4 ms·

Most helpful thing for the environment would be for big solar facilities to handle all this instead of individual homeowners. It's less efficient trying to make

Most helpful thing for the environment would be for big solar facilities to handle all this instead of individual homeowners. It's less efficient trying to make people run their own mini power plants.

988747 4y ago
[dead]
ok_dad 4y ago
Less efficient but more reliable, like software. The future of the grid should be many small generators and energy storage installations spread throughout the communities they service, not many large farms with requirements for huge transmission infrastructure. Spreading generation and storage will achieve more reliability than efficiency, sure, but when you're generating off solar or wind, who cares if it's efficient?
- luckylion 4y ago
  > when you're generating off solar or wind, who cares if it's efficient Whoever pays for the electricity, most likely. If you don't connect neighborhoods and each block or even house is an off-grid island, your reliability will suffer because you'll need large margins everywhere. If you do connect them, you have that "transmission infrastructure". Rooftop is great because it gives you a feeling of security and being self-sustaining, but if you want impact, it's probably much more efficient to have technicians install panels en masse at large installations than do one-off jobs on all those custom homes.
  - jacquesm 4y ago
    This is true, but with electric cars becoming more and more widespread local generation is having a measurable impact on daytime generation. It also offloads the grid because every KWh generated locally and consumed relatively locally doesn't need long haul transmission, as opposed to 'large installations'.
  - ok_dad 4y ago
    You can reduce transmission infra considerably, probably not eliminate it though. I am not advocating for islanding, I am advocating for something like the internet's smartly distributed network for the power grid. I do work in the industry, so while I'm not completely knowledgeable I do have knowledge that makes me think this is the way for the future. You're not going to eliminate all centralized generation, of course, especially for solar! However, smaller installations of solar, wind, batteries, and etc. are useful for reducing the transmission grid requirements and increasing reliability and distribution capabilities. If you do end up with transmission lines disconnected, it's a good idea to have some capability to island and generate some portion of the power locally. I say "who cares" about efficiency, because the efficiency gains on the technologies involved with distributed grids and the cost reductions over time will make it "not matter much" because it will be relative pennies compared to today's infrastructure. It will be worth it to overbuild the distributed infrastructure in order to achieve better reliability. Energy is a necessity today, and will be a literal life-saver when climate change causes massive shifts in the climate where people currently live and won't want to abandon. We have to make it more reliable than it is with today's centralized system. tl;dr: I am advocating for more distributed hardware + software that will make the grid more reliable in the face of disconnections and transmission infra failure, not distributing generation completely to the end-user thus requiring them to generate their own power, only a portion of it.
    - jacquesm 4y ago
      That makes very good sense, and I would be very happy to participate in such a scheme if it were on offer.
- hot_gril 4y ago
  The efficiency matters cause of the cost and waste of panels and maintenance. I don't know exactly how expensive transmission is, but there's probably a reason wind/solar power plants are so big and centralized rather than being smaller and spread out closer to homes, which must still be far more efficient than homeowners doing the job. About reliability, the transmission network still needs to handle peak load during a cloudy week. At least A/C usage would be lower then. Speaking of software, crowd computing via widely distributed CPU-heavy jobs to home PCs is fading away. It's just so much more efficient to do that stuff in a datacenter, especially if there are specialized accelerators involved.
  - ok_dad 4y ago
    On the last note, most companies in the building management software industry these days run a computer at the edge so that if there is no connectivity they can still process the control signals on-site. It was common a few years ago for us to be doing it in the cloud, but today it's starting to cost a lot more due to the massive numbers of buildings installing BMSes, and therefore these same companies are shifting to "edge computing" for as much of the site control as possible. Only analytics that cut across customers or aggregations and data storage are done in the cloud, and even then we're all trying to push as much as we can to the edge. My company is specifically rebuilding our infra to push the control loop and everything else we can to the site edge computer because doing it in the cloud is not efficient for our cost structure, and we have a $1000 industrial PC sitting there already, so why not use it? As far as distribution goes, the goal is to not need long-distance transmission infra in the future, via a mix of several types of renewables, energy storage, and even adding some emergency carbon generation in the mix if required. Today we need the transmission infra, but the goal is to reduce that by an order of magnitude which will reduce costs and maintenance by at least the same amount.
mrshadowgoose 4y ago
Yep. Centralized solutions can be implemented in a more efficient manner, and don't rely on convincing millions of apathetic individuals to both care and directly spend their money.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- jacquesm 4y ago
  Power transmission infrastructure isn't exactly free and if centralized solutions are that much more efficient then how come I can generate my own power for about 7% or so of what it retails for?
  - hot_gril 4y ago
    If the home solar were so efficient, then it'd be happening without subsidies. Even with them, break-even point is pretty long. What does your 7% figure include?
    - jacquesm 4y ago
      Mine is without subsidies. And the break even may be 'pretty long' but it still has a higher ROI than any other thing I could have possibly done with my money. My 7% figure includes TCO / total expected power generated over the lifetime of the system. Note that this isn't the first system I put together but it is by far the largest.
    - the_third_wave 4y ago
      > it'd be happening without subsidies It is happening without subsidies, at least here in Sweden. I put ~14.5 kW of panels on a barn roof last year without any need for subsidies because I can calculate the payback period on my own 10 fingers. Panels are affordable, inverters are still fairly expensive but a bit of shopping around can give remarkable results. It helps that I did all the work myself and got an electrician to sign off on it - he was impressed and had no problems doing so - but even when you can not do so the payback is still clearly within the lifetime of the system. As it stands now we get to sell power at wholesale rates for the coming 5 years after which we need to renew the contract. If by that time the rules are changed we get a storage battery - I got a hybrid inverter for this purpose - and will start using excess power during the dark hours instead of selling it when it is produced. By that time I expect batteries to have come down in price and/or wholesale prices to have gone up sufficiently for this to be economically feasible, i.e. for the total power stored in them over all charge cycles to come out less expensive than power bought from the distribution network. This is not yet the case but I can wait.
sologoub 4y ago
Land use also matters - these roof right now are a waste of space and energy because there’s nothing on them doing anything useful except heating up in the summer, requiring more AC and various materials to try and keep them cooler. Using this unused space for energy generation is better than not using this space and transforming spaces that could otherwise be dedicated to nature or food production.
- oh_sigh 4y ago
  It would be far more cost effective to just beef up the insulation in your attic, rather than put very expensive sunshades on your roof.
  - jacquesm 4y ago
    You could do both.
- s1artibartfast 4y ago
  Land use doesn't matter. California has abundant deserts and empty land suitable for solar. At the end of the day, paying a homeowner for rooftop solar is just subsidizing one person instead of providing 20x more solar power to everyone.
  - hot_gril 4y ago
    Yeah, easy to forget how cheap land is here. It's only expensive in urban areas, but the panels don't have to be there.
mbgerring 4y ago
No, the most helpful thing for the environment is to deploy solar anywhere it will fit as fast as we possibly can until CO2 emissions from electricity are driven to 0. For the last decade, deployment of rooftop solar has chugged along at a steady pace while utility-scale solar projects have been bogged down by red tape and disinformation campaigns. So rooftops have been and will likely remain the fastest deployment target. The planet was already out of time for perfect solutions at the turn of this century. Now is the time for pragmatism.
jacquesm 4y ago
The most helpful thing is conservation. Net metering is next, and after that local storage.
marssaxman 4y ago
Why "instead" - why not both? We need to switch over to entirely renewable power as quickly as possible, so we should do everything that works.
- jacquesm 4y ago
  Exactly. And incentivizing private individuals to put their money on the line to accelerate the energy transition is good for everybody, especially future generations.
- hot_gril 4y ago
  Because it's not both. Some people have resigned to doing the electrical companies' job in CA at least, others don't care.
RangerScience 4y ago
I'm not so sure. Transmission losses and (AFAIK) infrastructure maintenance are also big costs. If I have rooftop solar, I probably have the most power at my peak usage, going straight into my air conditioning.
- s1artibartfast 4y ago
  Transmission losses are far lower than the cost of residential solar. National Grid transmission losses are around 5% of delivered power, while rooftop solar producers are paid 10 to 20 x the cost of commercial power production. Similarly, infrastructure and maintenance costs are fixed unless you are willing to go without power on a cloudy day or throughout the winter.
  - RangerScience 4y ago
    Wait, what? :googles around: Ahhhh - the number living in my head from EE classes back on college was much, much higher - but apparently that's overall, not transmission: https://www.enerdynamics.com/Energy-Currents_Blog/How-Much-Primary-Energy-Is-Wasted-Before-Consumers-See-Value-from-Electricity.aspx https://www.enerdynamics.com/Energy-Currents_Blog/How-Much-P... Thank you! > infra & maintenance Right, right. My first expectation is that residential power usage is less on cloudy days, since lower AC needs. But, you're right to point out what you're pointing out - the drop in rooftop solar might be much greater than the corresponding drop in AC usage. My second expectation is that residential CA solar is almost entirely in places that don't get "winter" - which I guess in this case means 1) storms covering the sky and/or panels, 2) cold enough that heating power usage is significant, and 3) sun being lower in the sky means a reduction in power (I don't know how much tho)
    - s1artibartfast 4y ago
      >My second expectation is that residential CA solar is almost entirely in places that don't get "winter" Being in a cloudless area doesnt protect you from the rotation of the earth around the sun. Day length and solar angle still change. Even with ideal weather, California gets 50% less solar radiation in winter. Add weather on top and it is pretty typcial to get 10-20% of rooftop power in the winter. This means that the grid needs to be able to import 100% of the power when needed. Building and mainating the grid is essentially a fixed cost. Using the grid doesn't cost anything. Solar makes sense given that there is a big power load in the summers when the sun is shining. What doesn't make sense is buying power for $0.40/kWh from a homeowner mid summer when you have a grid connected power plant selling it for $0.02. We paid for the grid and need it either way, so we should use it.

988747 4y ago

[dead]

ok_dad 4y ago

Less efficient but more reliable, like software. The future of the grid should be many small generators and energy storage installations spread throughout the communities they service, not many large farms with requirements for huge transmission infrastructure. Spreading generation and storage will achieve more reliability than efficiency, sure, but when you're generating off solar or wind, who cares if it's efficient?

luckylion 4y ago
> when you're generating off solar or wind, who cares if it's efficient Whoever pays for the electricity, most likely. If you don't connect neighborhoods and each block or even house is an off-grid island, your reliability will suffer because you'll need large margins everywhere. If you do connect them, you have that "transmission infrastructure". Rooftop is great because it gives you a feeling of security and being self-sustaining, but if you want impact, it's probably much more efficient to have technicians install panels en masse at large installations than do one-off jobs on all those custom homes.
- jacquesm 4y ago
  This is true, but with electric cars becoming more and more widespread local generation is having a measurable impact on daytime generation. It also offloads the grid because every KWh generated locally and consumed relatively locally doesn't need long haul transmission, as opposed to 'large installations'.
- ok_dad 4y ago
  You can reduce transmission infra considerably, probably not eliminate it though. I am not advocating for islanding, I am advocating for something like the internet's smartly distributed network for the power grid. I do work in the industry, so while I'm not completely knowledgeable I do have knowledge that makes me think this is the way for the future. You're not going to eliminate all centralized generation, of course, especially for solar! However, smaller installations of solar, wind, batteries, and etc. are useful for reducing the transmission grid requirements and increasing reliability and distribution capabilities. If you do end up with transmission lines disconnected, it's a good idea to have some capability to island and generate some portion of the power locally. I say "who cares" about efficiency, because the efficiency gains on the technologies involved with distributed grids and the cost reductions over time will make it "not matter much" because it will be relative pennies compared to today's infrastructure. It will be worth it to overbuild the distributed infrastructure in order to achieve better reliability. Energy is a necessity today, and will be a literal life-saver when climate change causes massive shifts in the climate where people currently live and won't want to abandon. We have to make it more reliable than it is with today's centralized system. tl;dr: I am advocating for more distributed hardware + software that will make the grid more reliable in the face of disconnections and transmission infra failure, not distributing generation completely to the end-user thus requiring them to generate their own power, only a portion of it.
  - jacquesm 4y ago
    That makes very good sense, and I would be very happy to participate in such a scheme if it were on offer.
hot_gril 4y ago
The efficiency matters cause of the cost and waste of panels and maintenance. I don't know exactly how expensive transmission is, but there's probably a reason wind/solar power plants are so big and centralized rather than being smaller and spread out closer to homes, which must still be far more efficient than homeowners doing the job. About reliability, the transmission network still needs to handle peak load during a cloudy week. At least A/C usage would be lower then. Speaking of software, crowd computing via widely distributed CPU-heavy jobs to home PCs is fading away. It's just so much more efficient to do that stuff in a datacenter, especially if there are specialized accelerators involved.
- ok_dad 4y ago
  On the last note, most companies in the building management software industry these days run a computer at the edge so that if there is no connectivity they can still process the control signals on-site. It was common a few years ago for us to be doing it in the cloud, but today it's starting to cost a lot more due to the massive numbers of buildings installing BMSes, and therefore these same companies are shifting to "edge computing" for as much of the site control as possible. Only analytics that cut across customers or aggregations and data storage are done in the cloud, and even then we're all trying to push as much as we can to the edge. My company is specifically rebuilding our infra to push the control loop and everything else we can to the site edge computer because doing it in the cloud is not efficient for our cost structure, and we have a $1000 industrial PC sitting there already, so why not use it? As far as distribution goes, the goal is to not need long-distance transmission infra in the future, via a mix of several types of renewables, energy storage, and even adding some emergency carbon generation in the mix if required. Today we need the transmission infra, but the goal is to reduce that by an order of magnitude which will reduce costs and maintenance by at least the same amount.

mrshadowgoose 4y ago

Yep. Centralized solutions can be implemented in a more efficient manner, and don't rely on convincing millions of apathetic individuals to both care and directly spend their money.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
jacquesm 4y ago
Power transmission infrastructure isn't exactly free and if centralized solutions are that much more efficient then how come I can generate my own power for about 7% or so of what it retails for?
- hot_gril 4y ago
  If the home solar were so efficient, then it'd be happening without subsidies. Even with them, break-even point is pretty long. What does your 7% figure include?
  - jacquesm 4y ago
    Mine is without subsidies. And the break even may be 'pretty long' but it still has a higher ROI than any other thing I could have possibly done with my money. My 7% figure includes TCO / total expected power generated over the lifetime of the system. Note that this isn't the first system I put together but it is by far the largest.
  - the_third_wave 4y ago
    > it'd be happening without subsidies It is happening without subsidies, at least here in Sweden. I put ~14.5 kW of panels on a barn roof last year without any need for subsidies because I can calculate the payback period on my own 10 fingers. Panels are affordable, inverters are still fairly expensive but a bit of shopping around can give remarkable results. It helps that I did all the work myself and got an electrician to sign off on it - he was impressed and had no problems doing so - but even when you can not do so the payback is still clearly within the lifetime of the system. As it stands now we get to sell power at wholesale rates for the coming 5 years after which we need to renew the contract. If by that time the rules are changed we get a storage battery - I got a hybrid inverter for this purpose - and will start using excess power during the dark hours instead of selling it when it is produced. By that time I expect batteries to have come down in price and/or wholesale prices to have gone up sufficiently for this to be economically feasible, i.e. for the total power stored in them over all charge cycles to come out less expensive than power bought from the distribution network. This is not yet the case but I can wait.

sologoub 4y ago

Land use also matters - these roof right now are a waste of space and energy because there’s nothing on them doing anything useful except heating up in the summer, requiring more AC and various materials to try and keep them cooler. Using this unused space for energy generation is better than not using this space and transforming spaces that could otherwise be dedicated to nature or food production.

oh_sigh 4y ago
It would be far more cost effective to just beef up the insulation in your attic, rather than put very expensive sunshades on your roof.
- jacquesm 4y ago
  You could do both.
s1artibartfast 4y ago
Land use doesn't matter. California has abundant deserts and empty land suitable for solar. At the end of the day, paying a homeowner for rooftop solar is just subsidizing one person instead of providing 20x more solar power to everyone.
- hot_gril 4y ago
  Yeah, easy to forget how cheap land is here. It's only expensive in urban areas, but the panels don't have to be there.

mbgerring 4y ago

No, the most helpful thing for the environment is to deploy solar anywhere it will fit as fast as we possibly can until CO2 emissions from electricity are driven to 0. For the last decade, deployment of rooftop solar has chugged along at a steady pace while utility-scale solar projects have been bogged down by red tape and disinformation campaigns. So rooftops have been and will likely remain the fastest deployment target. The planet was already out of time for perfect solutions at the turn of this century. Now is the time for pragmatism.

jacquesm 4y ago

The most helpful thing is conservation. Net metering is next, and after that local storage.

marssaxman 4y ago

Why "instead" - why not both? We need to switch over to entirely renewable power as quickly as possible, so we should do everything that works.

jacquesm 4y ago
Exactly. And incentivizing private individuals to put their money on the line to accelerate the energy transition is good for everybody, especially future generations.
hot_gril 4y ago
Because it's not both. Some people have resigned to doing the electrical companies' job in CA at least, others don't care.

RangerScience 4y ago

I'm not so sure. Transmission losses and (AFAIK) infrastructure maintenance are also big costs. If I have rooftop solar, I probably have the most power at my peak usage, going straight into my air conditioning.

s1artibartfast 4y ago
Transmission losses are far lower than the cost of residential solar. National Grid transmission losses are around 5% of delivered power, while rooftop solar producers are paid 10 to 20 x the cost of commercial power production. Similarly, infrastructure and maintenance costs are fixed unless you are willing to go without power on a cloudy day or throughout the winter.
- RangerScience 4y ago
  Wait, what? :googles around: Ahhhh - the number living in my head from EE classes back on college was much, much higher - but apparently that's overall, not transmission: https://www.enerdynamics.com/Energy-Currents_Blog/How-Much-Primary-Energy-Is-Wasted-Before-Consumers-See-Value-from-Electricity.aspx https://www.enerdynamics.com/Energy-Currents_Blog/How-Much-P... Thank you! > infra & maintenance Right, right. My first expectation is that residential power usage is less on cloudy days, since lower AC needs. But, you're right to point out what you're pointing out - the drop in rooftop solar might be much greater than the corresponding drop in AC usage. My second expectation is that residential CA solar is almost entirely in places that don't get "winter" - which I guess in this case means 1) storms covering the sky and/or panels, 2) cold enough that heating power usage is significant, and 3) sun being lower in the sky means a reduction in power (I don't know how much tho)
  - s1artibartfast 4y ago
    >My second expectation is that residential CA solar is almost entirely in places that don't get "winter" Being in a cloudless area doesnt protect you from the rotation of the earth around the sun. Day length and solar angle still change. Even with ideal weather, California gets 50% less solar radiation in winter. Add weather on top and it is pretty typcial to get 10-20% of rooftop power in the winter. This means that the grid needs to be able to import 100% of the power when needed. Building and mainating the grid is essentially a fixed cost. Using the grid doesn't cost anything. Solar makes sense given that there is a big power load in the summers when the sun is shining. What doesn't make sense is buying power for $0.40/kWh from a homeowner mid summer when you have a grid connected power plant selling it for $0.02. We paid for the grid and need it either way, so we should use it.