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Puerto Rico's Solar Microgrids Beat Blackout

382 points by ohjeez 1y ago

amoshebb 1y ago
I love solar, but this "those who can afford microgrids can shield themselves from blackouts" paired with net metering where "the wealthy get paid a premium for excess generation and can buy expensive high-demand power back at a discount" probably aren't steps on the path to improved grid resiliency for any definition other than this weird "no island-wide outages" definition.
- rstupek 1y ago
  The alternative way to look at it is that early adopters get the volume up such that the price comes down to where more people can afford it?
  - ta988 1y ago
    This doesn't solve the issue of either storage or continous (and controllable) supply.
  - Dylan16807 1y ago
    Solar panels are already so cheap that household solar is mostly about the installation price. And more people affording their own panels is still a lot more expensive than fixing the grid.
    - closewith 1y ago
      But batteries aren't, and batteries are both the key technology for load shifting and the biggest expense in modern installations.
      - bryanlarsen 1y ago
        5kWh of batteries is under $1000. That's enough for load shifting for most people. Even if you need several of them, that's still going to be cheaper than installation labor.
        eldaisfish 1y ago
        where are you buying 5 kWH of batteries for under $ 1,000? The typical 5 kWh battery in Canada is C$ 3,000 - 4,000.
        the_pwner224 1y ago
        https://signaturesolar.com/all-products/batteries/?_bc_fsnf=1&brand=66 https://signaturesolar.com/all-products/batteries/?_bc_fsnf=... Server rack style, 1200 USD for 4.8 kWh = $250/kWh. Wall-mount, 14.3 kWh for $3.3k = $231/kWh. These guys seem to be the biggest DIY solar equipment supplier in the US. Afaik you can get batteries from China (AliExpress) for quite a bit cheaper too.
        djrj477dhsnv 1y ago
        Yep I bought several Huawei 4.8 kWh batteries for about $450 each for an off-grid house in SE Asia. They've been working great a year later, running AC throughout the night.
        djrj477dhsnv 1y ago
        That really depends on where you live. I set up the batteries and inverter myself, but paid a local installer and his 2 helpers a grand total of $45 to install and ground 10 x 600w panels on my dangerously high metal roof.
  - numpad0 1y ago
    Solar output is also proportionate to area of sunlight projection. This means the theoretical capacity available to you is proportionate to real estate, area of planetary surface, under your ownership.
    - lukan 1y ago
      And the area you own is theoretical proportionate to your avaibale money. So yes, rich people can obviously have more of it all, like with everything else that money can buy. But is this really a point worth going in deeper here? I see the point as in "solar power plus battery is good", creates resillence, please more of it. Unfair distribution of wealth is a different problem. And here concreteley the article lacks for me details, what exactly the work on the grid means, if it is really about fossils vs solar, but microgrids that can connect to each other sounds like a pragmatic solution to me.
      - bluefirebrand 1y ago
        > Unfair distribution of wealth is a different problem Unfortunately, all problems are eventually going to come down to this. Or many problems are, if not "all" We can't fix a lot of the problems facing our society and our planet with "only wealthy can afford this" solutions
        lukan 1y ago
        "We can't fix a lot of the problems facing our society and our planet with "only wealthy can afford this" solutions" And I think, we can't fix a lot of technical problems if we make everything about money distribution. Besides, solar plus battery became really cheap. And get cheaper every day. And this work to connect such microgrids is potentially beneficial for poor areas all around the world. But no, it doesn't solve the issue of extreme poverty, but why would it?
      - Dylan16807 1y ago
        Microgrids at that size are the most expensive way to get resilience. If they're pragmatic for many people then something has failed and we should work to fix it. Bigger ones have a better tradeoffs, so I'm not so harsh on towns having their own grids. Still unsure whether it's a good use of funds.
- layoric 1y ago
  Agreed. From first hand experience, even for regulated electricity markets, games get played to maximize profit per power generated that are directly making stability worse. Fixing these loop holes is hard for the regulator since they are instructed to encourage both increased renewable penetration and stability, despite traders/operators/producers not acting in good faith and just gaming whatever they can.
  - colechristensen 1y ago
    A healthy regulated will encourage maximizing profit for power and bring in competition which drives the cost down until energy is a commodity and the cost of electricity is actually based on the price of production and a small profit based on the cost of capital. Any situations that cause price spikes result in investment to harvest the difference. The fact that you can add to the grid by installing solar and battery and connect to the grid in a single afternoon makes it pretty easy these days to have an elastic market that grows until you hit the limit of decentralized production vs. existing transmission architecture... but with the right equipment you can have community sized islands that can be much more immune to instability.
    - layoric 1y ago
      > A healthy regulated will encourage maximizing profit for power and bring in competition which drives the cost down until energy is a commodity and the cost of electricity is actually based on the price of production and a small profit based on the cost of capital. That is not how the electricity market works, in Australia anyway, and somewhat fundamentally everywhere. The network needs to maintain a frequency and voltage for it to be reliable. These change as load and production change. So consumers don't get a choice of which electrons power their house, only who they pay. They pay a 'retailer' who usually has nothing to do with production for a known cost per kwh + fees ahead of time. The market then operates where agreements between parties including retailers and produces (traders and others as well) has a 'market rate' that essentially arbitrage between longer term fixed rates and market rates. The fact that the stability is tied to frequency and voltage (and infrastructure) means there is a limit to the rate of production and consumption, not to mention electricity is a necessity in the modern age. In Australia at least we are finding out the hard way about what happens when you privatize a necessity. People will pay whatever it costs, and since the market needs a high level of regulation just to function, a market IMO is just a bad fit for trying to bring costs down rather than just rent seeking. > The fact that you can add to the grid by installing solar and battery and connect to the grid in a single afternoon That has become harder in recent time due to areas being over saturated by solar. Cities in Australia can deny you connecting to the grid if there is too much, as well as we have high network voltage detection on inverters which now kick in on many sunny days due to again, too much solar. Electricity network operators pay a large amount of money to services to predict/model how much of the power in their network is coming from solar and where because they commonly don't know, so it becomes a difficult balance of how much solar you are allowed to connect. > but with the right equipment you can have community sized islands that can be much more immune to instability. Agreed, but due to the required _shared_ infrastructure for this to work will need public land to connect these islands or even within an 'island', as well as the now private vested interests in rent seeking, this will be a fringe solution only available to those with larger amounts of land like communes or other rural setups. Again, speaking to Australia.
- mcbishop 1y ago
  Net metering is gone in most of California (for new solar). I think it's going away in general. Distributed solar supports a more stable grid for everyone (per UL 1741-SB requirements).
  - amoshebb 1y ago
    the article is about Puerto Rico, not California, and specifically mentions net metering.
    - matthewdgreen 1y ago
      I think the poster’s point is that net metering is a tool to promote early adoption of solar, and (in at least one prominent example) when solar penetration becomes high enough for it to impact grid stability, larger grids have removed net metering. So to address GP poster’s point: net metering affecting grid stability in a substantial way is more a theoretical concern that’s already been addressed in one of the locations where it stopped being theoretical.
- toast0 1y ago
  It depends on the terms of the net metering. If it's the ancient practice of crediting on a one for one basis, yeah that doesn't help. (A look around says that's probably where PR is now). If they credit power delivered to the grid based on conditions when it was delivered, then that might help. With appropriate controls, storage can increase grid stability. It would probably be more cost effective to do utility scale storage projects, but project management is difficult in PR; letting those with personal capital hook up solar+batteries and send some of that onto the grid when demand is high seems useful?
- floatrock 1y ago
  What's the alternative? Equity is important, sure, but to swing all the way towards "only a centralized grid should be allowed in order to make sure all have the same level access" is a head-in-the-sands approach that ignores realities such as how the centralized grid out there has metastasized into a non-functional bureaucratic blame-shifting machine (at least measured by the increasing frequency of outages). A centralized grid also never actually delivers true equitable access. One alternative is decentralization, and the article talks about that: > The town’s local environmental nonprofit Casa Pueblo teamed up with researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tenn., to develop a way to connect multiple microgrids to exchange power with one another, all without having to be hooked up to Puerto Rico’s grid. The strategy, called grid orchestration, ensures that if power is knocked out on one of the installations, the others aren’t compromised. Is it the wealthy that are doing that? Maybe? Probably? But isn't that how any R&D technology investment starts? It's also involving a government-funded lab to re-envision how these systems could work to achieve resiliency through coordinated decentralization. And if there's any truth to trickle-down economics, it would have to be in something that allows for a decentralized approach accessible to many, not a centralized approach that only rewards r > g accumulation. Sounds like a good use of government research funding to me.
- deleted 1y ago
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dotancohen 1y ago
From what I understand, most homes that are connected to both solar and the grid require the grid to be active to produce solar. This is for two reasons. One, not to endanger lineman working on the grid. And two, the solar AC cycle must be synchronized with the grid AC cycle. Are these homes not also connected to the grid? Or is there some technology that addresses these two issues that are in use in Puerto Rico?
- slipheen 1y ago
  If you use a string inverter not a emphase style microinverter, most of them are capable of running without the grid- Particularly if you add any sort of battery system. These use a form of transfer switch like you’d use when you connect a generator- they disconnect the upstream.
  - mcbishop 1y ago
    You can run sans grid with Enphase (with their "system controller").
- zie 1y ago
  This is true, but if you add in local batteries attached to the solar, you can have a device that works in basically all situations. If disconnected from the grid, it can run off battery instead of just not working. I haven't read the OP link yet, but my guess is they are doing something like this: Grid, Solar and batteries.
  - lukan 1y ago
    "Grid, Solar and batteries." They are doing microgrids, that connect to each other.
    - zie 1y ago
      Aka a grid. Sure, this is a newer version of the grid, that allows local failover, but it's just a grid. Maybe we can upgrade the other grids to do this too. That would be fabulous.
Simon_O_Rourke 1y ago
Is this more of a battery cost issue - if you owned a battery that charged off the grid and discharged during blackout periods then that might just about cover you if you budget for the expected outage duration.... And assuming you can afford said battery in the first place.
- ema 1y ago
  Depends on the length of the blackouts, if it's more than a day then solar panels will allow you to lower the amount of batteries you get.
- pyrale 1y ago
  > if you owned a battery that charged off the grid and discharged during blackout periods This wouldn't work. The reason isolated units can inject electricity back into the grid without issue is that they can observe frequency. If a blackout occurs, this information is gone. You need to perform a black start, which can't be done by isolated, uncoordinated equipments.
  - magicalhippo 1y ago
    Pretty sure GP was talking about a UPS, not feeding the grid.
  - 1dom 1y ago
    I don't think that applies for microgrids, or at least, it's not really an issue in my case. I know what you're talking about though: I think that more applies to generators that are operating with megawatts and take time for turbines to spin up and stuff. Microgrids are normally instantaneous battery buffered type things. They can instantly deliver power at the frequency range mandated for the national grid.
  - philjohn 1y ago
    What you actually need is islanding equipment which discharges the battery for local use only, but cuts off (or islands you from) your main incoming power connection. Many of the PV systems you can buy from the big players (SolarEdge, Tesla and more) support this, often calling it "whole home backup". Same principle as having a generator with an interlock.
chilldsgn 1y ago
I don't know much about electrical grids, but I'm wondering if something like this concept could help South Africa with its endlessly struggling electrical grid problems. My city constantly has power outages and the majority of people cannot afford installing solar into their homes.
- happymellon 1y ago
  From what I understand, South Africa's electrical problems have been long term political.
  - cinntaile 1y ago
    That's the case everywhere in the world, it's not a tech issue. The tech exists.
    - nbadg 1y ago
      The technology certainly exists, though some of it is pretty new and not all of it is mature or commoditized (particularly in the context of high levels of penetration of variable renewables on the grid). That being said, politics aren't the only reason why it might not be deployed. Capitalization issues, for one, are also common. Additionally, you have to make a judgement call about what you consider included in "politics" -- for example, does corruption count?
    - happymellon 1y ago
      Not always, sometimes its logistics, sometimes outside forces which create time pressures. Not everything can be solved by money, sometimes its a mythical man month/9 women can't produce a baby in 1 month issue. However in this scenario, its pure neglect which is causing power issues.
      - AdamN 1y ago
        In this case though, high reliability electricity delivery is very doable. Many countries achieve 3 9s or higher. Sure there are the issues like the recent Spain/Portugal blackout but even that has some political roots.
danans 1y ago
Based on what I see in the photo in the article, PV array codes in Puerto Rico must be quite different from those in California, because the arrays seem to cover almost the entirety of the roofs. In California fire access codes [1] prevent the entire roof from being covered like in PV that. 1. https://energycodeace.com/site/custom/public/reference-ace-2013/index.html#!Documents/76californiafirecodesolaraccessrequirements.htm https://energycodeace.com/site/custom/public/reference-ace-2...
- blitzar 1y ago
  Likely because they have building codes that prevent the construction of houses from matchsticks.
  - potato3732842 1y ago
    It has nothing to do with construction and everything to do with rainfall. I can throw a lit road flare into my back yard and nothing will happen, because I don't live in a glorified desert. PR is an order of magnitude wetter than where I live.
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
    - neilknowsbest 1y ago
      PR has a dry season when the island receives less rain, and there are dry regions that generally get less rain. In fact, there are sometimes forest fires [1]. Regarding construction, I've never seen a smoke alarm inside a residential building in PR. I would hazard a guess that this is allowed for concrete/cinderblock; presumably the roof thing is the same. [1] - https://www.elnuevodia.com/noticias/seguridad/notas/incendio-forestal-comienza-a-quemar-terrenos-de-la-reserva-del-bosque-estatal-de-maricao/ https://www.elnuevodia.com/noticias/seguridad/notas/incendio...
- heliodor 1y ago
  The vast majority of roofs in Puerto Rico are flat and the vast majority of buildings are made of cinder blocks and concrete.
pythonbase 1y ago
Solar power is working wonders for rural and urban Pakistan. In fact, we became the largest importer of solar panels.
- jahnu 1y ago
  I learned about it on this episode of Volts Fascinating consequences https://www.volts.wtf/p/pakistans-solar-boom https://www.volts.wtf/p/pakistans-solar-boom
- subscribed 1y ago
  This is actually fantastic news. I wonder if you're also utilising their secondary purpose (shading and improving microclimat https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S004896972105021X https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00489...)
- hinkley 1y ago
  India has had good luck building solar panels over irrigation canals. The shade substantially reduces the evaporation losses in the canal system. The framing is a bit tricky of course.
  - 0cf8612b2e1e 1y ago
    California announced they were going to do the same.
    - hinkley 1y ago
      Yeah the channelized sections of the Colorado would be a good candidate as well, though I personally believe the bigger solution is reintroducing beavers into the upper water shed, to increase total average flow.
      - sand500 1y ago
        How do beavers increase total water flow? I can see them causing more water to be held upstream.
m4r1k 1y ago
Meanwhile, in third-world, overly bureaucratic Italy, one has to wait several months to get all the paperwork in order to take advantage of a solar installation. Self-deployed solutions are also limited to 800 watts, which is peanuts in today's world.
- pkirk 1y ago
  That is the case only if you want to give your surplus back to the grid. If you avoid that, you are only limited to a maximum power of 20kW of solar panels installed.
  - ferguess_k 1y ago
    20kW seems to be ample for home usage. Half should be good enough.
    - tills13 1y ago
      I recently got a 10kWh system installed and it should cover about half my usage. I live in meh-irradiance Canada. Full coverage of my bill in summer, pathetic generation in the summer. So yeah, sunnier places like Italy 10kWh would be perfect -- especially for places with heat pumps and warm winters.
- wuming2 1y ago
  You have clearly never spent anything but holiday time in a underdeveloped county. If ever. You won’t draw similarities otherwise. Completely different standing points.
- elzbardico 1y ago
  Italy is third world country now?
elitegolfhub 1y ago
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pyrale 1y ago
This article looks like it completely embraces the pov of solar providers, and describes maintenance of the grid as serving the interests of the fossil electricity industry. ...And not far from the end: > The next milestone, Massol-Deyá says, will be successfully connecting microgrids that are not in close geographic proximity. Yeah... great journalism here IEEE.
KaiserPro 1y ago
So the bit thats not clear here is are they defining rules for what happens when there are interconnection failures? or is it that to connect to the grid you need to have your own storage as well as PV? it sounded like they joined three "islands" together.
metalman 1y ago
technological advances for off/tied grid solar are now maturing into high quality solutions for all scenarios, costs are in free fall. I was an ultra early adopter of solar pv in 1991 in Takilma, Oregon living in a school bus,and continue to live off grid in Nova Scotia. As to Peurto Rico, my first question was answered by a quick look at a topograpgical map, and Peurto Rico looks a lot like Nova Scotia....lots and lots of hills and little valleys and rivers, which means that for them topography has a big part to play, also looking at pictures of the instalations there, basic roofing is clearly a price consideration before other things, so developing solar that assembles into a physical roofing product, that entirely replaces other roofing, would be important for anyone who is carefullt crunching numbers on a new build in a choice location, add in charging for cars and scooters which can double as extra house power when needed and the inevitability of the comming switch becomes obvious.
amai 1y ago
They should buy a nuclear power plant instead. Only nuclear power plants can prevent blackouts.
- OtherShrezzing 1y ago
  A nuclear plant wouldn't prevent the specific types of blackouts that Puerto Rico suffers from, as described in the article. Hurricanes and aged infrastructure means the power coming from centralised producers fails to arrive at distributed consumers. The advantage solar has in this regard is that the energy is produced within 1/2km of its consumption.
- blitzar 1y ago
  France enters the chat ...
- Attrecomet 1y ago
  I have to wonder how you envision a small community building nucular when the state has already failed them. That's the real neat thing, that cooperations smaller than the entire territory of Puerto Rico can take action and help themselves, and even take away pressure from the rest of the grid doing it! > Only nuclear power plants can prevent blackouts. That sentence is so maximal that it is trivially maximally wrong. Clearly, other tech can do that too. Like, blindingly obviously.
- greenie_beans 1y ago
  yes it is so easy to build nuclear https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nukegate_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nukegate_scandal
- gregors 1y ago
  Timely post as a TN power plant is offline https://www.local3news.com/local-news/tva-takes-sequoyah-nuclear-plant-offline/article_f61d061f-4f09-49ad-aaa6-d643b9edf53a.html https://www.local3news.com/local-news/tva-takes-sequoyah-nuc...
EcommerceFlow 1y ago
My hope for America is once Optimus robots are up and running, have 1-2 legions worth work 24/7 setting up a huge farm in Arizona, then creating an energy transition line to the east coast. It sounds crazy, but given the rate of advancements in robots and the fact that solar panels are already mass manufactured, why isn’t this feasible in 2 years?
- worldsayshi 1y ago
  Yeah if Musk now clears his head, gives up politics, enters his villain redemption arc and focuses on something he's actually good at - making technology wonders happen through the force of will, workforce manipulation, trial and error and duct tape - it might happen.
- floatrock 1y ago
  Are you a tesla bot?
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
- JKCalhoun 1y ago
  Are solar panels still being produced in the U.S.? I thought we strangled that golden goose.
  - EcommerceFlow 1y ago
    Remove the Chinese Tariffs on them, then just import massive amounts.
    - blitzar 1y ago
      That would be playing right into the Chinese evil plan to spend trillions giving away solar panels to America so Americans go woke (and have cheap electricity) /s
WillAdams 1y ago
Does anyone have a good link/step-by-step for doing some sort of home solar system where: - it's sufficiently small-scale that no building permit is required - it looks nice enough that neighbors won't complain - the wiring is essentially plug-and-play The best approach I've been able to come up with is to purchase a medium size battery pack such as is used for glamping (glamour camping), plug it into the wall and connect my refrigerator and a couple of other high-draw appliances to it (basement dehumidifier comes to mind), build a small roof for the back deck, using poured footings with short posts and then attaching the vertical pillars for the roof to that (which should side-step the need for a building permit since it's not a permanent structure), then placing the solar panels on that roof and running a wire to the battery placed in the kitchen.
- originalvichy 1y ago
  Companies like Ecoflow sell mobile battery packs which you can connect foldable/small panels to by just plugging them in. No roof installation required. Those panels can be bought as a bundle with the packs. Those packs can then be connected to extension cords. It’s a starting point for short term outages.
  - WillAdams 1y ago
    That is the company whose products I've been considering --- my idea was to attach the solar panels to the roof so as to not need to fold/unfold, and to be able to take advantage of them all day without any further clutter on the deck (gaining a roofed area on the deck is a nice bonus).
- sanex 1y ago
  I'm interested in doing something like this as well. Build a pergola with a solar roof instead of just a metal one from Costco. I've seen a few videos online doing a similar sized system with like a Jackert or Anker Solix. Realistically with 2-3 harbor freight panels they're only enough to power like your home office. A fridge will burn through the battery pretty fast. I do believe you can have them do input and output straight into your wall outlet and you don't have to plug right the appliances into the battery/inverter.
greenie_beans 1y ago
my prediction, for the US: electricity demand from AI will exceed supply at least in the short and medium term, driving up electric prices for consumers
- bryanlarsen 1y ago
  Increased demand for air conditioning in the US is increasing demand at about the same rate as AI is. We're expanding the grid fast enough to handle one, but not both.
  - greenie_beans 1y ago
    interesting, i haven't heard that. where can i go to learn about that? historians cite AC as one of the things that changed the american south in the 20th century, making it more habitable.
black_13 1y ago
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alexnewman 1y ago
i live in puerto rico. I talk with my luma friends all the time, we need baseload. We need more gas. We've made huge investments in solar that have been destroyed by hurricanes and are a huge waste issue.
- asciii 1y ago
  i got really tired of Luma and after the new year blackout i jumped ship to windmar. i'm fairly rural so it's actually decent and in a good spot where other neighbors have fared well during hurricanes.
eagerpace 1y ago
I would love to have just enough solar to flatten my peak usage on the hottest days of the summer. They naturally coincide with tons of sun. I don't need a huge system to be all solar all the time or even care about credits from the power company. I just don't want a $300 bill in the summer and a $50 bill in the winter. Has anyone designed a good solution for this?
- toomuchtodo 1y ago
  I have installed 200kw+ worth of rooftop (Florida) and ground mount (NorCal) resi systems (primarily Enphase, but I'm familiar with the operating requirements of other inverters), and am currently riding shotgun for a ~200MW solar PV project in the Midwest. If you share more details (general location, utility, and energy cost schedule [static, seasonal]), I am happy to provide some guidance.
  - senjin 1y ago
    With solar panels being so much cheaper than 10-15 years ago, it seems like installation costs are the biggest hurdle to wider adoption. Do you see anything reducing those costs in the future? Maybe we need a push to make standing seam metal roofs more mainstream and people can install their own without having to drill into their roof
    - toomuchtodo 1y ago
      Soft costs are a majority of residential system cost [1], and there are some efforts to cram those costs down. One example is SolarApp [2], an automated permitting platform that directly integrates with local jurisdiction systems to streamline the permitting process (which was incubated at NREL [3]). Another are coop buys [4], where a community will open a registration window, and once a pool of buyers have committed, an RFP is put out of installers to bid to install the entire pool of systems. This drives down sales and marketing costs. While I am a big fan of standing seam metal roofs for longevity reasons, they cost anywhere between 2x-3x the cost of a premium (architecture shingles vs 3 tab) asphalt shingle roof. This is due to increased labor costs to have the rolled steel cut and formed on site. If you could drive the down the cost (training and similar evangelism efforts sponsored by domestic steel manufacturers perhaps to stoke demand to replace other more volatile demand like auto sales), certainly friction based solar racking mounted to such a roof is superior to something requiring penetrations through the roof material and decking. Regardless, we should assume most home owners are not going to do these installs themselves on their roofs. When new homes are built, solar installs should be required but in a way that makes the cost competitive vs unreasonable profit capture through whomever is building the home. When roofs are replaced, also an excellent time to have a solar PV system installed. These systems have a lifetime of at least 25 years, so it's important to have the stars align to make the choice as inexpensive and frictionless as possible when its made. [1] https://www.energy.gov/eere/solar/solar-soft-costs-basics https://www.energy.gov/eere/solar/solar-soft-costs-basics [2] https://gosolarapp.org/ https://gosolarapp.org/ [3] https://www.nrel.gov/news/video/nrels-solarapp-streamlines-solar-permitting-text https://www.nrel.gov/news/video/nrels-solarapp-streamlines-s... [4] https://solarunitedneighbors.org/resources/the-ultimate-solar-co-op-guide/ https://solarunitedneighbors.org/resources/the-ultimate-sola...
whall6 1y ago
I don’t have data but I have a hunch most blackouts in PR are weather related. In that case (stormy skies), solar probably won’t help much.
- cjbgkagh 1y ago
  Don’t most storms happen at night? So really it’s the battery doing the work either way.
  - whall6 1y ago
    The amount of battery capacity required to sustain power demand for this to be scaled to a meaningful population is high (PR average daily power demand is ~50 GWh per day). Most power outages in PR take 48 to 72 hours to fix. You would need batteries that can store 150 GWh of power. That’s a LOT of money to install. Even this assumes that you wouldn’t want any breathing room on battery capacity (i.e., every power outage will be fixed in under 72 hours).
tgtweak 1y ago
I keep seeing these "grid synchronizing" inverters that don't require transfer switches and can generate to offset the energy pulled from the grid - in the event of a full grid outage, you can always manually hit the disconnect and run the home - provided the load doesn't surpass the generation capacity (or storage capacity if running with batteries). It seems like this hasn't really made it's way into North America, which is unfortunate as it would lower the barrier of entry for home solar considerably vs traditional grid-tie/net metering which requires a ton of permits, electricians, meter changes, disconnects (or transfer switches) and generally lots of delays and cost. I would be very curious how the "migrogrids" interconnect in PR - it seems there is some kind of synchronization and neighborhood-level disconnects to isolate from the shared grid.
- rtkwe 1y ago
  Grid synchronizing is not the same as being able to operate in island mode. The only reason you can run those inverters without an automatic transfer switch is because they don't function when there's no grid to follow so they shut off when power goes out meaning they don't backfeed the grid outside the home. A lot of inverters are just grid following and you need some other source creating the 60-hz signal for the solar inverters to follow. Generally this is either a battery or generator because solar has a really hard fall off in the power provided the instant you try to draw too much so instantaneous spike loads like motors starting (compressors/fans/etc) will often collapse off grid solar only installs.
  - bob1029 1y ago
    > motors starting This is a big problem when working with single stage HVAC condensers. These motors can have a LRA rating of well over 100 amps.
    - tgtweak 1y ago
      There are solutions like Microair easy start - these are pretty common on generator setups too as these peak starting amps can snuff a generator too.
nandomrumber 1y ago
Just taking the article’s title at face value, what does it mean to have a blackout with microgrids? Microgrids are, by definition, impervious to blackouts. If a microgrid loses power due to a fault, neighbouring grids are unaffected. If all the neighbouring grids lose power due to a common fault, but your local grid is unaffected due to design or implementation choices, you’re golden. Microgrids aren’t a solution to blackouts, and blackouts are not an issue microgrids have. Looking at the article, the first paragraph claims: When power went out across all of Puerto Rico on 16 April [well, clearly it didn’t as the very next sentence goes on to claim] a lot of the lights in the town of Adjuntas stayed on. It can’t be both. It’s not a blackout and the lights stayed on. Grid segmentation and multiple generation sources can do this too, and is a common feature of existing, traditional, power grids. The city I live in has these features with feed-ins from multiple hydro electric plants and wind factories, and a HVDC link to the next state over which has a full spectrum of generation sources bar nuclear. As a result, the electricity here is very stable, and I don’t recall the last time we had even a brown out that affected the entire greater metro are and satellite towns. Microgrids with interconnects are grids. We can build grids that work, thereby leaving the general population free to pursue other, more important, economic endeavours. Failing that, build microgrids.
- destitude 1y ago
  I think the average reader will understand exactly what they are trying to say.

382 points by ohjeez 1y ago

I love solar, but this "those who can afford microgrids can shield themselves from blackouts" paired with net metering where "the wealthy get paid a premium for excess generation and can buy expensive high-demand power back at a discount" probably aren't steps on the path to improved grid resiliency for any definition other than this weird "no island-wide outages" definition.

rstupek 1y ago
The alternative way to look at it is that early adopters get the volume up such that the price comes down to where more people can afford it?
- ta988 1y ago
  This doesn't solve the issue of either storage or continous (and controllable) supply.
- Dylan16807 1y ago
  Solar panels are already so cheap that household solar is mostly about the installation price. And more people affording their own panels is still a lot more expensive than fixing the grid.
  - closewith 1y ago
    But batteries aren't, and batteries are both the key technology for load shifting and the biggest expense in modern installations.
    - bryanlarsen 1y ago
      5kWh of batteries is under $1000. That's enough for load shifting for most people. Even if you need several of them, that's still going to be cheaper than installation labor.
      - eldaisfish 1y ago
        where are you buying 5 kWH of batteries for under $ 1,000? The typical 5 kWh battery in Canada is C$ 3,000 - 4,000.
        the_pwner224 1y ago
        https://signaturesolar.com/all-products/batteries/?_bc_fsnf=1&brand=66 https://signaturesolar.com/all-products/batteries/?_bc_fsnf=... Server rack style, 1200 USD for 4.8 kWh = $250/kWh. Wall-mount, 14.3 kWh for $3.3k = $231/kWh. These guys seem to be the biggest DIY solar equipment supplier in the US. Afaik you can get batteries from China (AliExpress) for quite a bit cheaper too.
        djrj477dhsnv 1y ago
        Yep I bought several Huawei 4.8 kWh batteries for about $450 each for an off-grid house in SE Asia. They've been working great a year later, running AC throughout the night.
      - djrj477dhsnv 1y ago
        That really depends on where you live. I set up the batteries and inverter myself, but paid a local installer and his 2 helpers a grand total of $45 to install and ground 10 x 600w panels on my dangerously high metal roof.
- numpad0 1y ago
  Solar output is also proportionate to area of sunlight projection. This means the theoretical capacity available to you is proportionate to real estate, area of planetary surface, under your ownership.
  - lukan 1y ago
    And the area you own is theoretical proportionate to your avaibale money. So yes, rich people can obviously have more of it all, like with everything else that money can buy. But is this really a point worth going in deeper here? I see the point as in "solar power plus battery is good", creates resillence, please more of it. Unfair distribution of wealth is a different problem. And here concreteley the article lacks for me details, what exactly the work on the grid means, if it is really about fossils vs solar, but microgrids that can connect to each other sounds like a pragmatic solution to me.
    - bluefirebrand 1y ago
      > Unfair distribution of wealth is a different problem Unfortunately, all problems are eventually going to come down to this. Or many problems are, if not "all" We can't fix a lot of the problems facing our society and our planet with "only wealthy can afford this" solutions
      - lukan 1y ago
        "We can't fix a lot of the problems facing our society and our planet with "only wealthy can afford this" solutions" And I think, we can't fix a lot of technical problems if we make everything about money distribution. Besides, solar plus battery became really cheap. And get cheaper every day. And this work to connect such microgrids is potentially beneficial for poor areas all around the world. But no, it doesn't solve the issue of extreme poverty, but why would it?
    - Dylan16807 1y ago
      Microgrids at that size are the most expensive way to get resilience. If they're pragmatic for many people then something has failed and we should work to fix it. Bigger ones have a better tradeoffs, so I'm not so harsh on towns having their own grids. Still unsure whether it's a good use of funds.
layoric 1y ago
Agreed. From first hand experience, even for regulated electricity markets, games get played to maximize profit per power generated that are directly making stability worse. Fixing these loop holes is hard for the regulator since they are instructed to encourage both increased renewable penetration and stability, despite traders/operators/producers not acting in good faith and just gaming whatever they can.
- colechristensen 1y ago
  A healthy regulated will encourage maximizing profit for power and bring in competition which drives the cost down until energy is a commodity and the cost of electricity is actually based on the price of production and a small profit based on the cost of capital. Any situations that cause price spikes result in investment to harvest the difference. The fact that you can add to the grid by installing solar and battery and connect to the grid in a single afternoon makes it pretty easy these days to have an elastic market that grows until you hit the limit of decentralized production vs. existing transmission architecture... but with the right equipment you can have community sized islands that can be much more immune to instability.
  - layoric 1y ago
    > A healthy regulated will encourage maximizing profit for power and bring in competition which drives the cost down until energy is a commodity and the cost of electricity is actually based on the price of production and a small profit based on the cost of capital. That is not how the electricity market works, in Australia anyway, and somewhat fundamentally everywhere. The network needs to maintain a frequency and voltage for it to be reliable. These change as load and production change. So consumers don't get a choice of which electrons power their house, only who they pay. They pay a 'retailer' who usually has nothing to do with production for a known cost per kwh + fees ahead of time. The market then operates where agreements between parties including retailers and produces (traders and others as well) has a 'market rate' that essentially arbitrage between longer term fixed rates and market rates. The fact that the stability is tied to frequency and voltage (and infrastructure) means there is a limit to the rate of production and consumption, not to mention electricity is a necessity in the modern age. In Australia at least we are finding out the hard way about what happens when you privatize a necessity. People will pay whatever it costs, and since the market needs a high level of regulation just to function, a market IMO is just a bad fit for trying to bring costs down rather than just rent seeking. > The fact that you can add to the grid by installing solar and battery and connect to the grid in a single afternoon That has become harder in recent time due to areas being over saturated by solar. Cities in Australia can deny you connecting to the grid if there is too much, as well as we have high network voltage detection on inverters which now kick in on many sunny days due to again, too much solar. Electricity network operators pay a large amount of money to services to predict/model how much of the power in their network is coming from solar and where because they commonly don't know, so it becomes a difficult balance of how much solar you are allowed to connect. > but with the right equipment you can have community sized islands that can be much more immune to instability. Agreed, but due to the required _shared_ infrastructure for this to work will need public land to connect these islands or even within an 'island', as well as the now private vested interests in rent seeking, this will be a fringe solution only available to those with larger amounts of land like communes or other rural setups. Again, speaking to Australia.
mcbishop 1y ago
Net metering is gone in most of California (for new solar). I think it's going away in general. Distributed solar supports a more stable grid for everyone (per UL 1741-SB requirements).
- amoshebb 1y ago
  the article is about Puerto Rico, not California, and specifically mentions net metering.
  - matthewdgreen 1y ago
    I think the poster’s point is that net metering is a tool to promote early adoption of solar, and (in at least one prominent example) when solar penetration becomes high enough for it to impact grid stability, larger grids have removed net metering. So to address GP poster’s point: net metering affecting grid stability in a substantial way is more a theoretical concern that’s already been addressed in one of the locations where it stopped being theoretical.
toast0 1y ago
It depends on the terms of the net metering. If it's the ancient practice of crediting on a one for one basis, yeah that doesn't help. (A look around says that's probably where PR is now). If they credit power delivered to the grid based on conditions when it was delivered, then that might help. With appropriate controls, storage can increase grid stability. It would probably be more cost effective to do utility scale storage projects, but project management is difficult in PR; letting those with personal capital hook up solar+batteries and send some of that onto the grid when demand is high seems useful?
floatrock 1y ago
What's the alternative? Equity is important, sure, but to swing all the way towards "only a centralized grid should be allowed in order to make sure all have the same level access" is a head-in-the-sands approach that ignores realities such as how the centralized grid out there has metastasized into a non-functional bureaucratic blame-shifting machine (at least measured by the increasing frequency of outages). A centralized grid also never actually delivers true equitable access. One alternative is decentralization, and the article talks about that: > The town’s local environmental nonprofit Casa Pueblo teamed up with researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tenn., to develop a way to connect multiple microgrids to exchange power with one another, all without having to be hooked up to Puerto Rico’s grid. The strategy, called grid orchestration, ensures that if power is knocked out on one of the installations, the others aren’t compromised. Is it the wealthy that are doing that? Maybe? Probably? But isn't that how any R&D technology investment starts? It's also involving a government-funded lab to re-envision how these systems could work to achieve resiliency through coordinated decentralization. And if there's any truth to trickle-down economics, it would have to be in something that allows for a decentralized approach accessible to many, not a centralized approach that only rewards r > g accumulation. Sounds like a good use of government research funding to me.
deleted 1y ago
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dotancohen 1y ago

From what I understand, most homes that are connected to both solar and the grid require the grid to be active to produce solar. This is for two reasons. One, not to endanger lineman working on the grid. And two, the solar AC cycle must be synchronized with the grid AC cycle. Are these homes not also connected to the grid? Or is there some technology that addresses these two issues that are in use in Puerto Rico?

slipheen 1y ago
If you use a string inverter not a emphase style microinverter, most of them are capable of running without the grid- Particularly if you add any sort of battery system. These use a form of transfer switch like you’d use when you connect a generator- they disconnect the upstream.
- mcbishop 1y ago
  You can run sans grid with Enphase (with their "system controller").
zie 1y ago
This is true, but if you add in local batteries attached to the solar, you can have a device that works in basically all situations. If disconnected from the grid, it can run off battery instead of just not working. I haven't read the OP link yet, but my guess is they are doing something like this: Grid, Solar and batteries.
- lukan 1y ago
  "Grid, Solar and batteries." They are doing microgrids, that connect to each other.
  - zie 1y ago
    Aka a grid. Sure, this is a newer version of the grid, that allows local failover, but it's just a grid. Maybe we can upgrade the other grids to do this too. That would be fabulous.

Simon_O_Rourke 1y ago

Is this more of a battery cost issue - if you owned a battery that charged off the grid and discharged during blackout periods then that might just about cover you if you budget for the expected outage duration.... And assuming you can afford said battery in the first place.

ema 1y ago
Depends on the length of the blackouts, if it's more than a day then solar panels will allow you to lower the amount of batteries you get.
pyrale 1y ago
> if you owned a battery that charged off the grid and discharged during blackout periods This wouldn't work. The reason isolated units can inject electricity back into the grid without issue is that they can observe frequency. If a blackout occurs, this information is gone. You need to perform a black start, which can't be done by isolated, uncoordinated equipments.
- magicalhippo 1y ago
  Pretty sure GP was talking about a UPS, not feeding the grid.
- 1dom 1y ago
  I don't think that applies for microgrids, or at least, it's not really an issue in my case. I know what you're talking about though: I think that more applies to generators that are operating with megawatts and take time for turbines to spin up and stuff. Microgrids are normally instantaneous battery buffered type things. They can instantly deliver power at the frequency range mandated for the national grid.
- philjohn 1y ago
  What you actually need is islanding equipment which discharges the battery for local use only, but cuts off (or islands you from) your main incoming power connection. Many of the PV systems you can buy from the big players (SolarEdge, Tesla and more) support this, often calling it "whole home backup". Same principle as having a generator with an interlock.

chilldsgn 1y ago

I don't know much about electrical grids, but I'm wondering if something like this concept could help South Africa with its endlessly struggling electrical grid problems. My city constantly has power outages and the majority of people cannot afford installing solar into their homes.

happymellon 1y ago
From what I understand, South Africa's electrical problems have been long term political.
- cinntaile 1y ago
  That's the case everywhere in the world, it's not a tech issue. The tech exists.
  - nbadg 1y ago
    The technology certainly exists, though some of it is pretty new and not all of it is mature or commoditized (particularly in the context of high levels of penetration of variable renewables on the grid). That being said, politics aren't the only reason why it might not be deployed. Capitalization issues, for one, are also common. Additionally, you have to make a judgement call about what you consider included in "politics" -- for example, does corruption count?
  - happymellon 1y ago
    Not always, sometimes its logistics, sometimes outside forces which create time pressures. Not everything can be solved by money, sometimes its a mythical man month/9 women can't produce a baby in 1 month issue. However in this scenario, its pure neglect which is causing power issues.
    - AdamN 1y ago
      In this case though, high reliability electricity delivery is very doable. Many countries achieve 3 9s or higher. Sure there are the issues like the recent Spain/Portugal blackout but even that has some political roots.

danans 1y ago

Based on what I see in the photo in the article, PV array codes in Puerto Rico must be quite different from those in California, because the arrays seem to cover almost the entirety of the roofs. In California fire access codes [1] prevent the entire roof from being covered like in PV that. 1. https://energycodeace.com/site/custom/public/reference-ace-2013/index.html#!Documents/76californiafirecodesolaraccessrequirements.htm https://energycodeace.com/site/custom/public/reference-ace-2...

blitzar 1y ago
Likely because they have building codes that prevent the construction of houses from matchsticks.
- potato3732842 1y ago
  It has nothing to do with construction and everything to do with rainfall. I can throw a lit road flare into my back yard and nothing will happen, because I don't live in a glorified desert. PR is an order of magnitude wetter than where I live.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - neilknowsbest 1y ago
    PR has a dry season when the island receives less rain, and there are dry regions that generally get less rain. In fact, there are sometimes forest fires [1]. Regarding construction, I've never seen a smoke alarm inside a residential building in PR. I would hazard a guess that this is allowed for concrete/cinderblock; presumably the roof thing is the same. [1] - https://www.elnuevodia.com/noticias/seguridad/notas/incendio-forestal-comienza-a-quemar-terrenos-de-la-reserva-del-bosque-estatal-de-maricao/ https://www.elnuevodia.com/noticias/seguridad/notas/incendio...
heliodor 1y ago
The vast majority of roofs in Puerto Rico are flat and the vast majority of buildings are made of cinder blocks and concrete.

pythonbase 1y ago

Solar power is working wonders for rural and urban Pakistan. In fact, we became the largest importer of solar panels.

jahnu 1y ago
I learned about it on this episode of Volts Fascinating consequences https://www.volts.wtf/p/pakistans-solar-boom https://www.volts.wtf/p/pakistans-solar-boom
subscribed 1y ago
This is actually fantastic news. I wonder if you're also utilising their secondary purpose (shading and improving microclimat https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S004896972105021X https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00489...)
hinkley 1y ago
India has had good luck building solar panels over irrigation canals. The shade substantially reduces the evaporation losses in the canal system. The framing is a bit tricky of course.
- 0cf8612b2e1e 1y ago
  California announced they were going to do the same.
  - hinkley 1y ago
    Yeah the channelized sections of the Colorado would be a good candidate as well, though I personally believe the bigger solution is reintroducing beavers into the upper water shed, to increase total average flow.
    - sand500 1y ago
      How do beavers increase total water flow? I can see them causing more water to be held upstream.

m4r1k 1y ago

Meanwhile, in third-world, overly bureaucratic Italy, one has to wait several months to get all the paperwork in order to take advantage of a solar installation. Self-deployed solutions are also limited to 800 watts, which is peanuts in today's world.

pkirk 1y ago
That is the case only if you want to give your surplus back to the grid. If you avoid that, you are only limited to a maximum power of 20kW of solar panels installed.
- ferguess_k 1y ago
  20kW seems to be ample for home usage. Half should be good enough.
  - tills13 1y ago
    I recently got a 10kWh system installed and it should cover about half my usage. I live in meh-irradiance Canada. Full coverage of my bill in summer, pathetic generation in the summer. So yeah, sunnier places like Italy 10kWh would be perfect -- especially for places with heat pumps and warm winters.
wuming2 1y ago
You have clearly never spent anything but holiday time in a underdeveloped county. If ever. You won’t draw similarities otherwise. Completely different standing points.
elzbardico 1y ago
Italy is third world country now?

elitegolfhub 1y ago

[dead]

pyrale 1y ago

This article looks like it completely embraces the pov of solar providers, and describes maintenance of the grid as serving the interests of the fossil electricity industry. ...And not far from the end: > The next milestone, Massol-Deyá says, will be successfully connecting microgrids that are not in close geographic proximity. Yeah... great journalism here IEEE.

KaiserPro 1y ago

So the bit thats not clear here is are they defining rules for what happens when there are interconnection failures? or is it that to connect to the grid you need to have your own storage as well as PV? it sounded like they joined three "islands" together.

metalman 1y ago

technological advances for off/tied grid solar are now maturing into high quality solutions for all scenarios, costs are in free fall. I was an ultra early adopter of solar pv in 1991 in Takilma, Oregon living in a school bus,and continue to live off grid in Nova Scotia. As to Peurto Rico, my first question was answered by a quick look at a topograpgical map, and Peurto Rico looks a lot like Nova Scotia....lots and lots of hills and little valleys and rivers, which means that for them topography has a big part to play, also looking at pictures of the instalations there, basic roofing is clearly a price consideration before other things, so developing solar that assembles into a physical roofing product, that entirely replaces other roofing, would be important for anyone who is carefullt crunching numbers on a new build in a choice location, add in charging for cars and scooters which can double as extra house power when needed and the inevitability of the comming switch becomes obvious.

amai 1y ago

They should buy a nuclear power plant instead. Only nuclear power plants can prevent blackouts.

OtherShrezzing 1y ago
A nuclear plant wouldn't prevent the specific types of blackouts that Puerto Rico suffers from, as described in the article. Hurricanes and aged infrastructure means the power coming from centralised producers fails to arrive at distributed consumers. The advantage solar has in this regard is that the energy is produced within 1/2km of its consumption.
blitzar 1y ago
France enters the chat ...
Attrecomet 1y ago
I have to wonder how you envision a small community building nucular when the state has already failed them. That's the real neat thing, that cooperations smaller than the entire territory of Puerto Rico can take action and help themselves, and even take away pressure from the rest of the grid doing it! > Only nuclear power plants can prevent blackouts. That sentence is so maximal that it is trivially maximally wrong. Clearly, other tech can do that too. Like, blindingly obviously.
greenie_beans 1y ago
yes it is so easy to build nuclear https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nukegate_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nukegate_scandal
gregors 1y ago
Timely post as a TN power plant is offline https://www.local3news.com/local-news/tva-takes-sequoyah-nuclear-plant-offline/article_f61d061f-4f09-49ad-aaa6-d643b9edf53a.html https://www.local3news.com/local-news/tva-takes-sequoyah-nuc...

EcommerceFlow 1y ago

My hope for America is once Optimus robots are up and running, have 1-2 legions worth work 24/7 setting up a huge farm in Arizona, then creating an energy transition line to the east coast. It sounds crazy, but given the rate of advancements in robots and the fact that solar panels are already mass manufactured, why isn’t this feasible in 2 years?

worldsayshi 1y ago
Yeah if Musk now clears his head, gives up politics, enters his villain redemption arc and focuses on something he's actually good at - making technology wonders happen through the force of will, workforce manipulation, trial and error and duct tape - it might happen.
floatrock 1y ago
Are you a tesla bot?
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
JKCalhoun 1y ago
Are solar panels still being produced in the U.S.? I thought we strangled that golden goose.
- EcommerceFlow 1y ago
  Remove the Chinese Tariffs on them, then just import massive amounts.
  - blitzar 1y ago
    That would be playing right into the Chinese evil plan to spend trillions giving away solar panels to America so Americans go woke (and have cheap electricity) /s

WillAdams 1y ago

Does anyone have a good link/step-by-step for doing some sort of home solar system where: - it's sufficiently small-scale that no building permit is required - it looks nice enough that neighbors won't complain - the wiring is essentially plug-and-play The best approach I've been able to come up with is to purchase a medium size battery pack such as is used for glamping (glamour camping), plug it into the wall and connect my refrigerator and a couple of other high-draw appliances to it (basement dehumidifier comes to mind), build a small roof for the back deck, using poured footings with short posts and then attaching the vertical pillars for the roof to that (which should side-step the need for a building permit since it's not a permanent structure), then placing the solar panels on that roof and running a wire to the battery placed in the kitchen.

originalvichy 1y ago
Companies like Ecoflow sell mobile battery packs which you can connect foldable/small panels to by just plugging them in. No roof installation required. Those panels can be bought as a bundle with the packs. Those packs can then be connected to extension cords. It’s a starting point for short term outages.
- WillAdams 1y ago
  That is the company whose products I've been considering --- my idea was to attach the solar panels to the roof so as to not need to fold/unfold, and to be able to take advantage of them all day without any further clutter on the deck (gaining a roofed area on the deck is a nice bonus).
sanex 1y ago
I'm interested in doing something like this as well. Build a pergola with a solar roof instead of just a metal one from Costco. I've seen a few videos online doing a similar sized system with like a Jackert or Anker Solix. Realistically with 2-3 harbor freight panels they're only enough to power like your home office. A fridge will burn through the battery pretty fast. I do believe you can have them do input and output straight into your wall outlet and you don't have to plug right the appliances into the battery/inverter.

greenie_beans 1y ago

my prediction, for the US: electricity demand from AI will exceed supply at least in the short and medium term, driving up electric prices for consumers

bryanlarsen 1y ago
Increased demand for air conditioning in the US is increasing demand at about the same rate as AI is. We're expanding the grid fast enough to handle one, but not both.
- greenie_beans 1y ago
  interesting, i haven't heard that. where can i go to learn about that? historians cite AC as one of the things that changed the american south in the 20th century, making it more habitable.

black_13 1y ago

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alexnewman 1y ago

i live in puerto rico. I talk with my luma friends all the time, we need baseload. We need more gas. We've made huge investments in solar that have been destroyed by hurricanes and are a huge waste issue.

asciii 1y ago
i got really tired of Luma and after the new year blackout i jumped ship to windmar. i'm fairly rural so it's actually decent and in a good spot where other neighbors have fared well during hurricanes.

eagerpace 1y ago

I would love to have just enough solar to flatten my peak usage on the hottest days of the summer. They naturally coincide with tons of sun. I don't need a huge system to be all solar all the time or even care about credits from the power company. I just don't want a $300 bill in the summer and a $50 bill in the winter. Has anyone designed a good solution for this?

toomuchtodo 1y ago
I have installed 200kw+ worth of rooftop (Florida) and ground mount (NorCal) resi systems (primarily Enphase, but I'm familiar with the operating requirements of other inverters), and am currently riding shotgun for a ~200MW solar PV project in the Midwest. If you share more details (general location, utility, and energy cost schedule [static, seasonal]), I am happy to provide some guidance.
- senjin 1y ago
  With solar panels being so much cheaper than 10-15 years ago, it seems like installation costs are the biggest hurdle to wider adoption. Do you see anything reducing those costs in the future? Maybe we need a push to make standing seam metal roofs more mainstream and people can install their own without having to drill into their roof
  - toomuchtodo 1y ago
    Soft costs are a majority of residential system cost [1], and there are some efforts to cram those costs down. One example is SolarApp [2], an automated permitting platform that directly integrates with local jurisdiction systems to streamline the permitting process (which was incubated at NREL [3]). Another are coop buys [4], where a community will open a registration window, and once a pool of buyers have committed, an RFP is put out of installers to bid to install the entire pool of systems. This drives down sales and marketing costs. While I am a big fan of standing seam metal roofs for longevity reasons, they cost anywhere between 2x-3x the cost of a premium (architecture shingles vs 3 tab) asphalt shingle roof. This is due to increased labor costs to have the rolled steel cut and formed on site. If you could drive the down the cost (training and similar evangelism efforts sponsored by domestic steel manufacturers perhaps to stoke demand to replace other more volatile demand like auto sales), certainly friction based solar racking mounted to such a roof is superior to something requiring penetrations through the roof material and decking. Regardless, we should assume most home owners are not going to do these installs themselves on their roofs. When new homes are built, solar installs should be required but in a way that makes the cost competitive vs unreasonable profit capture through whomever is building the home. When roofs are replaced, also an excellent time to have a solar PV system installed. These systems have a lifetime of at least 25 years, so it's important to have the stars align to make the choice as inexpensive and frictionless as possible when its made. [1] https://www.energy.gov/eere/solar/solar-soft-costs-basics https://www.energy.gov/eere/solar/solar-soft-costs-basics [2] https://gosolarapp.org/ https://gosolarapp.org/ [3] https://www.nrel.gov/news/video/nrels-solarapp-streamlines-solar-permitting-text https://www.nrel.gov/news/video/nrels-solarapp-streamlines-s... [4] https://solarunitedneighbors.org/resources/the-ultimate-solar-co-op-guide/ https://solarunitedneighbors.org/resources/the-ultimate-sola...

whall6 1y ago

I don’t have data but I have a hunch most blackouts in PR are weather related. In that case (stormy skies), solar probably won’t help much.

cjbgkagh 1y ago
Don’t most storms happen at night? So really it’s the battery doing the work either way.
- whall6 1y ago
  The amount of battery capacity required to sustain power demand for this to be scaled to a meaningful population is high (PR average daily power demand is ~50 GWh per day). Most power outages in PR take 48 to 72 hours to fix. You would need batteries that can store 150 GWh of power. That’s a LOT of money to install. Even this assumes that you wouldn’t want any breathing room on battery capacity (i.e., every power outage will be fixed in under 72 hours).

tgtweak 1y ago

I keep seeing these "grid synchronizing" inverters that don't require transfer switches and can generate to offset the energy pulled from the grid - in the event of a full grid outage, you can always manually hit the disconnect and run the home - provided the load doesn't surpass the generation capacity (or storage capacity if running with batteries). It seems like this hasn't really made it's way into North America, which is unfortunate as it would lower the barrier of entry for home solar considerably vs traditional grid-tie/net metering which requires a ton of permits, electricians, meter changes, disconnects (or transfer switches) and generally lots of delays and cost. I would be very curious how the "migrogrids" interconnect in PR - it seems there is some kind of synchronization and neighborhood-level disconnects to isolate from the shared grid.

rtkwe 1y ago
Grid synchronizing is not the same as being able to operate in island mode. The only reason you can run those inverters without an automatic transfer switch is because they don't function when there's no grid to follow so they shut off when power goes out meaning they don't backfeed the grid outside the home. A lot of inverters are just grid following and you need some other source creating the 60-hz signal for the solar inverters to follow. Generally this is either a battery or generator because solar has a really hard fall off in the power provided the instant you try to draw too much so instantaneous spike loads like motors starting (compressors/fans/etc) will often collapse off grid solar only installs.
- bob1029 1y ago
  > motors starting This is a big problem when working with single stage HVAC condensers. These motors can have a LRA rating of well over 100 amps.
  - tgtweak 1y ago
    There are solutions like Microair easy start - these are pretty common on generator setups too as these peak starting amps can snuff a generator too.

nandomrumber 1y ago

Just taking the article’s title at face value, what does it mean to have a blackout with microgrids? Microgrids are, by definition, impervious to blackouts. If a microgrid loses power due to a fault, neighbouring grids are unaffected. If all the neighbouring grids lose power due to a common fault, but your local grid is unaffected due to design or implementation choices, you’re golden. Microgrids aren’t a solution to blackouts, and blackouts are not an issue microgrids have. Looking at the article, the first paragraph claims: When power went out across all of Puerto Rico on 16 April [well, clearly it didn’t as the very next sentence goes on to claim] a lot of the lights in the town of Adjuntas stayed on. It can’t be both. It’s not a blackout and the lights stayed on. Grid segmentation and multiple generation sources can do this too, and is a common feature of existing, traditional, power grids. The city I live in has these features with feed-ins from multiple hydro electric plants and wind factories, and a HVDC link to the next state over which has a full spectrum of generation sources bar nuclear. As a result, the electricity here is very stable, and I don’t recall the last time we had even a brown out that affected the entire greater metro are and satellite towns. Microgrids with interconnects are grids. We can build grids that work, thereby leaving the general population free to pursue other, more important, economic endeavours. Failing that, build microgrids.

destitude 1y ago
I think the average reader will understand exactly what they are trying to say.