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‘Energy independence feels practical’: Europeans building mini solar farms

354 points by vrganj 7mo ago

theshrike79 7mo ago
Distributed energy production / storage is the key for resiliency in the future. Every solar farm doesn't need to be China Size - it doesn't even need to be a "farm", just put them on roofs. And don't let perfect be the enemy of good. Yes there are times when solar doesn't produce energy, but there are also times where it OVERproduces.
- friendzis 7mo ago
  > And don't let perfect be the enemy of good. Yes there are times when solar doesn't produce energy, but there are also times where it OVERproduces. When solar OVERproduces you have to literally pay someone to consume that energy, most probably wind farms, which could be producing energy instead. So you pay actually twice. When the solar underproduces, you need to bring in alternative sources, but those now have to cover all their fixed costs and generate return on investment over this limited timeframe, which means the actual backup prices hit stratospheric levels. What's the actual cost of solar with actual net-billing?
  - raverbashing 7mo ago
    "If you find dollar bills on the ground you need to pay someone to collect it as litter" Charge batteries, do electrolysis, or a multitude of other uses (I know some companies do that already)
    - conorcleary 7mo ago
      Used 240w modules built in 2010-2012 are worth $60-100 CAD at the moment in small quantities. There will be hundreds of thousands hitting the market (as long as they didn't hit the ground with careless removals) in ~2030+ as microFIT contracts in Ontario expire. There is no clear path to switching these arrays to Net Metering, as of yet. Prepare for all sorts of unrecycled solar panels and potential loss of renewable capacity that is already installed.
      - pjc50 7mo ago
        Could you elaborate on this? Why would people remove a working solar system?
        jandrese 7mo ago
        Buildings get torn down. Roof needs a replacement and the owner doesn't feel like it is worthwhile to redo the solar install for panels that only have 5 years of warranty left, or maybe they want to replace them with higher power models with a fresh warranty. There are any number of reasons why someone might need to offload otherwise functional solar panels.
        mrguyorama 7mo ago
        Currently used solar panels are a hot commodity, with many groups selling them by the pallet, because 10 year old solar panels are still efficient enough to easily pay for themselves. Very few installations will care about specifically how many panels they want, they just want a nameplate output per dollar figure. Old inverters might not have a second life though.
        conorcleary 7mo ago
        All of these things should be given second lives, refurbished, firmware upgrades, recycled, etc.
        conorcleary 7mo ago
        In Ontario, there is a feed-in-tariff program for payment in exchange for renewable/green energy generation direct-to-grid. This program has contracts which expire. The microFIT program (under 10kW/hr solar capacity) has a bulk of contracts expire around the same short period of time. There is not-yet a fully funded or thought-through method for extending contracts or providing better-than-dismantle options to contract owners that is/are accessible.
      - msandford 7mo ago
        Net metering is really, really smart when the installed base is small relative to the fossil fuel power plant capacity. But it doesn't scale forever. Once it gets up towards 20-40% of the fossil fuel capacity, it goes from an asset to a liability. Suppose I have a 100MW gas turbine. And suppose there's 1MW of solar installed in my generation network. I don't really care if I sell 80MW at noon and 90MW around dinner time and 50MW through the night, or if instead it's 79MW at noon and 91MW at dinner and 51MW at night. The gas costs about the same irrespective of when I burn it so a bit of a fuel shift doesn't really matter. But take that 1MW and turn it into 20MW and suddenly we go from 80MW at noon to 60MW at noon, 90MW at dinner to 110MW at dinner and uh oh. You see the problem? Whatever losses I endured at noon I don't get to make up for at dinner because my plant only goes up to 100MW and now we're not just shifting when we burn how much fuel, we're literally having to shift the power generation to a different plant. Is this example precisely accurate? Absolutely not. But it helps you get a feel for the problem of net metering at scale. The grid can act as a battery for a few % of total generation, but by the time you hit some number, maybe 20% maybe 40% net metering turns from a cool math trick to a real cost on the grid.
    - theshrike79 7mo ago
      This is literally the only sane usage for hydrogen outside of industrial uses, when you have a massive excess of renewables, use it to turn water into pressurised hydrogen. And when the prices go up, you run that through a grid scale fuel cell and feed it back to the network.
      - hvb2 7mo ago
        Storing hydrogen is no small feat. Especially for long duration
        raverbashing 7mo ago
        Might be cheaper than batteries, and if you can store it for 24h to compensate day/night cycles you're still making money
  - RealityVoid 7mo ago
    > When solar OVERproduces you have to literally pay someone to consume that energy, most probably wind farms, which could be producing energy instead. You don't have to do this with solar, you can just disconnect the panel and have it go a bit hotter. For producers that have a long-ish bringup time, yes, you might need to do this at time.
    - pjc50 7mo ago
      The situation is slightly complicated by dispatch order, and domestic solar isn't usually dispatchable at all. Grid-scale farms are. Wind farms don't consume energy, but there is a real issue with how often they have to be "curtailed" (paid to turn off). That is to a great extent due to issues with grid connectivity between Scotland and the rest of the UK, which are (slowly) being worked on.
      - RealityVoid 7mo ago
        My understanding is that all inverters sold at this moment, in the EU, need to have demand response and grid curtailment mechanisms by law.
      - leonidasrup 7mo ago
        Wind curtailment is the deliberate reduction of electricity output from wind turbines, despite their capability to generate power under existing wind conditions. This practice is typically implemented by grid operators to maintain the stability of the electrical grid or to address specific operational constraints. https://www.enlitia.com/resources-blog-post/what-is-wind-curtailment https://www.enlitia.com/resources-blog-post/what-is-wind-cur... "paid to turn off" Wind energy providers in some countries are compensated for curtailment, this a form of subsidy for renewables. It can be payed directly by the goverment, or it is added to the price of electricity for consumer. https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/renewable-curtailment-compensation-costs-germany-decrease-22-2025 https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/renewable-curtailment-c...
  - 1970-01-01 7mo ago
    >you have to literally pay someone to consume that energy, Here's the thing. That's a rule and not a technical problem. Absolutely no reason to do this other than rules and regulations.
    - ZeroGravitas 7mo ago
      Yes, but even more so, it's a good sensible rule! People don't even bother to argue why it's bad, they've just seen so many headlines telling them it's bad they don't question it.
      - 1970-01-01 7mo ago
        I'll question it. Why does it exist? Why can't we just shut off the panels or dump excess energy into a metal rod? Why do we need to have a buyer at all?
        friendzis 7mo ago
        Because otherwise the incentive structures for solar-as-baseload, sweeping the actual cost on the consumers, collapse. The system is built on putting equality sign between oversubscribed solar and coal/gas backups during times of undersubscription.
        ZeroGravitas 7mo ago
        It's not a buyer, people are paid to take the energy that would otherwise be wasted. And when energy use is shifted it means you need to generate less later, saving money. The people who pay that cost to the people using the energy are people running energy generators that suffer wear and tear when they ramp down. Or sometimes it's a subsidy for the use of clean energy being passed on to ensure the clean energy is actually used, not wasted. All upside, no problems at all.
        synotna 7mo ago
        > are people running energy generators In Germany's case it's the tax payer, thanks to extremely generous subsidies that are excluded from state aid regulation
  - toomuchtodo 7mo ago
    Inverters can be configured with export limits to limit, or entirely halt, energy exports based on market or grid signals. Term of art is "curtailment." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtailment_(electricity) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtailment_(electricity)
  - mr_mitm 7mo ago
    > When solar OVERproduces you have to literally pay someone to consume that energy, Can't we just throttle the solar panel? In a worst case, you just pull the plug. It's not like a nuclear power plant which needs to be shut down carefully, or am I misunderstanding something?
    - tacet 7mo ago
      You can limit amount you feed back into network. Not sure how is situation with home installations, factory i work for runs 150kw plant for our own consumption and don't bother with selling, but i know that we can set up how much we want/are allowed to feed back.
      - kevin_thibedeau 7mo ago
        You don't have to use net metering in residential either. Grid-supported hybrid inverters that won't export power can be installed. Bonus is that they run when the grid is down. It's effectively like having an automatic transfer switch where the grid is the backup generator when your batteries are drained. The profit margin for the pro installers is reduced so they don't promote them, but it is a viable route to save money and avoid hassles with the power company on a self-install.
    - tapoxi 7mo ago
      Yes that's exactly how it works, it's called curtailment.
  - pstuart 7mo ago
    When there's an OVERproduction of energy, that really means there's an UNDER-availability of storage. Battery tech continues it's march towards cheaper prices, and alternatives such as thermal storage are making inroads as well. It borders on criminal to have abundant energy production be disservice.
    - ElevenLathe 7mo ago
      I'm no energy markets analyst, so take this with a grain of salt, but I think the next major breakthrough for solar (not the slow, inevitable rollout we're seeing now) will be when somebody figures out an economical way export this periodic overproduction. There is basically never a time when humanity as a whole has an overproduction of free energy, but at present we also don't have a way to make money turning this surplus into a tradable product (like oil, coal, LNG, etc.) because all the electric-powered processes for making such products (ammonia, methane, primary aluminum production, etc) require big hunks of capital equipment that lose money unless they're operated more or less continuously. Battery, thermal, pumped hydro, etc. help here, in that enough of it can theoretically turn off-and-on solar/wind power into a continuous load to power your aluminum smelter or whatever. Even better though, would be a cheap electrically operated methane plant that you could afford to run intermittently. This, plus a peaker natgas generating plant make, effectively, a battery of infinite size, or you can sell it to any of the many eager buyers of natgas. Building a small, prefab, plant like this, if possible, would seem to be mainly a problem of scale, and therefore it seems likely that China will get to it pretty soon.
  - Rebelgecko 7mo ago
    Cheap home solar installations usually have a disconnect- do they not use those in larger scale installs? I'm also surprised they aren't using batteries to capture overproduction. They've been clutch in the US, and we're not exactly pushing the envelope of green energy nowadays
  - horsawlarway 7mo ago
    Home installations just cut it off. In both of these cases. I did my own battery backed installation. When I'm underproducing I can shed load (I turn off my AC - almost always that's enough, and it's automated by relay). When I'm overproducing (ex - my battery is full and my load is still not enough to consume input) I just don't let the panels generate more current than I can consume. Managing grid scale power is different concern, and not particularly relevant to small household generation. Especially not relevant in the 800W category for "balcony solar" (which is much smaller than what I'm working with). Solar is fucking coming, whether you continue to shove head into the ground or not. It's just way more affordable. Getting easily more affordable as batteries continue to improve. I honestly doubt I'll still be connected to a local utility grid for electric 10 years from now, and I live in a region of the US that has considerably cheaper grid power than most areas.
    - theshrike79 7mo ago
      My current EV has a 38kW battery. When it's too worn out for car use (SoH around 60-70%), it's still perfectly enough to run _everything_ in my house for multiple days - except for the electric sauna, and I'm smart enough to turn it on if there are production issues :D There's a reason why EV's will never be as cheap as the cheapest ICE shitbox. Just the bare metals in the battery are worth thousands when recycled, even more if the battery is still viable.
      - sl-1 7mo ago
        If you ever are looking to implement that EV battery as house backup, this repo might be useful: https://github.com/dalathegreat/Battery-Emulator https://github.com/dalathegreat/Battery-Emulator I did mine with it and old leaf 24kwh battery (~60k km). After all the safety margins I get ~15 kwh out of the battery.
        tadfisher 7mo ago
        Sorry, the consequences are too dire for me to delegate household battery control to a vibe-coded project. I'm curious what your home insurance provider has to say about your installation.
  - MagicMoonlight 7mo ago
    No you don’t, you could just ground it. Paying them is a choice.
  - teamonkey 7mo ago
    This is not how curtailment works. Curtailment is when an energy company has successfully bid on delivering electricity for the next block of time (an hour, for example) but it can’t provide that agreed amount of power because it would overload the grid. There are various reasons why that would happen: faults and unexpected lack of demand, for example. In that case the company is paid for the energy it was contracted to deliver, only for that period of time, even though it did not provide power. It is wrong to say that overproducers HAVE to be paid. They don’t. They only have to be paid if there was an agreement to buy that power but for whatever reason the grid can’t take it. Normally if there is a generation surplus, the cheapest companies will win the bid to provide power and the others will simply not be paid.
    - bluGill 7mo ago
      The utility SHOULD ensure there is enough power for the worst case. Which is why they will sometimes pay someone to not generate power.
  - theshrike79 7mo ago
    Here in Finland electricity prices can drop to under 1c/kWh due to renewables, basically every time it's sunny and/or windy electricity is practically free (the transfer costs are static though). A few times the price has actually been negative, people got paid for using electricity due to overproduction =)
    - leonidasrup 7mo ago
      In Finland you produce more electricity from nuclear energy, than from hydropower, wind, or solar. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-prod-source-stacked.png?country=FIN&imWidth=1700 https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-prod-source-s... The amounts for year 2025: Nuclear 32 TWh, Wind 22 TWh, Hydro 12 TWh, Solar 1TWh.
      - daveguy 7mo ago
        And more from hydropower, wind, and solar, than from nuclear.
        leonidasrup 7mo ago
        Contribution of solar in Finland is really insignificant.
  - mbgerring 7mo ago
    There will be connected batteries in every home solving this problem faster than the fossil fuel lobby can come up with a new talking point about why it’ll never work.
    - laurencerowe 7mo ago
      I'm not convinced we'll ever see mass deployments of batteries to homes, not because of the fossil fuel lobby but because of the economies of scale from installing grid sized batteries at strategic points in the transmission network. In California grid scale batteries have capital costs of around $125/kWh to $155/kWh while a home battery might be 20x that including installation.
      - mbgerring 7mo ago
        It’s already happening as I write this. An enormous amount of capital and labor are already deployed to find ways to get batteries into people’s homes, and growth is accelerating.
      - Panzer04 7mo ago
        That's because home battery providers aren't competing on price yet. The market is still small, the risks are high and they need to figure things out. Once the early adopters run out they will have to start competing on price to make sales. There's no justification for a home battery when they charge 10k for 10kwh as they do now - only early adopters and government subsidies getting it over the line. IMO home batteries should be a relatively easy install in principle, it's just still in that early expensive phase.
- te_chris 7mo ago
  Wild that you're getting downvoted for saying something so obvious. Weird.
  - izacus 7mo ago
    That's the same kind of problem solving that thought making self driving Teslas is the solution for infrastructure problems.
    - forgetfreeman 7mo ago
      I'm fairly certain securing one's household's access to energy independent of rate increases triggered by a combination of aging infrastructure and data center power demand doesn't have a lot in common with tech bros attempts at reinventing trains badly from first principles but I'm open to hear the argument. Care to unpack that?
      - username135 7mo ago
        Im eager to hear rhis one... _grabbing popcorn_
      - izacus 7mo ago
        Easily: it's techbros again forgetting that an expensive asset only wealthy can afford isn't a solution to a mass scale infrastructure problem. And again, just like with Tesla bros, nothing about household solar is independent and requires infrastructure to support it - which, just like with trains, isn't going to get required investment because you're dreaming about individual investment. Like you say, I want trains - proper infrastructure supported renewables, not Teslas - home individual infra only affordable by wealthy individuals at the cost of shared infrastructure while lowering resilience because it still uses shared infrastructure.
  - 9wzYQbTYsAIc 7mo ago
    Politics of solar, at work
  - mbgerring 7mo ago
- PowerElectronix 7mo ago
  I'm every day more convinced that the only reasonable future of energy production is distributed solar and storage with microgrids at the neighbourhood level or so. Anything bigger in scale is prone to being shittified to the limit by public entities.
  - vkou 7mo ago
    I can tell you've never dealt with an HOA or Strata before. Neighbourhood-level organizations of busybodies are way ahead of everyone else on winning the race to shittification. Putting them in charge of your electricity won't be all sunshine and rainbows.
    - fc417fc802 7mo ago
      I'd rather the county utility manage such a neighborhood level grid; I don't trust my neighbors over the long term to consistently make good decisions regarding such technical matters. But then that's sort of what the major grid operators already do with smaller localized circuits. It's just that it was all built multiple decades ago with centralized unidirectional distribution in mind.
      - PaulDavisThe1st 7mo ago
        > the county utility the what now?
        fc417fc802 7mo ago
        Do you not have a utility that covers one or a few counties where you live? Here it's some sort of strange public-private partnership scheme with private investment, strictly capped profits, and a few publicly elected officials at the top. I've also lived in places where the local government owned and managed the entire grid themselves, including directly employing the workers. I've also lived in places where the operation was entirely privatized (IIRC there was some sort of rate cap and a broad SLA in exchange for being granted the natural monopoly).
- hapticmonkey 7mo ago
  Rooftop solar is incredibly popular here in Australia. I think it’s something like 33% of houses have it. We also have a great climate for it. I have solar on my house and am seeing around 50% self sufficiency overall. Of course with this much saturation, the rate you get paid for feeding back to the grid is quickly dropping to zero. So self use is the game now. The problem is now shifting to home batteries and storage. Because peak power household use times are in the evening when the sun is not shining.
  - KennyBlanken 7mo ago
    > We also have a great climate for it. Back when solar was much, much more expensive this sort of thing mattered. Now the panels have plunged in price so much, you just deploy more panels (cost of install and other central stuff is the same) and/or accept the longer payback period. Cold climates do better than one might expect because the colder a solar panel is, the better it works.
    - usuryofnicks 7mo ago
      >now the panels have plunged in price so much, you just deploy more panels It's not really, the sun doesen't rise above the horizon for over a month where I live. quadrupling zero output is still zero. The country has massive renewable so by the time solar would generate something, electricity is already super cheap
      - nutjob2 7mo ago
        You're clearly an outlier, 99% of installs will not have that problem.
        usuryofnicks 7mo ago
        The issue persists across the nordic countries, I argue that climate matters a lot to the type of power you're looking to generate.
  - 7mo ago
- push0ret 7mo ago
  If we just hadn't centralized control of the inverters to a few (chinese) companies... Great read on the risks to our power infrastructure from remote controlled solar inverters: https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/the-gigantic-unregulated-power-plants-in-the-cloud/ https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/the-gigantic-unregulated-p...
derelicta 7mo ago
A shame local companies where I am from have year long backlogs.
- pjc50 7mo ago
  The "balcony solar" system is going to be available in Lidl for no-approval self-install. Limited to 800W.
  - jandrese 7mo ago
    Depends on your locality. The Fossil fuel industry is lobbying hard against this and is successful in some places.
cjrp 7mo ago
The UK previously didn't allow small plug in solar panels (the kind that you just plug in to a mains socket) due to, I believe, safety reasons. This has changed within the last few days https://energysavingtrust.org.uk/solar-roadmap/ https://energysavingtrust.org.uk/solar-roadmap/
- mytailorisrich 7mo ago
  It hasn't changed... yet. The media noise is because the government has announced that they were reviewing current rules with the aim of allowing "balcony solar" by the end of the year.
- lazyasciiart 7mo ago
  I believe it’s only legal in Utah so far in the US: they legislated it last year, and apparently half the country is expected to pass a copy-paste version in their next sessions
  - TYPE_FASTER 7mo ago
    Current state by state status (not my site): https://pluginsolarusa.com https://pluginsolarusa.com
- t0mas88 7mo ago
  There is a real safety issue with plug-in solar panels and plug-in batteries. Things go wrong if other loads are on the same circuit, which is almost unavoidable with a plug-in system. Consider a circuit in a home, designed to carry 16A like a common EU/UK circuit, protected by a 16A breaker. Then plug in solar or a battery that delivers just a small 10A. Now in case some other thing on that circuit draws 26A, the breaker doesn't stop it and the circuit is overloaded. If that same solar was installed as a fixed setup on its own circuit with no other loads on it, it would be safe and protected by the 16A breaker in the switchboard. It's the combination with other loads that causes issues.
  - jamescrowley 7mo ago
    My understanding is that is why they are limiting to 800w (~4A) at least in the UK's BS 7671 Amendment, which they consider well within the designed safety margins.
metalman 7mo ago
to answer the first question in the article "Many consumers want to know how long it will take them to make back the upfront costs of solar" my answer is that the payback is imediate, right from the first moment watching as energy is generated out of thin air, and the sudden relief from getting off the energy angst missery-go-round, and the sheer borring inertness of solar pv as it does the thing with zero detectable effort, is gratifying and relaxing in a way that money never gives. I will add that solar pv is increadably robust, and damage tollerant as well, you can drive a claw hammer through a panel, and while it does not improve the performance, the degradation is actualy not that much, and it will continue to function for years
- 9wzYQbTYsAIc 7mo ago
  The mindset shift towards “how many hours of computer usage did that one panel enable” is like the mindset shift from learning calculus, in some ways. Not quite a paradigm shift, but you gain a new appreciation for conservation of use when it’s a difference between choice of $/kW/hr and “wow, the panel powered that for most of the day”. At the same time, many people will just use a solar calculator or watch or yard lights etc, oblivious to it all. Show people a solar powered laptop, a solar powered phone, or a solar powered tablet, then they will be impressed. Remember the craze about solar powered car competitions? permacompute + solar would make for quite the $100 laptop competition.
- zowie_howie 7mo ago
  Is it immediate? Sure, there is satisfaction that you are using 'free' electricity. But it does have an upfront cost. I calculated that it would take over 11 years to recoup the investment based on our current usage. Given we already get cheap night-time rates to charge the car and run appliances, it is hard to justify. Like many UK houses, we have gas central heating too. I guess if we had a battery too (more investment) then we could switch to using electric oil-filled radiators, though they would not heat the whole house. And we could install a hot water tank. I guess for new builds there is a real opportunity, but for an existing household I'm struggling to see how it works - and I want it to!
  - 7mo ago
dust42 7mo ago
I once read an article that in Berlin the sewage system is flushed with fresh water because too many people have installed water saving toilet flushers. So plenty of people bought these water savers and now the price of water has gone up because the water that is directly flushed needs to be paid too. The 'balcony power stations' are the same thing. They get subsidised, and you even get a fixed kWh price when pushing into the grid. The problem is that in the end it will become more expensive for everybody because at times you have a surplus driving the whole sale electricity prices into the negative while still paying fixed prices for injection into the grid. To make this economically viable, you have to have everyone paying spot prices. Everything else is just green ideology driven inefficiency. Just to make it clear, I think renewables are an important option for the future. But to make them a viable option of the electricity energy mix, supply and demand, storage and grid capacity need to be taken into account. Last not least, there is plenty of low hanging fruit to drive CO2 emissions down: drive up the truck tolls. Currently you have potatoes farmed in Germany, driven to Poland to get washed, transported to Italy to be converted to french fries and transferred back to Germany into the super markets. Same goes for home office, during Covid it was possible for many workers to continue with their work. Does an accountant need to drive to an office every day? Nope. How many business trips could be replaced by a video call? If the CO2 emissions problem is to be solved rather sooner than later, the money has to be spend efficiently as there isn't enough of it.
- watwut 7mo ago
  > I once read an article that in Berlin the sewage system is flushed with fresh water because too many people have installed water saving toilet flushers. So plenty of people bought these water savers and now the price of water has gone up because the water that is directly flushed needs to be paid too. What is this supposed to mean? You flush less water, therefore water price is more expensive, because flushed water needs to be paid too?
  - myrmidon 7mo ago
    Presumably that the water bill (for tap water) was priced to cover both tap water provisioning and sewage works. But people using (free) rainwater to flush toilets ruined the pricing model, making the tap water price go up. I honestly don't see the problem, it's probably still worth it (because society still needs to provide less tap water and saves there).
pjc50 7mo ago
Fairly boilerplate article, but the bit that is news is the UK balcony solar permitting. Better longread: https://solarenergyconcepts.co.uk/post/plug-in-solar-uk/ https://solarenergyconcepts.co.uk/post/plug-in-solar-uk/ Government press release with a long list of pull quotes: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/government-to-make-plug-in-solar-available-within-months https://www.gov.uk/government/news/government-to-make-plug-i... (I note that in the alternate universe where Ed Miliband became PM because he didn't eat a bacon sandwich, we could have had this a decade ago. It is embarrassing to be beaten on environmentalist regulatory efficiency by Germany)
- mytailorisrich 7mo ago
  > I note that in the alternate universe where Ed Miliband became PM because he didn't eat a bacon sandwich, we could have had this a decade ago I read what is happening in exactly the opposite way. To me it shows that Milliand and the government at large do very little with no strategic thinking and no plan (same as the guys before in fairness but this government was supposed to be soo different...) and, in this case, is only reacting in a panic after almost 2 years in office to the pressure of "doing something" because of the Iran war, while also being told (slight mitigating circumstances for Milliband) that it mustn't cost anything. I always picture scenes from The Thick of It/ In the Loop when I imagine how they come up with 'ideas'.
  - teamonkey 7mo ago
    These policies were in their manifesto, they just take some time to enact, even with a majority government.
    - hdgvhicv 7mo ago
      Democracy fails to work because people expect things to happen overnight.
  - adjejmxbdjdn 7mo ago
    I find it fascinating how this comment comes up with a whole theory of what happened, along with implications about how the government, and Ed Miliband in particular, think and act, and it’s based entirely on just dreaming up what the facts are, when in reality the facts can be looked up trivially, including the fact that this was in the manifesto, or other facts that are known by anyone who has any knowledge about how govt (especially the UK govt that is designed to be conservative and slow moving) works. Like you just invented a story and made massive implications based on the invented story, with absolutely no hesitation. And you’re probably in at least the 50th percentile of intelligence. This is why we’re screwed.
aaron695 7mo ago
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misja111 7mo ago
Can anybody explain how these plug-in solar panels work? I am suprised that it's possible to just plug them in to your wall socket. For instance, isn't it complicated to have their output be in perfect sync with the frequency that comes in via the electricity net? Because to me it seems that if they won't, you will have lower benefits or even a net minus after plugging it in.
- canpan 7mo ago
  Not a specialist, just from what I heard: There are two things that make it work. First they are not really "independent" like the title says. They sync with the grid frequency. If the grid is down they shut off for safety. The other reason it works is that the grid power inside the home is just what you get as incoming power 〜230V. For example, I think in the US you get 240V or so delivered to your house, but 120V from the plug.
- mytailorisrich 7mo ago
  My understanding is that plug-in solar inverters do sense what is coming from the grid and phase-sync to it with a PLL, and also adjust voltage accordingly.
- pjc50 7mo ago
  > isn't it complicated to have their output be in perfect sync with the frequency Not especially, given that the inverter has a microprocessor in it. All it has to do is measure the phase of the existing grid. I don't have references for how it's actually done, but one obvious approach is simply to wait at each zero-crossing for a new half-cycle to cross a voltage threshold before turning on the output. This also implements the requirement to drop out if the grid goes away. It is probably also possible to measure during the "off" side of inverter output PWM, in the same way that variable frequency motor drivers work.
- myrmidon 7mo ago
  Typically, you have "dumb" panels connected to a mppt-controller/charger/inverter box which is connected to batteries and and electrical plug. This controller tunes voltage/current that is taken from the panels, optionally manages the attached battery and measures and feeds into the grid connection. Some systems are capable of running in isolation from grid (providing 230V AC on their own), but this is less common and often unnecessary.
ForHackernews 7mo ago
They are going to start selling solar panels at Lidl, a German-owned grocery store chain https://www.independent.co.uk/extras/indybest/house-garden/lidl-plug-in-solar-panels-b2945237.html https://www.independent.co.uk/extras/indybest/house-garden/l...
- gorbypark 7mo ago
  I saw a video from the UK government with a guy walking down the aisle of a Lidl talking about it! I quickly went to Lidl.es to look as these 800w balcony solar setups are legal here in Spain. Unfortunately they don’t sell the here! Maybe once the UK does it they’ll start.
- sambf 7mo ago
  It's been the case for several years in Lidl Germany and about a year in France
comrade1234 7mo ago
Related, there's also a boom in at-home battery installations. https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/climate-adaptation/switzerland-sees-battery-boom-as-homes-and-firms-store-more-solar-power/91150423 https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/climate-adaptation/switzerland-...
roysting 7mo ago
[flagged]
- pjc50 7mo ago
  Once you've bought the panel, unlike oil, that's it. The panel doesn't remember its national origin.
  - glimshe 7mo ago
    And panels last forever, ensuring that Europe won't have to deal with panel manufacturers ever again.
    - pjc50 7mo ago
      Warranty lives tend to be in the 20+ year range and potential lifespan even higher, so .. kinda? By coincidence I had my solar panels installed round about the time construction started on Hinkley Point C. They've already paid back their installation cost. I don't expect to replace them any time soon.
    - abenga 7mo ago
      You have 20 years after buying them to set up a local supply chain.
    - jandrese 7mo ago
      Historically panels are generally considered to be exhausted after 30 years of service, although even that means they're down to 80% of their original capacity. The more failure prone component is the inverter, by a huge margin.
  - throw0101c 7mo ago
    > Once you've bought the panel, unlike oil, that's it. The panel doesn't remember its national origin. Until there's a geopolitical event occurs and your supply chain gets cut off so any expansion, warranty, or replacement units cannot arrive, so you're stuck at the your current level of deployment (which may or may not be sufficient for your needs).
1970-01-01 7mo ago
"Suddenly" is horrific evidence that the government has no idea how to do long-term plans. Wait until you tell them you can run cars entirely on electricity from a solar farming. I'm sure they will ignore you until the price of diesel reaches four-digit territory. 1000p today? If only we didn't have to pay these incredible prices, what a miracle that would be..
- michaelteter 7mo ago
  It's not that government has no idea, it's that around the world, too many "leaders" are directly or strongly indirectly being enriched by the fossil fuel industry and their support industries. So politicians have a choice: do what's right for the people, or gain more power/money for themselves. Not every one of them chooses poorly, but enough do that it is difficult for real progress to be made.
  - mrguyorama 7mo ago
    Don't forget the truly staggering amount of voters who seem to be ideologically opposed to energy independence and self delusion to support those bought politicians. People earnestly and genuinely spout "But the birds" to wind installations. Why are they so intent on taking any possible excuse? Why do they need to have an opinion on something they know nothing about?
PowerElectronix 7mo ago
For european individuals, yes. For european nations, not in the least. They try to avoid independent consumers and producers of energy with all the regulations they can throw to them.
- leonidasrup 7mo ago
  [dead]
- myrmidon 7mo ago
  What nations are you talking about? E.g. in Germany, you can buy up to 7kW of panels, screw them onto your roof, wire them up with controller and battery and feed up to 800W into local grid, no one is gonna stop you or anything (only thing you need to do is register online with the grid operator if you have >2kW of panels). Legislation is, in fact, specifically made so people (i.e. landlord) actually can't easily stop you from doing this.
  - PowerElectronix 7mo ago
    The limits in power you can install, power you can inject to the grid and power you can just directly sell to neighbours through a micro-grid (zeeo, as it's illegal) tell quite the story.
    - LunaSea 7mo ago
      Micro grids are legal outside of Germany like in Belgium
  - interloxia 7mo ago
    Not quite as I understand it. At the low end, a couple of panels, yes. Beyond 960W of panels you will still need an an electrician rather than just the Schuko plug. It's not clear to me why, for example, 2kW of panels which are also limited to 800W need need the special plug. Hopefully I'm wrong! "With a standard Schuko plug, a maximum of 960 watts peak is allowed on the DC side, regulated by DIN VDE V 0126-95. With the Wieland connector, a special feed-in socket, the limit increases to 2,000 watts peak. Anyone wanting to operate a system with up to 7,000 watts of module power will need a permanently installed feed-in socket, thus entering a range that is technically possible but also more complex to implement." https://xpert.digital/en/balcony-solar-up-to-7-000-watts/ https://xpert.digital/en/balcony-solar-up-to-7-000-watts/
bokohut 7mo ago
Several recent HN posts about "time" and these correlate superbly in relation to the now obvious, to nearly all, global energy issues. Those proactive in a reactive world are often mocked and laughed at until as such passage of time is achieved for those only reactive to learn of the proactive's hindsight choices. For those in the United States aware of the 'behind the scenes' energy grid issues this insight reflects that prices will not be dropping for those electrons we all so depressively require daily just like our air and water. Energy grid decentralization is occurring with the actions of each individual and this article supports exactly that because no one alive can survive in our modern world without those electrons. "Necessity is the mother of invention" only now resonates for some while the futurists here that acted long ago acutely understand this growing trend.
- deleted 7mo ago
  [deleted]
- JumpCrisscross 7mo ago
  > Those proactive in a reactive world are often mocked and laughed at I'm going to start calling this a Jehovah's Witness complex. Where amplified, mostly imagined mockery of an incredibly dominant view, at least in group, is used as evidence of that view's righteousness and, by extension, rightness. > prices will not be dropping...Energy grid decentralization is occurring Cost versus resilience. A low-cost grid has lots of centralised production earning economies of scale. A highly-resilient system doesn't even need a grid, but it's going to be high cost. The correct answer is in between. Rural electrification should be done entirely decentralised. Meanwhile, trying to run a city (or even most industry) on de-centralised power is a recipe for ruin.
  - iugtmkbdfil834 7mo ago
    I think the answer may be more complex than that. I mean, I know you are not wrong. My boss only recently made a crack at how pointless solar energy is in the world of cheap gas. But it is not just cost. It is a level of control the contractor has over it. The solar systems, as currently pushed, are designed to be carefully monitored at all times; if you read the contract ( in IL anyway, but I presume it is common, because my mom had a similar experience ), I have to give the company a way in every time they desire to look at the panels. I can't just take it down, I need to hire them. I can't not sell the house without them ( and the buyer has to take over that contract ). I like solar tech, but the was it is designed is .. very American in the worst possible way. Yes, there seem to be better options popping up, but that is not where contractor money is at.. edit: Just in case, I got a quote in 2024 so obviously things may have changed on that front ( oddly, BBB may actually help with my particular set of complaints as the contractors will have to spread their bets somewhat ).
exabrial 7mo ago
EU had quite a bit of energy independence with its nuclear fleet at one point.
- pjc50 7mo ago
  The EU doesn't operate a nuclear fleet. Individual countries do, which is why you get opposite policy in France and Germany.
  - exabrial 7mo ago
    … face palm
- mrks_hy 7mo ago
  Sure, because there are quite a lot of natural Uranium sources on EU soil. Care to name them?
svilen_dobrev 7mo ago
i have been looking on this for an year+.. Here some current (online-shops) prices in Bulgaria.. say shop.chepakov.com / kameasolar.com - panel 490Wp 2sq.m chinese = ~80E - battery 5kwh Li chinese = ~1200E , non-chinese ~2000E+ - hybrid invertor+charger 4kw = ~800E chinese , ~2000E non-chinese - grid and regulations: -- day price: 0.15E/kWh, night: 0.09E/kWh -- no such thing as spot prices - summer or winter, peak sun or midnight, no difference -- can install anything AS LONG AS Nothing goes back into grid - and does not break other city/dwelling rules if one gets the electronics from Germany - geizheis.de - prices are half, coz a) no VAT, b) less middlemen . Even some smaller things come with free postage - from Germany to Bulgaria ; i did buy several smaller chargers/inverters (5kg), while local sellers here have no such ideas. But anyway. The (proven) efficiency one can get is about 50-60% per Wp (if there is sun). So.. it depends how much panels one can install as that is the monie-source, all else is monie-sink :/ Rough Napkin math, electronics with german prices, ~5 hours per day sun on average: 10 panels (1000E) + 2 batteries (2000E) + inverter (1000E) ~~4000E yielding on average 440kwh/month i.e. pay itself in 5-7+ years, mostly for summer loads. While 5 panels + 1 battery + inverter ~2500E -> ~220kwh/month -> 6-8+ years BUT only IF you can use that much electricity, otherwise it will take much longer to repay. And, batteries have to be replaced probably in 5-7 years, depending on depth-of-discharge. In most places here everything is electrical. i have convectors, boilers, stove, etc. No A/C. (all other electrics is maybe under 2kw in total). i use like day/night 400/250kWh in summer, 1400/800 kWh in winter. Some people have noisy heat pumps but doubt that changes things much. If it was a separate house - i would have done it long ago. But it's a block of flats. So... small Balcony stuff makes no sense (a very expensive UPS?), big balcony stuff (like putting those 5 panels as balcony's shade.. a) probably won't be allowed, b) only a short balcony faces south-ish. The roof of the building is empty - 250sq.m - and can hold about 75 panels - but dividing that into 15 (or 50+ in higher buildings).. is not pretty. a) Making one single farm and splitting the bill/output seems the only reasonable way but does not work without completely rewiring the building's grid input and measurings; not doable without bunch of permissions/certifications ; while b) making 15 separate 5-panels-packs - is not much economical, plus few kilometers of cables.. And c) If only few people want panels on roof, maybe some form of renting the roof space from others who don't want.. may work for a while but as any renting, may go crazy. So.. been sitting and thinking.. and recently seems only sitting..
Aboutplants 7mo ago
In the US, Distribution costs (the separate charge outside of your energy cost on your utility bill) are also incredibly high and going to keep rising as infrastructure costs mount. In my area, my distribution costs is actually more than my energy cost so the only way I ever think about solar is if I can decouple from the grid completely and get rid of those distribution costs. Got a long lo no ways to go
- BLKNSLVR 7mo ago
  There's talk about this in Australia too, to keep the power companies viable or to maintain their profit margins I'm not sure but I know to which option my opinion leans. It's a worse deal for people who have spent the capital to reduce their ongoing expenses, and it's a worse deal for people who have very low electricity usage (likely poorer people and those who are naturally frugal). It's possibly a better deal for heavy electricity users, and I'm not sure that's who should be rewarded. No, I am sure: they shouldn't be rewarded.
carlosjobim 7mo ago
Are Europeans actually building solar panels, or are they buying them?
- jopsen 7mo ago
  If the life cycle is 25 years we crunch to find a new supplier (should it be necessary) won't come as urgently :)
  - carlosjobim 7mo ago
    Agreed, but the headline should be "Europeans buying mini solar farms", in my opinion.
etchalon 7mo ago
The rest of the world, "Let's use technology that helps us improve the environment, our economy, and our grid." America - "I'mma roll coal and scream about birds and windmills."
xyrox1 7mo ago
Good job
deleted 7mo ago
[deleted]
sulplisetalk 7mo ago
energy independence - until the gov taxes you for tapping the sun shining over their land.
elric 7mo ago
Practical...if you ignore hot water. Once you add that into the mix, you either need a lot of space for a large hot water tank, or a very big battery. Peak charges make tankless resistive water heaters very expensive to run. Heck, I don't even have anywhere to place a heatpump, let alone a hot water tank.
Othrya 7mo ago
Uh Electrification is actually probably not the smartest way to get energy independently at the moment.
Gasp0de 7mo ago
I live in Germany, installed a micro solar system in September 2024. Since then, we've been producing 45% of our electricity consumption ourselves. This has saved us 550€, while the initial cost was around 800€. So this September, after 2 years, the system will have paid for itself.
- mmlkrx 7mo ago
  Could you provide more details? 800 Euros sounds very cheap while being able to produce 45% of your electricity needs. Did you mount it on your roof or a balcony or wall? How much power does it produce? Very curious to hear more details or even recommendations (I too live in Germany).
  - mixermachine 7mo ago
    Have a look here: https://shop-sicatron.de/products/sicatron-910w-balkonkraftwerk-2x-455-trina-solar-fox-ess-m1-800-e-800w https://shop-sicatron.de/products/sicatron-910w-balkonkraftw... You still need attachment material for your balcony. Keep in mind that this system will input all it's power into your power grid. If you don't use the power it will go directly into the public grid. Still, really good cost saving measure.
    - shafyy 7mo ago
      Do you own one of these? If yes, are you happy with the quality?
      - mixermachine 7mo ago
        No I don't own them. Some people here: https://www.mydealz.de/share-deal-from-app/2753917 https://www.mydealz.de/share-deal-from-app/2753917 mention as a downside that you have to connect to the manufacturer cloud to get the live production data from the interverter. Otherwise it is truly "plug everything together and it works".
        7mo ago
giantg2 7mo ago
Are they using EU manufactured solar panels? If not, I don't feel like this is real independence.
- edot 7mo ago
  Exactly. This is such a goofy idea, that you can buy something from China and use it in the EU and suddenly you’re “energy independent”. No, you’re China dependent. I guess the argument would be that solar panels last a long time and thus you’ve bought yourselves 20 years or whatever the life span is, of energy independence from China? But you’ll need new batteries sooner than that.
  - adrianN 7mo ago
    Solar panels are not that difficult to make. It’s just difficult to make them cheaper than China.
  - testing22321 7mo ago
    With rooftop solar and an EV I’m a lot less dependent on China for the next 30 years than everyone around me is on the Middle East daily for gas to drive and natural gas for heat.
- barbazoo 7mo ago
  It's a different kind of dependence. Sure you need China for this particular panel you're buying now but from then on you are no longer dependent on them. Compare that to oil and gas which has to continually be shipped. And no one says that we won't figure out how to produce these things ourselves one day.
  - giantg2 7mo ago
    We can produce them already, but they're too expensive. You are still reliant on China etc continuously shipping panels because panels will need to be replaced and expanded over time. Sure, it's a smaller volume, but still the same sort of problem.

354 points by vrganj 7mo ago

Distributed energy production / storage is the key for resiliency in the future. Every solar farm doesn't need to be China Size - it doesn't even need to be a "farm", just put them on roofs. And don't let perfect be the enemy of good. Yes there are times when solar doesn't produce energy, but there are also times where it OVERproduces.

friendzis 7mo ago
> And don't let perfect be the enemy of good. Yes there are times when solar doesn't produce energy, but there are also times where it OVERproduces. When solar OVERproduces you have to literally pay someone to consume that energy, most probably wind farms, which could be producing energy instead. So you pay actually twice. When the solar underproduces, you need to bring in alternative sources, but those now have to cover all their fixed costs and generate return on investment over this limited timeframe, which means the actual backup prices hit stratospheric levels. What's the actual cost of solar with actual net-billing?
- raverbashing 7mo ago
  "If you find dollar bills on the ground you need to pay someone to collect it as litter" Charge batteries, do electrolysis, or a multitude of other uses (I know some companies do that already)
  - conorcleary 7mo ago
    Used 240w modules built in 2010-2012 are worth $60-100 CAD at the moment in small quantities. There will be hundreds of thousands hitting the market (as long as they didn't hit the ground with careless removals) in ~2030+ as microFIT contracts in Ontario expire. There is no clear path to switching these arrays to Net Metering, as of yet. Prepare for all sorts of unrecycled solar panels and potential loss of renewable capacity that is already installed.
    - pjc50 7mo ago
      Could you elaborate on this? Why would people remove a working solar system?
      - jandrese 7mo ago
        Buildings get torn down. Roof needs a replacement and the owner doesn't feel like it is worthwhile to redo the solar install for panels that only have 5 years of warranty left, or maybe they want to replace them with higher power models with a fresh warranty. There are any number of reasons why someone might need to offload otherwise functional solar panels.
        mrguyorama 7mo ago
        Currently used solar panels are a hot commodity, with many groups selling them by the pallet, because 10 year old solar panels are still efficient enough to easily pay for themselves. Very few installations will care about specifically how many panels they want, they just want a nameplate output per dollar figure. Old inverters might not have a second life though.
        conorcleary 7mo ago
        All of these things should be given second lives, refurbished, firmware upgrades, recycled, etc.
      - conorcleary 7mo ago
        In Ontario, there is a feed-in-tariff program for payment in exchange for renewable/green energy generation direct-to-grid. This program has contracts which expire. The microFIT program (under 10kW/hr solar capacity) has a bulk of contracts expire around the same short period of time. There is not-yet a fully funded or thought-through method for extending contracts or providing better-than-dismantle options to contract owners that is/are accessible.
    - msandford 7mo ago
      Net metering is really, really smart when the installed base is small relative to the fossil fuel power plant capacity. But it doesn't scale forever. Once it gets up towards 20-40% of the fossil fuel capacity, it goes from an asset to a liability. Suppose I have a 100MW gas turbine. And suppose there's 1MW of solar installed in my generation network. I don't really care if I sell 80MW at noon and 90MW around dinner time and 50MW through the night, or if instead it's 79MW at noon and 91MW at dinner and 51MW at night. The gas costs about the same irrespective of when I burn it so a bit of a fuel shift doesn't really matter. But take that 1MW and turn it into 20MW and suddenly we go from 80MW at noon to 60MW at noon, 90MW at dinner to 110MW at dinner and uh oh. You see the problem? Whatever losses I endured at noon I don't get to make up for at dinner because my plant only goes up to 100MW and now we're not just shifting when we burn how much fuel, we're literally having to shift the power generation to a different plant. Is this example precisely accurate? Absolutely not. But it helps you get a feel for the problem of net metering at scale. The grid can act as a battery for a few % of total generation, but by the time you hit some number, maybe 20% maybe 40% net metering turns from a cool math trick to a real cost on the grid.
  - theshrike79 7mo ago
    This is literally the only sane usage for hydrogen outside of industrial uses, when you have a massive excess of renewables, use it to turn water into pressurised hydrogen. And when the prices go up, you run that through a grid scale fuel cell and feed it back to the network.
    - hvb2 7mo ago
      Storing hydrogen is no small feat. Especially for long duration
      - raverbashing 7mo ago
        Might be cheaper than batteries, and if you can store it for 24h to compensate day/night cycles you're still making money
- RealityVoid 7mo ago
  > When solar OVERproduces you have to literally pay someone to consume that energy, most probably wind farms, which could be producing energy instead. You don't have to do this with solar, you can just disconnect the panel and have it go a bit hotter. For producers that have a long-ish bringup time, yes, you might need to do this at time.
  - pjc50 7mo ago
    The situation is slightly complicated by dispatch order, and domestic solar isn't usually dispatchable at all. Grid-scale farms are. Wind farms don't consume energy, but there is a real issue with how often they have to be "curtailed" (paid to turn off). That is to a great extent due to issues with grid connectivity between Scotland and the rest of the UK, which are (slowly) being worked on.
    - RealityVoid 7mo ago
      My understanding is that all inverters sold at this moment, in the EU, need to have demand response and grid curtailment mechanisms by law.
    - leonidasrup 7mo ago
      Wind curtailment is the deliberate reduction of electricity output from wind turbines, despite their capability to generate power under existing wind conditions. This practice is typically implemented by grid operators to maintain the stability of the electrical grid or to address specific operational constraints. https://www.enlitia.com/resources-blog-post/what-is-wind-curtailment https://www.enlitia.com/resources-blog-post/what-is-wind-cur... "paid to turn off" Wind energy providers in some countries are compensated for curtailment, this a form of subsidy for renewables. It can be payed directly by the goverment, or it is added to the price of electricity for consumer. https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/renewable-curtailment-compensation-costs-germany-decrease-22-2025 https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/renewable-curtailment-c...
- 1970-01-01 7mo ago
  >you have to literally pay someone to consume that energy, Here's the thing. That's a rule and not a technical problem. Absolutely no reason to do this other than rules and regulations.
  - ZeroGravitas 7mo ago
    Yes, but even more so, it's a good sensible rule! People don't even bother to argue why it's bad, they've just seen so many headlines telling them it's bad they don't question it.
    - 1970-01-01 7mo ago
      I'll question it. Why does it exist? Why can't we just shut off the panels or dump excess energy into a metal rod? Why do we need to have a buyer at all?
      - friendzis 7mo ago
        Because otherwise the incentive structures for solar-as-baseload, sweeping the actual cost on the consumers, collapse. The system is built on putting equality sign between oversubscribed solar and coal/gas backups during times of undersubscription.
      - ZeroGravitas 7mo ago
        It's not a buyer, people are paid to take the energy that would otherwise be wasted. And when energy use is shifted it means you need to generate less later, saving money. The people who pay that cost to the people using the energy are people running energy generators that suffer wear and tear when they ramp down. Or sometimes it's a subsidy for the use of clean energy being passed on to ensure the clean energy is actually used, not wasted. All upside, no problems at all.
        synotna 7mo ago
        > are people running energy generators In Germany's case it's the tax payer, thanks to extremely generous subsidies that are excluded from state aid regulation
- toomuchtodo 7mo ago
  Inverters can be configured with export limits to limit, or entirely halt, energy exports based on market or grid signals. Term of art is "curtailment." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtailment_(electricity) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtailment_(electricity)
- mr_mitm 7mo ago
  > When solar OVERproduces you have to literally pay someone to consume that energy, Can't we just throttle the solar panel? In a worst case, you just pull the plug. It's not like a nuclear power plant which needs to be shut down carefully, or am I misunderstanding something?
  - tacet 7mo ago
    You can limit amount you feed back into network. Not sure how is situation with home installations, factory i work for runs 150kw plant for our own consumption and don't bother with selling, but i know that we can set up how much we want/are allowed to feed back.
    - kevin_thibedeau 7mo ago
      You don't have to use net metering in residential either. Grid-supported hybrid inverters that won't export power can be installed. Bonus is that they run when the grid is down. It's effectively like having an automatic transfer switch where the grid is the backup generator when your batteries are drained. The profit margin for the pro installers is reduced so they don't promote them, but it is a viable route to save money and avoid hassles with the power company on a self-install.
  - tapoxi 7mo ago
    Yes that's exactly how it works, it's called curtailment.
- pstuart 7mo ago
  When there's an OVERproduction of energy, that really means there's an UNDER-availability of storage. Battery tech continues it's march towards cheaper prices, and alternatives such as thermal storage are making inroads as well. It borders on criminal to have abundant energy production be disservice.
  - ElevenLathe 7mo ago
    I'm no energy markets analyst, so take this with a grain of salt, but I think the next major breakthrough for solar (not the slow, inevitable rollout we're seeing now) will be when somebody figures out an economical way export this periodic overproduction. There is basically never a time when humanity as a whole has an overproduction of free energy, but at present we also don't have a way to make money turning this surplus into a tradable product (like oil, coal, LNG, etc.) because all the electric-powered processes for making such products (ammonia, methane, primary aluminum production, etc) require big hunks of capital equipment that lose money unless they're operated more or less continuously. Battery, thermal, pumped hydro, etc. help here, in that enough of it can theoretically turn off-and-on solar/wind power into a continuous load to power your aluminum smelter or whatever. Even better though, would be a cheap electrically operated methane plant that you could afford to run intermittently. This, plus a peaker natgas generating plant make, effectively, a battery of infinite size, or you can sell it to any of the many eager buyers of natgas. Building a small, prefab, plant like this, if possible, would seem to be mainly a problem of scale, and therefore it seems likely that China will get to it pretty soon.
- Rebelgecko 7mo ago
  Cheap home solar installations usually have a disconnect- do they not use those in larger scale installs? I'm also surprised they aren't using batteries to capture overproduction. They've been clutch in the US, and we're not exactly pushing the envelope of green energy nowadays
- horsawlarway 7mo ago
  Home installations just cut it off. In both of these cases. I did my own battery backed installation. When I'm underproducing I can shed load (I turn off my AC - almost always that's enough, and it's automated by relay). When I'm overproducing (ex - my battery is full and my load is still not enough to consume input) I just don't let the panels generate more current than I can consume. Managing grid scale power is different concern, and not particularly relevant to small household generation. Especially not relevant in the 800W category for "balcony solar" (which is much smaller than what I'm working with). Solar is fucking coming, whether you continue to shove head into the ground or not. It's just way more affordable. Getting easily more affordable as batteries continue to improve. I honestly doubt I'll still be connected to a local utility grid for electric 10 years from now, and I live in a region of the US that has considerably cheaper grid power than most areas.
  - theshrike79 7mo ago
    My current EV has a 38kW battery. When it's too worn out for car use (SoH around 60-70%), it's still perfectly enough to run _everything_ in my house for multiple days - except for the electric sauna, and I'm smart enough to turn it on if there are production issues :D There's a reason why EV's will never be as cheap as the cheapest ICE shitbox. Just the bare metals in the battery are worth thousands when recycled, even more if the battery is still viable.
    - sl-1 7mo ago
      If you ever are looking to implement that EV battery as house backup, this repo might be useful: https://github.com/dalathegreat/Battery-Emulator https://github.com/dalathegreat/Battery-Emulator I did mine with it and old leaf 24kwh battery (~60k km). After all the safety margins I get ~15 kwh out of the battery.
      - tadfisher 7mo ago
        Sorry, the consequences are too dire for me to delegate household battery control to a vibe-coded project. I'm curious what your home insurance provider has to say about your installation.
- MagicMoonlight 7mo ago
  No you don’t, you could just ground it. Paying them is a choice.
- teamonkey 7mo ago
  This is not how curtailment works. Curtailment is when an energy company has successfully bid on delivering electricity for the next block of time (an hour, for example) but it can’t provide that agreed amount of power because it would overload the grid. There are various reasons why that would happen: faults and unexpected lack of demand, for example. In that case the company is paid for the energy it was contracted to deliver, only for that period of time, even though it did not provide power. It is wrong to say that overproducers HAVE to be paid. They don’t. They only have to be paid if there was an agreement to buy that power but for whatever reason the grid can’t take it. Normally if there is a generation surplus, the cheapest companies will win the bid to provide power and the others will simply not be paid.
  - bluGill 7mo ago
    The utility SHOULD ensure there is enough power for the worst case. Which is why they will sometimes pay someone to not generate power.
- theshrike79 7mo ago
  Here in Finland electricity prices can drop to under 1c/kWh due to renewables, basically every time it's sunny and/or windy electricity is practically free (the transfer costs are static though). A few times the price has actually been negative, people got paid for using electricity due to overproduction =)
  - leonidasrup 7mo ago
    In Finland you produce more electricity from nuclear energy, than from hydropower, wind, or solar. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-prod-source-stacked.png?country=FIN&imWidth=1700 https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-prod-source-s... The amounts for year 2025: Nuclear 32 TWh, Wind 22 TWh, Hydro 12 TWh, Solar 1TWh.
    - daveguy 7mo ago
      And more from hydropower, wind, and solar, than from nuclear.
      - leonidasrup 7mo ago
        Contribution of solar in Finland is really insignificant.
- mbgerring 7mo ago
  There will be connected batteries in every home solving this problem faster than the fossil fuel lobby can come up with a new talking point about why it’ll never work.
  - laurencerowe 7mo ago
    I'm not convinced we'll ever see mass deployments of batteries to homes, not because of the fossil fuel lobby but because of the economies of scale from installing grid sized batteries at strategic points in the transmission network. In California grid scale batteries have capital costs of around $125/kWh to $155/kWh while a home battery might be 20x that including installation.
    - mbgerring 7mo ago
      It’s already happening as I write this. An enormous amount of capital and labor are already deployed to find ways to get batteries into people’s homes, and growth is accelerating.
    - Panzer04 7mo ago
      That's because home battery providers aren't competing on price yet. The market is still small, the risks are high and they need to figure things out. Once the early adopters run out they will have to start competing on price to make sales. There's no justification for a home battery when they charge 10k for 10kwh as they do now - only early adopters and government subsidies getting it over the line. IMO home batteries should be a relatively easy install in principle, it's just still in that early expensive phase.
te_chris 7mo ago
Wild that you're getting downvoted for saying something so obvious. Weird.
- izacus 7mo ago
  That's the same kind of problem solving that thought making self driving Teslas is the solution for infrastructure problems.
  - forgetfreeman 7mo ago
    I'm fairly certain securing one's household's access to energy independent of rate increases triggered by a combination of aging infrastructure and data center power demand doesn't have a lot in common with tech bros attempts at reinventing trains badly from first principles but I'm open to hear the argument. Care to unpack that?
    - username135 7mo ago
      Im eager to hear rhis one... _grabbing popcorn_
    - izacus 7mo ago
      Easily: it's techbros again forgetting that an expensive asset only wealthy can afford isn't a solution to a mass scale infrastructure problem. And again, just like with Tesla bros, nothing about household solar is independent and requires infrastructure to support it - which, just like with trains, isn't going to get required investment because you're dreaming about individual investment. Like you say, I want trains - proper infrastructure supported renewables, not Teslas - home individual infra only affordable by wealthy individuals at the cost of shared infrastructure while lowering resilience because it still uses shared infrastructure.
- 9wzYQbTYsAIc 7mo ago
  Politics of solar, at work
- mbgerring 7mo ago
PowerElectronix 7mo ago
I'm every day more convinced that the only reasonable future of energy production is distributed solar and storage with microgrids at the neighbourhood level or so. Anything bigger in scale is prone to being shittified to the limit by public entities.
- vkou 7mo ago
  I can tell you've never dealt with an HOA or Strata before. Neighbourhood-level organizations of busybodies are way ahead of everyone else on winning the race to shittification. Putting them in charge of your electricity won't be all sunshine and rainbows.
  - fc417fc802 7mo ago
    I'd rather the county utility manage such a neighborhood level grid; I don't trust my neighbors over the long term to consistently make good decisions regarding such technical matters. But then that's sort of what the major grid operators already do with smaller localized circuits. It's just that it was all built multiple decades ago with centralized unidirectional distribution in mind.
    - PaulDavisThe1st 7mo ago
      > the county utility the what now?
      - fc417fc802 7mo ago
        Do you not have a utility that covers one or a few counties where you live? Here it's some sort of strange public-private partnership scheme with private investment, strictly capped profits, and a few publicly elected officials at the top. I've also lived in places where the local government owned and managed the entire grid themselves, including directly employing the workers. I've also lived in places where the operation was entirely privatized (IIRC there was some sort of rate cap and a broad SLA in exchange for being granted the natural monopoly).
hapticmonkey 7mo ago
Rooftop solar is incredibly popular here in Australia. I think it’s something like 33% of houses have it. We also have a great climate for it. I have solar on my house and am seeing around 50% self sufficiency overall. Of course with this much saturation, the rate you get paid for feeding back to the grid is quickly dropping to zero. So self use is the game now. The problem is now shifting to home batteries and storage. Because peak power household use times are in the evening when the sun is not shining.
- KennyBlanken 7mo ago
  > We also have a great climate for it. Back when solar was much, much more expensive this sort of thing mattered. Now the panels have plunged in price so much, you just deploy more panels (cost of install and other central stuff is the same) and/or accept the longer payback period. Cold climates do better than one might expect because the colder a solar panel is, the better it works.
  - usuryofnicks 7mo ago
    >now the panels have plunged in price so much, you just deploy more panels It's not really, the sun doesen't rise above the horizon for over a month where I live. quadrupling zero output is still zero. The country has massive renewable so by the time solar would generate something, electricity is already super cheap
    - nutjob2 7mo ago
      You're clearly an outlier, 99% of installs will not have that problem.
      - usuryofnicks 7mo ago
        The issue persists across the nordic countries, I argue that climate matters a lot to the type of power you're looking to generate.
- 7mo ago
push0ret 7mo ago
If we just hadn't centralized control of the inverters to a few (chinese) companies... Great read on the risks to our power infrastructure from remote controlled solar inverters: https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/the-gigantic-unregulated-power-plants-in-the-cloud/ https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/the-gigantic-unregulated-p...

derelicta 7mo ago

A shame local companies where I am from have year long backlogs.

pjc50 7mo ago
The "balcony solar" system is going to be available in Lidl for no-approval self-install. Limited to 800W.
- jandrese 7mo ago
  Depends on your locality. The Fossil fuel industry is lobbying hard against this and is successful in some places.

cjrp 7mo ago

The UK previously didn't allow small plug in solar panels (the kind that you just plug in to a mains socket) due to, I believe, safety reasons. This has changed within the last few days https://energysavingtrust.org.uk/solar-roadmap/ https://energysavingtrust.org.uk/solar-roadmap/

mytailorisrich 7mo ago
It hasn't changed... yet. The media noise is because the government has announced that they were reviewing current rules with the aim of allowing "balcony solar" by the end of the year.
lazyasciiart 7mo ago
I believe it’s only legal in Utah so far in the US: they legislated it last year, and apparently half the country is expected to pass a copy-paste version in their next sessions
- TYPE_FASTER 7mo ago
  Current state by state status (not my site): https://pluginsolarusa.com https://pluginsolarusa.com
t0mas88 7mo ago
There is a real safety issue with plug-in solar panels and plug-in batteries. Things go wrong if other loads are on the same circuit, which is almost unavoidable with a plug-in system. Consider a circuit in a home, designed to carry 16A like a common EU/UK circuit, protected by a 16A breaker. Then plug in solar or a battery that delivers just a small 10A. Now in case some other thing on that circuit draws 26A, the breaker doesn't stop it and the circuit is overloaded. If that same solar was installed as a fixed setup on its own circuit with no other loads on it, it would be safe and protected by the 16A breaker in the switchboard. It's the combination with other loads that causes issues.
- jamescrowley 7mo ago
  My understanding is that is why they are limiting to 800w (~4A) at least in the UK's BS 7671 Amendment, which they consider well within the designed safety margins.

metalman 7mo ago

to answer the first question in the article "Many consumers want to know how long it will take them to make back the upfront costs of solar" my answer is that the payback is imediate, right from the first moment watching as energy is generated out of thin air, and the sudden relief from getting off the energy angst missery-go-round, and the sheer borring inertness of solar pv as it does the thing with zero detectable effort, is gratifying and relaxing in a way that money never gives. I will add that solar pv is increadably robust, and damage tollerant as well, you can drive a claw hammer through a panel, and while it does not improve the performance, the degradation is actualy not that much, and it will continue to function for years

9wzYQbTYsAIc 7mo ago
The mindset shift towards “how many hours of computer usage did that one panel enable” is like the mindset shift from learning calculus, in some ways. Not quite a paradigm shift, but you gain a new appreciation for conservation of use when it’s a difference between choice of $/kW/hr and “wow, the panel powered that for most of the day”. At the same time, many people will just use a solar calculator or watch or yard lights etc, oblivious to it all. Show people a solar powered laptop, a solar powered phone, or a solar powered tablet, then they will be impressed. Remember the craze about solar powered car competitions? permacompute + solar would make for quite the $100 laptop competition.
zowie_howie 7mo ago
Is it immediate? Sure, there is satisfaction that you are using 'free' electricity. But it does have an upfront cost. I calculated that it would take over 11 years to recoup the investment based on our current usage. Given we already get cheap night-time rates to charge the car and run appliances, it is hard to justify. Like many UK houses, we have gas central heating too. I guess if we had a battery too (more investment) then we could switch to using electric oil-filled radiators, though they would not heat the whole house. And we could install a hot water tank. I guess for new builds there is a real opportunity, but for an existing household I'm struggling to see how it works - and I want it to!
- 7mo ago

dust42 7mo ago

I once read an article that in Berlin the sewage system is flushed with fresh water because too many people have installed water saving toilet flushers. So plenty of people bought these water savers and now the price of water has gone up because the water that is directly flushed needs to be paid too. The 'balcony power stations' are the same thing. They get subsidised, and you even get a fixed kWh price when pushing into the grid. The problem is that in the end it will become more expensive for everybody because at times you have a surplus driving the whole sale electricity prices into the negative while still paying fixed prices for injection into the grid. To make this economically viable, you have to have everyone paying spot prices. Everything else is just green ideology driven inefficiency. Just to make it clear, I think renewables are an important option for the future. But to make them a viable option of the electricity energy mix, supply and demand, storage and grid capacity need to be taken into account. Last not least, there is plenty of low hanging fruit to drive CO2 emissions down: drive up the truck tolls. Currently you have potatoes farmed in Germany, driven to Poland to get washed, transported to Italy to be converted to french fries and transferred back to Germany into the super markets. Same goes for home office, during Covid it was possible for many workers to continue with their work. Does an accountant need to drive to an office every day? Nope. How many business trips could be replaced by a video call? If the CO2 emissions problem is to be solved rather sooner than later, the money has to be spend efficiently as there isn't enough of it.

watwut 7mo ago
> I once read an article that in Berlin the sewage system is flushed with fresh water because too many people have installed water saving toilet flushers. So plenty of people bought these water savers and now the price of water has gone up because the water that is directly flushed needs to be paid too. What is this supposed to mean? You flush less water, therefore water price is more expensive, because flushed water needs to be paid too?
- myrmidon 7mo ago
  Presumably that the water bill (for tap water) was priced to cover both tap water provisioning and sewage works. But people using (free) rainwater to flush toilets ruined the pricing model, making the tap water price go up. I honestly don't see the problem, it's probably still worth it (because society still needs to provide less tap water and saves there).

pjc50 7mo ago

Fairly boilerplate article, but the bit that is news is the UK balcony solar permitting. Better longread: https://solarenergyconcepts.co.uk/post/plug-in-solar-uk/ https://solarenergyconcepts.co.uk/post/plug-in-solar-uk/ Government press release with a long list of pull quotes: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/government-to-make-plug-in-solar-available-within-months https://www.gov.uk/government/news/government-to-make-plug-i... (I note that in the alternate universe where Ed Miliband became PM because he didn't eat a bacon sandwich, we could have had this a decade ago. It is embarrassing to be beaten on environmentalist regulatory efficiency by Germany)

mytailorisrich 7mo ago
> I note that in the alternate universe where Ed Miliband became PM because he didn't eat a bacon sandwich, we could have had this a decade ago I read what is happening in exactly the opposite way. To me it shows that Milliand and the government at large do very little with no strategic thinking and no plan (same as the guys before in fairness but this government was supposed to be soo different...) and, in this case, is only reacting in a panic after almost 2 years in office to the pressure of "doing something" because of the Iran war, while also being told (slight mitigating circumstances for Milliband) that it mustn't cost anything. I always picture scenes from The Thick of It/ In the Loop when I imagine how they come up with 'ideas'.
- teamonkey 7mo ago
  These policies were in their manifesto, they just take some time to enact, even with a majority government.
  - hdgvhicv 7mo ago
    Democracy fails to work because people expect things to happen overnight.
- adjejmxbdjdn 7mo ago
  I find it fascinating how this comment comes up with a whole theory of what happened, along with implications about how the government, and Ed Miliband in particular, think and act, and it’s based entirely on just dreaming up what the facts are, when in reality the facts can be looked up trivially, including the fact that this was in the manifesto, or other facts that are known by anyone who has any knowledge about how govt (especially the UK govt that is designed to be conservative and slow moving) works. Like you just invented a story and made massive implications based on the invented story, with absolutely no hesitation. And you’re probably in at least the 50th percentile of intelligence. This is why we’re screwed.

aaron695 7mo ago

[dead]

misja111 7mo ago

Can anybody explain how these plug-in solar panels work? I am suprised that it's possible to just plug them in to your wall socket. For instance, isn't it complicated to have their output be in perfect sync with the frequency that comes in via the electricity net? Because to me it seems that if they won't, you will have lower benefits or even a net minus after plugging it in.

canpan 7mo ago
Not a specialist, just from what I heard: There are two things that make it work. First they are not really "independent" like the title says. They sync with the grid frequency. If the grid is down they shut off for safety. The other reason it works is that the grid power inside the home is just what you get as incoming power 〜230V. For example, I think in the US you get 240V or so delivered to your house, but 120V from the plug.
mytailorisrich 7mo ago
My understanding is that plug-in solar inverters do sense what is coming from the grid and phase-sync to it with a PLL, and also adjust voltage accordingly.
pjc50 7mo ago
> isn't it complicated to have their output be in perfect sync with the frequency Not especially, given that the inverter has a microprocessor in it. All it has to do is measure the phase of the existing grid. I don't have references for how it's actually done, but one obvious approach is simply to wait at each zero-crossing for a new half-cycle to cross a voltage threshold before turning on the output. This also implements the requirement to drop out if the grid goes away. It is probably also possible to measure during the "off" side of inverter output PWM, in the same way that variable frequency motor drivers work.
myrmidon 7mo ago
Typically, you have "dumb" panels connected to a mppt-controller/charger/inverter box which is connected to batteries and and electrical plug. This controller tunes voltage/current that is taken from the panels, optionally manages the attached battery and measures and feeds into the grid connection. Some systems are capable of running in isolation from grid (providing 230V AC on their own), but this is less common and often unnecessary.

ForHackernews 7mo ago

They are going to start selling solar panels at Lidl, a German-owned grocery store chain https://www.independent.co.uk/extras/indybest/house-garden/lidl-plug-in-solar-panels-b2945237.html https://www.independent.co.uk/extras/indybest/house-garden/l...

gorbypark 7mo ago
I saw a video from the UK government with a guy walking down the aisle of a Lidl talking about it! I quickly went to Lidl.es to look as these 800w balcony solar setups are legal here in Spain. Unfortunately they don’t sell the here! Maybe once the UK does it they’ll start.
sambf 7mo ago
It's been the case for several years in Lidl Germany and about a year in France

comrade1234 7mo ago

Related, there's also a boom in at-home battery installations. https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/climate-adaptation/switzerland-sees-battery-boom-as-homes-and-firms-store-more-solar-power/91150423 https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/climate-adaptation/switzerland-...

roysting 7mo ago

[flagged]

pjc50 7mo ago
Once you've bought the panel, unlike oil, that's it. The panel doesn't remember its national origin.
- glimshe 7mo ago
  And panels last forever, ensuring that Europe won't have to deal with panel manufacturers ever again.
  - pjc50 7mo ago
    Warranty lives tend to be in the 20+ year range and potential lifespan even higher, so .. kinda? By coincidence I had my solar panels installed round about the time construction started on Hinkley Point C. They've already paid back their installation cost. I don't expect to replace them any time soon.
  - abenga 7mo ago
    You have 20 years after buying them to set up a local supply chain.
  - jandrese 7mo ago
    Historically panels are generally considered to be exhausted after 30 years of service, although even that means they're down to 80% of their original capacity. The more failure prone component is the inverter, by a huge margin.
- throw0101c 7mo ago
  > Once you've bought the panel, unlike oil, that's it. The panel doesn't remember its national origin. Until there's a geopolitical event occurs and your supply chain gets cut off so any expansion, warranty, or replacement units cannot arrive, so you're stuck at the your current level of deployment (which may or may not be sufficient for your needs).

1970-01-01 7mo ago

"Suddenly" is horrific evidence that the government has no idea how to do long-term plans. Wait until you tell them you can run cars entirely on electricity from a solar farming. I'm sure they will ignore you until the price of diesel reaches four-digit territory. 1000p today? If only we didn't have to pay these incredible prices, what a miracle that would be..

michaelteter 7mo ago
It's not that government has no idea, it's that around the world, too many "leaders" are directly or strongly indirectly being enriched by the fossil fuel industry and their support industries. So politicians have a choice: do what's right for the people, or gain more power/money for themselves. Not every one of them chooses poorly, but enough do that it is difficult for real progress to be made.
- mrguyorama 7mo ago
  Don't forget the truly staggering amount of voters who seem to be ideologically opposed to energy independence and self delusion to support those bought politicians. People earnestly and genuinely spout "But the birds" to wind installations. Why are they so intent on taking any possible excuse? Why do they need to have an opinion on something they know nothing about?

PowerElectronix 7mo ago

For european individuals, yes. For european nations, not in the least. They try to avoid independent consumers and producers of energy with all the regulations they can throw to them.

leonidasrup 7mo ago
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myrmidon 7mo ago
What nations are you talking about? E.g. in Germany, you can buy up to 7kW of panels, screw them onto your roof, wire them up with controller and battery and feed up to 800W into local grid, no one is gonna stop you or anything (only thing you need to do is register online with the grid operator if you have >2kW of panels). Legislation is, in fact, specifically made so people (i.e. landlord) actually can't easily stop you from doing this.
- PowerElectronix 7mo ago
  The limits in power you can install, power you can inject to the grid and power you can just directly sell to neighbours through a micro-grid (zeeo, as it's illegal) tell quite the story.
  - LunaSea 7mo ago
    Micro grids are legal outside of Germany like in Belgium
- interloxia 7mo ago
  Not quite as I understand it. At the low end, a couple of panels, yes. Beyond 960W of panels you will still need an an electrician rather than just the Schuko plug. It's not clear to me why, for example, 2kW of panels which are also limited to 800W need need the special plug. Hopefully I'm wrong! "With a standard Schuko plug, a maximum of 960 watts peak is allowed on the DC side, regulated by DIN VDE V 0126-95. With the Wieland connector, a special feed-in socket, the limit increases to 2,000 watts peak. Anyone wanting to operate a system with up to 7,000 watts of module power will need a permanently installed feed-in socket, thus entering a range that is technically possible but also more complex to implement." https://xpert.digital/en/balcony-solar-up-to-7-000-watts/ https://xpert.digital/en/balcony-solar-up-to-7-000-watts/

bokohut 7mo ago

Several recent HN posts about "time" and these correlate superbly in relation to the now obvious, to nearly all, global energy issues. Those proactive in a reactive world are often mocked and laughed at until as such passage of time is achieved for those only reactive to learn of the proactive's hindsight choices. For those in the United States aware of the 'behind the scenes' energy grid issues this insight reflects that prices will not be dropping for those electrons we all so depressively require daily just like our air and water. Energy grid decentralization is occurring with the actions of each individual and this article supports exactly that because no one alive can survive in our modern world without those electrons. "Necessity is the mother of invention" only now resonates for some while the futurists here that acted long ago acutely understand this growing trend.

deleted 7mo ago
[deleted]
JumpCrisscross 7mo ago
> Those proactive in a reactive world are often mocked and laughed at I'm going to start calling this a Jehovah's Witness complex. Where amplified, mostly imagined mockery of an incredibly dominant view, at least in group, is used as evidence of that view's righteousness and, by extension, rightness. > prices will not be dropping...Energy grid decentralization is occurring Cost versus resilience. A low-cost grid has lots of centralised production earning economies of scale. A highly-resilient system doesn't even need a grid, but it's going to be high cost. The correct answer is in between. Rural electrification should be done entirely decentralised. Meanwhile, trying to run a city (or even most industry) on de-centralised power is a recipe for ruin.
- iugtmkbdfil834 7mo ago
  I think the answer may be more complex than that. I mean, I know you are not wrong. My boss only recently made a crack at how pointless solar energy is in the world of cheap gas. But it is not just cost. It is a level of control the contractor has over it. The solar systems, as currently pushed, are designed to be carefully monitored at all times; if you read the contract ( in IL anyway, but I presume it is common, because my mom had a similar experience ), I have to give the company a way in every time they desire to look at the panels. I can't just take it down, I need to hire them. I can't not sell the house without them ( and the buyer has to take over that contract ). I like solar tech, but the was it is designed is .. very American in the worst possible way. Yes, there seem to be better options popping up, but that is not where contractor money is at.. edit: Just in case, I got a quote in 2024 so obviously things may have changed on that front ( oddly, BBB may actually help with my particular set of complaints as the contractors will have to spread their bets somewhat ).

exabrial 7mo ago

EU had quite a bit of energy independence with its nuclear fleet at one point.

pjc50 7mo ago
The EU doesn't operate a nuclear fleet. Individual countries do, which is why you get opposite policy in France and Germany.
- exabrial 7mo ago
  … face palm
mrks_hy 7mo ago
Sure, because there are quite a lot of natural Uranium sources on EU soil. Care to name them?

svilen_dobrev 7mo ago

i have been looking on this for an year+.. Here some current (online-shops) prices in Bulgaria.. say shop.chepakov.com / kameasolar.com - panel 490Wp 2sq.m chinese = ~80E - battery 5kwh Li chinese = ~1200E , non-chinese ~2000E+ - hybrid invertor+charger 4kw = ~800E chinese , ~2000E non-chinese - grid and regulations: -- day price: 0.15E/kWh, night: 0.09E/kWh -- no such thing as spot prices - summer or winter, peak sun or midnight, no difference -- can install anything AS LONG AS Nothing goes back into grid - and does not break other city/dwelling rules if one gets the electronics from Germany - geizheis.de - prices are half, coz a) no VAT, b) less middlemen . Even some smaller things come with free postage - from Germany to Bulgaria ; i did buy several smaller chargers/inverters (5kg), while local sellers here have no such ideas. But anyway. The (proven) efficiency one can get is about 50-60% per Wp (if there is sun). So.. it depends how much panels one can install as that is the monie-source, all else is monie-sink :/ Rough Napkin math, electronics with german prices, ~5 hours per day sun on average: 10 panels (1000E) + 2 batteries (2000E) + inverter (1000E) ~~4000E yielding on average 440kwh/month i.e. pay itself in 5-7+ years, mostly for summer loads. While 5 panels + 1 battery + inverter ~2500E -> ~220kwh/month -> 6-8+ years BUT only IF you can use that much electricity, otherwise it will take much longer to repay. And, batteries have to be replaced probably in 5-7 years, depending on depth-of-discharge. In most places here everything is electrical. i have convectors, boilers, stove, etc. No A/C. (all other electrics is maybe under 2kw in total). i use like day/night 400/250kWh in summer, 1400/800 kWh in winter. Some people have noisy heat pumps but doubt that changes things much. If it was a separate house - i would have done it long ago. But it's a block of flats. So... small Balcony stuff makes no sense (a very expensive UPS?), big balcony stuff (like putting those 5 panels as balcony's shade.. a) probably won't be allowed, b) only a short balcony faces south-ish. The roof of the building is empty - 250sq.m - and can hold about 75 panels - but dividing that into 15 (or 50+ in higher buildings).. is not pretty. a) Making one single farm and splitting the bill/output seems the only reasonable way but does not work without completely rewiring the building's grid input and measurings; not doable without bunch of permissions/certifications ; while b) making 15 separate 5-panels-packs - is not much economical, plus few kilometers of cables.. And c) If only few people want panels on roof, maybe some form of renting the roof space from others who don't want.. may work for a while but as any renting, may go crazy. So.. been sitting and thinking.. and recently seems only sitting..

Aboutplants 7mo ago

In the US, Distribution costs (the separate charge outside of your energy cost on your utility bill) are also incredibly high and going to keep rising as infrastructure costs mount. In my area, my distribution costs is actually more than my energy cost so the only way I ever think about solar is if I can decouple from the grid completely and get rid of those distribution costs. Got a long lo no ways to go

BLKNSLVR 7mo ago
There's talk about this in Australia too, to keep the power companies viable or to maintain their profit margins I'm not sure but I know to which option my opinion leans. It's a worse deal for people who have spent the capital to reduce their ongoing expenses, and it's a worse deal for people who have very low electricity usage (likely poorer people and those who are naturally frugal). It's possibly a better deal for heavy electricity users, and I'm not sure that's who should be rewarded. No, I am sure: they shouldn't be rewarded.

carlosjobim 7mo ago

Are Europeans actually building solar panels, or are they buying them?

jopsen 7mo ago
If the life cycle is 25 years we crunch to find a new supplier (should it be necessary) won't come as urgently :)
- carlosjobim 7mo ago
  Agreed, but the headline should be "Europeans buying mini solar farms", in my opinion.

etchalon 7mo ago

The rest of the world, "Let's use technology that helps us improve the environment, our economy, and our grid." America - "I'mma roll coal and scream about birds and windmills."

xyrox1 7mo ago

Good job

deleted 7mo ago

[deleted]

sulplisetalk 7mo ago

energy independence - until the gov taxes you for tapping the sun shining over their land.

elric 7mo ago

Practical...if you ignore hot water. Once you add that into the mix, you either need a lot of space for a large hot water tank, or a very big battery. Peak charges make tankless resistive water heaters very expensive to run. Heck, I don't even have anywhere to place a heatpump, let alone a hot water tank.

Othrya 7mo ago

Uh Electrification is actually probably not the smartest way to get energy independently at the moment.

Gasp0de 7mo ago

I live in Germany, installed a micro solar system in September 2024. Since then, we've been producing 45% of our electricity consumption ourselves. This has saved us 550€, while the initial cost was around 800€. So this September, after 2 years, the system will have paid for itself.

mmlkrx 7mo ago
Could you provide more details? 800 Euros sounds very cheap while being able to produce 45% of your electricity needs. Did you mount it on your roof or a balcony or wall? How much power does it produce? Very curious to hear more details or even recommendations (I too live in Germany).
- mixermachine 7mo ago
  Have a look here: https://shop-sicatron.de/products/sicatron-910w-balkonkraftwerk-2x-455-trina-solar-fox-ess-m1-800-e-800w https://shop-sicatron.de/products/sicatron-910w-balkonkraftw... You still need attachment material for your balcony. Keep in mind that this system will input all it's power into your power grid. If you don't use the power it will go directly into the public grid. Still, really good cost saving measure.
  - shafyy 7mo ago
    Do you own one of these? If yes, are you happy with the quality?
    - mixermachine 7mo ago
      No I don't own them. Some people here: https://www.mydealz.de/share-deal-from-app/2753917 https://www.mydealz.de/share-deal-from-app/2753917 mention as a downside that you have to connect to the manufacturer cloud to get the live production data from the interverter. Otherwise it is truly "plug everything together and it works".
      - 7mo ago

giantg2 7mo ago

Are they using EU manufactured solar panels? If not, I don't feel like this is real independence.

edot 7mo ago
Exactly. This is such a goofy idea, that you can buy something from China and use it in the EU and suddenly you’re “energy independent”. No, you’re China dependent. I guess the argument would be that solar panels last a long time and thus you’ve bought yourselves 20 years or whatever the life span is, of energy independence from China? But you’ll need new batteries sooner than that.
- adrianN 7mo ago
  Solar panels are not that difficult to make. It’s just difficult to make them cheaper than China.
- testing22321 7mo ago
  With rooftop solar and an EV I’m a lot less dependent on China for the next 30 years than everyone around me is on the Middle East daily for gas to drive and natural gas for heat.
barbazoo 7mo ago
It's a different kind of dependence. Sure you need China for this particular panel you're buying now but from then on you are no longer dependent on them. Compare that to oil and gas which has to continually be shipped. And no one says that we won't figure out how to produce these things ourselves one day.
- giantg2 7mo ago
  We can produce them already, but they're too expensive. You are still reliant on China etc continuously shipping panels because panels will need to be replaced and expanded over time. Sure, it's a smaller volume, but still the same sort of problem.