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It's like the backyard furnaces during the Great Leap Forward. Production of electricity like production of steel makes most economical sense at scale. When th

It's like the backyard furnaces during the Great Leap Forward. Production of electricity like production of steel makes most economical sense at scale. When the economic policy fails so hard it has to resort to backyard anything you know where it's going.

pintxo 1y ago
What a strange take. This is not so much a policy applied from the top, but requested from the bottom. People want to contribute to the transition, and balcony solar installs are a cheap and simple way to do this.
- alexey-salmin 1y ago
  I do see it as the result of policy applied from the top, the policy that resulted in 2x household electricity prices compared to the US (which amounts to 3x difference if you adjust for median household income). I replied in another thread but I still remember how in my childhood all the ordinary people had to grow potatoes. The state didn't order them to, it just created food shortages that's all. You can say it was voluntary, "not so much a policy applied from the top".
  - morsch 1y ago
    Coincidentally, CO2 emissions per capita in the US are also about 2 times that of Germany.
  - pintxo 1y ago
    This is assuming people don’t want to go net zero, and people not understanding that going there requires change, which will be costly. I‘d argue there is a majority in Germany supporting the transition to green energy, accepting higher prices as a result.
  - jcattle 1y ago
    I don't think that this is comparable. People who struggle with their electricity bills can not afford balcony solar. It has a ROI of a few years with a (low) but comparably large one time upfront cost. With potatoes you only really pay with your time.
awanderingmind 1y ago
This is a strange analogy. The policy saves people money on their power bill. The backyward furnaces are considered a disaster because, among other things, they produced low quality steel, and diverted labour from agriculture and other things, none of which is the case here - people pay for solar panels and install them once, and then achieve savings.
kragen 1y ago
Around here I have a backyard washing machine, a backyard grill, a backyard clothesline, and my neighbors have backyard childcare, backyard parking, and a backyard motorcycle. And actually inside my house I have a flush toilet and an oven. Your assertion seems to imply that if instead I had to wash and dry my laundry at a coin-operated laundromat, eat at a cafeteria table with all my neighbors, and piss in a portapotty down the street, and my neighbor's kids were taken away to live at a boarding school, while he had to ride the bus to work instead of driving, that would be evidence of successful policy! We clearly have radically different definitions of success. Yours seems not to be well thought out. The problem with backyard furnaces was that the steel they produced was not just expensive but also inferior. If you could plug in a Tabletop Minimill that produced ingots of specialty precision steel alloys to your order, ranging from maraging steel to tool steel to nitinol, and which was also cheap to operate, that would not be an economic policy failure. That would be an enormous success! Your generalization that any kind of decentralization amounts to collective action failure is wrong. Some kinds of decentralization do; my household water pressure tank is decentralized because of collective action failure, for example, as I explained in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45487610 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45487610. Others don't. We have to analyze the particulars of each case. I've written at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45487051 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45487051 a bit about the particulars of this case.
- alexey-salmin 1y ago
  > Your generalization that any kind of decentralization amounts to collective action failure is wrong. Some kinds of decentralization do; ... Others don't. That's correct, yes. I too prefer a decentralized washing machine to coin-operated laundromats which are very common in France where I live nowadays. However I still believe that electricity generation has more in common with steelmaking than with laundry. Today solar panels make sense in terms of money ROI but not in terms of KWh ROI, they're largely enabled by economical disbalances around the world and not by their long-term value. The long-term solution in my view is nuclear which coincidentally the French do rather well, it's not all laundromats.
  - Slartie 1y ago
baq 1y ago
Yeah no. It would be if everyone had a steam turbine hooked up to their fireplace.
- chickenbig 1y ago
  Co-generating boilers have been tried before. It used a Stirling engine rather than a turbine, for 1kWe output. Whisper Tech (of New Zealand) provided the Stirling engine technology, and had their own line of CHP for marine applications. https://www.renewableenergyhub.co.uk/main/micro-combined-heat-and-power-micro-chp-information/baxi-ecogen-micro-chp-boiler https://www.renewableenergyhub.co.uk/main/micro-combined-hea...
jcattle 1y ago
Would you also agree that production of usable energy makes most sense at scale? With that I mean energy like heat and motion? Because so far it just hasn't been possible to generate electricity at home in a meaningful way. Unlike heat, which everyone largely generates at home. I would argue that there has been a technological leap, where electricity generation has become possible at home now through a combination of lower prices, ease of installation and feasibility to tie in to the rest of the electrical grid. Banning this new possibility would be a shortcoming of the policy.
mft_ 1y ago
Hard disagree here. 1) The biggest challenge to renewables seems to be not capacity, but storage: wind and solar can't be relied upon all of the time, and often provide peak power out of sync with peak demand. Within reason, hyper-local generation either removes the need for storage altogether (as generated electricity is immediately utilised by household appliances) or allows easy local storage to be added via a few KWh of battery in the basement. 2) Houses that can mostly power themselves also reduce demand on the electricity grid, assuming that large spikes can be avoided. 3) I like the future vision of all people and their dwellings being energy-independent, and this is the start of a path towards that. 4) Don't fall into the trap of only ever accepting an optimal solution. Local generation might be somewhat less efficient economically (although with private investment rather than governmental/corporate investment being used here, and with no apaprent shortages in solar panel supply, I'm not so sure about the comparison?) but that doesn't mean that it doesn't add some meaningful benefit, or that it shouldn't happen.
locallost 1y ago
This comment is so laughably wrong, yet at the same time not funny. Let's do some napkin math: * For the whole package people report 200-300 Euro prices. Let's make it 300. * To get to say 8GW of capacity you'd need 10 million of these units * The price of that ends up being 3 billion * With a capacity factor of 12.5% it will produce electricity like a 1GW source that is constantly producing at full capacity Now let's take a look at the "economical" production at scale model. * Hinkley Point C currently under construction with a 3.2 GW capacity * Estimated costs right now in the 50 billion Euro ballpark or 15-20 billion per GW This is at least 5x more expensive on construction costs alone. The opportunity cost in the lost 15 years of no return on investment during construction, running cost per year difference, cost differences when it's time to scrap both things in around five decades etc. is an exercise left to the reader. tl;dr sorry but you literally have no idea what you're talking about.
- alexey-salmin 1y ago
  I'm aware of such calculations and they are in disagreement with fundamental limitations of these technologies. Nuclear has EROI of 20-80, solar has something like 3 if you account for inverters and batteries. The fact that they forgot how to build reactors (France got them at 1.5B per GW adjusted for 2011 prices) and that China burns more and more coal to maintain the solar bubble doesn't change much long term. I don't think the current situation around solar is sustainable. I could be wrong of course but hopefully we'll live long enough to see the outcome. In the meanwhile I heavily bet on the nuclear being the future.
  - locallost 1y ago
    Solar EROI is not 3. To see that this cannot be the case: * last year around 600GW of solar was deployed, or 0.6TW * Imagine a 12.5% capacity factor (which is low) * Imagine their capacity will degrade linearly to 80% over 20 years (I don't know if this is completely true but it's a rough approximation), thus their average output is 90% * Imagine they will stop producing electricity after exactly 20 years (which is not true, they will continue to work unmaintained for decades) They will thus produce total electricity of .6 * .9 * .125 * 24 * 365 * 20 11826TWh If their EROI was 3 it would mean it took 3942 TWh to produce them. China used a total of 9852TWh of electricity in 2024. I would strongly presume China did not use 40% of its electricity to produce solar panels.

pintxo 1y ago

What a strange take. This is not so much a policy applied from the top, but requested from the bottom. People want to contribute to the transition, and balcony solar installs are a cheap and simple way to do this.

alexey-salmin 1y ago
I do see it as the result of policy applied from the top, the policy that resulted in 2x household electricity prices compared to the US (which amounts to 3x difference if you adjust for median household income). I replied in another thread but I still remember how in my childhood all the ordinary people had to grow potatoes. The state didn't order them to, it just created food shortages that's all. You can say it was voluntary, "not so much a policy applied from the top".
- morsch 1y ago
  Coincidentally, CO2 emissions per capita in the US are also about 2 times that of Germany.
- pintxo 1y ago
  This is assuming people don’t want to go net zero, and people not understanding that going there requires change, which will be costly. I‘d argue there is a majority in Germany supporting the transition to green energy, accepting higher prices as a result.
- jcattle 1y ago
  I don't think that this is comparable. People who struggle with their electricity bills can not afford balcony solar. It has a ROI of a few years with a (low) but comparably large one time upfront cost. With potatoes you only really pay with your time.

awanderingmind 1y ago

This is a strange analogy. The policy saves people money on their power bill. The backyward furnaces are considered a disaster because, among other things, they produced low quality steel, and diverted labour from agriculture and other things, none of which is the case here - people pay for solar panels and install them once, and then achieve savings.

kragen 1y ago

Around here I have a backyard washing machine, a backyard grill, a backyard clothesline, and my neighbors have backyard childcare, backyard parking, and a backyard motorcycle. And actually inside my house I have a flush toilet and an oven. Your assertion seems to imply that if instead I had to wash and dry my laundry at a coin-operated laundromat, eat at a cafeteria table with all my neighbors, and piss in a portapotty down the street, and my neighbor's kids were taken away to live at a boarding school, while he had to ride the bus to work instead of driving, that would be evidence of successful policy! We clearly have radically different definitions of success. Yours seems not to be well thought out. The problem with backyard furnaces was that the steel they produced was not just expensive but also inferior. If you could plug in a Tabletop Minimill that produced ingots of specialty precision steel alloys to your order, ranging from maraging steel to tool steel to nitinol, and which was also cheap to operate, that would not be an economic policy failure. That would be an enormous success! Your generalization that any kind of decentralization amounts to collective action failure is wrong. Some kinds of decentralization do; my household water pressure tank is decentralized because of collective action failure, for example, as I explained in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45487610 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45487610. Others don't. We have to analyze the particulars of each case. I've written at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45487051 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45487051 a bit about the particulars of this case.

alexey-salmin 1y ago
> Your generalization that any kind of decentralization amounts to collective action failure is wrong. Some kinds of decentralization do; ... Others don't. That's correct, yes. I too prefer a decentralized washing machine to coin-operated laundromats which are very common in France where I live nowadays. However I still believe that electricity generation has more in common with steelmaking than with laundry. Today solar panels make sense in terms of money ROI but not in terms of KWh ROI, they're largely enabled by economical disbalances around the world and not by their long-term value. The long-term solution in my view is nuclear which coincidentally the French do rather well, it's not all laundromats.
- Slartie 1y ago

baq 1y ago

Yeah no. It would be if everyone had a steam turbine hooked up to their fireplace.

chickenbig 1y ago
Co-generating boilers have been tried before. It used a Stirling engine rather than a turbine, for 1kWe output. Whisper Tech (of New Zealand) provided the Stirling engine technology, and had their own line of CHP for marine applications. https://www.renewableenergyhub.co.uk/main/micro-combined-heat-and-power-micro-chp-information/baxi-ecogen-micro-chp-boiler https://www.renewableenergyhub.co.uk/main/micro-combined-hea...

jcattle 1y ago

Would you also agree that production of usable energy makes most sense at scale? With that I mean energy like heat and motion? Because so far it just hasn't been possible to generate electricity at home in a meaningful way. Unlike heat, which everyone largely generates at home. I would argue that there has been a technological leap, where electricity generation has become possible at home now through a combination of lower prices, ease of installation and feasibility to tie in to the rest of the electrical grid. Banning this new possibility would be a shortcoming of the policy.

mft_ 1y ago

Hard disagree here. 1) The biggest challenge to renewables seems to be not capacity, but storage: wind and solar can't be relied upon all of the time, and often provide peak power out of sync with peak demand. Within reason, hyper-local generation either removes the need for storage altogether (as generated electricity is immediately utilised by household appliances) or allows easy local storage to be added via a few KWh of battery in the basement. 2) Houses that can mostly power themselves also reduce demand on the electricity grid, assuming that large spikes can be avoided. 3) I like the future vision of all people and their dwellings being energy-independent, and this is the start of a path towards that. 4) Don't fall into the trap of only ever accepting an optimal solution. Local generation might be somewhat less efficient economically (although with private investment rather than governmental/corporate investment being used here, and with no apaprent shortages in solar panel supply, I'm not so sure about the comparison?) but that doesn't mean that it doesn't add some meaningful benefit, or that it shouldn't happen.

locallost 1y ago

This comment is so laughably wrong, yet at the same time not funny. Let's do some napkin math: * For the whole package people report 200-300 Euro prices. Let's make it 300. * To get to say 8GW of capacity you'd need 10 million of these units * The price of that ends up being 3 billion * With a capacity factor of 12.5% it will produce electricity like a 1GW source that is constantly producing at full capacity Now let's take a look at the "economical" production at scale model. * Hinkley Point C currently under construction with a 3.2 GW capacity * Estimated costs right now in the 50 billion Euro ballpark or 15-20 billion per GW This is at least 5x more expensive on construction costs alone. The opportunity cost in the lost 15 years of no return on investment during construction, running cost per year difference, cost differences when it's time to scrap both things in around five decades etc. is an exercise left to the reader. tl;dr sorry but you literally have no idea what you're talking about.

alexey-salmin 1y ago
I'm aware of such calculations and they are in disagreement with fundamental limitations of these technologies. Nuclear has EROI of 20-80, solar has something like 3 if you account for inverters and batteries. The fact that they forgot how to build reactors (France got them at 1.5B per GW adjusted for 2011 prices) and that China burns more and more coal to maintain the solar bubble doesn't change much long term. I don't think the current situation around solar is sustainable. I could be wrong of course but hopefully we'll live long enough to see the outcome. In the meanwhile I heavily bet on the nuclear being the future.
- locallost 1y ago
  Solar EROI is not 3. To see that this cannot be the case: * last year around 600GW of solar was deployed, or 0.6TW * Imagine a 12.5% capacity factor (which is low) * Imagine their capacity will degrade linearly to 80% over 20 years (I don't know if this is completely true but it's a rough approximation), thus their average output is 90% * Imagine they will stop producing electricity after exactly 20 years (which is not true, they will continue to work unmaintained for decades) They will thus produce total electricity of .6 * .9 * .125 * 24 * 365 * 20 11826TWh If their EROI was 3 it would mean it took 3942 TWh to produce them. China used a total of 9852TWh of electricity in 2024. I would strongly presume China did not use 40% of its electricity to produce solar panels.