6 ms·

But solar has the benefit that it doesn't need to be centralised, people can cover their own roofs and have a battery to be self sufficient and now you don't ev

by jseban 4y ago

But solar has the benefit that it doesn't need to be centralised, people can cover their own roofs and have a battery to be self sufficient and now you don't even need a grid.

clarionbell 4y ago
Until they need replacement components for any of this. Which they will need evry couple of years. Then they will need centralized infrastructure in form of manufacturing plants, roads, rail and finally (because it is imported from China most likely) ports. Every step producing greenhouse gasses or other pollution. Self sufficiency of this sort is largely a sub-urban myth. A comfortable, optimistic one, but a myth nonetheless.
- DocTomoe 4y ago
  In other news, the solar cells installed on the White House by Carter apparently still provided energy ten years ago [1], and those who were not broken deliberately likely still do today. I am all for nuclear - but let's keep the discussion honest. [1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/carter-white-house-solar-panel-array/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/carter-white-hous...
  - clarionbell 4y ago
    Those are not solar cells, those are water heaters. In the interest of being honest. No wonder they still work, those are literally water pipes embedded in a roof panel. No inverter, no battery, nothing. The only thing they have in common with solar cells people install today is the fact that they are powered by sun.
    - nicoburns 4y ago
      Worth noting that people do still install those today in addition to PV panels. PV panels seem to get 20-30 years of use, which isn’t bad at all. And I believe they usually still work after that time, just with reduced efficiency.
      - arcticbull 4y ago
        There's also some cool combo rooftop solar panels/water heaters. [1] By cooling the panels themselves they increase their efficiency by up to 15% (so an increase from ~20% to ~23% total efficiency) - while also heating water for the home. [1] https://dualsun.com/en/product/hybrid-panel-spring/ https://dualsun.com/en/product/hybrid-panel-spring/
      - pfdietz 4y ago
        It is my understanding that residential solar water heating is moving to PV + heat pump water heaters.
- ben_w 4y ago
  Decades, IIRC, not years. Yes, total independence is unrealistic and will be until we have von Neumann universal constructors, but we are starting to get to the point where big footprint homes could reasonably be energy-independent for normal daily use.
  - TheSpiceIsLife 4y ago
    Depends how you sliced it. If every house had solar panels, there's going to be a rolling requirement for on going maintenance. Let's say, for argument sake, solar panels and inverts are approximately as reliable and long lasting as air conditioners, we'll still need a whole new fairly large industry. Seems doable, but we'd need to deal with recycling all the parts, still doable, but there's nothing self sufficient about any of that.
    - ben_w 4y ago
      Indeed, but that is why I said “decades”.
  - eldaisfish 4y ago
    be careful claiming that solar PV systems last decades. Many recent builds have components that fail including the panels, junction boxes, the panel-to-panel connectors and the inverters themselves. Solar isn't as reliable as the solar industry would have you believe. Worst part, a single component failure often takes large sections of the system offline. With domestic systems, that's the entire system.
    - powcontech 4y ago
      I’ve heard of issues with contactors failing in cold temperatures and dust or dirt (it is the desert, sand gets everywhere) causing fibre connections to stop working, ruin fans, cause overheating, outages, millions of dollars lost.
  - powcontech 4y ago
    I am responsible for maintaining eight 150 Ah 120v dc battery banks. The sites also have diesel generators so the batteries really only get used for the 10 seconds it take the diesel to start, maybe 4 or 5 times a year. The batteries are indoors. So far cells start to go after 5-7 years and then I have to replace the whole bank. Even 1 decade is optimistic life from current technology batteries that I am being sold from industrial battery sales channels.
- flgb 4y ago
  "evry couple of years" .. umm nope. Try every 10-20 years for the inverter and every 20-30 years for the panels. Roof-top solar in Australia is cheap and almost ubiquitous.
  - bregma 4y ago
    And the batteries?
  - eldaisfish 4y ago
    this is far from the truth. NREL have great reports and ongoing research into how often solar panels fail. You are correct in that it isn't every couple of years but it is not as long as 20 years. The number of solar PV panels that have been around that long, let alone survived that long is small.
  - ryathal 4y ago
    Every couple years is probably more accurate. Hardware fails all the time, especially at scale. Hard drives fail all the time, solar equipment isn't magically different. Once a full neighborhood has solar, someone will have a defective panel, a defective inverter, an improper install that needs to be redone, storm damage, panels that need cleaning, panels that get damaged from cleaning, or a building gets renovated/replaced/destroyed.
  - powcontech 4y ago
    A 5 kW inverter at a house is different from a 500 kW inverter in the desert
b112 4y ago
This depends upon location. I'd have to fill my entire house with batteries, and cover my entire 1 acre of land with panels, to get and store enough power in the winter. First, there's heating my house when it is -40C out. Second, there's only 5 hours of sunlight, 4 hours of dusk, and the sun stays low in the sky. Third, snow storms. So I'd need enough power collected, during 5 hours of weak sun, to power my house for 19 hours, and heat it. And that doesn't even account for days in a row of blowing, white out snowstorms sometimes. Solar is useless in some places as core power.
- ben_w 4y ago
  While this is true when the homes are isolated, in many cases there are power grids, and thus in principle can get their (Arctic circle?) winter power from Mexico or Italy (I don’t know where you live). I think the small number of exceptions are, even collectively, even long term, not problematic to fuel chemically. What kind of insulation do you have? I keep expecting aerogel on sites like this.
powcontech 4y ago
And yet how many people do that and ditch their grid connections? The reality is having as much electricity as you can use whenever you want for 10 cents a kWh is not something solar/battery provides.

by jseban 4y ago

But solar has the benefit that it doesn't need to be centralised, people can cover their own roofs and have a battery to be self sufficient and now you don't even need a grid.

clarionbell 4y ago

Until they need replacement components for any of this. Which they will need evry couple of years. Then they will need centralized infrastructure in form of manufacturing plants, roads, rail and finally (because it is imported from China most likely) ports. Every step producing greenhouse gasses or other pollution. Self sufficiency of this sort is largely a sub-urban myth. A comfortable, optimistic one, but a myth nonetheless.

DocTomoe 4y ago
In other news, the solar cells installed on the White House by Carter apparently still provided energy ten years ago [1], and those who were not broken deliberately likely still do today. I am all for nuclear - but let's keep the discussion honest. [1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/carter-white-house-solar-panel-array/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/carter-white-hous...
- clarionbell 4y ago
  Those are not solar cells, those are water heaters. In the interest of being honest. No wonder they still work, those are literally water pipes embedded in a roof panel. No inverter, no battery, nothing. The only thing they have in common with solar cells people install today is the fact that they are powered by sun.
  - nicoburns 4y ago
    Worth noting that people do still install those today in addition to PV panels. PV panels seem to get 20-30 years of use, which isn’t bad at all. And I believe they usually still work after that time, just with reduced efficiency.
    - arcticbull 4y ago
      There's also some cool combo rooftop solar panels/water heaters. [1] By cooling the panels themselves they increase their efficiency by up to 15% (so an increase from ~20% to ~23% total efficiency) - while also heating water for the home. [1] https://dualsun.com/en/product/hybrid-panel-spring/ https://dualsun.com/en/product/hybrid-panel-spring/
    - pfdietz 4y ago
      It is my understanding that residential solar water heating is moving to PV + heat pump water heaters.
ben_w 4y ago
Decades, IIRC, not years. Yes, total independence is unrealistic and will be until we have von Neumann universal constructors, but we are starting to get to the point where big footprint homes could reasonably be energy-independent for normal daily use.
- TheSpiceIsLife 4y ago
  Depends how you sliced it. If every house had solar panels, there's going to be a rolling requirement for on going maintenance. Let's say, for argument sake, solar panels and inverts are approximately as reliable and long lasting as air conditioners, we'll still need a whole new fairly large industry. Seems doable, but we'd need to deal with recycling all the parts, still doable, but there's nothing self sufficient about any of that.
  - ben_w 4y ago
    Indeed, but that is why I said “decades”.
- eldaisfish 4y ago
  be careful claiming that solar PV systems last decades. Many recent builds have components that fail including the panels, junction boxes, the panel-to-panel connectors and the inverters themselves. Solar isn't as reliable as the solar industry would have you believe. Worst part, a single component failure often takes large sections of the system offline. With domestic systems, that's the entire system.
  - powcontech 4y ago
    I’ve heard of issues with contactors failing in cold temperatures and dust or dirt (it is the desert, sand gets everywhere) causing fibre connections to stop working, ruin fans, cause overheating, outages, millions of dollars lost.
- powcontech 4y ago
  I am responsible for maintaining eight 150 Ah 120v dc battery banks. The sites also have diesel generators so the batteries really only get used for the 10 seconds it take the diesel to start, maybe 4 or 5 times a year. The batteries are indoors. So far cells start to go after 5-7 years and then I have to replace the whole bank. Even 1 decade is optimistic life from current technology batteries that I am being sold from industrial battery sales channels.
flgb 4y ago
"evry couple of years" .. umm nope. Try every 10-20 years for the inverter and every 20-30 years for the panels. Roof-top solar in Australia is cheap and almost ubiquitous.
- bregma 4y ago
  And the batteries?
- eldaisfish 4y ago
  this is far from the truth. NREL have great reports and ongoing research into how often solar panels fail. You are correct in that it isn't every couple of years but it is not as long as 20 years. The number of solar PV panels that have been around that long, let alone survived that long is small.
- ryathal 4y ago
  Every couple years is probably more accurate. Hardware fails all the time, especially at scale. Hard drives fail all the time, solar equipment isn't magically different. Once a full neighborhood has solar, someone will have a defective panel, a defective inverter, an improper install that needs to be redone, storm damage, panels that need cleaning, panels that get damaged from cleaning, or a building gets renovated/replaced/destroyed.
- powcontech 4y ago
  A 5 kW inverter at a house is different from a 500 kW inverter in the desert

b112 4y ago

This depends upon location. I'd have to fill my entire house with batteries, and cover my entire 1 acre of land with panels, to get and store enough power in the winter. First, there's heating my house when it is -40C out. Second, there's only 5 hours of sunlight, 4 hours of dusk, and the sun stays low in the sky. Third, snow storms. So I'd need enough power collected, during 5 hours of weak sun, to power my house for 19 hours, and heat it. And that doesn't even account for days in a row of blowing, white out snowstorms sometimes. Solar is useless in some places as core power.

ben_w 4y ago
While this is true when the homes are isolated, in many cases there are power grids, and thus in principle can get their (Arctic circle?) winter power from Mexico or Italy (I don’t know where you live). I think the small number of exceptions are, even collectively, even long term, not problematic to fuel chemically. What kind of insulation do you have? I keep expecting aerogel on sites like this.

powcontech 4y ago

And yet how many people do that and ditch their grid connections? The reality is having as much electricity as you can use whenever you want for 10 cents a kWh is not something solar/battery provides.