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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

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
[deleted]

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

[deleted]