3 ms·

>Isn’t this a pretty much solved problem though? Just add a battery to your house? In winter the days are short, the sky can be covered in clouds for an entire

>Isn’t this a pretty much solved problem though? Just add a battery to your house? In winter the days are short, the sky can be covered in clouds for an entire week, the solar panels can be covered in snow also. I have solar panels but I do not have a way to export my data to show you the summer vs winter GIANT difference. So people like me with solar need the other people in the area not to all go for solar, then we will need to find a way to burn the excess. Is the same with a country, we can't store the energy from summer for winter and also resist for say 2 weeks of snow and clouds. The EU market might be so in demand that the rich countries will bid for the energy and the poor will have to burn their things to survive. I am wondering if it would happen that with so many solar roofs we will either have to pay for people to use my energy or I will need to actually throw the excess in the ground safely somehow.

ben_w 2y ago
> In winter the days are short, the sky can be covered in clouds for an entire week, the solar panels can be covered in snow also. I have solar panels but I do not have a way to export my data to show you the summer vs winter GIANT difference. Short days, but still enough to make a lot of juice in Italy. Scotland and Scandinavia get issues, but Italy's basically OK for winter: https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=%28sunrise%2C+Rome%2C+21+Dec+2024%29%2C+%28sunset%2C+Rome%2C+21+Dec+2024%29 https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=%28sunrise%2C+Rome%2C+2... And: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S096014812100029X https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09601... > we can't store the energy from summer for winter and also resist for say 2 weeks of snow and clouds You, personally, can't store 2 weeks of energy (though it's closer than you may expect, 1 person-week of Italian average electrical consumption is ~= 1 EV battery*). But you personally don't have to, transmission to another part of the country (or continent) has a huge impact on how much storage you need. Basically, this problem is known, it's not all that difficult to work around — everything on the scale of "national power supply" is expensive and has pros and cons, PV isn't particularly remarkable in the scale or cost of those pros and cons even with current solutions and assuming no R&D effort can improve the trade-offs, they're just different than the pros and cons of the other options. * https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=%28%28%28300+terawatt-hours+%2F+1+year%29+%2F+population+Italy%29+*+1+week+*+1+person%29+in+kWh https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=%28%28%28300+terawatt-h...
- simion314 2y ago
  The real life is not as simple as you wish The energy I produce can only go to my neighbors, it can't be sent to a different region in the same village it is a grid limitation. Also when the weather is bad it is bad in a big chunk of Europe, sure in the South they will probably have nicer weather. What about the issue when everyone has solar? then who buys my extra production? Or if there is someone that can buy it because of too much solar the prices would be close to zero then the solar panels investment will not be worth it since you could be cheap energy from the people with solar panels when the weather is good. My gut feeling is that 100% solar is stupid, it is like the 20-80 problem we see now a lot of growth since it is very profitable, when more grid investment is needed and profits will go down this growth will stop.
  - ben_w 2y ago
    > The real life is not as simple as you wish The energy I produce can only go to my neighbors, it can't be sent to a different region in the same village it is a grid limitation. I would need to write something the size of a PhD thesis, not a comment, to fully describe the various possibilities and their trade-offs for even just the Italian grid, let alone the whole of Europe's. But to keep it simple, I can say that limits of your grid can be re-engineered, and even for unrelated age and capacity reasons people are already planning to spend more on upgrading the European grid anyway, than it would cost for the material to build a global high-power DC backbone that would let the EU be lit in the middle of night, in the middle of winter, without any batteries at all, by panels in the Australian outback — and I have in fact done the maths on that. (Only China is actually making enough aluminium, there's geopolitics even before Trump happened, but the price tag to get a single ohm of resistance around the entire planet is actually fine). > Or if there is someone that can buy it because of too much solar the prices would be close to zero then the solar panels investment will not be worth it since you could be cheap energy from the people with solar panels when the weather is good. Such investment is still generally worth it, because you don't need to actually sell anything when the price is low (or even negative), and even if it was zero the whole time forever, you've saved 100% of the current cost of supplying yourself with electricity. > My gut feeling is that 100% solar is stupid, it is like the 20-80 problem we see now a lot of growth since it is very profitable, when more grid investment is needed and profits will go down this growth will stop. 100% anything leads to correlated failures. But there's several other renewables.
account42 2y ago
> I am wondering if it would happen that with so many solar roofs we will either have to pay for people to use my energy This is already the case - Germany ends up paying for both electricity exports and imports.

ben_w 2y ago

> In winter the days are short, the sky can be covered in clouds for an entire week, the solar panels can be covered in snow also. I have solar panels but I do not have a way to export my data to show you the summer vs winter GIANT difference. Short days, but still enough to make a lot of juice in Italy. Scotland and Scandinavia get issues, but Italy's basically OK for winter: https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=%28sunrise%2C+Rome%2C+21+Dec+2024%29%2C+%28sunset%2C+Rome%2C+21+Dec+2024%29 https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=%28sunrise%2C+Rome%2C+2... And: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S096014812100029X https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09601... > we can't store the energy from summer for winter and also resist for say 2 weeks of snow and clouds You, personally, can't store 2 weeks of energy (though it's closer than you may expect, 1 person-week of Italian average electrical consumption is ~= 1 EV battery*). But you personally don't have to, transmission to another part of the country (or continent) has a huge impact on how much storage you need. Basically, this problem is known, it's not all that difficult to work around — everything on the scale of "national power supply" is expensive and has pros and cons, PV isn't particularly remarkable in the scale or cost of those pros and cons even with current solutions and assuming no R&D effort can improve the trade-offs, they're just different than the pros and cons of the other options. * https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=%28%28%28300+terawatt-hours+%2F+1+year%29+%2F+population+Italy%29+*+1+week+*+1+person%29+in+kWh https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=%28%28%28300+terawatt-h...

simion314 2y ago
The real life is not as simple as you wish The energy I produce can only go to my neighbors, it can't be sent to a different region in the same village it is a grid limitation. Also when the weather is bad it is bad in a big chunk of Europe, sure in the South they will probably have nicer weather. What about the issue when everyone has solar? then who buys my extra production? Or if there is someone that can buy it because of too much solar the prices would be close to zero then the solar panels investment will not be worth it since you could be cheap energy from the people with solar panels when the weather is good. My gut feeling is that 100% solar is stupid, it is like the 20-80 problem we see now a lot of growth since it is very profitable, when more grid investment is needed and profits will go down this growth will stop.
- ben_w 2y ago
  > The real life is not as simple as you wish The energy I produce can only go to my neighbors, it can't be sent to a different region in the same village it is a grid limitation. I would need to write something the size of a PhD thesis, not a comment, to fully describe the various possibilities and their trade-offs for even just the Italian grid, let alone the whole of Europe's. But to keep it simple, I can say that limits of your grid can be re-engineered, and even for unrelated age and capacity reasons people are already planning to spend more on upgrading the European grid anyway, than it would cost for the material to build a global high-power DC backbone that would let the EU be lit in the middle of night, in the middle of winter, without any batteries at all, by panels in the Australian outback — and I have in fact done the maths on that. (Only China is actually making enough aluminium, there's geopolitics even before Trump happened, but the price tag to get a single ohm of resistance around the entire planet is actually fine). > Or if there is someone that can buy it because of too much solar the prices would be close to zero then the solar panels investment will not be worth it since you could be cheap energy from the people with solar panels when the weather is good. Such investment is still generally worth it, because you don't need to actually sell anything when the price is low (or even negative), and even if it was zero the whole time forever, you've saved 100% of the current cost of supplying yourself with electricity. > My gut feeling is that 100% solar is stupid, it is like the 20-80 problem we see now a lot of growth since it is very profitable, when more grid investment is needed and profits will go down this growth will stop. 100% anything leads to correlated failures. But there's several other renewables.

account42 2y ago

> I am wondering if it would happen that with so many solar roofs we will either have to pay for people to use my energy This is already the case - Germany ends up paying for both electricity exports and imports.