4 ms·

You might be generating 120% but what happens if everybody installs? Do you have storage installed to smooth out the dead hours? Unfortunately the answer is t

You might be generating 120% but what happens if everybody installs? Do you have storage installed to smooth out the dead hours? Unfortunately the answer is that you need days of storage for solar and wind to be anywhere near 100% of the energy mix. The cost of that is astronomical.

wccrawford 4y ago
That's true, and it's why other sources of energy are useful still, such as wind and nuclear and hydro. But I also think we'll never get to the point that everyone has solar installed. There are plenty of situations where it doesn't make sense, such as properties with lots of taller trees around short buildings. Also, generating 120% generally doesn't make sense because the payout from the electric company for the other 20% is pitiful. A battery makes sense for a lot of people for a few reasons, too, so the power company doesn't necessarily have to be the one to do all of that, either. We did it mainly for relief from power outages, but it also works well for places with prices that change by time of day.
- mrguyorama 4y ago
  Solar is so damn cheap it almost makes sense to set up supplemental systems even if you only get like 10% of the power rated on the panel. Panels are like $1 per nominal watt
thelastgallon 4y ago
A comment like this comes up in every discussion of renewables and needs to die. We don't need separate stationery storage, enormous storage capacity will be free as car batteries. EVs will have 17 times the battery capacity of stationary storage systems by 2030 [1]. By the time we completely transition to EVs, it will be 100s of times of storage. All this storage capacity is available at zero cost, people buy cars anyways. It is decentralized, no single point of failure. This is the sweetest kind of energy demand, can charge whenever electricity prices are negative or zero. Cars are parked nearly all the time, grid adaptations will evolve demand management. Cars will supply power back to the grid at its highest prices, providing a source of income for EV owners. [1] https://assets.bbhub.io/professional/sites/24/BloombergNEF-ZEV-Dashboard-Sep-2022.pdf https://assets.bbhub.io/professional/sites/24/BloombergNEF-Z...
- londons_explore 4y ago
  Power prices have been going negative and spiking up 100x in the UK for a decade or more. Yet the vast majority of EV's don't have the ability to discharge into the grid to earn money... Most can't even charge when power is negatively priced unless you pay for a third party charger and service. Basically, Car owners, charger owners, Utility companies, and EV manufacturers would all like to earn the money by charging/discharging your EV at times to earn the most money. But all of those people don't want someone else being able to take that sweet sweet revenue. So they put roadblocks in the way. EV's usually have the capability to charge into the grid, but firmware that won't allow it. Chargers (AC and DC) won't allow power to flow back into the grid, and will disconnect any car who tries. Utilities refuse to let home users take part in the minute by minute pricing - instead the best available is dynamic pricing set half hourly a day in advance. And users want to do this, but have three parties who've assembled roadblocks in the way. And there is no indication of that impasse ending anytime soon.
  - gruez 4y ago
    >Utilities refuse to let home users take part in the minute by minute pricing - instead the best available is dynamic pricing set half hourly a day in advance. That seems reasonable considering what happened with griddy in texas.
    - londons_explore 4y ago
      There are better approaches. For example a supplier could sell you 5 kWh per day at a fixed price, and anything extra you use is at instant market price, with some kind of pay-as-you-use system. Then if the prices go sky high, users who chose that plan at least get to use 5kWh each day. 5kWh is plenty to not freeze and to keep your phone charged and fridge going. If you want more, you can pay more. The UK already has a system of electricity meters that have a 'balance', and when the balance reaches zero it cuts off till more credit is added. Such a scheme integrates well with that, and means a user can never rack up a massive unexpected bill if the price goes crazy high or low.
mellavora 4y ago
I keep hearing that a problem with solar is that it doesn't work at night. So I can see that as a (solvable) problem for industry, but for personal life? This idea that you need to have your lights on all night is rather recent. For a very very long time people survived by following the natural rythms of daylight. Some people even think this is healthier, and suggest special apps to adjust screen brightness to follow natural light patterns. A good fridge/freezer should hold its cold overnight, especially if you aren't snacking at midnight. So while it might be true that your current lifestyle is based on 24/7 electricity, but what makes that lifestyle sacrosanct? You'll probably change it over the next few years anyway, and odds are it is different today than it was 5 years ago.
- andsoitis 4y ago
  > This idea that you need to have your lights on all night is rather recent. For a very very long time people survived by following the natural rythms of daylight. People have used fire, candles for a very very long time to provide light at night.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    Lighting is a very small fraction of our energy usage (about 5%): https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=99&t=3 https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=99&t=3 If we built our houses right, we could drastically shift energy usage requirements for heating and cooling to daylight hours (utilizing thermal mass storage like https://www.steffes.com/ets/ https://www.steffes.com/ets/ )
  - AngryData 4y ago
    Also you can't underestimate moon light either in premodern times. Deep in the trees or an urban landscape with tall buildings all around it is less reliable, but even a half moon on a clear night without washing your vision out with bright artificial lights leaves you with a ton of light. And even when overcast you aren't completely blinded at night as long as you have a decent amount of sky above you. I think the idea of people sleeping as soon as the sun is down and not just doing low-light activities even 3000 years ago as ridiculous despite being a pervasive idea.
stephen_g 4y ago
The answer actually isn’t that you need days of storage. A researcher I follow on Twitter here in Australia called David Osmond has been running a simulation for over a year that scales up the wind and solar we have to the levels we would need to achieve around 100% renewable energy, and using real time data simulates storage requirements. He’s found that for the NEM grid in Australia at least, just six hours of storage can bring us to over 99% of demand being provided by renewables and storage over a month, almost every month. On a weekly basis, some weeks it’s 100%, but worst case will be something like two or three percent being provided by something like gas turbines over the week. We have more pumped hydro coming online and will have more in the future, so not all those six or so hours worth will be chemical batteries. Part of what makes this work is because on the eastern seaboard, often it might be, for example, windy in northern Queensland while it’s calm in South Australia, so being interconnected helps a lot. At this point we really don’t have (and it’s not simulating) any kind of serious demand management (apart from in emergencies, but I’m talking everyday kind of management), which could potentially remove some of the need for gas peaking. We also don’t have any offshore wind yet (legislation only legalised it last year and there are some early projects). As some of that offshore generation comes online with better capacity factors than onshore, it will likely make things more consistent.
- duckmysick 4y ago
  Is there any code for that simulation available publicly? I'd like to plug in numbers for other locations.
  - stephen_g 4y ago
    I don't think so unfortunately, he just posts the results, e.g. https://twitter.com/DavidOsmond8/status/1590215438323322880 https://twitter.com/DavidOsmond8/status/1590215438323322880
- evilos 4y ago
  How many gigawatt hours is 6 hours of storage though? Also is this just to cover current electricity demand or total primary energy?
strken 4y ago
What do you mean by astronomical? My back-of-the-napkin estimate is that you'd pay about $8k a year in battery costs to supply a household ($20k 18kWh battery system lasting 5 years, then double it). Obviously that's missing commercial power, utility-scale storage, heavy industry, electric vehicle charging, etc., but it seems like factoring those in would give you a big yet feasible cost, especially if storage gets cheaper over the next decades.
- hedora 4y ago
  $20K buys closer 30kWh these days, and they last more like 10 years instead of 5, so $8k/year is a wild overestimate. That strengths your point. However, 30kWh isn’t quite enough for heating and cooling an all-electric off-grid house, unless you carefully monitor battery capacity, etc.
- gergi137 4y ago
  The batteries alone have actually gotten quite affordable. https://signaturesolar.com/eg4-lifepower4-lithium-batteries-kit-48v-100ah-x-6-30-72kwh-6-server-rack-batteries-with-pre-assembled-rack/ https://signaturesolar.com/eg4-lifepower4-lithium-batteries-... Here is 30kWh of LFP batteries for $9,000. Now that doesn't include the inverters or installation or anything but LFP batteries have excellent longevity, in this case 7000 cycles to 80% depth-of-discharge. That means charging and discharging the battery every day for 19 years and at that point, you still have 80% of the remaining capacity.

wccrawford 4y ago

That's true, and it's why other sources of energy are useful still, such as wind and nuclear and hydro. But I also think we'll never get to the point that everyone has solar installed. There are plenty of situations where it doesn't make sense, such as properties with lots of taller trees around short buildings. Also, generating 120% generally doesn't make sense because the payout from the electric company for the other 20% is pitiful. A battery makes sense for a lot of people for a few reasons, too, so the power company doesn't necessarily have to be the one to do all of that, either. We did it mainly for relief from power outages, but it also works well for places with prices that change by time of day.

mrguyorama 4y ago
Solar is so damn cheap it almost makes sense to set up supplemental systems even if you only get like 10% of the power rated on the panel. Panels are like $1 per nominal watt

thelastgallon 4y ago

A comment like this comes up in every discussion of renewables and needs to die. We don't need separate stationery storage, enormous storage capacity will be free as car batteries. EVs will have 17 times the battery capacity of stationary storage systems by 2030 [1]. By the time we completely transition to EVs, it will be 100s of times of storage. All this storage capacity is available at zero cost, people buy cars anyways. It is decentralized, no single point of failure. This is the sweetest kind of energy demand, can charge whenever electricity prices are negative or zero. Cars are parked nearly all the time, grid adaptations will evolve demand management. Cars will supply power back to the grid at its highest prices, providing a source of income for EV owners. [1] https://assets.bbhub.io/professional/sites/24/BloombergNEF-ZEV-Dashboard-Sep-2022.pdf https://assets.bbhub.io/professional/sites/24/BloombergNEF-Z...

londons_explore 4y ago
Power prices have been going negative and spiking up 100x in the UK for a decade or more. Yet the vast majority of EV's don't have the ability to discharge into the grid to earn money... Most can't even charge when power is negatively priced unless you pay for a third party charger and service. Basically, Car owners, charger owners, Utility companies, and EV manufacturers would all like to earn the money by charging/discharging your EV at times to earn the most money. But all of those people don't want someone else being able to take that sweet sweet revenue. So they put roadblocks in the way. EV's usually have the capability to charge into the grid, but firmware that won't allow it. Chargers (AC and DC) won't allow power to flow back into the grid, and will disconnect any car who tries. Utilities refuse to let home users take part in the minute by minute pricing - instead the best available is dynamic pricing set half hourly a day in advance. And users want to do this, but have three parties who've assembled roadblocks in the way. And there is no indication of that impasse ending anytime soon.
- gruez 4y ago
  >Utilities refuse to let home users take part in the minute by minute pricing - instead the best available is dynamic pricing set half hourly a day in advance. That seems reasonable considering what happened with griddy in texas.
  - londons_explore 4y ago
    There are better approaches. For example a supplier could sell you 5 kWh per day at a fixed price, and anything extra you use is at instant market price, with some kind of pay-as-you-use system. Then if the prices go sky high, users who chose that plan at least get to use 5kWh each day. 5kWh is plenty to not freeze and to keep your phone charged and fridge going. If you want more, you can pay more. The UK already has a system of electricity meters that have a 'balance', and when the balance reaches zero it cuts off till more credit is added. Such a scheme integrates well with that, and means a user can never rack up a massive unexpected bill if the price goes crazy high or low.

mellavora 4y ago

I keep hearing that a problem with solar is that it doesn't work at night. So I can see that as a (solvable) problem for industry, but for personal life? This idea that you need to have your lights on all night is rather recent. For a very very long time people survived by following the natural rythms of daylight. Some people even think this is healthier, and suggest special apps to adjust screen brightness to follow natural light patterns. A good fridge/freezer should hold its cold overnight, especially if you aren't snacking at midnight. So while it might be true that your current lifestyle is based on 24/7 electricity, but what makes that lifestyle sacrosanct? You'll probably change it over the next few years anyway, and odds are it is different today than it was 5 years ago.

andsoitis 4y ago
> This idea that you need to have your lights on all night is rather recent. For a very very long time people survived by following the natural rythms of daylight. People have used fire, candles for a very very long time to provide light at night.
- bombcar 4y ago
  Lighting is a very small fraction of our energy usage (about 5%): https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=99&t=3 https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=99&t=3 If we built our houses right, we could drastically shift energy usage requirements for heating and cooling to daylight hours (utilizing thermal mass storage like https://www.steffes.com/ets/ https://www.steffes.com/ets/ )
- AngryData 4y ago
  Also you can't underestimate moon light either in premodern times. Deep in the trees or an urban landscape with tall buildings all around it is less reliable, but even a half moon on a clear night without washing your vision out with bright artificial lights leaves you with a ton of light. And even when overcast you aren't completely blinded at night as long as you have a decent amount of sky above you. I think the idea of people sleeping as soon as the sun is down and not just doing low-light activities even 3000 years ago as ridiculous despite being a pervasive idea.

stephen_g 4y ago

The answer actually isn’t that you need days of storage. A researcher I follow on Twitter here in Australia called David Osmond has been running a simulation for over a year that scales up the wind and solar we have to the levels we would need to achieve around 100% renewable energy, and using real time data simulates storage requirements. He’s found that for the NEM grid in Australia at least, just six hours of storage can bring us to over 99% of demand being provided by renewables and storage over a month, almost every month. On a weekly basis, some weeks it’s 100%, but worst case will be something like two or three percent being provided by something like gas turbines over the week. We have more pumped hydro coming online and will have more in the future, so not all those six or so hours worth will be chemical batteries. Part of what makes this work is because on the eastern seaboard, often it might be, for example, windy in northern Queensland while it’s calm in South Australia, so being interconnected helps a lot. At this point we really don’t have (and it’s not simulating) any kind of serious demand management (apart from in emergencies, but I’m talking everyday kind of management), which could potentially remove some of the need for gas peaking. We also don’t have any offshore wind yet (legislation only legalised it last year and there are some early projects). As some of that offshore generation comes online with better capacity factors than onshore, it will likely make things more consistent.

duckmysick 4y ago
Is there any code for that simulation available publicly? I'd like to plug in numbers for other locations.
- stephen_g 4y ago
  I don't think so unfortunately, he just posts the results, e.g. https://twitter.com/DavidOsmond8/status/1590215438323322880 https://twitter.com/DavidOsmond8/status/1590215438323322880
evilos 4y ago
How many gigawatt hours is 6 hours of storage though? Also is this just to cover current electricity demand or total primary energy?

strken 4y ago

What do you mean by astronomical? My back-of-the-napkin estimate is that you'd pay about $8k a year in battery costs to supply a household ($20k 18kWh battery system lasting 5 years, then double it). Obviously that's missing commercial power, utility-scale storage, heavy industry, electric vehicle charging, etc., but it seems like factoring those in would give you a big yet feasible cost, especially if storage gets cheaper over the next decades.

hedora 4y ago
$20K buys closer 30kWh these days, and they last more like 10 years instead of 5, so $8k/year is a wild overestimate. That strengths your point. However, 30kWh isn’t quite enough for heating and cooling an all-electric off-grid house, unless you carefully monitor battery capacity, etc.
gergi137 4y ago
The batteries alone have actually gotten quite affordable. https://signaturesolar.com/eg4-lifepower4-lithium-batteries-kit-48v-100ah-x-6-30-72kwh-6-server-rack-batteries-with-pre-assembled-rack/ https://signaturesolar.com/eg4-lifepower4-lithium-batteries-... Here is 30kWh of LFP batteries for $9,000. Now that doesn't include the inverters or installation or anything but LFP batteries have excellent longevity, in this case 7000 cycles to 80% depth-of-discharge. That means charging and discharging the battery every day for 19 years and at that point, you still have 80% of the remaining capacity.