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AC is the reason why I think solar power can do wonders even if it's nowhere near being able to meet all the demand. Especially in dry climates like the Americ
by kijin 7y ago
AC is the reason why I think solar power can do wonders even if it's nowhere near being able to meet all the demand.
Especially in dry climates like the American southwest, solar produces the most energy during the exact same hours when air conditioners need the most power. Build an excess of solar capacity, and you can probably prevent all brownouts. This would be a major benefit even for people who don't care about climate change.
- sokoloff 7y agoI would expect the solar peak to be an hour or two earlier than the peak of AC demand.
- kijin 7y agoYou can turn the panels slightly to the west or fiddle with other angles if you're concerned more about aligning peak hours than producing the maximum amount of energy possible.
- acdha 7y agoIt's not a perfect alignment but it's close enough: the key point is that you can generate the power without long-distance distribution requirements (which is a source of waste in the current model) with a considerable comfort margin. In the example I mentioned, San Diego has (IIRC) three long-distance interconnects and building more is extremely difficult because the routes are generally full of homeowners who will sue you. You don't need to power every AC unit in San Diego completely off of solar the entire day — just enough to keep the total draw well below the capacity limits of that network avoids the prospect of brownouts or blackouts, and it would cut the number of times they have to pay industrial customers to reduce usage for a few hours.