar panels we still needed the genset with some regularity but the year the windmill went up we used it only twice (when I was running a 12KW plasma cutter from the battery pack they tended to deplete a bit too quickly...).
iamphilrae 11y ago
Customers could keep their grid connection for backup purposes, but it should be rarely needed. Therefore if a customer is acting 99% self-sufficient, the grid operator is going to lose out. And this could happen within years when battery tech becomes cost effective. This change in legislation has just served to shorten that timeline.
- jacquesm 11y ago
  Just keeping the grid connection is a major cost.
  - davedx 11y ago
    Taxes are the highest cost for electricity (here in NL). Grid costs ~EUR190/year, taxes and govn't surcharges are ~EUR618/year. I don't know if you still need to pay the taxes if you're not grid connected though?
    - jacquesm 11y ago
      No, if you're off grid those taxes are not there.
  - tobz 11y ago
    What cost? It sounds like the parent is possibly suggesting the opposite of a backup power solution: transfer switch where you're in solar mode 99% of the time, and if things break or you need to do work, you switch over to grid power. I've never lived anywhere where I used zero kWh for the month, so I'm not sure... but I have to imagine the cost would be pretty slow... save for getting such a system setup (transfer switches are common enough with backup generator situations so I can't imagine that portion would be very expensive)
    - jacquesm 11y ago
      They'll charge a fixed fee just for the hookup, and it can be quite a large percentage if your consumption is minimal.
rsync 11y ago
"It's not that simple. A system that is not grid connected will need a lot more than just a battery to make it as reliable as a grid connection. Those 'few short years' are more likely a couple of decades, in other words well over the horizon for the people that are currently trying to squeeze the most profit from those utilities." How are panels + battery not as reliable ? I think you mean they don't last as long, right ? As in, theoretically you could use up the battery before the sun rises again so it's not as nice as the utility ... As far as I can tell, panels + battery (properly sized, and admittedly expensive) are all you need. You can just cancel your electric service at that point.
- jacquesm 11y ago
  No, it's a matter of coverage. Every year you'll have one stretch of 4 to 7 days without appreciable sun and this tends to deplete your batteries to the point where you will wreck the pack if you don't recharge. So you install either a wind generator, a genset or both. > As far as I can tell, panels + battery (properly sized, and admittedly expensive) are all you need. In some locations this may be true, in most it isn't. > You can just cancel your electric service at that point. As soon as you have backup power you can do that anyway.