[HN Gopher] Cheap solar power is sending electrical grids into a...
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Cheap solar power is sending electrical grids into a death spiral
Author : blackhawkC17
Score : 30 points
Date : 2025-02-13 19:41 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.economist.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.economist.com)
| beyondcompute wrote:
| https://archive.is/2025.02.13-153306/https://www.economist.c...
| 4d4m wrote:
| I mean, what power grid provider makes it easy to work with them
| to sell solar back to the grid? Bogus fees, negative rate
| metering, and lobbying against the consumer drives consumers to
| ever-cheaper solar and storage options.
|
| This is self inflicted behavior from monopolies that ignore user
| research.
| DCH3416 wrote:
| It depends on the utility company. Some are better than others.
|
| The grid is a utility. They weren't originally built with the
| idea of customers sending power back at a small scale. So it's
| tricky to maintain power fluctuations when you have all these
| extra data points. Plus considerations for the quality of
| consumer hardware. So naturally companies would prefer to have
| solar installations at scale as opposed to by residential
| basis.
| flyinghamster wrote:
| ComEd, the main electrical provider in northern Illinois,
| actively encourages homes and businesses to install solar power
| and offers net metering to solar-equipped customers.
|
| https://www.comed.com/smart-energy/my-green-power-connection...
| conradev wrote:
| > After ComEd receives confirmation that the project has
| passed municipal inspection, it can take anywhere from 6 to
| 18 weeks to complete the permanent residential electric
| service and up to 6 months for a permanent industrial
| electric service, depending on the amount of work required.
|
| 6 month turnaround sounds pretty weak.
|
| https://secure.comed.com/MyAccount/MyService/Pages/RequestIn.
| ..
| thedigitalone wrote:
| https://archive.is/MJyhB
| r00fus wrote:
| Hopefully what's dying is the concept of privately owned
| utilities. Everyone knows that, unless they're properly
| regulated, these eventually turn into a rent-seeking behemoths
| that corrupt the government (or vice-versa).
|
| However, what will likely happen is that these private utilities
| will see the writing on the wall and instead do what PG&E is
| doing in CA and just start charging "transmission fees" to keep
| their rates even higher despite massive daytime solar abundance.
|
| Everywhere there is state/municipal owned utilities it's almost
| always considerable cheaper than private.
| PlunderBunny wrote:
| > "lots of self-generated power will ultimately be wasted."
|
| This is sunlight falling on a roof. If you convert it into
| electricity but then don't use that electricity, is it really a
| waste? It's like saying that the overflow from my water tank that
| collects rain water off the roof is 'wasting' water.
|
| It could be argued that it's a waste in the sense that the
| generated electricity could have gone to someone else if there
| was a grid, but if the grid operator isn't allowing excess to be
| put back into the grid (e.g. because there's no demand at that
| time because it's sunny and everyone is using solar), then the
| grid operator needs to solve that with some form of energy
| storage (e.g. batteries).
| henearkr wrote:
| Just make roof solar panels with tiltable shades that limit the
| incoming sunlight for this kind of situations. This is when there
| is no battery storage involved.
|
| If the solar-roofed house can involve home batteries, problem
| solved.
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