6 ms·

Cheap solar power is sending electrical grids into a death spiral

106 points by blackhawkC17 2y ago

beyondcompute 2y ago
https://archive.is/2025.02.13-153306/https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2025/02/13/cheap-solar-power-is-sending-electrical-grids-into-a-death-spiral https://archive.is/2025.02.13-153306/https://www.economist.c...
4d4m 2y ago
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 2y ago
  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 2y ago
  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/developers-contractors/net-metering/net-metering-interconnection-faqs https://www.comed.com/smart-energy/my-green-power-connection...
  - conradev 2y ago
    > 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/RequestInstallationandNewMeter.aspx https://secure.comed.com/MyAccount/MyService/Pages/RequestIn...
    - 0_____0 2y ago
      How long do you expect it to take? Related: I've been trying to get my electric company to register the meters they installed in August so I can get billed properly. It's been months of back and forth. I just want to pay them money for electricity, it's all I want from them.
      - pests 2y ago
        Had a similar situation back in 2018/2019. Electric company offered a flat rate for electric vehicle charging but you needed to install a second meter. Took them forever to install the actual meter (it had been jumped by the electricians and covered by cardboard) and then months of not being billed for it.
      - conradev 2y ago
        California can permit standard residential installations same-day with SolarAPP+
        0_____0 2y ago
        That's fantastic, I wish simple things could be permitted that fast here. It takes weeks for simple stuff to get approved here.
    - sanderjd 2y ago
      Six months for "permanent industrial electric service" sounds pretty reasonable, actually.
- strken 2y ago
  What's wrong with negative electricity pricing? Are utilities meant to let consumers overvolt the grid and use their industrial customers and utility-scale generators to counteract it without any compensation or disincentive?
  - snailmailstare 2y ago
    I have no roof but I would happily have a day of battery around in the bad weather and use it to drastically cut my electricity costs in good weather. In a world with competitive grids or grids that couldn't charge negative, I think some regulatory complexity would suddenly evaporate and someone much like the paradoxical utility sponsored energy saving consultant might show up to help me do that.
- rstuart4133 2y ago
  We are going through the same thing in Australia. In fact I suspect it's happening everywhere with solar. The current solutions look to be market based, which boils down to getting rid of "one fixed price per kWh" and moving to something closer to paying whatever the wholesale market is charging. Not exactly that as the wholesale market is wild. It can varying by over a factor of 1000 during the year. What has happened is time of use charging which boils down to different fix rates for different times of the day. Controlled loads, which translates to the supplier being able to forcibly turn off things in your house. If you agree to that for your car charger for example, you get to pay about USD $0.05/kWh to charge your car. And there are demand charges, which means you don't pay per kW/h used but rather your peak draw in kW over a 3 month period. Net metering was never a thing here, but now they can forcibly turn off the feed-in. In return they where used to set the maximum feed-in very conservatively based on how much the grid could absorb form every panel in the suburb at the worst possible time, now they will take the maximum your wiring supports. Finally they now allow households to form themselves into power plants, that sell the power they generate / store directly on the wholesale market. Meanwhile, the story is talking about grids disallowing net metering as a big step. It ain't a big step. It wasn't even a first step for Australia, as the distortions it caused were obvious so it was never allowed. It looks to me like Australia has largely solved the day to day "grid instability" problem the article talks about. We do have places whose yearly average is 70% renewable, and they are fine. I'm not so sure about how them solving the "sun hasn't shined and the wind hasn't blown" for a week issue. It's not insurmountable as even on cloudy days, solar outputs 20% of peak. However, right now the solution in that 70% state is gas peakers.
thedigitalone 2y ago
https://archive.is/MJyhB https://archive.is/MJyhB
r00fus 2y ago
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.
- Marsymars 2y ago
  > Everywhere there is state/municipal owned utilities it's almost always considerable cheaper than private. Not everywhere, it's really the regulation that matters, not just the ownership - here in Alberta we've got a market where we get municipally-owned utilities where we still get high rates comprising of energy fees + transmission fees + distribution fees.
- stephen_g 2y ago
  Yeah, I'm fine with there being a market where private generators can sell power to the grid, but the poles and wires need to be publicly owned. I don't know how there are still some that haven't worked out that a privatised natural monopoly is one of the worst ownership structures for anything important - as if multiple other companies could ever build a other electricity transmission networks on top of each other in the same area (or water and sewer systems, etc.) and provide actual competition! It's impossible and ludicrous.
PlunderBunny 2y ago
> "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).
- m3kw9 2y ago
  Yep, we’ve been wasting the suns energy for billions of years
  - YurgenJurgensen 2y ago
    It’s even worse than that. We’re wasting all the energy of every star in the Universe every second we spend not building Dyson spheres around them.
    - Ekaros 2y ago
      No, Dyson spheres is short term thinking. What we really should be doing is breaking up the stars and storing they hydrogen for future use. Just allowing fusion to happen and radiating the energy away is inefficient and wasteful.
      - m3kw9 2y ago
        Next level thinking let’s start these conversations early
      - choilive 2y ago
        No need to break them up, just ship them to the universe's most efficient storage mechanism - a black hole!
henearkr 2y ago
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.
- dgacmu 2y ago
  You don't need to. If you don't draw the energy from the panels, nothing happens. It's not like a turbine where you'd have to dump the energy into a dummy load. Solar power not used is simply not produced.
  - henearkr 2y ago
    Nice, in this case the solution is really easy, just a switch that the grid operator can turn off to cut the solar panels off the grid when there is not enough demand.
    - Gigachad 2y ago
      That's how it does work now, at least in Australia, the energy meter on your house is connected to the internet and when the market rate goes negative (oversupply) solar production gets disconnected. If you've got a battery you can continue to charge it, as well as consuming power from your own panels, but you won't feed back power at these times.
xrd 2y ago
Lots of threads lately about power utilities making bad decisions and barriers to starting public utilities, indirectly which can lead to fires and home loss. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42971311 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42971311 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42975492 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42975492 If the privately owned utilities are left to their own devices when solar comes in and eats their lunch, expect more "climate change driven disasters," right?
- bb88 2y ago
  Don't forget about regulatory capture too. If Idaho Power (e.g. because they're in a republican state with a bunch of wildfires lately) fails or is culpable for billions caused by fires by their lax equipment, someone will bail them out -- probably the tax payer. If the tax payer is ultimately on the hook, then the tax payers should own the utility.
justlikereddit 2y ago
Anyone who paid some attention saw this coming. You can't run a grid with maxed out cheap renewables. It's like having a society where the police and prisons staff closes shop and goes home when the sun sets and still expect law and order to persist.
- Zigurd 2y ago
  NYPD tried that. Law and order persisted.
advael 2y ago
Weird how when the rapacious whims of capitalists destroy things people value the economists posit that "those things weren't viable in the market, we have to be realistic" but when business models that capital finds valuable are under threat from technological commodification the line is "disaster, death spiral" I have to say, my days of not taking economics seriously as a science are certainly coming to a middle
kylehotchkiss 2y ago
This reminds me that utilities can limit the size of your rooftop solar system, which locks you into whatever your usage you had at install time. Because of that it's difficult for me to actually achieve net zero electric usage and it's more cost effective for me to remain on a gas furnace instead of upgrading to a heat pump. This is such a shame. I wish I could just get 2 more KWh.
- hex4def6 2y ago
  I assume you mean 2kW not 2kWh. And you can; look up "Non-export addition". These are solar panels that are set to zero-export; they will either charge a battery or the current house loads, but never backfeed into the grid.
  - quickthrowman 2y ago
    > they will either charge a battery or the current house loads, but never backfeed into the grid. I’m not sure I understand how this works unless you split off loads into a subpanel that is fed by a UPS which is fed by solar panels, and also isolated from your utility connected electrical service. As far as I understand it, you can’t have power generated by solar panels feeding loads in your grid-connected panel without backfeeding the grid, same deal as a generator backfeeding a grid-connected panel. You have to kill the MCB or service disconnect to prevent backfeeding. If you have links with info on how this work (one-line diagram would be extremely useful) I’d be curious. I sell and run commercial electrical work, FWIW. I’ve done zero solar jobs so my understanding could definitely be wrong!
    - kylehotchkiss 2y ago
      Wouldn't it be like Grid < Primary solar > Battery < Secondary Solar Where the house is powered by inverter directly on the battery (and maybe a second inverter for primary solar to grid?)
    - narism 2y ago
      Zero export inverters are grid-tied but monitor the meter/CTs for load changes in order to curtail solar production/shift it to battery charging. I think they can technically backfeed a little bit if load is suddenly dumped depending on the inverter response time. Some have a secondary hard disconnect for additional protection. https://knowledge-center.solaredge.com/sites/kc/files/feed-in_limitation_application_note.pdf https://knowledge-center.solaredge.com/sites/kc/files/feed-i...
johnea 2y ago
The existing comments here already capture most of my thoughts on the subject: users reap benefit + shareholder loose revenue = disaster! Disaster for who? Not the users that's for sure. Another aspect of this in the US electric utility context is that if more power is genrated locally, and exxcess is distributed as locally as possible, then long distance distribution is reduced. THere aren't as many needs, and certainly this reduces planned expansion of long distance distribution. However, this is also a "disaster" as defined above, since construction of those long distance transmission facilities are also payed for with public bonds and therefore direct taxpayer funding. The economist never ceases to amaze in this twisted logic...
hcknwscommenter 2y ago
One Jack Rickard, RIP, who was quite an opinionated jerk imho, coined the concept of "selfish solar." The idea was that solar was on its way to becoming so cheap that one should just install enough panels and batteries such that you basically never use the grid, it's just a backup for uncommon events. Basically grid use drops to that 1 or 10% of the time the sun doesn't shine for days. I think we are there on the panel side, and will be there soon on the battery side. Selfish solar could make sense but it would change the economics of solar and electric grids substantially. If everyone went selfish solar, grid electricity and infrastructure would become prohibitively expensive. We are decades away from that or at least one decade (IMHO), but we need thoughtful regulation on this point. Will we get it? I suppose time will tell.
- thijson 2y ago
  That might work in southern latitudes where the seasonal change in solar irradiation isn't much different. In the North, like in Canada, there's just not enough solar in the winter. We really need a way to store excess solar from the summer into the winter. Like on the scale of a 500 gallon propane tank.
  - richjdsmith 2y ago
    There is a finish company working on something that might fit this need: domestic sand batteries. https://polarnightenergy.fi/sand-battery/ https://polarnightenergy.fi/sand-battery/
  - metalmangler 2y ago
    doing fine @ 45°north thank you, and know people living and making all of there income from solar even further north, with I might add equipment that is now outdated, but was much more expensive than what is availible now, which has almost doubled in efficiency, and is less than half the price, retail, with palet loads becoming bizarly cheap. When combined with a new build semi passive solar house, conventional heating systems can be omited entirely. There is a comming "solar divide" ....those who pay energy bills, and those that dont.
  - 2y ago
tim333 2y ago
The two girds they talk about were not doing that great before solar either. Eskom South Africa: >CEO and the cyanide-laced coffee...dramatic example of how criminality has seeped into South Africa’s state...organised theft, mainly of copper, on an industrial scale https://www.ft.com/content/5fe8291d-9895-4272-9e0a-eefa279116f4 https://www.ft.com/content/5fe8291d-9895-4272-9e0a-eefa27911... Pakistan: >Pakistan's energy shortfall refuses to abate amid scorching heat, load-shedding...Pakistan's urban centres are now suffering up to six hours of load shedding...Calling it a "crisis of leadership and coordination", a former PEPCO head criticised... https://energy.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/oil-and-gas/pakistans-energy-shortfall-refuses-to-abate-amid-scorching-heat-load-shedding/84136196 https://energy.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/oil-and-gas... Not sure you can blame solar for that. The rest of the world seems to manage solar without death spirals.
bentt 2y ago
I built a garage with a flat roof to accommodate a solar system. I assumed it would make sense. However between the city rules on setback and the extra cost of a grid-connected system, it didn't make sense. Since then I've been strongly considering an off-grid setup. I'd like to see those get more uptake because there are so many fewer dependencies and regulations.
suraci 2y ago
The Economist, a journal that speaks for the British millionaires

106 points by blackhawkC17 2y ago

https://archive.is/2025.02.13-153306/https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2025/02/13/cheap-solar-power-is-sending-electrical-grids-into-a-death-spiral https://archive.is/2025.02.13-153306/https://www.economist.c...

4d4m 2y ago

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 2y ago
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 2y ago
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/developers-contractors/net-metering/net-metering-interconnection-faqs https://www.comed.com/smart-energy/my-green-power-connection...
- conradev 2y ago
  > 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/RequestInstallationandNewMeter.aspx https://secure.comed.com/MyAccount/MyService/Pages/RequestIn...
  - 0_____0 2y ago
    How long do you expect it to take? Related: I've been trying to get my electric company to register the meters they installed in August so I can get billed properly. It's been months of back and forth. I just want to pay them money for electricity, it's all I want from them.
    - pests 2y ago
      Had a similar situation back in 2018/2019. Electric company offered a flat rate for electric vehicle charging but you needed to install a second meter. Took them forever to install the actual meter (it had been jumped by the electricians and covered by cardboard) and then months of not being billed for it.
    - conradev 2y ago
      California can permit standard residential installations same-day with SolarAPP+
      - 0_____0 2y ago
        That's fantastic, I wish simple things could be permitted that fast here. It takes weeks for simple stuff to get approved here.
  - sanderjd 2y ago
    Six months for "permanent industrial electric service" sounds pretty reasonable, actually.
strken 2y ago
What's wrong with negative electricity pricing? Are utilities meant to let consumers overvolt the grid and use their industrial customers and utility-scale generators to counteract it without any compensation or disincentive?
- snailmailstare 2y ago
  I have no roof but I would happily have a day of battery around in the bad weather and use it to drastically cut my electricity costs in good weather. In a world with competitive grids or grids that couldn't charge negative, I think some regulatory complexity would suddenly evaporate and someone much like the paradoxical utility sponsored energy saving consultant might show up to help me do that.
rstuart4133 2y ago
We are going through the same thing in Australia. In fact I suspect it's happening everywhere with solar. The current solutions look to be market based, which boils down to getting rid of "one fixed price per kWh" and moving to something closer to paying whatever the wholesale market is charging. Not exactly that as the wholesale market is wild. It can varying by over a factor of 1000 during the year. What has happened is time of use charging which boils down to different fix rates for different times of the day. Controlled loads, which translates to the supplier being able to forcibly turn off things in your house. If you agree to that for your car charger for example, you get to pay about USD $0.05/kWh to charge your car. And there are demand charges, which means you don't pay per kW/h used but rather your peak draw in kW over a 3 month period. Net metering was never a thing here, but now they can forcibly turn off the feed-in. In return they where used to set the maximum feed-in very conservatively based on how much the grid could absorb form every panel in the suburb at the worst possible time, now they will take the maximum your wiring supports. Finally they now allow households to form themselves into power plants, that sell the power they generate / store directly on the wholesale market. Meanwhile, the story is talking about grids disallowing net metering as a big step. It ain't a big step. It wasn't even a first step for Australia, as the distortions it caused were obvious so it was never allowed. It looks to me like Australia has largely solved the day to day "grid instability" problem the article talks about. We do have places whose yearly average is 70% renewable, and they are fine. I'm not so sure about how them solving the "sun hasn't shined and the wind hasn't blown" for a week issue. It's not insurmountable as even on cloudy days, solar outputs 20% of peak. However, right now the solution in that 70% state is gas peakers.

thedigitalone 2y ago

https://archive.is/MJyhB https://archive.is/MJyhB

r00fus 2y ago

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.

Marsymars 2y ago
> Everywhere there is state/municipal owned utilities it's almost always considerable cheaper than private. Not everywhere, it's really the regulation that matters, not just the ownership - here in Alberta we've got a market where we get municipally-owned utilities where we still get high rates comprising of energy fees + transmission fees + distribution fees.
stephen_g 2y ago
Yeah, I'm fine with there being a market where private generators can sell power to the grid, but the poles and wires need to be publicly owned. I don't know how there are still some that haven't worked out that a privatised natural monopoly is one of the worst ownership structures for anything important - as if multiple other companies could ever build a other electricity transmission networks on top of each other in the same area (or water and sewer systems, etc.) and provide actual competition! It's impossible and ludicrous.

PlunderBunny 2y ago

> "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).

m3kw9 2y ago
Yep, we’ve been wasting the suns energy for billions of years
- YurgenJurgensen 2y ago
  It’s even worse than that. We’re wasting all the energy of every star in the Universe every second we spend not building Dyson spheres around them.
  - Ekaros 2y ago
    No, Dyson spheres is short term thinking. What we really should be doing is breaking up the stars and storing they hydrogen for future use. Just allowing fusion to happen and radiating the energy away is inefficient and wasteful.
    - m3kw9 2y ago
      Next level thinking let’s start these conversations early
    - choilive 2y ago
      No need to break them up, just ship them to the universe's most efficient storage mechanism - a black hole!

henearkr 2y ago

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.

dgacmu 2y ago
You don't need to. If you don't draw the energy from the panels, nothing happens. It's not like a turbine where you'd have to dump the energy into a dummy load. Solar power not used is simply not produced.
- henearkr 2y ago
  Nice, in this case the solution is really easy, just a switch that the grid operator can turn off to cut the solar panels off the grid when there is not enough demand.
  - Gigachad 2y ago
    That's how it does work now, at least in Australia, the energy meter on your house is connected to the internet and when the market rate goes negative (oversupply) solar production gets disconnected. If you've got a battery you can continue to charge it, as well as consuming power from your own panels, but you won't feed back power at these times.

xrd 2y ago

Lots of threads lately about power utilities making bad decisions and barriers to starting public utilities, indirectly which can lead to fires and home loss. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42971311 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42971311 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42975492 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42975492 If the privately owned utilities are left to their own devices when solar comes in and eats their lunch, expect more "climate change driven disasters," right?

bb88 2y ago
Don't forget about regulatory capture too. If Idaho Power (e.g. because they're in a republican state with a bunch of wildfires lately) fails or is culpable for billions caused by fires by their lax equipment, someone will bail them out -- probably the tax payer. If the tax payer is ultimately on the hook, then the tax payers should own the utility.

justlikereddit 2y ago

Anyone who paid some attention saw this coming. You can't run a grid with maxed out cheap renewables. It's like having a society where the police and prisons staff closes shop and goes home when the sun sets and still expect law and order to persist.

Zigurd 2y ago
NYPD tried that. Law and order persisted.

advael 2y ago

Weird how when the rapacious whims of capitalists destroy things people value the economists posit that "those things weren't viable in the market, we have to be realistic" but when business models that capital finds valuable are under threat from technological commodification the line is "disaster, death spiral" I have to say, my days of not taking economics seriously as a science are certainly coming to a middle

kylehotchkiss 2y ago

This reminds me that utilities can limit the size of your rooftop solar system, which locks you into whatever your usage you had at install time. Because of that it's difficult for me to actually achieve net zero electric usage and it's more cost effective for me to remain on a gas furnace instead of upgrading to a heat pump. This is such a shame. I wish I could just get 2 more KWh.

hex4def6 2y ago
I assume you mean 2kW not 2kWh. And you can; look up "Non-export addition". These are solar panels that are set to zero-export; they will either charge a battery or the current house loads, but never backfeed into the grid.
- quickthrowman 2y ago
  > they will either charge a battery or the current house loads, but never backfeed into the grid. I’m not sure I understand how this works unless you split off loads into a subpanel that is fed by a UPS which is fed by solar panels, and also isolated from your utility connected electrical service. As far as I understand it, you can’t have power generated by solar panels feeding loads in your grid-connected panel without backfeeding the grid, same deal as a generator backfeeding a grid-connected panel. You have to kill the MCB or service disconnect to prevent backfeeding. If you have links with info on how this work (one-line diagram would be extremely useful) I’d be curious. I sell and run commercial electrical work, FWIW. I’ve done zero solar jobs so my understanding could definitely be wrong!
  - kylehotchkiss 2y ago
    Wouldn't it be like Grid < Primary solar > Battery < Secondary Solar Where the house is powered by inverter directly on the battery (and maybe a second inverter for primary solar to grid?)
  - narism 2y ago
    Zero export inverters are grid-tied but monitor the meter/CTs for load changes in order to curtail solar production/shift it to battery charging. I think they can technically backfeed a little bit if load is suddenly dumped depending on the inverter response time. Some have a secondary hard disconnect for additional protection. https://knowledge-center.solaredge.com/sites/kc/files/feed-in_limitation_application_note.pdf https://knowledge-center.solaredge.com/sites/kc/files/feed-i...

johnea 2y ago

The existing comments here already capture most of my thoughts on the subject: users reap benefit + shareholder loose revenue = disaster! Disaster for who? Not the users that's for sure. Another aspect of this in the US electric utility context is that if more power is genrated locally, and exxcess is distributed as locally as possible, then long distance distribution is reduced. THere aren't as many needs, and certainly this reduces planned expansion of long distance distribution. However, this is also a "disaster" as defined above, since construction of those long distance transmission facilities are also payed for with public bonds and therefore direct taxpayer funding. The economist never ceases to amaze in this twisted logic...

hcknwscommenter 2y ago

One Jack Rickard, RIP, who was quite an opinionated jerk imho, coined the concept of "selfish solar." The idea was that solar was on its way to becoming so cheap that one should just install enough panels and batteries such that you basically never use the grid, it's just a backup for uncommon events. Basically grid use drops to that 1 or 10% of the time the sun doesn't shine for days. I think we are there on the panel side, and will be there soon on the battery side. Selfish solar could make sense but it would change the economics of solar and electric grids substantially. If everyone went selfish solar, grid electricity and infrastructure would become prohibitively expensive. We are decades away from that or at least one decade (IMHO), but we need thoughtful regulation on this point. Will we get it? I suppose time will tell.

thijson 2y ago
That might work in southern latitudes where the seasonal change in solar irradiation isn't much different. In the North, like in Canada, there's just not enough solar in the winter. We really need a way to store excess solar from the summer into the winter. Like on the scale of a 500 gallon propane tank.
- richjdsmith 2y ago
  There is a finish company working on something that might fit this need: domestic sand batteries. https://polarnightenergy.fi/sand-battery/ https://polarnightenergy.fi/sand-battery/
- metalmangler 2y ago
  doing fine @ 45°north thank you, and know people living and making all of there income from solar even further north, with I might add equipment that is now outdated, but was much more expensive than what is availible now, which has almost doubled in efficiency, and is less than half the price, retail, with palet loads becoming bizarly cheap. When combined with a new build semi passive solar house, conventional heating systems can be omited entirely. There is a comming "solar divide" ....those who pay energy bills, and those that dont.
- 2y ago

tim333 2y ago

The two girds they talk about were not doing that great before solar either. Eskom South Africa: >CEO and the cyanide-laced coffee...dramatic example of how criminality has seeped into South Africa’s state...organised theft, mainly of copper, on an industrial scale https://www.ft.com/content/5fe8291d-9895-4272-9e0a-eefa279116f4 https://www.ft.com/content/5fe8291d-9895-4272-9e0a-eefa27911... Pakistan: >Pakistan's energy shortfall refuses to abate amid scorching heat, load-shedding...Pakistan's urban centres are now suffering up to six hours of load shedding...Calling it a "crisis of leadership and coordination", a former PEPCO head criticised... https://energy.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/oil-and-gas/pakistans-energy-shortfall-refuses-to-abate-amid-scorching-heat-load-shedding/84136196 https://energy.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/oil-and-gas... Not sure you can blame solar for that. The rest of the world seems to manage solar without death spirals.

bentt 2y ago

I built a garage with a flat roof to accommodate a solar system. I assumed it would make sense. However between the city rules on setback and the extra cost of a grid-connected system, it didn't make sense. Since then I've been strongly considering an off-grid setup. I'd like to see those get more uptake because there are so many fewer dependencies and regulations.

suraci 2y ago

The Economist, a journal that speaks for the British millionaires