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Excuse my ignorance (I am a layperson and simply interested in this subject), but are you suggesting that the utility themselves would rollout distributed solar

by criley 13y ago

Excuse my ignorance (I am a layperson and simply interested in this subject), but are you suggesting that the utility themselves would rollout distributed solar to their customers, and thus the utilities engineers are skeptical of the technology and how it would be rolled out? It seems to me that the whole point is that consumers will begin the rollout themselves, generating and storing power on their own and the only visible effect to the utility would be a dramatic decrease in power use by that customer. While having a grid where you could sell your unused energy is a great idea, I didn't see that as the focus of this article. I thought this article was simply about the distributed generation and storage. In the context of distributed generation and storage on an individual level -- why do utility engineers matter? They don't get a say in the rollout, they don't manage it, and they certainly don't get to prevent it. All they can do is maintain their infrastructure in the face of a change they cannot stop.

akiselev 13y ago
I think the article is talking about customers who buy their own solar installations. The thing is, no system is available (afaik) that is 24/7 solar power (batteries add a massive cost to user solar installations) so the only way for you to have power at all times is to sell the surplus generated solar back to the utility (which is where the engineering problems come in) during peak solar hours and using the gird off peak.
- cinquemb 13y ago
  Well the tech for batteries is getting cheaper and better. Check out this Hak5 rig of van with PV and batteries: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWmCpt2KXOs http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWmCpt2KXOs From this, it is not hard to imagine if one scaled this setup one could be off the grid now.
  - quantumstate 13y ago
    I was recently in rural South Sudan, at a place where there are no power lines within 80 miles. So the systems they use must be off the grid by necessity. There were several PV and battery setups there which worked pretty well. Obviously you need to be careful with the amount of power that you use, but it can run computers, TV and lighting with a reasonable setup. There was a computer lab at one installation which had one desktop machine acting as a server and about 15 thin clients to keep the power usage low.
    - cinquemb 13y ago
      Thats why i think CSP and thermal storage (via molten salts KNO3+NaNO3) might work better in the long run (at least in an environment with an atmosphere).
- criley 13y ago
  Yes! But in that paradigm, where you generate 80%+ of your needed energy and rely on the grid for the rest, how does that affect the utility? The only difference to them is that you draw less power than you used to. Sure, it would benefit them to learn your habits so they can manage steady power delivery at scale, but they don't get a say in your solar rollout. They don't get to prevent it. They don't get to be skeptical (or if they are, they can't act on it). The person I'm replying to seemed to say that the engineers at utilities are skeptical of this technology and honestly I don't understand how they're relevant, since utilities aren't rolling out the technology, maintaining the technology, etc.
  - sp332 13y ago
    But what if you generate 110% of your electricity needs? You would push out more power than is coming in, sometimes literally running the meter backwards.
    - criley 13y ago
      Are we saying that there is no way to prevent power from going backwards back to the utility? I figured what you generated went directly to your storage system, you drew from your storage system OR the grid, or some third part intelligently drew from the grid or your system as necessary. Is it functionally impossible to have solar panels that don't "run the meter backwards?" Because I can see how that would threaten the infrastructure that wasn't designed for it. I mean, I see places like Apple generating all their electricity on location for their new planned office and using the grid as backup. Is Apple sending their excess power back to the utility? Totally different scale, I'm well aware, but just curious.
      - toomuchtodo 13y ago
        Yes, you can configure inverters to not dump excess current back to the utility. You either charge batteries or you dump the power into a load like an electric water heater. In almost all grid-tied scenarios though, you want to sell the power back to the utility. I'm not familiar with commerical operations, as they would fall under power purchase agreements (PPAs), but with residential installations your meter quite literally does spin backwards or a separate meter is used to determine how much power you've sent back to the grid. This is dependent on how the utility compensates you for the power you generate (spin the meter back if its a credit or the same price as what your purchase it from them at, separate meter if the pricing paid to you is different than the retail rate). As the article states, we don't have the issues in the US that Germany has yet, because Germany produces so much more solar energy than in the US. At some point though, questions will need to be answered about who is going to pay for the spinning capacity (likely natural gas generators) that isn't used except for those rare times when the wind isn't blowing, the sun isn't shinning, and you can't drag enough power in from another geographic region over HVDC transmission lines.
- schiffern 13y ago
  >batteries add a massive cost to user solar installations SolarCity will install a bank of Tesla Motors Li-ion batteries for grid backup and load shifting. This would be financed over the course of the loan (typically 20 years), not all at once. http://www.solarcity.com/residential/energy-storage.aspx http://www.solarcity.com/residential/energy-storage.aspx
sophacles 13y ago
I was not talking about the completely off grid case at all. Maybe I misunderstood the article. I was talking in terms of grid-connected solar installs, which I feel just make more sense. What happens if you get a cloudy week? You have no power until the sun shines again... or have to fire up your inefficient generator (the existence of which may in fact negate any savings anyway... because price and inefficiency at small scale of generation). It could be my bias showing too... I'll admit that. However, there are interesting regulatory consequences here. Various levels of government have regulations in place that are designed to protect the consumer, but also put a strain on utilities. In a very large number of places, the power company is only allowed to charge a certain rate or less. This rate is partly based on building out the infrastructure for all houses, businesses, etc in the region, and assuming certain usage values. They are also required to make power available to anyone in those areas. They are also required to provide power under certain conditions, regardless of the customer paying (e.g. they can't shut off power in the winter in many places, because that could kill someone). The utility being constrained by the rules in these places must figure out how to operate profitably (being a publicly traded company in many cases) with these constraints. So, if suddenly everyone starts going off-grid, they are still required to sell at a certain rate or lower, still required to be able to provide power to everyone, and being told that they can't necessarily charge enough for that service, because a lot of people will just go off-grid. It is a sticky situation, and until operating models and regulations can be worked out to account for wide-spread off grid people, it is kind of a catch-22 for everyone. I don't want my power to go out because the utility can't afford maintenance because they can't charge me what they need to for reliable service, because half of my neighbors are off-grid now. Basically, the question is: if you were under regulation to act a certain way, and those regulations were based on assumptions, wouldn't you be against allowing behavior that breaks those assumptions without a change in your regulatory responsibility?
- solistice 13y ago
  That sounds like the 60 train restrictions/governmental restrictions on closing branch lines/rate restrictions in Atlas Shrugged (Not looking for Ayn Rand discussion). So if you happen to have a system with high inertia (stacks of paper weighting it down), any change will break it, whether it's more demand (brown/blackout) or less demand (financing model collapses).

by criley 13y ago

akiselev 13y ago

I think the article is talking about customers who buy their own solar installations. The thing is, no system is available (afaik) that is 24/7 solar power (batteries add a massive cost to user solar installations) so the only way for you to have power at all times is to sell the surplus generated solar back to the utility (which is where the engineering problems come in) during peak solar hours and using the gird off peak.

cinquemb 13y ago
Well the tech for batteries is getting cheaper and better. Check out this Hak5 rig of van with PV and batteries: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWmCpt2KXOs http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWmCpt2KXOs From this, it is not hard to imagine if one scaled this setup one could be off the grid now.
- quantumstate 13y ago
  I was recently in rural South Sudan, at a place where there are no power lines within 80 miles. So the systems they use must be off the grid by necessity. There were several PV and battery setups there which worked pretty well. Obviously you need to be careful with the amount of power that you use, but it can run computers, TV and lighting with a reasonable setup. There was a computer lab at one installation which had one desktop machine acting as a server and about 15 thin clients to keep the power usage low.
  - cinquemb 13y ago
    Thats why i think CSP and thermal storage (via molten salts KNO3+NaNO3) might work better in the long run (at least in an environment with an atmosphere).
criley 13y ago
Yes! But in that paradigm, where you generate 80%+ of your needed energy and rely on the grid for the rest, how does that affect the utility? The only difference to them is that you draw less power than you used to. Sure, it would benefit them to learn your habits so they can manage steady power delivery at scale, but they don't get a say in your solar rollout. They don't get to prevent it. They don't get to be skeptical (or if they are, they can't act on it). The person I'm replying to seemed to say that the engineers at utilities are skeptical of this technology and honestly I don't understand how they're relevant, since utilities aren't rolling out the technology, maintaining the technology, etc.
- sp332 13y ago
  But what if you generate 110% of your electricity needs? You would push out more power than is coming in, sometimes literally running the meter backwards.
  - criley 13y ago
    Are we saying that there is no way to prevent power from going backwards back to the utility? I figured what you generated went directly to your storage system, you drew from your storage system OR the grid, or some third part intelligently drew from the grid or your system as necessary. Is it functionally impossible to have solar panels that don't "run the meter backwards?" Because I can see how that would threaten the infrastructure that wasn't designed for it. I mean, I see places like Apple generating all their electricity on location for their new planned office and using the grid as backup. Is Apple sending their excess power back to the utility? Totally different scale, I'm well aware, but just curious.
    - toomuchtodo 13y ago
      Yes, you can configure inverters to not dump excess current back to the utility. You either charge batteries or you dump the power into a load like an electric water heater. In almost all grid-tied scenarios though, you want to sell the power back to the utility. I'm not familiar with commerical operations, as they would fall under power purchase agreements (PPAs), but with residential installations your meter quite literally does spin backwards or a separate meter is used to determine how much power you've sent back to the grid. This is dependent on how the utility compensates you for the power you generate (spin the meter back if its a credit or the same price as what your purchase it from them at, separate meter if the pricing paid to you is different than the retail rate). As the article states, we don't have the issues in the US that Germany has yet, because Germany produces so much more solar energy than in the US. At some point though, questions will need to be answered about who is going to pay for the spinning capacity (likely natural gas generators) that isn't used except for those rare times when the wind isn't blowing, the sun isn't shinning, and you can't drag enough power in from another geographic region over HVDC transmission lines.
schiffern 13y ago
>batteries add a massive cost to user solar installations SolarCity will install a bank of Tesla Motors Li-ion batteries for grid backup and load shifting. This would be financed over the course of the loan (typically 20 years), not all at once. http://www.solarcity.com/residential/energy-storage.aspx http://www.solarcity.com/residential/energy-storage.aspx

sophacles 13y ago

I was not talking about the completely off grid case at all. Maybe I misunderstood the article. I was talking in terms of grid-connected solar installs, which I feel just make more sense. What happens if you get a cloudy week? You have no power until the sun shines again... or have to fire up your inefficient generator (the existence of which may in fact negate any savings anyway... because price and inefficiency at small scale of generation). It could be my bias showing too... I'll admit that. However, there are interesting regulatory consequences here. Various levels of government have regulations in place that are designed to protect the consumer, but also put a strain on utilities. In a very large number of places, the power company is only allowed to charge a certain rate or less. This rate is partly based on building out the infrastructure for all houses, businesses, etc in the region, and assuming certain usage values. They are also required to make power available to anyone in those areas. They are also required to provide power under certain conditions, regardless of the customer paying (e.g. they can't shut off power in the winter in many places, because that could kill someone). The utility being constrained by the rules in these places must figure out how to operate profitably (being a publicly traded company in many cases) with these constraints. So, if suddenly everyone starts going off-grid, they are still required to sell at a certain rate or lower, still required to be able to provide power to everyone, and being told that they can't necessarily charge enough for that service, because a lot of people will just go off-grid. It is a sticky situation, and until operating models and regulations can be worked out to account for wide-spread off grid people, it is kind of a catch-22 for everyone. I don't want my power to go out because the utility can't afford maintenance because they can't charge me what they need to for reliable service, because half of my neighbors are off-grid now. Basically, the question is: if you were under regulation to act a certain way, and those regulations were based on assumptions, wouldn't you be against allowing behavior that breaks those assumptions without a change in your regulatory responsibility?

solistice 13y ago
That sounds like the 60 train restrictions/governmental restrictions on closing branch lines/rate restrictions in Atlas Shrugged (Not looking for Ayn Rand discussion). So if you happen to have a system with high inertia (stacks of paper weighting it down), any change will break it, whether it's more demand (brown/blackout) or less demand (financing model collapses).