"Struggling"
this post was submitted on 03 Dec 2024
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We have so much solar power that we can no longer efficiently profit off of it. We would either need to reduce the margins we make on electricity or destroy our stock of solar capital to reinflate the price of energy.
What to do... what to do...
Not really struggling
All they need to do is subsidise batteries and problem solved
Figuring out grid scale storage isn't easy, but the good thing about it is that you can figure out storage at slightly smaller scales to alleviate the problem somewhat, and build on that success to try to get to daily storage to meet nighttime demand, then up to weekly storage to handle fluctuations in weather, and maybe even seasonal storage to deal with seasonal variation in both supply and demand.
But storage doesn't have to just be chemical batteries, either. Some can be demand shifting, like desalination or water pumping based on excess power supply. Maybe even intermittently powering direct air capture of CO2 if there's so much excess energy they don't know what to do with it. Some can be storage of heat, whether really hot like molten salt that can run turbines for dispatchable electricity, or just at the residential scale with a bunch of distributed hot water tanks, or everything in between. There are also some storage technologies relying on gravity (pumped hydro if the geography supports it), compressed air, flywheels (could be important for maintaining grid inertia for stability).
And there's always curtailment, where you just don't generate the power, and turn off some the panels in the middle of the day.
H₂?
Australia has too many electricity distributors shipping profits overseas instead of upgrading the grid
I've said it before and I'll say it again, this feels like a good place for Hydrogen power to step in.
One of the oft repeated concerns is that generating hydrogen to power vehicles the takes a lot of energy, which often comes from dirty sources.
One of the oft repeated issues for solar (or wind etc) is that it's available at certain times and not in and of itself storable or transportable, so excess is lost.
So, take the excess solar energy, produce hydrogen and store for off-peak times or to distribute.
Seems like a win to me.
So, take the excess solar energy, produce hydrogen and store for off-peak times or to distribute.
Storing hydrogen is difficult and expensive. Not even to say it can't be done, but it would require the energy companies to invest money in capital, and they hate doing that.
And this involves only driving in summer when there is excess energy? Or getting through winter by storing enough hydrogen to make the Beirut explosion look like a firecracker in comparison?
Just ship the hydrogen to the other hemisphere.
That sounds fun. Not only are we already losing ton of energy to create the hydrogen, we can now lose even more and make it more expensive by trying to liquefy/compress it to make it somewhat transportable. [1]
Also, almost 90% of humans living in the northen hemisphere will surely not cause any issues to this plan. [2]
You're not LOSING anything if it's capturing already excess energy, which would by its nature be lost if not used at the time of generation
Neither solar panels, nor hydrogen generators are free. If you need to build extra panels and hydrogen generators, you are making the infrastructure more expensive, consequently raising electricity prices. Or hydrogen prices if you use it as fuel instead of power storage.
Just ship the humans to the other hemisphere.
🤣
That's funny, but modern solar panel power plants don't care that it's winter. The panels rotate and an arid area isn't getting that much more cloud cover.
The article says the ones it talks about do. Also, rotating panels can't stop days from being shorter during winter.
I'm not saying it's not lower. I'm saying it's not nearly as big of a deal as people say it is.
So what are you saying exactly? With what issue would using hydrogen help?
I'm just talking about winter vs summer capacity in desert solar installations.
Night? Longer periods of cloudy days or storms?
So we are not using it for cars, but to make electricity at night? Just even less efficiently than hydro pumped power? Ok...
Subsidise home battery systems so that the excess is stored locally instead of going back into the grid.
Which also has the additional benefit for homeowners of local backup power in the case of a blackout :)
How else will they be able to continue justify pulling coal out of the ground if they have a robust power grid based on renewables
V2G and V2H is here, so you'll be able to store there and draw down overnight in a suitable ecar.
A large pumped hydro in Qld has been cancelled by the new Lib government, so won't be able to store it there. Snowy Hydro pumped storage is way behind schedule and locally Redflow went backrupt, so huge Zinc Flow storage batteries arent available to rollout to store excess energy and Lithuim is a shitty choice for large grid batteries.
Just read the same article about CA last week; too much solar to be used so the excess solar generated, get this, was sold-often at a loss--to Arizona(the fact AZ can't make it's own sufficient solar shows the willful neglect, economic and political nature of energy!) and it lowered AZ bills but not CA. We're back to energy traders and Enron price manipulations in the US after 20 years.
Batteries will fix much of it but until the grid has proper storage consumers getting fucked by businesses per usual.
CA has a for-profit energy sector so that's not surprising. They aren't lowering bills there for anything short of the apocalypse.
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Every smart person told them, "update the grids before adding solar."
But did they listen? No. Because updating the grids was an expensive and difficult endeavour and they just wanted to lower their costs first.
Personally, I said fuck the grid and built my own solar power without it. I have separate grid power too.
Obama tried to push grid upgrades for years, kept getting shot down. His plans would all be done by now. Throw in the fuel economy requirements of 54.5 mpg requirements for cars and light trucks and we would have seen billions of barrels of oil not being needed. (Lower gas prices as well). Granted it wasn't everything, but it was what we needed to start doing. Now 13, 14 years later after Trump rolled back those fuel efficiency policies as much as he could because it cost manufacturers more money in research, we are much closer to a rock we can't live on and haven't advanced nearly enough. So we voted in Drill Baby Drill to finish off the rock.
Oh no they did that research. The manufacturers complained because the US was the last great dumping ground for old inefficient engines. They put those highly efficient engines in European cars and used the US to empty their warehouses of old engines.
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We are sick of the arseholes that are running the power companies, and we are sick of the outrageous prices they are charging for electricity.
Simple as that.
10 years ago, my gas bill was $80 a month. Today (and nothing has changed) it is almost $300 a month. Same shit has happened with Electricity and water. They are fucking scum.
They can go fuck themselves. If there was a free version of gas like electricity, I would install it in an instant. (I only use gas for kitchen hob, my BBQ outside - both of which get fuck all use, and my hot water which only really gets used when I wash my balls in the morning.) 300% price hike in 10 years.... They can all suck my balls,
Yup it's the same here in Germany where more and more households have been taking energy production into their own hands. Soon energy companies will only be in charge of distribution and storage, but I doubt this will make things much cheaper for long unless we cut private companies out of the process completely.
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