[HN Gopher] Modeling light for solar panel placement in urban se...
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Modeling light for solar panel placement in urban settings
Author : codereviewed
Score : 26 points
Date : 2022-08-11 14:31 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (engineering.cmu.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (engineering.cmu.edu)
| causi wrote:
| I'm surprised there's not a cheap internet of things solar energy
| measurement pod you can buy a passle of and put all over your
| property to log daily sun exposure.
| jpm_sd wrote:
| Seems like a very doable design problem. The angle of incidence
| of the sun varies quite a bit with the time of year, however,
| so if you can model accurately that's going to be a more
| effective use of your time.
| causi wrote:
| Google Maps has rough tree and structure geometry data for a
| huge portion of the globe. I wonder if you could scrape that
| and use it to calculate maximum sun exposure.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| https://sunroof.withgoogle.com/
| Dave_Rosenthal wrote:
| Honest question, is there any good reason for doing solar on
| buildings in urban areas? It seems like solar power it should be
| considerably less expensive from large installations on cheaper
| land outside the city. The only reasons I can think of to built
| it on buildings are:
|
| 1) Virtue signaling. (Not a good reason) 2) The person who builds
| it truly wants solar but doesn't own that other land so it's
| simple to just use their roof. (Not a good reason) 3) Power
| transmission from another location more than offsets the cost
| savings. (I doubt this is true) 4) Tax/policy distortions. (Not a
| good reason)
|
| Am I missing something? Is there a good reason for rooftop solar?
| MrGLaDOS wrote:
| Solar PV takes up a lot of land. Rich, densely populated
| countries (like the Netherlands) find the areas outside of the
| cities to be more valuable as (recreational) nature, for
| upcoming housing projects, or for agricultural use.
|
| Another (short term) practical reason is that remote areas
| where the land is cheap usually have a weaker connection to the
| electrical grid. As erecting vast solar parks takes months
| while fortifying the grid takes years (and is very expensive),
| this creates bottlenecks. Erecting new solar parks in such
| remote areas is therefore (temporarily) prohibited:
| https://www.sunforson.com/dutch-provinces-of-friesland-and-g...
| marcosdumay wrote:
| You are already going to build a roof. Putting solar panels on
| it has very little marginal costs.
|
| It's certainly cheaper than buying some land exclusively for
| it, building supporting infrastructure, and then transmitting
| the power to the place you live.
|
| Retrofitting a roof with solar panels is a different situation,
| but I won't be surprised if the costs of dealing with all of
| the power generation, transmission and distribution companies
| add up to more than just putting some panels there.
| jjoonathan wrote:
| Why did you bury #3?
|
| Transmission and distribution aren't trivial. Under the right
| circumstances, people can get very attractive ROI periods, not
| to mention a degree of independence.
|
| I can't be the only one who learned from the Texas incident
| that our grids our metastable and one bad crash away from a
| multi-week outage. I can't be the only one who thought "F that,
| I want a plan B."
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Transmission requirements don't go away with rooftop solar.
| In fact, they become a huge sticking point.
|
| If customers need transmission at night, or even once a year,
| they still need all the infrastructure in place.
| ghostbrainalpha wrote:
| Having a plan B, doesn't mean you completely abandon plan
| A.
|
| Would decide against having a spare tire on your car, just
| because your traditional 4 tires were still required?
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Yes, there is a very good reason.
|
| It is an action that can be done by an individual that doesn't
| require coordination with tens of millions of other people.
|
| This is a real value that should not be underestimated.
|
| With respect to you other points, yes, economies of scale and
| more ideal sites provide vast advantages commercial solar.
| Commercial solar farms are ~$1/watt and residential is
| $2-3/watt with subsidies.
| kkfx wrote:
| Keep attention to an aspect: most setups are grid-connected
| because full autonomy is not possible or simply way too
| expensive. As a result while a single human can decide
| (depending on local laws on that topic) putting some panels
| and relevant inverters the grid need to cope with far less
| stable and predictable loads grid.
|
| Keeping a grid up and running is a delicate balance between
| varying consumption and production, like having a tight rope
| with various needles suspended by the their eye, some with
| added weight, some with a hand to push the rope 50/60Hz. We
| normally "average the load" of a grid making large enough but
| not too large grids with few big generators and many small
| (or few large but constant) loads. With renewables and a
| gazillion of grid-tied inverters who tend to be (far) quicker
| than big ones the frequency keep a bit schizophrenic:
| inverters see constantly a bit too high or too low frequency
| and keep adjusting their output generated instability. If
| they are few others local consumers around them just absorb
| their output, but if they are MANY keeping the grid up is a
| nightmare.
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