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> If too many people build solar, the utility can't build new infrastructure and charge everyone for it. Right. Because solar does not play well with existing

> If too many people build solar, the utility can't build new infrastructure and charge everyone for it. Right. Because solar does not play well with existing infrastructure but solar needs the grid to be even close to viable. It needs it because it is a diffuse intermittent power source, where the peak power generation does not actually match peak power use. Solar overproduction cannot be saved for later either, meaning that you have another infrastructure challenge of dealing with overproduction when you don't need it. In general, solar only really works if it is paired with a a traditional power generator that can ramp up quickly (when there is no solar output) and ramp down quickly (when solar output is high). The only power generators that can do that are ones that burn fossil fuels. That's why natural gas companies are a BIG lobby group for solar. That's why Germany is signing massive, multi-decade deals to ship Russian gas, as they expand their wind and solar infrastructure. If you care about getting rid of carbon emissions, solar is a disaster. Not to mention energy use in building panels and the number of rare earth materials each one needs, the problems with recycling them, and their land-use requirements and the environmental impact of that. >It is good for everyone when rich people buy solar No. Just no.

reustle 7y ago
I may be misunderstanding but it seems like most of your comment completely ignores batteries?
- new_realist 7y ago
  Batteries double the cost of solar for a 24 hour storage cycle. If you want to store energy for 48 hours, the cost doubles again. 96 hours? Doubles again. Want to store a mere 10% of US electrical generation from summer to use in winter? Literally 52 trillion (yes, trillion) dollars if you use batteries. A bit expensive, even if you spread the cost over 25 years. Pumped hydro, CAES and hydrogen stored in salt caverns are much cheaper at that scale.
  - Retric 7y ago
    Only if you’re failing to build enough solar. There is zero reason to ramp up storage rather than reduce the need for it. Over production is cheaper than any other option and reduces the need for longer term storage as daily solar output never drops to zero. Solar is cheap enough it’s still cost competitive if you assume significant power production is wasted. Further, battery systems are designed to avoid full discharge, design for 99.5% of the time and you have spare capacity for the last 0.5%.
    - jacquesm 7y ago
      > daily solar output never drops to zero True, but it is also almost never 'rated power'. Typically a solar installation will deliver somewhere between 30 and 50% of rated power on average, depending on your latitude it might be even lower. The times when solar panels work at their best is during clear winter days and when they are capable of two axis adjustment. Because of the cost of such an installation the typical choice is to install more panels running at lower efficiency. And you'd need to size your batteries for those worst case scenarios of obscured sub in which case your panels might only output between 5 and 10% of their nominal capacity. For reference, my 1600W array is outputting 15.9 Watts right now, earlier, at the best time of the day it was making about 300W due to the sky being overcast. If I had to rely on battery power to make up the difference I would not be able to make it on solar alone. A healthy mix uses both solar and windpower, hydro if you have access to it (it is by far the most stable of the three and capable of providing baseline power without any tricks).
      - Retric 7y ago
        The economics of residential solar is heavily tied to local conditions. But, for grid solar there is little reasons to build it in the north rather than just move electricity from the south. We are already below 2c/kWh for solar power in some areas, the average consumer price is 13.27 cents per kilowatt hour in the US. That’s a lot of wiggle room. Let’s assume 50% over production that’s 4c/kWh, backed up by 60h worth of batteries and transmission and your still cheaper than Nuclear while covering base load and peaking power needs. Further at National grid scale 50% over production an 60h of batteries is crazy overkill.
mepiethree 7y ago
> solar needs the grid to be even close to viable This was true 20 years ago and will be laughable 20 years from now. > The only power generators that can do that are ones that burn fossil fuels. Fossil fuel generators do NOT ramp up and down quickly. BTM and FTM battery storage solutions ramp up and down faster and are rapidly becoming cheaper and more environmentally friendly alternatives. > energy use in building panels and the number of rare earth materials each one needs, the problems with recycling them, and their land-use requirements and the environmental impact of that. Every one of these supposed drawbacks of solar also apply to generating power with fossil fuel. Fracking causes earthquakes in Oklahoma and wastelands in southeast New Mexico. Mountaintop removal for coal has probably permanently destroyed parts of PA, WV, VA, and KY. I won't argue that the issues you bring up aren't bad, they just lack context. In my view, human addiction to electricity is bad in all forms, but fossil fuels are clearly worse.
- macspoofing 7y ago
  >This was true 20 years ago and will be laughable 20 years from now. Will the sun start shining at night in 20 years? >Fossil fuel generators do NOT ramp up and down quickly. Natural gas ramps as quickly as it can. But let's assume that's true, that's not a point against me, it's a point against solar because then it means that solar is completely unworkable. >Every one of these supposed drawbacks of solar also apply to generating power with fossil fuel. No. Because we know we can power an economy with fossil fuels, and do it in any weather, day or night. >Fracking causes earthquakes in Oklahoma and wastelands in southeast New Mexico. Yes. Natural gas isn't great. >In my view, human addiction to electricity is bad in all forms, but fossil fuels are clearly worse. Right. That's why we need to get off fossil fuels. But you can't do that with solar or wind. Here's what works: Nuclear, Hydro, Geothermal - that's basically it and the latter two need particular geography to be viable.
  - gibolt 7y ago
    Storage costs are dropping rapidly. New batteries are nearly there for cost competitiveness. As the first generation of BEV batteries become 'spent', they will be reused in grid-scale applications. Space and weight are not a concern, and most will have ~70% of their original capacity. That accelerates quickly once Gen 2 batteries have hit end of life.
jacquesm 7y ago
The only fossil fuel generators that ramp up and down quickly are the ones burning natural gas powering turbines. The rest is rather sluggish. And Nuclear is terrible at this too, especially at load shedding, which can cause a plant to be shut down after which it will take up to 72 hours to power back up.
- hansthehorse 7y ago
  Utilities generally use what is called spinning reserve. That is a plant, or a few plants, that are sitting at idle power with the turbine generator up to speed but may or may not be connected to the grid. The old coal and oil plants were good at this and could quickly meet peak demand. Gas is much better at it though. Nuclear is always base loaded as it's usually the cheapest kilowatt maker in the system. It's never taken me 72 hours to start the nuclear plant I worked at except after an outage where a valve lineup check of the entire plant is performed and mountains of paper work to do.
  - jacquesm 7y ago
    Your practical knowledge obviously trumps my second hand one. The 72 hour figure came from a guy I knew that worked on the CL&P nukes in Pickering. We talked about it in the context of the cascading failure that caused the widespread grid outage, he said that 'once the nukes shut down we will be down for at least three days because that's how long it will take to bring them back up'.
mrep 7y ago
Or you use batteries which is in the default option. From the article "You can also enter your address and get an updated estimate that takes into account local costs and incentives, and add on any Powerwalls (with three as the default for a 2,000 square-foot roof)"
- macspoofing 7y ago
  >Or you use batteries which is in the default option. What batteries? Hate to break it to you, but there is no battery technology capable of storing enough energy to bridge solar intermittency gaps at even the scale of a city.
  - grogenaut 7y ago
    Of course there are, the you just called it something else: hydro.
    - mceachen 7y ago
      Here's an example: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinorwig_Power_Station https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinorwig_Power_Station
      - AnthonyMouse 7y ago
        The problem with hydro is that it doesn't scale. You can build it where there is a suitable location, but most of the suitable locations already have it.
  - mrep 7y ago
    This solar roof is for single family homes, not city scale energy. You can power a single family home by building extra solar capacity so you have a surplus of energy during the day to charge batteries which you use at night. Just search for "off grid homes" to see examples. It'll most likely be more expensive at todays prices but the technology absolutely exists.

reustle 7y ago

I may be misunderstanding but it seems like most of your comment completely ignores batteries?

new_realist 7y ago
Batteries double the cost of solar for a 24 hour storage cycle. If you want to store energy for 48 hours, the cost doubles again. 96 hours? Doubles again. Want to store a mere 10% of US electrical generation from summer to use in winter? Literally 52 trillion (yes, trillion) dollars if you use batteries. A bit expensive, even if you spread the cost over 25 years. Pumped hydro, CAES and hydrogen stored in salt caverns are much cheaper at that scale.
- Retric 7y ago
  Only if you’re failing to build enough solar. There is zero reason to ramp up storage rather than reduce the need for it. Over production is cheaper than any other option and reduces the need for longer term storage as daily solar output never drops to zero. Solar is cheap enough it’s still cost competitive if you assume significant power production is wasted. Further, battery systems are designed to avoid full discharge, design for 99.5% of the time and you have spare capacity for the last 0.5%.
  - jacquesm 7y ago
    > daily solar output never drops to zero True, but it is also almost never 'rated power'. Typically a solar installation will deliver somewhere between 30 and 50% of rated power on average, depending on your latitude it might be even lower. The times when solar panels work at their best is during clear winter days and when they are capable of two axis adjustment. Because of the cost of such an installation the typical choice is to install more panels running at lower efficiency. And you'd need to size your batteries for those worst case scenarios of obscured sub in which case your panels might only output between 5 and 10% of their nominal capacity. For reference, my 1600W array is outputting 15.9 Watts right now, earlier, at the best time of the day it was making about 300W due to the sky being overcast. If I had to rely on battery power to make up the difference I would not be able to make it on solar alone. A healthy mix uses both solar and windpower, hydro if you have access to it (it is by far the most stable of the three and capable of providing baseline power without any tricks).
    - Retric 7y ago
      The economics of residential solar is heavily tied to local conditions. But, for grid solar there is little reasons to build it in the north rather than just move electricity from the south. We are already below 2c/kWh for solar power in some areas, the average consumer price is 13.27 cents per kilowatt hour in the US. That’s a lot of wiggle room. Let’s assume 50% over production that’s 4c/kWh, backed up by 60h worth of batteries and transmission and your still cheaper than Nuclear while covering base load and peaking power needs. Further at National grid scale 50% over production an 60h of batteries is crazy overkill.

mepiethree 7y ago

> solar needs the grid to be even close to viable This was true 20 years ago and will be laughable 20 years from now. > The only power generators that can do that are ones that burn fossil fuels. Fossil fuel generators do NOT ramp up and down quickly. BTM and FTM battery storage solutions ramp up and down faster and are rapidly becoming cheaper and more environmentally friendly alternatives. > energy use in building panels and the number of rare earth materials each one needs, the problems with recycling them, and their land-use requirements and the environmental impact of that. Every one of these supposed drawbacks of solar also apply to generating power with fossil fuel. Fracking causes earthquakes in Oklahoma and wastelands in southeast New Mexico. Mountaintop removal for coal has probably permanently destroyed parts of PA, WV, VA, and KY. I won't argue that the issues you bring up aren't bad, they just lack context. In my view, human addiction to electricity is bad in all forms, but fossil fuels are clearly worse.

macspoofing 7y ago
>This was true 20 years ago and will be laughable 20 years from now. Will the sun start shining at night in 20 years? >Fossil fuel generators do NOT ramp up and down quickly. Natural gas ramps as quickly as it can. But let's assume that's true, that's not a point against me, it's a point against solar because then it means that solar is completely unworkable. >Every one of these supposed drawbacks of solar also apply to generating power with fossil fuel. No. Because we know we can power an economy with fossil fuels, and do it in any weather, day or night. >Fracking causes earthquakes in Oklahoma and wastelands in southeast New Mexico. Yes. Natural gas isn't great. >In my view, human addiction to electricity is bad in all forms, but fossil fuels are clearly worse. Right. That's why we need to get off fossil fuels. But you can't do that with solar or wind. Here's what works: Nuclear, Hydro, Geothermal - that's basically it and the latter two need particular geography to be viable.
- gibolt 7y ago
  Storage costs are dropping rapidly. New batteries are nearly there for cost competitiveness. As the first generation of BEV batteries become 'spent', they will be reused in grid-scale applications. Space and weight are not a concern, and most will have ~70% of their original capacity. That accelerates quickly once Gen 2 batteries have hit end of life.

jacquesm 7y ago

The only fossil fuel generators that ramp up and down quickly are the ones burning natural gas powering turbines. The rest is rather sluggish. And Nuclear is terrible at this too, especially at load shedding, which can cause a plant to be shut down after which it will take up to 72 hours to power back up.

hansthehorse 7y ago
Utilities generally use what is called spinning reserve. That is a plant, or a few plants, that are sitting at idle power with the turbine generator up to speed but may or may not be connected to the grid. The old coal and oil plants were good at this and could quickly meet peak demand. Gas is much better at it though. Nuclear is always base loaded as it's usually the cheapest kilowatt maker in the system. It's never taken me 72 hours to start the nuclear plant I worked at except after an outage where a valve lineup check of the entire plant is performed and mountains of paper work to do.
- jacquesm 7y ago
  Your practical knowledge obviously trumps my second hand one. The 72 hour figure came from a guy I knew that worked on the CL&P nukes in Pickering. We talked about it in the context of the cascading failure that caused the widespread grid outage, he said that 'once the nukes shut down we will be down for at least three days because that's how long it will take to bring them back up'.

mrep 7y ago

Or you use batteries which is in the default option. From the article "You can also enter your address and get an updated estimate that takes into account local costs and incentives, and add on any Powerwalls (with three as the default for a 2,000 square-foot roof)"

macspoofing 7y ago
>Or you use batteries which is in the default option. What batteries? Hate to break it to you, but there is no battery technology capable of storing enough energy to bridge solar intermittency gaps at even the scale of a city.
- grogenaut 7y ago
  Of course there are, the you just called it something else: hydro.
  - mceachen 7y ago
    Here's an example: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinorwig_Power_Station https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinorwig_Power_Station
    - AnthonyMouse 7y ago
      The problem with hydro is that it doesn't scale. You can build it where there is a suitable location, but most of the suitable locations already have it.
- mrep 7y ago
  This solar roof is for single family homes, not city scale energy. You can power a single family home by building extra solar capacity so you have a surplus of energy during the day to charge batteries which you use at night. Just search for "off grid homes" to see examples. It'll most likely be more expensive at todays prices but the technology absolutely exists.