15 ms·

Pakistan says rooftop solar output to exceed grid demand in some hubs next year

232 points by toomuchtodo 1y ago

toomuchtodo 1y ago
https://archive.today/48P6c https://archive.today/48P6c
pfdietz 1y ago
What this shows is solar is increasingly threatening the electric utility business model. Even without net metering, demand destruction will cause the traditional model to stop working.
- thfuran 1y ago
  Will it? I’m not sure how the utilities structure their prices wrt the actual cost, but they definitely separate the baseline connection cost from usage on bills (at least in the US), so they may not be killed by people using very little power as long as the connection fee actually covers things.
  - kingstnap 1y ago
    The hardest possible demand to meet is random, reasonal, and spikey demand spread diffusely over a large area. Which is more or less homes. Conversely the easiest possible demand to meet is localized constant and high demand. Basically AI datacenters or industrial users. These guys are basically paying for the grid and residential have it as a subsidy. The supermajority of the price of electricity is fixed costs related to installing and maintaining capacity. The marginal problem of increasing generation or utilization is cheap. I believe it's like under 20% even for gas power where you have to buy gas. For grid solar it would be even crazier because marginally its basically free they really don't care how much you use it even goes negative but the fixed costs are everything. So what causes a lot of social problems is when wealthy people get their own private solar because the whole current pricing structure revolves around wealthy people using a lot of electricity and paying down the connection costs for poor people. If they have solar the poor people are fronting the maintainence cost which destabilizes everything.
    - mjh2539 1y ago
      Without load balancing, AI datacenters are very swingy (which is bad).
  - jaltekruse 1y ago
    Unfortunately the connection fee does not cover all fixed cost. For a long time the model has been fairly "progressive" in this regard. Some of the fixed costs of the grid have been paid for by amortization over the per Kw cost, which had the effect of charging people who used more a larger chunk of these fixed costs. Now with the option to provide your own power if you have upfront capital for solar can build as big of a system as they want. As other comments in the thread have mentioned, net-metering is largely functioned as a subsidy to give money to people who are already doing fine financially. I want green energy, and I think that decentralization has definite benefits, but it's pretty hard to argue against maintaining the grid to allow re-balancing and covering supply shortfalls in specific areas. Here is a video discussing this problem - https://youtu.be/C4cNnVK412U?si=ZzZhoApFW3khqrdq&t=720 https://youtu.be/C4cNnVK412U?si=ZzZhoApFW3khqrdq&t=720
    - namibj 1y ago
      What you could do is bill per energy in e.g. 15 minute chunks, and separately bill for transformer/line capacity by e.g. the peak usage in any such chunk over the contract period, like they do in Germany for atypical load profile industrial users since decades ago. Net metering is overall just entirely stupid as a concept; measure inbound and outbound flow separately if you can't just measure the 15 minute chunks; bill grid fees on the energy price on inbound and only pay energy price on outbound. Or even bill grid fees on outbound up to one of many available large substations, and thus handle the issue of demand across large distances making buildout of solar in a convenient but far away place not being disincentivized vs. more-demand-local buildout.
- SoftTalker 1y ago
  Most people aren’t interested in being responsible for their own electrical generation. Especially with payback still being on the order of decades
  - seanmcdirmid 1y ago
    Most people don’t have the capital to be responsible for their own electricity generation, except the rich.
    - andor 1y ago
      It's really not expensive anymore. There's a Black Friday deal on amazon.de for an entry-level Anker Solix system with 4x500W panels and a 2.6 kWh battery. 1200 EUR. For those that don't have the cash, financing is available. Have you read this, about SunKing and SunCulture in Africa, recently posted on HN: https://climatedrift.substack.com/p/why-solarpunk-is-already-happening https://climatedrift.substack.com/p/why-solarpunk-is-already... Their smallest solar products are small lanterns. Simply having a pollution-free source of light is already a quality of life improvement for some people. One step up is to add a USB port to charge phones.
      - seanmcdirmid 1y ago
        Oh I’m sure, Pakistan has alot of trade with China also so it’s probably cheaper than in the west. But it would still be expensive for the poorer Pakistanis, and would require some investment, they simply have less ability to do that than a richer middle class Pakistani, so the poor pay the poor tax because they can’t invest capital to bring their costs down. Low Chinese prices are making it more and more possible though. I hope the future will be really different.
        pfdietz 1y ago
        We're seeing solar with batteries going in in sub-Saharan Africa, so don't tell me something can't be made to work even with the poor in Pakistan.
- more_corn 1y ago
  There’s a business model where distributed solar production and storage is the norm and central grid based generation and delivery is the minority. Such a model is extremely resistant and there’s less system infrastructure necessary. It’s quite feasible to redesign the system around a “distributed first” model.
  - idiotsecant 1y ago
    Where do the massive upgrades to the distribution system required for this kind of setup come from? We simultaneously hate utilities and want them to redesign and pay for a distribution system that was not intended for bidirectional load flow. Our municipal distribution systems are barely adequate. Net metering produces essentially no revenue but imposes a huge load on that infra.
    - kieranmaine 1y ago
      My understanding is there is less of a need for massive grid upgrades in this model due to the use of storage. Rather than having to be able to distribute peak loads from solar, requiring a larger connection, you can smooth out the supply and distribute an even amount throughout the day, using a smaller connection. The section "1.1.3 Bringing large savings on grid expansions" [1] has a good explanation. 1. https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/solar-electricity-every-hour-of-every-day-is-here-and-it-changes-everything/chapter-1-how-batteries-will-unlock-solars-true-po/ https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/solar-electricity-e...
      - idiotsecant 1y ago
        This is exactly wrong because transmission and distribution are different things. You can think of distribution as the 'last mile' infrastructure. It's not expensive in the way transmission is - individual services are relatively cheap. The reason it's expensive is that there are enormous amounts of it and municipal distribution systems can be wildly complex. Power flows in these systems are unidirectional. When you throw that assumption on its head you drastically change how these systems must be designed. A major change like that would be astronomically expensive. The only reason it kinda works now is that very few people do grid connected generation after the meter. Once that becomes more widespread it's time for a huge investment, on the order of what the transmission system needs, but it all has to be paid for by local utilities, very few of which can get the capital together to do major projects like that.
- UltraSane 1y ago
  What will people do at night?
  - peppersghost93 1y ago
    overprovision for their needs during the day and utilize battery power at night.
    - UltraSane 1y ago
      Solar panels are cheap but batteries are very expensive.
      - peppersghost93 1y ago
        They can be depending on your needs. Lithium iron phosphate batteries are pretty cheap for their capacity. If you build your own power station with them you'd be surprised how far your money goes.
        UltraSane 1y ago
        It is much more expensive that just buying electricity from the grid at night.
        scheeseman486 1y ago
        In Australia, if you have the space for rooftop solar, it's far cheaper in the long run to buy solar+battery. We did the math for our household and even if grid prices are stable (which they aren't, they're fast increasing) we're still going to make money back on the investment in less than 4 years. Granted this includes a government rebate for the battery, but overall the prices have plummeted. Any government that isn't pushing for renewables and energy storage at this point is actively working against it's citizens.
        UltraSane 1y ago
- _trampeltier 1y ago
  I think in most countrys, you already pay one bill for the grid and one for the used electric power.
  - pfdietz 1y ago
    The bill you pay for the grid in such cases typically doesn't cover the fixed costs, and would have to be much higher if solar demand destruction becomes big.
- ghc 1y ago
  Commercial and industrial use already makes up a large portion of demand. While the model will change to cater less to residential needs, overall demand for stable, high voltage generation is not going to go down.
  - jasonsb 1y ago
    Commercial properties often have enough roof area to meet most of their daytime demand on-site. And industrial consumption in Western countries has been flat or declining for years, so "stable, high-voltage generation" may face less demand than assumed.
  - pfdietz 1y ago
    If long term storage (like Standard Thermal) comes into play, I could see industrial users decide to just decouple from the grid too (or, use the threat to do so as a means to drive down what they are charged.) We may see industrial users preposition themselves in locations with ample nearby PV potential. If I were building a factory in the US (or a data center) I would think twice before putting it in a higher population density area. We may also see local microgrids develop. This would still have distribution costs, but not transmission.
- PunchyHamster 1y ago
  if the same solar also had enough battery capacity, sure. But they do not, they still need to buy at out of solar peak and that just causes problems for both sides. I think grid should start moving into selling storage as a service. Just put a bunch of bulk storage at every transformer station and buy solar from consumers at solar peak, sell them back say 80% of it (or whatever margin is required to pay for it) off peak. That way utility no longer have to haul megawatts all the way from the power plant all the time, any peak can be hauled from the batteries and let the other types of power plant more time to spool up, and the grid is more resilient to outages (assuming you were lucky and battery bank local to you still had some charge
  - toomuchtodo 1y ago
    LFP chemistries are approaching ~$50/kWh, and CATL's sodium chemistry is supposed to be ~$40/kWh (per CATL); soon it will be more expensive to ship the battery storage than the storage itself. "Watershed moment:" Big battery storage prices hit record low in China auction - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44504630 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44504630 - July 2025 (4 comments) IEA: The battery industry has entered a new phase - https://www.iea.org/commentaries/the-battery-industry-has-entered-a-new-phase https://www.iea.org/commentaries/the-battery-industry-has-en... - March 5th, 2025 Naxtra Battery Breakthrough & Dual-Power Architecture: CATL Pioneers the Multi-Power Era - https://www.catl.com/en/news/6401.html https://www.catl.com/en/news/6401.html - April 21st, 2025 China Already Makes as Many Batteries as the Entire World Wants - https://about.bnef.com/insights/clean-transport/china-already-makes-as-many-batteries-as-the-entire-world-wants/ https://about.bnef.com/insights/clean-transport/china-alread... - April 19th, 2024
    - kragen 1y ago
      Currently "Sodium Battery Cell" is priced at US$50–70/kWh on the Shanghai Metals Market, which gives every appearance of being a real thing: https://www.metal.com/en/markets/43 https://www.metal.com/en/markets/43. They list LFP batteries currently at US$38–52/kWh: https://www.metal.com/en/markets/42 https://www.metal.com/en/markets/42 I think you may be dramatically overestimating how much container shipping costs.
- triceratops 1y ago
  In most places in the developed world utility-scale solar is much cheaper to build than rooftop solar. And there's value in having a stable grid to fall back on. I think the demand destruction story is overrated.
  - kragen 1y ago
    Balcony solar is even cheaper to build than utility-scale solar.
    - triceratops 1y ago
      It's limited to 800W in Germany and 1200W in Utah. It isn't about to replace utility-scale generation anytime soon.
      - rjdj377dhabsn 1y ago
        Those limits are just arbitrary regulations. It's easy to install 10x that on a residential roof.
        triceratops 1y ago
        And we come back to my original point. Residential roof installation is the most expensive way to install solar power. Utility scale solar is easily haf the cost of residential.
        rstuart4133 1y ago
        > Utility scale solar is easily half the cost of residential. If it's only half, the problem it's not going to stop residential installs. By the time that utility power gets to them here in Australia it costs about 3 times as much, so they are going to install their rooftop systems anyway. I can't speak for elsewhere, but here in Australia residential installs tend to be over provisioned. A small'ish install is 5kW. That generates about 20kWh per day. Typical household consumption is 1/2 that. Newer builds like mine tend to have far more - upwards of 20kW of panels. That's to cater for charging EV's. The result is grid solar installs are getting hammered by roof top solar: https://reneweconomy.com.au/wind-and-solar-hit-record-share-of-main-grid-as-curtailment-underscores-need-for-more-storage/ https://reneweconomy.com.au/wind-and-solar-hit-record-share-...
- testing22321 1y ago
  > solar is increasingly threatening the electric utility business model The writing is on the wall that the electric utility business model is a dying business like the career of bus or truck driver. Some countries will take a while to realize due to head in the sand , tariffs and corruption.
ZeroConcerns 1y ago
Excellent results, even if the source article is a bit government-optimistic-press-releasy. The less-good news is that, even with abundant solar, you still need a functional grid (even more so than in traditional top-down energy distribution schemes) in order for everyone to take advantage of it, but this is a problem that lots of rich nations are working through right now, so affordable off-the-shelf solutions are bound to appear in the near future. And I wish Pakistan the best in taking advantage of those and/or their home-grown ingenuity!
- NedF 1y ago
  [dead]
abdullahkhalids 1y ago
I would encourage people to go look at satellite view of random "rich" neighbourhoods in Pakistan, and note how many solar panels there are on rooftops. Here is the first one I scrolled to in Lahore [1], and one in Karachi [2] Pakistan's grid prices tripled or more since the start of the Russia-Ukraine war, because the extremely mismanaged and poorly designed electricity system+economy could not handle the energy price shock. This spiraled into rich people just buying rooftop solar systems, which exacerbated the grid problems even more. [1] https://www.google.com/maps/@31.3611237,74.2493456,357m/data=!3m1!1e3?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI1MTEyMy4xIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D https://www.google.com/maps/@31.3611237,74.2493456,357m/data... [2] https://www.google.com/maps/@24.8014179,67.0460688,415m/data=!3m1!1e3?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI1MTEyMy4xIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D https://www.google.com/maps/@24.8014179,67.0460688,415m/data...
- riku_iki 1y ago
  > rich people just buying rooftop solar systems, which exacerbated the grid problems even more. how it exacerbated problems exactly?..
  - saidinesh5 1y ago
    I'm guessing: fewer people buying from the power companies/grid => the fixed costs of these companies are pushed onto the poorer customers, who already couldn't afford much.
    - gus_massa 1y ago
      Don't they charge a minimum just for keeping the wires connected?
      - deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]
      - bee_rider 1y ago
        I think most places the service is priced under the assumption that usage is enough to pay for the grid… I’ve only ever rented though. Are connection fees something that homeworkers think about? Possibly we will have to see changes to account for this sort of stuff at a more granular level, as the grid becomes more dynamic. But, that’s a future we should be actively looking to design for, as the energy supply mix is going to change whatever anybody thinks about that. Can’t beat energy falling from the sky, on price…
bitxbitxbitcoin 1y ago
How many years before this happens in parts of the United States?
- hamdingers 1y ago
  In California, grid-tied rooftop solar was putting energy prices into the negative so often that they reconfigured the NEM to discourage export back to the grid and encourage battery storage.
  - Animats 1y ago
    It seems to have worked, too.[1] Batteries are the invisible change in the power business. They don't take up much land area. They're not visible to the public. Just being able to charge batteries during low power cost periods changes the whole economics of the industry. Whether battery banks should be allowed to sell back to the grid is a tough question. Texas says no.[2] It's potentially "dispatchable" power, but only until the battery runs down. [1] https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2025-10-17/california-made-it-through-another-summer-without-a-flex-alert https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2025-10-17/califor... [2] https://www.ercot.com/mktrules/keypriorities/bes/ktc8 https://www.ercot.com/mktrules/keypriorities/bes/ktc8
  - _whiteCaps_ 1y ago
    And it's messing with our utilities in BC because we were buying the daytime oversupply in California and selling the hydro generated power back at night. They've had to adjust plans as battery storage comes online.
- newsclues 1y ago
  Already does in some cases but the utility companies have fought back and they can buy laws and regulations to slow down the process and protect profits.
- jillesvangurp 1y ago
  Up to the locals in the US. Depends what their pain threshold is for falling behind and looking a bit behind the times. I think FOMO is going to be a big driver in a few years. This is not a left vs right topic. It's a money topic. And my impression of the US is that they love getting stuff on the cheap. Solar energy should be such a thing and it's getting painfully obvious that the US is paying a steep price where the rest of the world isn't. If I'm reading the situation correct, that is already annoying the hell out of a lot of traditionally republican leading states and not because they are tree-huggers. The right question to ask is whether places like Mexico are going to politely wait for the US to get its act together or whether they'll just go ahead and start electrifying their country and industry and reducing their cost levels. The current isolationist policy works both ways. Very sunny place, Mexico. Great place for solar and batteries. And once you have those, Chines EVs produced locally might work very well. And they can export those further south.
neebz 1y ago
We switched to solar in 2021 expecting a 3.5-year payback. Electricity prices rose so fast that we recovered the investment in under two years. Also the national grid is notorious for it's frequent blackouts (load-shedding) since the early ’90s. Solar allowed us to have uninterrupted supply in the mornings and longer backups during night.
- toomuchtodo 1y ago
  Rough location (if you feel comfortable sharing ground truth)?
  - tibbydudeza 1y ago
    South Africa - load shedding is a curse word here :).
    - toomuchtodo 1y ago
      Great to hear about the fast payback period, wishing you reliable power :)
      - kragen 1y ago
        tibbydudeza didn't post about a fast payback period. Maybe neebz is his wife?
        toomuchtodo 1y ago
        Broadly speaking, payback period in South Africa is very fast due to similar grid economics to Pakistan.
        kragen 1y ago
        But neebz may not be in Pakistan either. Oh, they are: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43622584 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43622584
woodpanel 1y ago
Imagine being the CCP and you’ve managed to turn your industrial capacity into the world‘s single largest renewable energy source. PV‘s Saudi-Arabia.
- infinet 1y ago
  There were similar comments on HN. The argument goes that since it takes energy to produce PV panels and wind turbines, China effectively is an energy exporting country. What’s even better is some of the PV and turbines are produced with renewable energy. And unlike oil and gas, which are used only once, PV panels and wind turbines generate power for many years.
  - woodpanel 1y ago
    The argument also has a geopolitical component: PV panels wear down, and by the time yours have too, the energy infrastructure around you will have shifted towards PVs. I.e. your (country’s) energy will be dependent on China. That is another aspect of “the Saudia-Arabia of PVs”
- torginus 1y ago
  Yeah but I think advanced economies can figure out to produce the same things if there's a strategic need - and absorb the cost - you also can't just close the pipes and starve everybody, so China doesn't really have that much political leverage in how you use it. There's also huge internal competition inside China between companies, so they have a harder time fixing prices.
  - woodpanel 1y ago
    > if there's a strategic need Nope. A defining mechanism in energy markets is the cost to extract it. There's a reason Saudi Arabia dominates oil, if you can extract it with a shovel. And directly counter to your point, there's a reason, say, Germany can't just kick start a shell gas/oil industry even if it does have the deposits underneath. > harder time fixing prices Eh, it's not like the CCP didn't do heavy handed market interventions before, right? I mean some would even argue "fixing prices" is already embedded with the ruling party's name. > you also can't just close the pipes and starve everybody, What is this even suppose to mean? Of course you can. That is the whole point of having geopolitical leverage.
unglaublich 1y ago
Great, you can easily switch them off or even better, store heat under ground for the winter.
- kragen 1y ago
  Lahore doesn't really have a winter as such: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lahore#Climate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lahore#Climate Air conditioning is, however, life-changing. Thermal energy storage can potentially power air conditioning, but it isn't a very well developed technology.
SackSolStr 1y ago
The payback periods get me confused. A relative set up solar a year ago in one of the sunniest places in Europe, the Canaries, cost €7,000 for 6KW. He just ran the math on it and found out that the payback period is 15 years. The only way to make it profitable is government subsidies. How can it be profitable to install solar in continental Europe where taxes and labor costs are much higher while having much less sun? Why are we using taxpayers' money to subsidize such negative NPV projects?
- kragen 1y ago
  Your comment appears to be unrelated to Pakistan and, due to the confusion of units, has been reduced to nonsense. Moreover, your implied calculations don't work out. If we assume that you meant €7000 for 6 kilowatts peak (not 6 kelvin wurtzite henries or 6 kilowatt hours, neither of which is sensible) the probable answer is that your relative paid 25× the current market price for their solar panels and therefore got 25× the payback time. However, if we assume €0.12/kWh and a 20% capacity factor, 6 kilowatts peak would average 1.2 kilowatts, which is 10520 kWh per year, which works out to €1260 per year, which would be a payback time of 6 years, not 15 years. Moreover, another way of saying that the payback time on a durable investment is 15 years is that the investment returns 6.7% per year. That would be a highly profitable investment, even without government subsidies.
  - testing22321 1y ago
    > You seem to have created this account just to troll I find it fascinating that someone is willing to pay for accounts to swing opinions or seed FUD on a topics like solar panels. It’s happening here, it’s clearly happening everywhere on every topic.
    - kragen 1y ago
      HN accounts don't require payment.
      - testing22321 1y ago
mannanj 1y ago
Unpopular opinion: this is so contentious because it’s more about control.
- markdown 1y ago
  Nah, it's about power (heh!). Politicians need votes to remain in power. They lose votes if electricity is expensive. Lower demand and therefore low revenue in the face of fixed grid maintenance costs mean prices have to rise. Higher costs to voters terrifies politicians.
  - mannanj 1y ago
    The politicians do get paid by captured corporate interests though. And some of those are energy generation interests. Until solar companies captured some of that interest, solar subsidies and cost remained high and unsupported by regulatory interests - when capture is there regulatory interest support the alternative power. Sometimes these captured interests can even block and harm progress that's better for society. I'm sure I don't have to break this down for you further. Surely you can identify examples.
    - markdown 1y ago
      Fair point
- spacebanana7 1y ago
  Homeowners having the ability to produce their own energy means they get to opt out of capitalist markets and socialist sharing systems. It’s similar to how the British empire hated subsistence farming, and always wanted colonial subjects to be economically interacting with either trading companies or the state apparatus.
  - chickenbig 1y ago
    > Homeowners having the ability to produce their own energy means they get to opt out of capitalist markets and socialist sharing systems. All well and good, provided the homeowner opts out of the system. Part of the problem comes when the grid connection is not severed. Using it as a backup option (at the same time as other people, for when the weather is bad) or demanding the grid takes their excess production are counter-productive to the system as a whole.
darkteflon 1y ago
> The south Asian nation is planning to introduce new tariffs for large solar users, as well as changes to fee structures to ensure businesses with panels share equally in the costs of grid upkeep, she said. Of course. We wouldn’t want the benefit of a public good to accrue to the public now, would we.
torginus 1y ago
I feel like this is disingenuous - I have solar, and peak power exceeds demand by a sizeable margin, but there are week long stretches with basically no solar. Given how cheap panels, are, it makes a ton of sense to oversize your system, and charge your batteries in the couple hour stretches where the sun does happen to shine.

232 points by toomuchtodo 1y ago

https://archive.today/48P6c https://archive.today/48P6c

What this shows is solar is increasingly threatening the electric utility business model. Even without net metering, demand destruction will cause the traditional model to stop working.

thfuran 1y ago
Will it? I’m not sure how the utilities structure their prices wrt the actual cost, but they definitely separate the baseline connection cost from usage on bills (at least in the US), so they may not be killed by people using very little power as long as the connection fee actually covers things.
- kingstnap 1y ago
  The hardest possible demand to meet is random, reasonal, and spikey demand spread diffusely over a large area. Which is more or less homes. Conversely the easiest possible demand to meet is localized constant and high demand. Basically AI datacenters or industrial users. These guys are basically paying for the grid and residential have it as a subsidy. The supermajority of the price of electricity is fixed costs related to installing and maintaining capacity. The marginal problem of increasing generation or utilization is cheap. I believe it's like under 20% even for gas power where you have to buy gas. For grid solar it would be even crazier because marginally its basically free they really don't care how much you use it even goes negative but the fixed costs are everything. So what causes a lot of social problems is when wealthy people get their own private solar because the whole current pricing structure revolves around wealthy people using a lot of electricity and paying down the connection costs for poor people. If they have solar the poor people are fronting the maintainence cost which destabilizes everything.
  - mjh2539 1y ago
    Without load balancing, AI datacenters are very swingy (which is bad).
- jaltekruse 1y ago
  Unfortunately the connection fee does not cover all fixed cost. For a long time the model has been fairly "progressive" in this regard. Some of the fixed costs of the grid have been paid for by amortization over the per Kw cost, which had the effect of charging people who used more a larger chunk of these fixed costs. Now with the option to provide your own power if you have upfront capital for solar can build as big of a system as they want. As other comments in the thread have mentioned, net-metering is largely functioned as a subsidy to give money to people who are already doing fine financially. I want green energy, and I think that decentralization has definite benefits, but it's pretty hard to argue against maintaining the grid to allow re-balancing and covering supply shortfalls in specific areas. Here is a video discussing this problem - https://youtu.be/C4cNnVK412U?si=ZzZhoApFW3khqrdq&t=720 https://youtu.be/C4cNnVK412U?si=ZzZhoApFW3khqrdq&t=720
  - namibj 1y ago
    What you could do is bill per energy in e.g. 15 minute chunks, and separately bill for transformer/line capacity by e.g. the peak usage in any such chunk over the contract period, like they do in Germany for atypical load profile industrial users since decades ago. Net metering is overall just entirely stupid as a concept; measure inbound and outbound flow separately if you can't just measure the 15 minute chunks; bill grid fees on the energy price on inbound and only pay energy price on outbound. Or even bill grid fees on outbound up to one of many available large substations, and thus handle the issue of demand across large distances making buildout of solar in a convenient but far away place not being disincentivized vs. more-demand-local buildout.
SoftTalker 1y ago
Most people aren’t interested in being responsible for their own electrical generation. Especially with payback still being on the order of decades
- seanmcdirmid 1y ago
  Most people don’t have the capital to be responsible for their own electricity generation, except the rich.
  - andor 1y ago
    It's really not expensive anymore. There's a Black Friday deal on amazon.de for an entry-level Anker Solix system with 4x500W panels and a 2.6 kWh battery. 1200 EUR. For those that don't have the cash, financing is available. Have you read this, about SunKing and SunCulture in Africa, recently posted on HN: https://climatedrift.substack.com/p/why-solarpunk-is-already-happening https://climatedrift.substack.com/p/why-solarpunk-is-already... Their smallest solar products are small lanterns. Simply having a pollution-free source of light is already a quality of life improvement for some people. One step up is to add a USB port to charge phones.
    - seanmcdirmid 1y ago
      Oh I’m sure, Pakistan has alot of trade with China also so it’s probably cheaper than in the west. But it would still be expensive for the poorer Pakistanis, and would require some investment, they simply have less ability to do that than a richer middle class Pakistani, so the poor pay the poor tax because they can’t invest capital to bring their costs down. Low Chinese prices are making it more and more possible though. I hope the future will be really different.
      - pfdietz 1y ago
        We're seeing solar with batteries going in in sub-Saharan Africa, so don't tell me something can't be made to work even with the poor in Pakistan.
more_corn 1y ago
There’s a business model where distributed solar production and storage is the norm and central grid based generation and delivery is the minority. Such a model is extremely resistant and there’s less system infrastructure necessary. It’s quite feasible to redesign the system around a “distributed first” model.
- idiotsecant 1y ago
  Where do the massive upgrades to the distribution system required for this kind of setup come from? We simultaneously hate utilities and want them to redesign and pay for a distribution system that was not intended for bidirectional load flow. Our municipal distribution systems are barely adequate. Net metering produces essentially no revenue but imposes a huge load on that infra.
  - kieranmaine 1y ago
    My understanding is there is less of a need for massive grid upgrades in this model due to the use of storage. Rather than having to be able to distribute peak loads from solar, requiring a larger connection, you can smooth out the supply and distribute an even amount throughout the day, using a smaller connection. The section "1.1.3 Bringing large savings on grid expansions" [1] has a good explanation. 1. https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/solar-electricity-every-hour-of-every-day-is-here-and-it-changes-everything/chapter-1-how-batteries-will-unlock-solars-true-po/ https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/solar-electricity-e...
    - idiotsecant 1y ago
      This is exactly wrong because transmission and distribution are different things. You can think of distribution as the 'last mile' infrastructure. It's not expensive in the way transmission is - individual services are relatively cheap. The reason it's expensive is that there are enormous amounts of it and municipal distribution systems can be wildly complex. Power flows in these systems are unidirectional. When you throw that assumption on its head you drastically change how these systems must be designed. A major change like that would be astronomically expensive. The only reason it kinda works now is that very few people do grid connected generation after the meter. Once that becomes more widespread it's time for a huge investment, on the order of what the transmission system needs, but it all has to be paid for by local utilities, very few of which can get the capital together to do major projects like that.
UltraSane 1y ago
What will people do at night?
- peppersghost93 1y ago
  overprovision for their needs during the day and utilize battery power at night.
  - UltraSane 1y ago
    Solar panels are cheap but batteries are very expensive.
    - peppersghost93 1y ago
      They can be depending on your needs. Lithium iron phosphate batteries are pretty cheap for their capacity. If you build your own power station with them you'd be surprised how far your money goes.
      - UltraSane 1y ago
        It is much more expensive that just buying electricity from the grid at night.
        scheeseman486 1y ago
        In Australia, if you have the space for rooftop solar, it's far cheaper in the long run to buy solar+battery. We did the math for our household and even if grid prices are stable (which they aren't, they're fast increasing) we're still going to make money back on the investment in less than 4 years. Granted this includes a government rebate for the battery, but overall the prices have plummeted. Any government that isn't pushing for renewables and energy storage at this point is actively working against it's citizens.
        UltraSane 1y ago
_trampeltier 1y ago
I think in most countrys, you already pay one bill for the grid and one for the used electric power.
- pfdietz 1y ago
  The bill you pay for the grid in such cases typically doesn't cover the fixed costs, and would have to be much higher if solar demand destruction becomes big.
ghc 1y ago
Commercial and industrial use already makes up a large portion of demand. While the model will change to cater less to residential needs, overall demand for stable, high voltage generation is not going to go down.
- jasonsb 1y ago
  Commercial properties often have enough roof area to meet most of their daytime demand on-site. And industrial consumption in Western countries has been flat or declining for years, so "stable, high-voltage generation" may face less demand than assumed.
- pfdietz 1y ago
  If long term storage (like Standard Thermal) comes into play, I could see industrial users decide to just decouple from the grid too (or, use the threat to do so as a means to drive down what they are charged.) We may see industrial users preposition themselves in locations with ample nearby PV potential. If I were building a factory in the US (or a data center) I would think twice before putting it in a higher population density area. We may also see local microgrids develop. This would still have distribution costs, but not transmission.
PunchyHamster 1y ago
if the same solar also had enough battery capacity, sure. But they do not, they still need to buy at out of solar peak and that just causes problems for both sides. I think grid should start moving into selling storage as a service. Just put a bunch of bulk storage at every transformer station and buy solar from consumers at solar peak, sell them back say 80% of it (or whatever margin is required to pay for it) off peak. That way utility no longer have to haul megawatts all the way from the power plant all the time, any peak can be hauled from the batteries and let the other types of power plant more time to spool up, and the grid is more resilient to outages (assuming you were lucky and battery bank local to you still had some charge
- toomuchtodo 1y ago
  LFP chemistries are approaching ~$50/kWh, and CATL's sodium chemistry is supposed to be ~$40/kWh (per CATL); soon it will be more expensive to ship the battery storage than the storage itself. "Watershed moment:" Big battery storage prices hit record low in China auction - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44504630 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44504630 - July 2025 (4 comments) IEA: The battery industry has entered a new phase - https://www.iea.org/commentaries/the-battery-industry-has-entered-a-new-phase https://www.iea.org/commentaries/the-battery-industry-has-en... - March 5th, 2025 Naxtra Battery Breakthrough & Dual-Power Architecture: CATL Pioneers the Multi-Power Era - https://www.catl.com/en/news/6401.html https://www.catl.com/en/news/6401.html - April 21st, 2025 China Already Makes as Many Batteries as the Entire World Wants - https://about.bnef.com/insights/clean-transport/china-already-makes-as-many-batteries-as-the-entire-world-wants/ https://about.bnef.com/insights/clean-transport/china-alread... - April 19th, 2024
  - kragen 1y ago
    Currently "Sodium Battery Cell" is priced at US$50–70/kWh on the Shanghai Metals Market, which gives every appearance of being a real thing: https://www.metal.com/en/markets/43 https://www.metal.com/en/markets/43. They list LFP batteries currently at US$38–52/kWh: https://www.metal.com/en/markets/42 https://www.metal.com/en/markets/42 I think you may be dramatically overestimating how much container shipping costs.
triceratops 1y ago
In most places in the developed world utility-scale solar is much cheaper to build than rooftop solar. And there's value in having a stable grid to fall back on. I think the demand destruction story is overrated.
- kragen 1y ago
  Balcony solar is even cheaper to build than utility-scale solar.
  - triceratops 1y ago
    It's limited to 800W in Germany and 1200W in Utah. It isn't about to replace utility-scale generation anytime soon.
    - rjdj377dhabsn 1y ago
      Those limits are just arbitrary regulations. It's easy to install 10x that on a residential roof.
      - triceratops 1y ago
        And we come back to my original point. Residential roof installation is the most expensive way to install solar power. Utility scale solar is easily haf the cost of residential.
        rstuart4133 1y ago
        > Utility scale solar is easily half the cost of residential. If it's only half, the problem it's not going to stop residential installs. By the time that utility power gets to them here in Australia it costs about 3 times as much, so they are going to install their rooftop systems anyway. I can't speak for elsewhere, but here in Australia residential installs tend to be over provisioned. A small'ish install is 5kW. That generates about 20kWh per day. Typical household consumption is 1/2 that. Newer builds like mine tend to have far more - upwards of 20kW of panels. That's to cater for charging EV's. The result is grid solar installs are getting hammered by roof top solar: https://reneweconomy.com.au/wind-and-solar-hit-record-share-of-main-grid-as-curtailment-underscores-need-for-more-storage/ https://reneweconomy.com.au/wind-and-solar-hit-record-share-...
testing22321 1y ago
> solar is increasingly threatening the electric utility business model The writing is on the wall that the electric utility business model is a dying business like the career of bus or truck driver. Some countries will take a while to realize due to head in the sand , tariffs and corruption.

ZeroConcerns 1y ago

Excellent results, even if the source article is a bit government-optimistic-press-releasy. The less-good news is that, even with abundant solar, you still need a functional grid (even more so than in traditional top-down energy distribution schemes) in order for everyone to take advantage of it, but this is a problem that lots of rich nations are working through right now, so affordable off-the-shelf solutions are bound to appear in the near future. And I wish Pakistan the best in taking advantage of those and/or their home-grown ingenuity!

NedF 1y ago
[dead]

abdullahkhalids 1y ago

I would encourage people to go look at satellite view of random "rich" neighbourhoods in Pakistan, and note how many solar panels there are on rooftops. Here is the first one I scrolled to in Lahore [1], and one in Karachi [2] Pakistan's grid prices tripled or more since the start of the Russia-Ukraine war, because the extremely mismanaged and poorly designed electricity system+economy could not handle the energy price shock. This spiraled into rich people just buying rooftop solar systems, which exacerbated the grid problems even more. [1] https://www.google.com/maps/@31.3611237,74.2493456,357m/data=!3m1!1e3?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI1MTEyMy4xIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D https://www.google.com/maps/@31.3611237,74.2493456,357m/data... [2] https://www.google.com/maps/@24.8014179,67.0460688,415m/data=!3m1!1e3?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI1MTEyMy4xIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D https://www.google.com/maps/@24.8014179,67.0460688,415m/data...

riku_iki 1y ago
> rich people just buying rooftop solar systems, which exacerbated the grid problems even more. how it exacerbated problems exactly?..
- saidinesh5 1y ago
  I'm guessing: fewer people buying from the power companies/grid => the fixed costs of these companies are pushed onto the poorer customers, who already couldn't afford much.
  - gus_massa 1y ago
    Don't they charge a minimum just for keeping the wires connected?
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
    - bee_rider 1y ago
      I think most places the service is priced under the assumption that usage is enough to pay for the grid… I’ve only ever rented though. Are connection fees something that homeworkers think about? Possibly we will have to see changes to account for this sort of stuff at a more granular level, as the grid becomes more dynamic. But, that’s a future we should be actively looking to design for, as the energy supply mix is going to change whatever anybody thinks about that. Can’t beat energy falling from the sky, on price…

bitxbitxbitcoin 1y ago

How many years before this happens in parts of the United States?

hamdingers 1y ago
In California, grid-tied rooftop solar was putting energy prices into the negative so often that they reconfigured the NEM to discourage export back to the grid and encourage battery storage.
- Animats 1y ago
  It seems to have worked, too.[1] Batteries are the invisible change in the power business. They don't take up much land area. They're not visible to the public. Just being able to charge batteries during low power cost periods changes the whole economics of the industry. Whether battery banks should be allowed to sell back to the grid is a tough question. Texas says no.[2] It's potentially "dispatchable" power, but only until the battery runs down. [1] https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2025-10-17/california-made-it-through-another-summer-without-a-flex-alert https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2025-10-17/califor... [2] https://www.ercot.com/mktrules/keypriorities/bes/ktc8 https://www.ercot.com/mktrules/keypriorities/bes/ktc8
- _whiteCaps_ 1y ago
  And it's messing with our utilities in BC because we were buying the daytime oversupply in California and selling the hydro generated power back at night. They've had to adjust plans as battery storage comes online.
newsclues 1y ago
Already does in some cases but the utility companies have fought back and they can buy laws and regulations to slow down the process and protect profits.
jillesvangurp 1y ago
Up to the locals in the US. Depends what their pain threshold is for falling behind and looking a bit behind the times. I think FOMO is going to be a big driver in a few years. This is not a left vs right topic. It's a money topic. And my impression of the US is that they love getting stuff on the cheap. Solar energy should be such a thing and it's getting painfully obvious that the US is paying a steep price where the rest of the world isn't. If I'm reading the situation correct, that is already annoying the hell out of a lot of traditionally republican leading states and not because they are tree-huggers. The right question to ask is whether places like Mexico are going to politely wait for the US to get its act together or whether they'll just go ahead and start electrifying their country and industry and reducing their cost levels. The current isolationist policy works both ways. Very sunny place, Mexico. Great place for solar and batteries. And once you have those, Chines EVs produced locally might work very well. And they can export those further south.

neebz 1y ago

We switched to solar in 2021 expecting a 3.5-year payback. Electricity prices rose so fast that we recovered the investment in under two years. Also the national grid is notorious for it's frequent blackouts (load-shedding) since the early ’90s. Solar allowed us to have uninterrupted supply in the mornings and longer backups during night.

toomuchtodo 1y ago
Rough location (if you feel comfortable sharing ground truth)?
- tibbydudeza 1y ago
  South Africa - load shedding is a curse word here :).
  - toomuchtodo 1y ago
    Great to hear about the fast payback period, wishing you reliable power :)
    - kragen 1y ago
      tibbydudeza didn't post about a fast payback period. Maybe neebz is his wife?
      - toomuchtodo 1y ago
        Broadly speaking, payback period in South Africa is very fast due to similar grid economics to Pakistan.
        kragen 1y ago
        But neebz may not be in Pakistan either. Oh, they are: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43622584 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43622584

woodpanel 1y ago

Imagine being the CCP and you’ve managed to turn your industrial capacity into the world‘s single largest renewable energy source. PV‘s Saudi-Arabia.

infinet 1y ago
There were similar comments on HN. The argument goes that since it takes energy to produce PV panels and wind turbines, China effectively is an energy exporting country. What’s even better is some of the PV and turbines are produced with renewable energy. And unlike oil and gas, which are used only once, PV panels and wind turbines generate power for many years.
- woodpanel 1y ago
  The argument also has a geopolitical component: PV panels wear down, and by the time yours have too, the energy infrastructure around you will have shifted towards PVs. I.e. your (country’s) energy will be dependent on China. That is another aspect of “the Saudia-Arabia of PVs”
torginus 1y ago
Yeah but I think advanced economies can figure out to produce the same things if there's a strategic need - and absorb the cost - you also can't just close the pipes and starve everybody, so China doesn't really have that much political leverage in how you use it. There's also huge internal competition inside China between companies, so they have a harder time fixing prices.
- woodpanel 1y ago
  > if there's a strategic need Nope. A defining mechanism in energy markets is the cost to extract it. There's a reason Saudi Arabia dominates oil, if you can extract it with a shovel. And directly counter to your point, there's a reason, say, Germany can't just kick start a shell gas/oil industry even if it does have the deposits underneath. > harder time fixing prices Eh, it's not like the CCP didn't do heavy handed market interventions before, right? I mean some would even argue "fixing prices" is already embedded with the ruling party's name. > you also can't just close the pipes and starve everybody, What is this even suppose to mean? Of course you can. That is the whole point of having geopolitical leverage.

unglaublich 1y ago

Great, you can easily switch them off or even better, store heat under ground for the winter.

kragen 1y ago
Lahore doesn't really have a winter as such: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lahore#Climate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lahore#Climate Air conditioning is, however, life-changing. Thermal energy storage can potentially power air conditioning, but it isn't a very well developed technology.

SackSolStr 1y ago

The payback periods get me confused. A relative set up solar a year ago in one of the sunniest places in Europe, the Canaries, cost €7,000 for 6KW. He just ran the math on it and found out that the payback period is 15 years. The only way to make it profitable is government subsidies. How can it be profitable to install solar in continental Europe where taxes and labor costs are much higher while having much less sun? Why are we using taxpayers' money to subsidize such negative NPV projects?

kragen 1y ago
Your comment appears to be unrelated to Pakistan and, due to the confusion of units, has been reduced to nonsense. Moreover, your implied calculations don't work out. If we assume that you meant €7000 for 6 kilowatts peak (not 6 kelvin wurtzite henries or 6 kilowatt hours, neither of which is sensible) the probable answer is that your relative paid 25× the current market price for their solar panels and therefore got 25× the payback time. However, if we assume €0.12/kWh and a 20% capacity factor, 6 kilowatts peak would average 1.2 kilowatts, which is 10520 kWh per year, which works out to €1260 per year, which would be a payback time of 6 years, not 15 years. Moreover, another way of saying that the payback time on a durable investment is 15 years is that the investment returns 6.7% per year. That would be a highly profitable investment, even without government subsidies.
- testing22321 1y ago
  > You seem to have created this account just to troll I find it fascinating that someone is willing to pay for accounts to swing opinions or seed FUD on a topics like solar panels. It’s happening here, it’s clearly happening everywhere on every topic.
  - kragen 1y ago
    HN accounts don't require payment.
    - testing22321 1y ago

mannanj 1y ago

Unpopular opinion: this is so contentious because it’s more about control.

markdown 1y ago
Nah, it's about power (heh!). Politicians need votes to remain in power. They lose votes if electricity is expensive. Lower demand and therefore low revenue in the face of fixed grid maintenance costs mean prices have to rise. Higher costs to voters terrifies politicians.
- mannanj 1y ago
  The politicians do get paid by captured corporate interests though. And some of those are energy generation interests. Until solar companies captured some of that interest, solar subsidies and cost remained high and unsupported by regulatory interests - when capture is there regulatory interest support the alternative power. Sometimes these captured interests can even block and harm progress that's better for society. I'm sure I don't have to break this down for you further. Surely you can identify examples.
  - markdown 1y ago
    Fair point
spacebanana7 1y ago
Homeowners having the ability to produce their own energy means they get to opt out of capitalist markets and socialist sharing systems. It’s similar to how the British empire hated subsistence farming, and always wanted colonial subjects to be economically interacting with either trading companies or the state apparatus.
- chickenbig 1y ago
  > Homeowners having the ability to produce their own energy means they get to opt out of capitalist markets and socialist sharing systems. All well and good, provided the homeowner opts out of the system. Part of the problem comes when the grid connection is not severed. Using it as a backup option (at the same time as other people, for when the weather is bad) or demanding the grid takes their excess production are counter-productive to the system as a whole.

darkteflon 1y ago

> The south Asian nation is planning to introduce new tariffs for large solar users, as well as changes to fee structures to ensure businesses with panels share equally in the costs of grid upkeep, she said. Of course. We wouldn’t want the benefit of a public good to accrue to the public now, would we.

torginus 1y ago

I feel like this is disingenuous - I have solar, and peak power exceeds demand by a sizeable margin, but there are week long stretches with basically no solar. Given how cheap panels, are, it makes a ton of sense to oversize your system, and charge your batteries in the couple hour stretches where the sun does happen to shine.