11 ms·

“After Going Solar, I Felt the Bliss of Sudden Abundance”

75 points by vwoolf 4y ago

moepstar 4y ago
Ugh, what i don't get is the "oh, i got that for free - let's just waste it in any way i can think of" mentality. Every kWh fed back into the grid is a kWh that is displacing energy generated by coal, gas, nuclear, ....
- bencollier49 4y ago
  Good point.
  - mirekrusin 4y ago
    Yet short sighted, think about solar becoming mainstream and most households being in the same situation - who are you going to be giving the energy to if everybody around is in surplus feeding back? We'll soon realize that batteries, hot water and other forms of energy storage should be shared/communal.
    - yazaddaruvala 4y ago
      Your definition of “short sighted” might need an amendment. > think about solar becoming mainstream and most households being in the same situation This is a happy problem. It would mean humans have overcome climate change. That much surplus energy will create demand. From grid sized battery arbitrage, to desalination, to powering factories in the day. You should learn to celebrate the sun-optimal but significantly better solution. Especially knowing that we can always keep improving.
- hammyhavoc 4y ago
  Because people buy things for themselves usually. E.g. they bought the solar system to give themselves power, not to benefit other people, so that it's had this weird side effect of abundance is something that they openly admit they can't process.
- MisterMower 4y ago
  Only if there’s demand for that marginal kWh. If not, it truly is wasted.
  - eastbound 4y ago
    1 GW into the grid allows us to do maintenance of a nuclear reactor during summer, so it be ready for winter. It’s temporally displacing energy, not unlike a battery.
- otherme123 4y ago
  I'm from Spain, have panels and a bit of this mentality. The thing is the electric utility sells at market price (say 30 cents), but buys at incredible low prices (about 5 cents). That makes them a net earning of 25 cents for an energy they didn't invest a dime to produce, and in fact I have to pay to distribute (about 5€/month). My target is to net zero, but never net negative (put more in the grid that I consume), because that would be working for the utility. If I'm selling too much, a unneeded oven pyrolisis or AC it is. Pay me 80% of the market prices and I will contribute more to the grid. Also that I'm no hardcore hippie: I'm doing my part investing around 60K in PV, so I want my returns either as €€€ or in comfort, not in virtue. And I'm not taking ethical climate lessons from people who doesn't have any panel. It's like "oh, you bought a Tesla, you should give rides to your neighbors that still run gas vehicles. But Uber keeps 80% of the earnings".
  - tasuki 4y ago
    You're providing electricity when there's large supply, and you're buying it when there's less supply and large demand. The prices actually make sense, as evidenced by you still selling despite the low price and still buying despite the high price.
    - otherme123 4y ago
      I don't know in other countries. Here in Spain I sell at a fixed price. Right now, and you can check it at esios.ree.es, pool price if you're buying (i.e. a regular consumer without panels) is 24.4 cents. My panels are producing at peak right now at noon. I can't consume it all, and selling at about 3 cents. Obviously, at night, I have to buy, currently at 35 cents. This doesn't make any sense. In fact, there's a law that makes me meet a minimum kWh sold per year (which I carefully plan to meet in october) or I get fined. Once the minimum is done, I close the faucet until february. E.g if I'm not at home for the weekend, the extra energy goes to heat the house.
  - beej71 4y ago
    If they paid 80%, would they still have a viable business as more people ran solar? They have to pay to run and maintain the grid. That money has to come from somewhere. For people on solar and battery power, the grid is a backup, but I don't think we can have this incredibly expensive backup system running to our houses for low cost. I could see a future where the grid is no longer viable, and people run solar and batteries with diesel backup.
inciampati 4y ago
For only $20k you too can have free electricity in seven years. Soon, the energy cost of the panels should get low enough that it really is us tapping into abundance...
- spockz 4y ago
  $20.000? I installed a 4500Wp system for €3600. How much do you get for $20k? With my system we have a net return but we don’t have AC.
  - sgt101 4y ago
    The difference that I can see is the battery - a 13.5KWH battery costs ~$10k installed. €3600 is very cheap for 4.5k installed !
    - spockz 4y ago
      Ok. Batteries seem to be a similar amount in euros here. But they are rarely used due to net metering.
      - sgt101 4y ago
        In the UK we have asymmetric pricing so produced solar goes to the grid at 5p and electricity comes at 27p. At night you can buy electricity for 7p for about 5 hours. So - batteries can make sense in that you can charge them during the day and then discharge them at night. If you find that there is not enough in the battery you can put in some charge at night and then top it up during the day.
- hparadiz 4y ago
  More like 40k financed over 7 years with a $500 payment. Except your electricity use goes into negative and you can recoup some of those costs. Meanwhile like the article said you start to use $400 worth a month and with batteries you end up fully self sufficient when the grid goes down. Honestly on a tech salary it's a bit of a luxury but not much for the peace of mind of never having your power go out. Basically $120 more a month. And then when it's paid off it does become free. If you own a home it's really a no brainer.
rconti 4y ago
What a weird article. In places with net metering, it doesn't matter when you use it. In places (like CA, under NEM2.0), where you get credits proportional to when you generate, you're still better off charging your car at night because you're getting multiplier effect when you generate during peak hours and consume at off-peak hours. Everyone says to buy a bigger system than you think you'll need because your consumption goes up slowly over time. We're a net consumer despite our solar. I've gotta say, having solar has done something of the opposite to me. It's made it clear that the power you generate is not really yours; if you're grid-tied, the more you get into the minutia of what you make when you generate, what you're charged when you consume, grid interconnection fees, tiering, lack of grid sync when the grid is down, etc, the more it becomes clear that owning rooftop solar is NOT generating your own power for your own use, it's merely an arbitrage scheme where you're really trading your rooftop real estate for cheaper power.
- jacquesm 4y ago
  Netmetering is on the way out in plenty of places though.
- tshaddox 4y ago
  Would the feeling change if you had a day’s worth of batteries at home?
  - rconti 4y ago
    Absolutely! It just wasn't worth the cost to me at say $9k+. For a couple thousand, sure.
- hbarka 4y ago
  Even with net metering and all you have is solar, it still does matter when you use grid power. California peak rates are 3 PM to midnight, and you’re not getting any offset when the sun is down and then you’re conscious about peak rates. The calculus only changes when you have solar production + battery storage. Then you have freedom.
  - 4y ago
null_object 4y ago
I think the point of this article is to reach the doubters from another angle than the usual doom-and-gloom eco-disaster or climate apocalypse approach. It makes using solar attractive to the consumption-hungry among us, and presents it as a money-saving device: all of which will appeal to a completely new demographic than the usual environmentally-aware crowd.
- XorNot 4y ago
  Exactly this - once people are onboard, or at least interested, then they're ready to learn. Breaking the "it'll never work" dismissiveness is an important first step.
Barrin92 4y ago
I think the man needs a lesson in Jevon's Paradox (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox) Simply put, if an increase in efficiency, ecologically in this case, leads to an increase in consumption then the end result isn't a decrease in energy usage but an increase. One of the reasons carbo-hydrogen consumption has barely fallen totally is because every time we make something more efficient we have the fantastic idea to use it for something other than substituting the old energy sources. Every solar panel put to use for something that isn't turning an old power plant off is slowing the energy transition. The people on HN who rightfully ask why our software is so slow despite our chips being so fast know Jevon's paradox by heart. It's important to point out that this applies to the infrastructure needed for green energy itself, which is not green. Solar panels, batteries, concrete, steel, rare earths, the downside of that green energy the author blasts so abundantly through is some toxic mining pit in Africa.
- gwicks56 4y ago
  Are you making the argument that we should be striving for a decrease in consumption? Because I can see no compelling argument that that should be so. In fact, we should be using way more energy. It should be green, but trying to tell people to use less is a guaranteed way for any kind of climate action to fail. Cheaper, cleaner, more abundant, is the only way we are going to move forward, people are just not going to sign up to a future we're we use less than our parents generation.
  - tjoff 4y ago
    > [...] people are just not going to sign up to a future we're we use less than our parents generation. This is why we are doomed and why a sizeable and increasing portion of our society has no hope.
    - v-erne 4y ago
      My thoughts also. Greed has no limits. I have lots of absurdly rich family members and friends and all they do is talk and think how to have more (I once witnessed a coversation where someone was complaining that he have to drive 2 hours to his favorite golf course while his brother takes his private helicopter and is there in 15 munutes - I kid You not!)
hosh 4y ago
And just imagine, what kind of shift in your sense of abundance if you knew food grew in food forests planted in your backyard?
- pjerem 4y ago
  To be fair, you’d need really big backyard and a lot of work to feed an entire family year long with a balanced diet while having a sense of abundance.
  - prawn 4y ago
    Even getting a good return on a standard backyard space takes a lot of work dealing with pests. Where I am, the fruit trees get hassled by birds, possums, rats, beetles, fungus, etc. Other plants cop it from slugs/snails, caterpillars, etc. I planted seeds for easy things like beans and snowpeas the other week and forgot to sprinkle slug pellets - absolutely nothing but weeds survived. If I don't net fruit trees, I will get nothing to eat as every single fruit will get attacked by birds from above, rats from underneath, etc. Not to mention weeds swamping everything. It's time consuming.
    - hosh 4y ago
      I get hassled by pests as well, though I try to add things into the local ecology that would eat or mitigate them. My backyard chickens cover a lot of insect pests. Where I am is too dry for snails, otherwise I'd get some ducks. Fungus is key to building a healthy, perennial food forest, so it really depends on how it is planted, what the species needs, etc. Pesticides and herbicides tend to kill off the beneficial fungus. Some drought-tolerant species, like pomegranates, get invaded by fungi when soil conditions are too wet. Another is if you are using the right root stock / scion combination for your fruiting trees. As far as weeds goes, there's a way to incorporate them. It depends on the "weed" species. Some, like dandelions, are pioneer species that help rebuild soil and should be left where they are. Others may need more drastic strategies like resetting the soil ecology using aggressive sheet mulching. Generally though, if you have something occupying (1) all ecological functions, and at (2) all canopy layers, it would be difficult for weeds invade because that role is already taken up by something.
someweirdperson 4y ago
AC is easy, because it is needed when there is a lot of sun. The challenge is heating. Feeding to the grid during summer and buying back during winter does not solve any problem. For non-heating use day/night cycles can be solved by batteries. For non-heating use over-provisioning to catch ambient light could even make it work during winter, no grid needed. But for heating, over-provisioning to run a heat-pump on ambient light does not seem viable. Year-cycle storage is complex (e.g., hydrogen, maybe high-temperature to store heat, ...). A solution can be collectors to create electricity which is then stored by a second system. An alternative might be collectors that don't produce electricity but something that can be stored directly. Difficult choice to go all-in on PV for planned use of 25 years today when there might be a more storage-friendly solution available in 10 years.
- HyperSane 4y ago
- cfn 4y ago
  This mirrors my experience. I was offgrid for over six years and we had enough solar panels and batteries to produce all the power we needed and then some (even in the Winter as this was in South Europe). But for heating we used wood. I suppose we could have run a 1-2kw heater for a few hours every night but it would have reduced the batteries life which were quite expensive.
- freddie_mercury 4y ago
  > AC is easy, because it is needed when there is a lot of sun. This isn't universally true and I think shows a lack of intuitive familiarity with climates that aren't North America or Europe. Where I live the over night low will be 26c (79f). With high humidity that's a "RealFeel(r)" of 31c (88f). Most people find that uncomfortable to sleep in, especially if they didn't grow up in it. Most people I know have their air conditioning on overnight. There are plenty of places where night time temperatures, especially when combined with humidity, still result in air conditioning -- assuming the country is rich enough to afford it. Which increasingly many are. Heck, today is overcast with no sun but it is still 33c with a "RealFeel" of 40c.
nerdawson 4y ago
How big do these arrays have to be to hit self-sustainability? I bought a new build house in the UK a few years back which had solar panels pre-installed on the roof (IMO that should be a requirement for all new houses). It’s a 1kW array facing west so I’m far from experiencing the abundance this article describes.
- mirekrusin 4y ago
  There will be a difference between UK and ie. South of France where you have 300 days a year of full sunshine days.
- KaiserPro 4y ago
  a 1kw array is realistically going to provide 300-900watts. which in summer is going to get you about 6-9kwhr a day. I have a 5.6kw array and a battery. It has provided 99.8% of our power since march. (only 60% of our power was from solar in january though.) We've generated ~3 MwHr this year, with 1.5 net going to the grid. We don't have a feed in tariff, so any power we generate and export is free to the supplier. This means that we put on the washing machine & dishwasher on during solar peak, so that we stop the power companies making as much money. But. We have gas heating. even with external wall insulation we using about 500kwhr a month in febuary. (Im not sure that acutally all, as the smart meter has stopped reporting properly.)
biren34 4y ago
I don't understand why so many people who care about greenhouse gases (and so love renewable energy sources) refuse to acknowledge that producing the equipment that generates "renewable" energy required massive energy investment (that came from fossil fuels). And so there are two payback periods: one financial and the other environmental. This person extended their environmental payback period to achieve "abundance". I have no problem with that, but the fact that it's considered "free" on the very same dimension that they originally sought to optimize--when it's clearly not free--baffles me.
- bruce343434 4y ago
  It's "amortized free"
mrjin 4y ago
Put all the other factors aside, the author at least ignored quite a few critical variables: 1. Decaying of the panels. I'm wondering if the panels can retain 50% of designed output after 7 years. 2. Maintenance. If the inverter go busted in 7 years, hopefully the warranty would be still valid by then. Also, the extra load panels put on roof was never factored when the house was built, it's not uncommon to see issues caused by that. 3. Variance of feed-in tariff. So if the tariff wasn't locked in, I'm pretty sure there would be surprises on how fast it can drop.
- sercand 4y ago
  Most panels provide 25 years warranty of 85% of output. Therefore, you can use your panels up to 40 years in some cases.
blablabla123 4y ago
I'm on a plan that uses only regeneratives, that also definitely helped me stop worrying too much (Although now there's the gas crisis unfortunately)
oaiey 4y ago
The article missed one very critical element: depending on the tariffs it may be a net zero sum game for a consumer, but solar energy is super tricky grid wise. When clouds pass over the country, when it is night, when it is winter there is no abundance of energy in the grid. Winter could be baseline compensated by nuclear but the variations summer and winter beyond buffers have to be compensated by energy sources can startup very quickly. And that is mostly natural gas. So while I can totally follow the article positiv argument (as a proud owner myself I experience the same sentiments), in the larger picture, that feeling only works in summer daylight and only if the grid is already on 100% renewables at the given time (which in parts of Europe we are).
- freemint 4y ago
  The problem is just that the grid is to small. The sun shines 24/7 with almost consistent energy hitting earth all year.
kkfx 4y ago
Mh, after I've "gone solar" i felt a sense of abundance in some hours of many sunny days BUT I see from my "smart meter" (Home Assistant + Victron inverter + Carlo Giavazzi meter, to state another thing [1]) logs that I also need energy when the Sun NOT shine an as a result instead of sense of abundance I've developed a sense of "keep watching" to choose what to run or not depending on the Sun state... Unfortunately I've realized how much is unfeasible living on renewables... I've realized that without damn real scalable, cheap and long lasting storage we can only spend money to made an almost zero-sum (in the best case) game. At MINIMUM we need storage to power TWO-THREE ENTIRE DAYS and enough peak power to recharge it in 3h. A thing that in most latitude/homes means something from the cost of a not so cheap car to the cost of a home alone, for ~10 years of usable life due to the most expensive part: the battery. To really being able to live on renewable we need year-long storage, something that can power a home for six month, being recharged in the other six to have enough charge/discharge margin during an year. To be clear I'm NOT unhappy of my investment because it pay back in term of blackout protection (thanks to a small but capable enough to pass a night on essential services lithium storage) and in term of yearly amortization costs BUT, while for a mix of reasons (some definitively artificially made by some humans, acting as cancer of humanity) I suggest others to do the same I'm FAR LESS optimistic... [1] that IoT development in the SOLE area where IoT is meaningful, useful for the user is utterly developed and crappy limited.
bartimus 4y ago
Considering the sun produces 1370 Watts per square meter (solar constant). I cannot imagine an average homeowner in Brooklyn having enough rooftop space to accomodate the number of panels required to power their home for 100%. Especially when taking heating / air conditioning into account.
Glench 4y ago
This is just great to read
snapplebobapple 4y ago
There is a shocking amount of ignorance of the actual functioning of the electric grid and where costs actually come from for non demand resources like solar and wind (and run of river hydro and a bunch of others) in this thread. Power grids require supply to equal demand at all times within a small margin of error or else the grid blacks out. Grid operators keep within the margin of error with ancillary services constantly ramping generators up and down by small amounts to keep supply equal to demand across the grid. The uncosted and huge cost of solar and wind is that they cannot provide ancillary services (until storage gets a lot better and cheaper, which is a long time away, likely decades) and they increase ancillary demand because enough ancillaries have to be available to cover wind cutouts or clouds rolling in. This cost increases exponentially as percent of power from non demand resources increases because you have to run the other generation increasingly at min gen just to be able to ramp them to Max gen if needed. This is no big deal when these resources are a couple percent of your grid but hugely costly as they stop being a rounding error in your generation profile. So yes, solar is way cheaper than most other gen to install right now but it causes an externality that isnt being priced correctly right now and that per unit externality increases as the grid gets more of these resources.
RickJWagner 4y ago
I was liking the article until I read the bash on Republicans. I tend to vote Republican, and I've sold my car. I have Democrat friends that drive trucks and big motorcycles purely for pleasure. So tired of the political nagging and innuendo in every little thing. It's probably going to get worse as November draws closer.
hcarvalhoalves 4y ago
Producing these solar panels and everything that will consume its energy _also_ consumes energy. Probably produced in China, powered by coal. The “abundance” perspective is deceptive, people seem to simply refuse to accept a reduction in consumption.

75 points by vwoolf 4y ago

Ugh, what i don't get is the "oh, i got that for free - let's just waste it in any way i can think of" mentality. Every kWh fed back into the grid is a kWh that is displacing energy generated by coal, gas, nuclear, ....

bencollier49 4y ago
Good point.
- mirekrusin 4y ago
  Yet short sighted, think about solar becoming mainstream and most households being in the same situation - who are you going to be giving the energy to if everybody around is in surplus feeding back? We'll soon realize that batteries, hot water and other forms of energy storage should be shared/communal.
  - yazaddaruvala 4y ago
    Your definition of “short sighted” might need an amendment. > think about solar becoming mainstream and most households being in the same situation This is a happy problem. It would mean humans have overcome climate change. That much surplus energy will create demand. From grid sized battery arbitrage, to desalination, to powering factories in the day. You should learn to celebrate the sun-optimal but significantly better solution. Especially knowing that we can always keep improving.
hammyhavoc 4y ago
Because people buy things for themselves usually. E.g. they bought the solar system to give themselves power, not to benefit other people, so that it's had this weird side effect of abundance is something that they openly admit they can't process.
MisterMower 4y ago
Only if there’s demand for that marginal kWh. If not, it truly is wasted.
- eastbound 4y ago
  1 GW into the grid allows us to do maintenance of a nuclear reactor during summer, so it be ready for winter. It’s temporally displacing energy, not unlike a battery.
otherme123 4y ago
I'm from Spain, have panels and a bit of this mentality. The thing is the electric utility sells at market price (say 30 cents), but buys at incredible low prices (about 5 cents). That makes them a net earning of 25 cents for an energy they didn't invest a dime to produce, and in fact I have to pay to distribute (about 5€/month). My target is to net zero, but never net negative (put more in the grid that I consume), because that would be working for the utility. If I'm selling too much, a unneeded oven pyrolisis or AC it is. Pay me 80% of the market prices and I will contribute more to the grid. Also that I'm no hardcore hippie: I'm doing my part investing around 60K in PV, so I want my returns either as €€€ or in comfort, not in virtue. And I'm not taking ethical climate lessons from people who doesn't have any panel. It's like "oh, you bought a Tesla, you should give rides to your neighbors that still run gas vehicles. But Uber keeps 80% of the earnings".
- tasuki 4y ago
  You're providing electricity when there's large supply, and you're buying it when there's less supply and large demand. The prices actually make sense, as evidenced by you still selling despite the low price and still buying despite the high price.
  - otherme123 4y ago
    I don't know in other countries. Here in Spain I sell at a fixed price. Right now, and you can check it at esios.ree.es, pool price if you're buying (i.e. a regular consumer without panels) is 24.4 cents. My panels are producing at peak right now at noon. I can't consume it all, and selling at about 3 cents. Obviously, at night, I have to buy, currently at 35 cents. This doesn't make any sense. In fact, there's a law that makes me meet a minimum kWh sold per year (which I carefully plan to meet in october) or I get fined. Once the minimum is done, I close the faucet until february. E.g if I'm not at home for the weekend, the extra energy goes to heat the house.
- beej71 4y ago
  If they paid 80%, would they still have a viable business as more people ran solar? They have to pay to run and maintain the grid. That money has to come from somewhere. For people on solar and battery power, the grid is a backup, but I don't think we can have this incredibly expensive backup system running to our houses for low cost. I could see a future where the grid is no longer viable, and people run solar and batteries with diesel backup.

inciampati 4y ago

For only $20k you too can have free electricity in seven years. Soon, the energy cost of the panels should get low enough that it really is us tapping into abundance...

spockz 4y ago
$20.000? I installed a 4500Wp system for €3600. How much do you get for $20k? With my system we have a net return but we don’t have AC.
- sgt101 4y ago
  The difference that I can see is the battery - a 13.5KWH battery costs ~$10k installed. €3600 is very cheap for 4.5k installed !
  - spockz 4y ago
    Ok. Batteries seem to be a similar amount in euros here. But they are rarely used due to net metering.
    - sgt101 4y ago
      In the UK we have asymmetric pricing so produced solar goes to the grid at 5p and electricity comes at 27p. At night you can buy electricity for 7p for about 5 hours. So - batteries can make sense in that you can charge them during the day and then discharge them at night. If you find that there is not enough in the battery you can put in some charge at night and then top it up during the day.
hparadiz 4y ago
More like 40k financed over 7 years with a $500 payment. Except your electricity use goes into negative and you can recoup some of those costs. Meanwhile like the article said you start to use $400 worth a month and with batteries you end up fully self sufficient when the grid goes down. Honestly on a tech salary it's a bit of a luxury but not much for the peace of mind of never having your power go out. Basically $120 more a month. And then when it's paid off it does become free. If you own a home it's really a no brainer.

rconti 4y ago

What a weird article. In places with net metering, it doesn't matter when you use it. In places (like CA, under NEM2.0), where you get credits proportional to when you generate, you're still better off charging your car at night because you're getting multiplier effect when you generate during peak hours and consume at off-peak hours. Everyone says to buy a bigger system than you think you'll need because your consumption goes up slowly over time. We're a net consumer despite our solar. I've gotta say, having solar has done something of the opposite to me. It's made it clear that the power you generate is not really yours; if you're grid-tied, the more you get into the minutia of what you make when you generate, what you're charged when you consume, grid interconnection fees, tiering, lack of grid sync when the grid is down, etc, the more it becomes clear that owning rooftop solar is NOT generating your own power for your own use, it's merely an arbitrage scheme where you're really trading your rooftop real estate for cheaper power.

jacquesm 4y ago
Netmetering is on the way out in plenty of places though.
tshaddox 4y ago
Would the feeling change if you had a day’s worth of batteries at home?
- rconti 4y ago
  Absolutely! It just wasn't worth the cost to me at say $9k+. For a couple thousand, sure.
hbarka 4y ago
Even with net metering and all you have is solar, it still does matter when you use grid power. California peak rates are 3 PM to midnight, and you’re not getting any offset when the sun is down and then you’re conscious about peak rates. The calculus only changes when you have solar production + battery storage. Then you have freedom.
- 4y ago

null_object 4y ago

I think the point of this article is to reach the doubters from another angle than the usual doom-and-gloom eco-disaster or climate apocalypse approach. It makes using solar attractive to the consumption-hungry among us, and presents it as a money-saving device: all of which will appeal to a completely new demographic than the usual environmentally-aware crowd.

XorNot 4y ago
Exactly this - once people are onboard, or at least interested, then they're ready to learn. Breaking the "it'll never work" dismissiveness is an important first step.

Barrin92 4y ago

I think the man needs a lesson in Jevon's Paradox (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox) Simply put, if an increase in efficiency, ecologically in this case, leads to an increase in consumption then the end result isn't a decrease in energy usage but an increase. One of the reasons carbo-hydrogen consumption has barely fallen totally is because every time we make something more efficient we have the fantastic idea to use it for something other than substituting the old energy sources. Every solar panel put to use for something that isn't turning an old power plant off is slowing the energy transition. The people on HN who rightfully ask why our software is so slow despite our chips being so fast know Jevon's paradox by heart. It's important to point out that this applies to the infrastructure needed for green energy itself, which is not green. Solar panels, batteries, concrete, steel, rare earths, the downside of that green energy the author blasts so abundantly through is some toxic mining pit in Africa.

gwicks56 4y ago
Are you making the argument that we should be striving for a decrease in consumption? Because I can see no compelling argument that that should be so. In fact, we should be using way more energy. It should be green, but trying to tell people to use less is a guaranteed way for any kind of climate action to fail. Cheaper, cleaner, more abundant, is the only way we are going to move forward, people are just not going to sign up to a future we're we use less than our parents generation.
- tjoff 4y ago
  > [...] people are just not going to sign up to a future we're we use less than our parents generation. This is why we are doomed and why a sizeable and increasing portion of our society has no hope.
  - v-erne 4y ago
    My thoughts also. Greed has no limits. I have lots of absurdly rich family members and friends and all they do is talk and think how to have more (I once witnessed a coversation where someone was complaining that he have to drive 2 hours to his favorite golf course while his brother takes his private helicopter and is there in 15 munutes - I kid You not!)

hosh 4y ago

And just imagine, what kind of shift in your sense of abundance if you knew food grew in food forests planted in your backyard?

pjerem 4y ago
To be fair, you’d need really big backyard and a lot of work to feed an entire family year long with a balanced diet while having a sense of abundance.
- prawn 4y ago
  Even getting a good return on a standard backyard space takes a lot of work dealing with pests. Where I am, the fruit trees get hassled by birds, possums, rats, beetles, fungus, etc. Other plants cop it from slugs/snails, caterpillars, etc. I planted seeds for easy things like beans and snowpeas the other week and forgot to sprinkle slug pellets - absolutely nothing but weeds survived. If I don't net fruit trees, I will get nothing to eat as every single fruit will get attacked by birds from above, rats from underneath, etc. Not to mention weeds swamping everything. It's time consuming.
  - hosh 4y ago
    I get hassled by pests as well, though I try to add things into the local ecology that would eat or mitigate them. My backyard chickens cover a lot of insect pests. Where I am is too dry for snails, otherwise I'd get some ducks. Fungus is key to building a healthy, perennial food forest, so it really depends on how it is planted, what the species needs, etc. Pesticides and herbicides tend to kill off the beneficial fungus. Some drought-tolerant species, like pomegranates, get invaded by fungi when soil conditions are too wet. Another is if you are using the right root stock / scion combination for your fruiting trees. As far as weeds goes, there's a way to incorporate them. It depends on the "weed" species. Some, like dandelions, are pioneer species that help rebuild soil and should be left where they are. Others may need more drastic strategies like resetting the soil ecology using aggressive sheet mulching. Generally though, if you have something occupying (1) all ecological functions, and at (2) all canopy layers, it would be difficult for weeds invade because that role is already taken up by something.

someweirdperson 4y ago

AC is easy, because it is needed when there is a lot of sun. The challenge is heating. Feeding to the grid during summer and buying back during winter does not solve any problem. For non-heating use day/night cycles can be solved by batteries. For non-heating use over-provisioning to catch ambient light could even make it work during winter, no grid needed. But for heating, over-provisioning to run a heat-pump on ambient light does not seem viable. Year-cycle storage is complex (e.g., hydrogen, maybe high-temperature to store heat, ...). A solution can be collectors to create electricity which is then stored by a second system. An alternative might be collectors that don't produce electricity but something that can be stored directly. Difficult choice to go all-in on PV for planned use of 25 years today when there might be a more storage-friendly solution available in 10 years.

HyperSane 4y ago
cfn 4y ago
This mirrors my experience. I was offgrid for over six years and we had enough solar panels and batteries to produce all the power we needed and then some (even in the Winter as this was in South Europe). But for heating we used wood. I suppose we could have run a 1-2kw heater for a few hours every night but it would have reduced the batteries life which were quite expensive.
freddie_mercury 4y ago
> AC is easy, because it is needed when there is a lot of sun. This isn't universally true and I think shows a lack of intuitive familiarity with climates that aren't North America or Europe. Where I live the over night low will be 26c (79f). With high humidity that's a "RealFeel(r)" of 31c (88f). Most people find that uncomfortable to sleep in, especially if they didn't grow up in it. Most people I know have their air conditioning on overnight. There are plenty of places where night time temperatures, especially when combined with humidity, still result in air conditioning -- assuming the country is rich enough to afford it. Which increasingly many are. Heck, today is overcast with no sun but it is still 33c with a "RealFeel" of 40c.

nerdawson 4y ago

How big do these arrays have to be to hit self-sustainability? I bought a new build house in the UK a few years back which had solar panels pre-installed on the roof (IMO that should be a requirement for all new houses). It’s a 1kW array facing west so I’m far from experiencing the abundance this article describes.

mirekrusin 4y ago
There will be a difference between UK and ie. South of France where you have 300 days a year of full sunshine days.
KaiserPro 4y ago
a 1kw array is realistically going to provide 300-900watts. which in summer is going to get you about 6-9kwhr a day. I have a 5.6kw array and a battery. It has provided 99.8% of our power since march. (only 60% of our power was from solar in january though.) We've generated ~3 MwHr this year, with 1.5 net going to the grid. We don't have a feed in tariff, so any power we generate and export is free to the supplier. This means that we put on the washing machine & dishwasher on during solar peak, so that we stop the power companies making as much money. But. We have gas heating. even with external wall insulation we using about 500kwhr a month in febuary. (Im not sure that acutally all, as the smart meter has stopped reporting properly.)

biren34 4y ago

I don't understand why so many people who care about greenhouse gases (and so love renewable energy sources) refuse to acknowledge that producing the equipment that generates "renewable" energy required massive energy investment (that came from fossil fuels). And so there are two payback periods: one financial and the other environmental. This person extended their environmental payback period to achieve "abundance". I have no problem with that, but the fact that it's considered "free" on the very same dimension that they originally sought to optimize--when it's clearly not free--baffles me.

bruce343434 4y ago
It's "amortized free"

mrjin 4y ago

Put all the other factors aside, the author at least ignored quite a few critical variables: 1. Decaying of the panels. I'm wondering if the panels can retain 50% of designed output after 7 years. 2. Maintenance. If the inverter go busted in 7 years, hopefully the warranty would be still valid by then. Also, the extra load panels put on roof was never factored when the house was built, it's not uncommon to see issues caused by that. 3. Variance of feed-in tariff. So if the tariff wasn't locked in, I'm pretty sure there would be surprises on how fast it can drop.

sercand 4y ago
Most panels provide 25 years warranty of 85% of output. Therefore, you can use your panels up to 40 years in some cases.

blablabla123 4y ago

I'm on a plan that uses only regeneratives, that also definitely helped me stop worrying too much (Although now there's the gas crisis unfortunately)

oaiey 4y ago

The article missed one very critical element: depending on the tariffs it may be a net zero sum game for a consumer, but solar energy is super tricky grid wise. When clouds pass over the country, when it is night, when it is winter there is no abundance of energy in the grid. Winter could be baseline compensated by nuclear but the variations summer and winter beyond buffers have to be compensated by energy sources can startup very quickly. And that is mostly natural gas. So while I can totally follow the article positiv argument (as a proud owner myself I experience the same sentiments), in the larger picture, that feeling only works in summer daylight and only if the grid is already on 100% renewables at the given time (which in parts of Europe we are).

freemint 4y ago
The problem is just that the grid is to small. The sun shines 24/7 with almost consistent energy hitting earth all year.

kkfx 4y ago

Mh, after I've "gone solar" i felt a sense of abundance in some hours of many sunny days BUT I see from my "smart meter" (Home Assistant + Victron inverter + Carlo Giavazzi meter, to state another thing [1]) logs that I also need energy when the Sun NOT shine an as a result instead of sense of abundance I've developed a sense of "keep watching" to choose what to run or not depending on the Sun state... Unfortunately I've realized how much is unfeasible living on renewables... I've realized that without damn real scalable, cheap and long lasting storage we can only spend money to made an almost zero-sum (in the best case) game. At MINIMUM we need storage to power TWO-THREE ENTIRE DAYS and enough peak power to recharge it in 3h. A thing that in most latitude/homes means something from the cost of a not so cheap car to the cost of a home alone, for ~10 years of usable life due to the most expensive part: the battery. To really being able to live on renewable we need year-long storage, something that can power a home for six month, being recharged in the other six to have enough charge/discharge margin during an year. To be clear I'm NOT unhappy of my investment because it pay back in term of blackout protection (thanks to a small but capable enough to pass a night on essential services lithium storage) and in term of yearly amortization costs BUT, while for a mix of reasons (some definitively artificially made by some humans, acting as cancer of humanity) I suggest others to do the same I'm FAR LESS optimistic... [1] that IoT development in the SOLE area where IoT is meaningful, useful for the user is utterly developed and crappy limited.

bartimus 4y ago

Considering the sun produces 1370 Watts per square meter (solar constant). I cannot imagine an average homeowner in Brooklyn having enough rooftop space to accomodate the number of panels required to power their home for 100%. Especially when taking heating / air conditioning into account.

Glench 4y ago

This is just great to read

snapplebobapple 4y ago

There is a shocking amount of ignorance of the actual functioning of the electric grid and where costs actually come from for non demand resources like solar and wind (and run of river hydro and a bunch of others) in this thread. Power grids require supply to equal demand at all times within a small margin of error or else the grid blacks out. Grid operators keep within the margin of error with ancillary services constantly ramping generators up and down by small amounts to keep supply equal to demand across the grid. The uncosted and huge cost of solar and wind is that they cannot provide ancillary services (until storage gets a lot better and cheaper, which is a long time away, likely decades) and they increase ancillary demand because enough ancillaries have to be available to cover wind cutouts or clouds rolling in. This cost increases exponentially as percent of power from non demand resources increases because you have to run the other generation increasingly at min gen just to be able to ramp them to Max gen if needed. This is no big deal when these resources are a couple percent of your grid but hugely costly as they stop being a rounding error in your generation profile. So yes, solar is way cheaper than most other gen to install right now but it causes an externality that isnt being priced correctly right now and that per unit externality increases as the grid gets more of these resources.

RickJWagner 4y ago

I was liking the article until I read the bash on Republicans. I tend to vote Republican, and I've sold my car. I have Democrat friends that drive trucks and big motorcycles purely for pleasure. So tired of the political nagging and innuendo in every little thing. It's probably going to get worse as November draws closer.

hcarvalhoalves 4y ago

Producing these solar panels and everything that will consume its energy _also_ consumes energy. Probably produced in China, powered by coal. The “abundance” perspective is deceptive, people seem to simply refuse to accept a reduction in consumption.