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Solar power is catching on. Along with it, other things are changing. Selling back to grid only gets you credit towards your power bill which you need to use up
by itchyjunk 10y ago
Solar power is catching on. Along with it, other things are changing. Selling back to grid only gets you credit towards your power bill which you need to use up in 6-12 months or you lose it (someone who recently got solar told me this is how it works for him).
I would like to see ways for customers to sell power among themselves (if possible) in this case. If I generate some extra power and someone needs it to charge their car, i'd rather sell it to him. Instead of the shady power company. But maybe it doesn't work like this.
- givemefive 10y agoWhat about Folding@Home or other high energy computing tasks. If you have your PS4, XBOX, home desktop, SO's laptop, etc running high intensity tasks how much energy would that be?
- Synaesthesia 10y agoThe biggest power consumer is things like Geysers, kettles, stoves and so on. A desktop running at 100% uses like 200W whereas a geyser uses like 2kw.
- acover 10y agoThe biggest power consumer is electric heat/ac. http://www.torontohydro.com/sites/electricsystem/residential/yourbilloverview/Pages/ApplianceChart.aspx http://www.torontohydro.com/sites/electricsystem/residential...
- ClassyJacket 10y agoMy high end gaming PC would push over 500W when mining Bitcoin (actually Lite coin) back in the day. Side note: Swype keyboard will not allow me to write Litecoin as one word with a bracket after it, no matter how much I correct it.
- infogulch 10y agoWhen autocorrect refuses to cooperate I find that spacing things out between normal words then deleting the spacers usually works. Correction usually only occurs after typing punctuation, not for deletion. Litecoin and [] Litecoin []
- ClassyJacket 10y agoYeah, that seems to be the only way to do it. (Litecoin)... Strange, it's changed its policy now.
- patrickk 10y agoI mined Ethereum last summer on a 6 GPU, dual-PSU rig. Each GPU consumed roughly 220W-250W IIRC, so the heat and noise was considerable.
- astrodust 10y agoThat's one panel worth of power, theoretically.
- ClassyJacket 10y agoThe heat from that would be horrendous. A typical space heater consumes about the same as that. Even at just 500W my machine would heat the room considerably over a few hours.
- dm3730 10y ago> Geysers For those wondering, that term means hot water heater.
- Someone 10y ago2kW when the faucet is running, about zero when it isn't. With a duty cycle of 1% (= running hot water for 15 minutes a day), that desktop could beat your geyser, even when running at 10% throughout the day.
- matt4077 10y agoIgnoring the time limit you mention, I fail to see the difference? Electricity isn't tangible. In the case of AC, they're just wiggling the electrons in your appliances back and forth. Any promise that your power goes to your neighbour, via the grid, would be a lie. In financial terms, letting anyone sell electricity to the "shady power company" at the same price they buy it at is only possible as a government-mandated subsidy paid by all customers, intended to promote clean energy. It effectively makes the grid your free, unlimited, zero-loss battery. If you want to sell it to your neighbour at the same price they and you pay to have the grid wiggle your electrons, there's no difference. If you want, for unfathomable reason, to set a different price, you can just walk over and hand them some money whenever you feel like it. But currently, there are no circumstances under which it would make sense to not sell as much as you can to the power company: if you're producing at costs above grid prices (still likely in most locations), your neighbour could always get his power cheaper from the grid. If you're producing below grid prices, selling as much as possible at the subsidised rates is your best choice.
- glandium 10y ago> In financial terms, it's extremely generous to let anyone sell electricity to the "shady power company" at the same price they buy it at. In some countries, it's even a better deal, because the "shady power company" has to buy it for more than they sell electricity for. (I don't know if it's still true, but it was the case in France)
- baddox 10y agoI think the previous commentator's point is that distributing power between neighbors is a theoretical way to avoid the time limit imposed by the power company. Of course, with current infrastructure I assume the power company would still need to support this model by doing some simple math with everyone's meters in a neighborhood or region.
- LoSboccacc 10y agoIf the time limit is 6 months as he say and you have excess panels to cover average winter needs, summer surpluses are lost More importantly it was left unspecified if the discount given was dollar for dollar electricity. If it's less than that suddenly your ideal, infinite battery becomes less than perfect But I agree selling to the neighboor is not gonna work - a feasible alternative would be to have the resources pooled for building a larger panels with a larger battery
- programmarchy 10y agoA Powerwall helps with being able to store charge for yourself. It'd be awesome to share power directly with neighbors, too. You could always install your own cable, right? Doesn't seem like the power company would even need to be involved.
- taneq 10y agoIn Australia at least, there are regulations against installing power cabling that goes between premises (unless you're a power company, of course).
- hodgesrm 10y agoSame in California. The rule is that the cabling can't cross a street. So actually you could provide power to neighbors within in the block but not the next one.
- taneq 10y agoWe're not even allowed to run cable between two adjacent properties owned by the same company. (A former employer of mine got around this with a "temporary" 3-phase cable going between the two, but it was regarded as a bit dubious.)
- cardiffspaceman 10y agoIn many places the streets form a grid, it's true. You would possibly have only a dozen homes that could be connected. In other places, the streets are arranged as a tree with cul-de-sacs as the leaves. An island of acreage could emerge in such developments where you could visit dozens of homes without crossing a street.
- ClassyJacket 10y agoYep, they're so strict that the National Broadband Network was worried that simply powering distribution point units for Fibre-to-the-Curb internet would break those rules.
- 10y ago
- manicdee 10y agoA scheme used here in Australia is to sign up your PV+battery to a virtual power plant, then sell electricity on the wholesale market when it is profitable to do so. e.g.: Reposit Power http://www.repositpower.com http://www.repositpower.com
- toomuchtodo 10y agoTesla will be doing the same with their vehicles and Solar City's tech team: distributed virtual generators and demand. ISO operators will be able to issue price signals, and Tesla will be able to supply to or draw power from the grid (in accordance with their customer's wishes of course) in aggregate
- TorKlingberg 10y agoI'm sure you could, but you'd have to lay your own cable to your neighbor. If you want the power company to transmit the power and handle load balancing, you will end up paying for it.
- Shivetya 10y agoSolar power is catching on but it does not work on all roofs in all locations and I am curious if companies pushing home roof top installations are upfront with their numbers. I know our local energy co-op lets you "invest" into a facility they have constructed where they are adding panels as demand increases. The logic here is, not outlay of funds by the home owners, maintenance needs are consolidated to one location, and it can be ideally situated. Until panel installs become near maintenance free and service technicians are common where inspections are fast and cheap its not going to solve our problems. I am hoping TESLA's previous announcement related to solar shingles and such plays out well. It needs to become cheap enough that even if your system is not ideally situated its cheap enough to be economical.
- whiskers08xmt 10y agoThere's an interesting project called Solar Coin[0] attempting to do this. I'm not too sure how it relates to crypto-currency, though. [0] https://solarcoin.org/en/front-page/ https://solarcoin.org/en/front-page/
- norea-armozel 10y agoIt's probably why Tesla wants to sell people the power wall despite its own shortcomings. Why give that power back to the grid operators who are going to screw you over? Just get a battery storage solution that also charges your car and maybe covers some of the power consumption in the home? I think in the long term this is the only viable option or until the grid operators and other concerns outlaw usage of battery tech that stores power in advance of daily usage.
- syncsynchalt 10y agoGrid operators would love it if you leveled out your energy usage in that way. They see the duck neck coming: https://www.caiso.com/Documents/FlexibleResourcesHelpRenewables_FastFacts.pdf https://www.caiso.com/Documents/FlexibleResourcesHelpRenewab...
- sjg007 10y agoIt's funny how power companies quickly moved away from the pay you cash for your power to credits to now fixed rates for life. Solar is a huge disruptor.
- wklauss 10y agoIt was obvious that pay you for power was not scalable. Eventually you'll see people disconnecting from grid altogether to avoid fixed rates.