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In Germany on a south-facing balcony, producing your own electricity from solar panels is cheaper than the transmission costs of the power company. Meaning that

In Germany on a south-facing balcony, producing your own electricity from solar panels is cheaper than the transmission costs of the power company. Meaning that even if the power company somehow had a too-cheap-to-meter fusion power plant, getting that electricity to you is more expensive than you making your own solar power. Part of this is that transmission costs are higher in Germany than e.g. in the US, partially because Germany has a much more robust system with far fewer outages. How to structure these costs will likely become a bigger topic as more people produce their own electricity but still expect the grid to be there when they need it.

babypuncher 2y ago
This is sort of my problem with pushing at-home solar as a primary means to de-carbonize our electricity production. We still need grid access, but with more people not getting their electricity from the grid, the cost to maintain it gets shifted to those who still use it as their primary source of energy. And, well, it's not the poor who are installing kilowatts worth of solar capacity and battery storage on their property.
- anotherhue 2y ago
  I expect that could be mostly solved by changing the billing metric, pay for the ampacity of the hookup not the energy.
- pkulak 2y ago
  We _need_ grid access, for now. Batteries are getting so crazy cheap. LFP is hitting the market en masse, and right behind that is sodium ion to halve the price again. And, at least where I am, grid _access_ isn't really the biggest cost, capacity is. My power company would love it if I hooked some batteries up to solar and used that during peak hours so they don't have to upgrade every transmission line between me and a bunch of coal in Idaho. In fact, I know this because they pay me to do *exactly that with time-of-use metering. * I don't actually have any solar, but I do have an electric water heater and an electric car, which are both huge batteries, and easy to time shift the charging of.
  - hedora 2y ago
    If you get two EVs equivalent to average size American cars, that’s over 200 kwh of storage. That’s equivalent to roughly 15 tesla powerwalls, and newer models can charge your (tiny) house battery as needed during power outages. Having said that, community net metering makes way more sense in urban areas than per-building solar. The idea is that, by law, you can buy a small fraction of a neighborhood wide solar or wind farm (e.g. on a commercial parking lot, or a few blocks away, etc), and the power company offsets your power consumption bill with the electricity your fraction of the solar installation produced.
  - bmicraft 2y ago
    sodium ion tech is largely on hold because LFP got cheaper than expected and made it largely non-viable at current pieces. The expensive thing about batteries aren't the raw materials but manufacturing the cells, and those costs increase massively when you're trying to match kWh produced with a lower energy chemistry.
- Moto7451 2y ago
  This is only the case in a few markets that still do 1:1 net metering. I still get charged a grid connection fee (which you’re charged even if you use zero electricity) and when I sell power back to the grid I only am credited the production value and not the full kWh rate. As a result anything I net back I still pay the cost of the transmission infrastructure.
ttt3ts 2y ago
Fewer outages vs US source? I work in the power industry in the US and I am sure this is regionally true but highly doubt it as a blanket statement.
- wklauss 2y ago
  U.S. electricity customers averaged five and one-half hours of power interruptions in 2022 Source: https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=61303 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=61303 In 2023, German households experienced an average of 13.7 minutes of power outages. Source: https://www.heise.de/en/news/Power-supply-13-7-minutes-of-power-outage-per-household-in-2023-9981390.html https://www.heise.de/en/news/Power-supply-13-7-minutes-of-po... Not sure if the metrics are 100% comparable (they seem to be?) but points to a huge difference in reliability.
  - dylan604 2y ago
    How many hurricanes did Germany have in 2023? How many tornadoes did Germany have in 2023? Let's not think that weather has nothing to do with any of this. That would just be beyond insulting
    - stefan_ 2y ago
      Underground powerlines are the norm in Germany, hurricanes, tornadoes or not and their grid would still perform vastly better.
      - Moto7451 2y ago
        Atlanta, GA has underground power transmission through much of the city (and specifically my neighborhood within the city) and we can still lose power in storms. What isn’t underground currently is being moved there in much of the city. However, the transmission equipment is still outside and still has physical limits. There’s only so much water, so much wind, and so much lightning electrical systems can take without someone going dark. Underground trunks can also flood and short so they’re not a full panacea in areas that have heavy storms. We’ve had a mild storm season the past two years and we’ve maybe been down seconds in total in my area. While the average I’m sure is correct, the distribution is going to depend a lot on what is going on with nature. When I lived in California I lived in an LADWP area so I didn’t experience rolling blackouts. As a kid I had friends that would come over because they lived in an Edison area and play time in air conditioning at my house was much more enjoyable in August. If you were to find the average downtime during that period of time I expect it would saddle everyone with 10-15 minutes of outages even though my area never went down and my friends lost power for a few hours each week during heat waves.
interludead 2y ago
If too many people go off-grid just enough to avoid paying their fair share, the costs get pushed onto those who can't generate their own power. Balancing that will be tricky.

babypuncher 2y ago

This is sort of my problem with pushing at-home solar as a primary means to de-carbonize our electricity production. We still need grid access, but with more people not getting their electricity from the grid, the cost to maintain it gets shifted to those who still use it as their primary source of energy. And, well, it's not the poor who are installing kilowatts worth of solar capacity and battery storage on their property.

anotherhue 2y ago
I expect that could be mostly solved by changing the billing metric, pay for the ampacity of the hookup not the energy.
pkulak 2y ago
We _need_ grid access, for now. Batteries are getting so crazy cheap. LFP is hitting the market en masse, and right behind that is sodium ion to halve the price again. And, at least where I am, grid _access_ isn't really the biggest cost, capacity is. My power company would love it if I hooked some batteries up to solar and used that during peak hours so they don't have to upgrade every transmission line between me and a bunch of coal in Idaho. In fact, I know this because they pay me to do *exactly that with time-of-use metering. * I don't actually have any solar, but I do have an electric water heater and an electric car, which are both huge batteries, and easy to time shift the charging of.
- hedora 2y ago
  If you get two EVs equivalent to average size American cars, that’s over 200 kwh of storage. That’s equivalent to roughly 15 tesla powerwalls, and newer models can charge your (tiny) house battery as needed during power outages. Having said that, community net metering makes way more sense in urban areas than per-building solar. The idea is that, by law, you can buy a small fraction of a neighborhood wide solar or wind farm (e.g. on a commercial parking lot, or a few blocks away, etc), and the power company offsets your power consumption bill with the electricity your fraction of the solar installation produced.
- bmicraft 2y ago
  sodium ion tech is largely on hold because LFP got cheaper than expected and made it largely non-viable at current pieces. The expensive thing about batteries aren't the raw materials but manufacturing the cells, and those costs increase massively when you're trying to match kWh produced with a lower energy chemistry.
Moto7451 2y ago
This is only the case in a few markets that still do 1:1 net metering. I still get charged a grid connection fee (which you’re charged even if you use zero electricity) and when I sell power back to the grid I only am credited the production value and not the full kWh rate. As a result anything I net back I still pay the cost of the transmission infrastructure.

ttt3ts 2y ago

Fewer outages vs US source? I work in the power industry in the US and I am sure this is regionally true but highly doubt it as a blanket statement.

wklauss 2y ago
U.S. electricity customers averaged five and one-half hours of power interruptions in 2022 Source: https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=61303 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=61303 In 2023, German households experienced an average of 13.7 minutes of power outages. Source: https://www.heise.de/en/news/Power-supply-13-7-minutes-of-power-outage-per-household-in-2023-9981390.html https://www.heise.de/en/news/Power-supply-13-7-minutes-of-po... Not sure if the metrics are 100% comparable (they seem to be?) but points to a huge difference in reliability.
- dylan604 2y ago
  How many hurricanes did Germany have in 2023? How many tornadoes did Germany have in 2023? Let's not think that weather has nothing to do with any of this. That would just be beyond insulting
  - stefan_ 2y ago
    Underground powerlines are the norm in Germany, hurricanes, tornadoes or not and their grid would still perform vastly better.
    - Moto7451 2y ago
      Atlanta, GA has underground power transmission through much of the city (and specifically my neighborhood within the city) and we can still lose power in storms. What isn’t underground currently is being moved there in much of the city. However, the transmission equipment is still outside and still has physical limits. There’s only so much water, so much wind, and so much lightning electrical systems can take without someone going dark. Underground trunks can also flood and short so they’re not a full panacea in areas that have heavy storms. We’ve had a mild storm season the past two years and we’ve maybe been down seconds in total in my area. While the average I’m sure is correct, the distribution is going to depend a lot on what is going on with nature. When I lived in California I lived in an LADWP area so I didn’t experience rolling blackouts. As a kid I had friends that would come over because they lived in an Edison area and play time in air conditioning at my house was much more enjoyable in August. If you were to find the average downtime during that period of time I expect it would saddle everyone with 10-15 minutes of outages even though my area never went down and my friends lost power for a few hours each week during heat waves.

interludead 2y ago

If too many people go off-grid just enough to avoid paying their fair share, the costs get pushed onto those who can't generate their own power. Balancing that will be tricky.