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).
Instead the entire paradigm of centralized generation may need to be called into question and we should instead be focusing on a hybrid centralized baseline + local generation and storage. Places like China do fine with promoting residential solar where nearly half the solar was on residential rooftops (2023) [1].
[1] https://globalenergymonitor.org/report/china-continues-to-le...
| Policymakers are now attempting to come up with solutions. “You can make solar play nice with the grids,” ...
| Yet the best solution would be for energy firms to respond to the competition and sort themselves out.
The article is talking about: * how solar is disrupting the traditional utility model * in countries where the utilities provide a poor service wealthy people are doing there own thing producing their own power with PV * how this leads to less customers for the utility leading to more expensive power for people who cannot afford to generate their own power * that solutions like grid-tied home PV instead of independent systems provides a better outcome for everyone in the area.
I don't think it it to much of a stretch to say that the article is advocating for, as you say, "a hybrid centralized baseline + local generation and storage."
BUT, a while ago rich people started to get off the grid. And this has advantages, such as much greater flexibility in where to live, so they did.
Middle class people could get off the grid, which ironically the government paid them for. So they did.
Companies largely got off the grid (it's more complicated, they built solar plants, then sold the electricity for electricity at night or somehow traded with grids, and locked in these contracts for decades). So they're effectively off the grid.
So who's paying this eternal interest that keeps increasing?
Who isn't off the grid? The governments themselves, and poor people. Governments have, of course, decided they don't pay for the grid themselves (not even for maintenance). It's in your electricity bill ... which due to government financial responsibility (such as the previous German government entrusting all this ... to Putin. Yes, really, that Putin) ... is climbing fast. One might add that one story is that the head of the government that entrusted German energy to Putin was threatened during an official visit to Putin ... by Putin setting dogs on her (he had read she was terrified of dogs) ... she STILL went through with entrusting the energy infrastructure to Putin. Then Ukraine blew up a major part of the infrastructure Putin built. You can't make this up. Personally, I'm the sort of person that if someone sets dogs on me ... anything after that is going to be a tough sell.
So now poor people effectively have an extra tax in high electricity prices that are climbing fast (the increases are now down to 5x the rate of inflation. Yes, DOWN, that's correct). Oh and to make matters worse, as the article points out, it's become ever easier to get off the grid. Which means the people served by the grid ... still dropping. Not just houses in suburbs are disconnecting, but city houses as well. And there may be other reasons. It's green. Or my favorite: the Israeli reason (these people are brilliant and insane). Convincing people to buy solar power because ... it does not disconnect in case of war. Apparently it's popular in Arab countries too.
Since this allowed past governments to spend more money, they now have no problem spending a less, or paying that money back, of course. Yes, that last sentence was a joke. No, in reality they're coming up with ever crueler and more forceful methods to make sure poor people pay the extra tax, such as making it non-dischargeable. Making it a crime to disconnect from the grid. To take it out of unemployment benefits before the person sees the money. To threaten everything a person has in case of non-payment (e.g. school subsidies for their children). Etc.
It isn't working.
Oh and that this debacle, which is entirely the decision of the currently in power party, even if the head of the government was swapped, is driving people in droves to other parties (ie. AfD), is the fault of Zelensky, Putin, Musk, Netanyahu ... and frankly everyone ... except of course the party that actually did it.
In my opinion, a lot had to do with how they set retail rates. The retail electric companies set different rate categories and tiers. Most residential customers don't realize that they're often subsidizing commercial and industrial customers. So, of course there's going to be a death spiral when those residential customers decide to generate themselves.
> Rooftop solar offers an alternative to a monopoly that can no longer be considered natural.
Electricity generation can no longer be considered a natural monopoly. That sounds like an endorsement of rooftop solar.
In fact, it even somewhat welcomes it by pointing out that the competition utility companies now face will force them to offer better service.
I don't think that moving the generation around is really an "instead", because the problem at hand is that distribution is expensive and someone has to pay for it if you want a grid. And most of that cost is the local stuff.
So how do you get everyone connected that wants to be, without it costing them a ton of money? You might have to make the grid cost into a mandatory tax.
Whether the electric company is private or state-owned is mostly a separate issue.
Wind and solar reduce fuel use, but they make for very little reduction in required infrastructure. Thus the value to the utility company is approximately the value of the fuel that's offset minus the costs of handling the situation.
Combine these and you see that the true value of wind and solar is pretty low other than from an environmental standpoint of reducing carbon emissions. (Now, if you have a use case of something that's power intensive but can freely be turned on and off then there could be some appreciable value.)
If we're ok with everyone being an island or building a system capable of massively distributed generation, great. It will be massively more complex, less efficient, and more expensive to maintain. Let's just be honest about the nature of the problem.
I'm so, very sick of it.
This narrative is going to ruin us all. The rich and powerful will be ruined as well, it'll just take a little bit longer.
I think this is true of a lot of things that are 'in our house' (or on our property). A fatuous hypothetical example might be a large central refrigerator shared between multiple properties.
The apartment building I live in has large central boilers for the hot water, to save space in the apartments. This benefitted the property developer, and is probably more energy efficient (although, just like our solar power example, transmission loss needs to be accounted for), but has downsides for the apartment residents.
A better example is private vehicle ownership, as opposed to public transport. It's a good example of something that has moved from a more centralised control to individual control, with benefits and downsides.
I've lived in buildings with this, and others (houses) without, and I much prefer the former. There's nothing I need to maintain, and the 'big' version seems to be more reliable than the single-house-sized heating equipment. The one time I remember the hot water being repaired, the janitor stuck up a note explaining that due to some sort of redundancy we'd still have hot water, but it would be less hot than it was supposed to be.
Note, I said amazingly cheap, not efficient. We have more efficient solar options but they're in the lab waiting for a breakthrough to make them cheaper or being replaced in the market with options that waste more and cost less per useful watt delivered.
The Economist did a whole issue recently about how amazing solar is and how it is changing the world but they've been mildly climate skeptical for years platforming frauds like Bjorn Lomberg and it still leaks through in their writing, even if they've switched to "solar being too cheap is bad" from "solar is too expensive to help".
Solar is competing against systems that pay for their fuel directly and which still turn two thirds of it to waste heat.
The solution is of course a mix. Solar/wind/hydrogen/gas/etc., big grid/home systems. It will require grid upgrades.
Batteries are already happening [0]. And electric cars + home solar systems with batteries have a further ability to allow additions to this at scale if the grid supports it
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battery_energy_storage_syste...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_Australia
[2] https://web.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/Others...
[3] https://www.wri.org/update/sustained-portfolio-policies-have...
[5] https://gogn.orkustofnun.is/Talnaefni/OS-2021-T009-01.pdf
What we see at grid scale are batteries being used for quick response power while other generators are being spun up. The thing is the grid very much doesn't like it when demand exceeds supply. Systems shut down to protect themselves and you either dump loads very quickly or suffer a cascade failure (see the 1965 blackout--and note that that only stopped growing when the operators were able to dump enough load.)
Since this is in disaster territory the utilities obviously try to avoid it and ensure there's always enough to cope with any surges--which means they must have more stuff spinning than they actually need. Enter facilities like the big batteries: keeping them hot costs almost nothing and they have a very fast response when called upon. This buys the utilities time in which to spin up other generators and thus allows them to operate with less waste.
I think there are three stages of renewable development. The first stage renewables partly offset traditional suppliers. The second stage is you actually have excess part of the time. And the third stage you have a lot of season excess. China and Texas are in the first stage but California is in the second stage already.
I'm not sure it's that simple as evidenced by the ever increasing hours of negative electricity prices.
As far as I know, there are so far no good applications for short bursts of negative prices. Everything that would love those is so capital intensive/high fix costs that even 10 or 20% utilisation rates at negative prices are not enough to make it economically viable.
Season excess is also a big problem. Batteries to smooth the days/nights cycles are fine, you can use them ~365 times a year. But a battery to smooth out summer/winter cycles can only be used once a year!
https://www.caiso.com/todays-outlook/supply
The difference between summer and winter for renewables is 20%. In California the difference is driven mostly by solar.
This is an interesting page.
http://www.statsmapsnpix.com/2021/11/world-population-by-lat...
Majority of the worlds population lives between 40 north and 10 degrees south. And also some places like Scotland had lots of wind.
Definitely winners and losers in the transition.
I do find the rest of the article more or less balanced in the discussion of the issue, even though it tries very hard not to actually squarely put blame where it lies
If that means the grids go bankrupt and default on payments to the fossil fuel industry, then I will try to pretend to be very sad for at least 60 seconds.
The group of people that will ultimately benefit from this includes just about everyone except the octogenarian plutocrats that are actively accelerating climate change.
Maybe once they die off there will be some financial incentives to help repair the atmosphere (assuming life extension technology doesn’t doom all of us to living with their immortality).
Through a grid it may be sent to a plant which will produce green hydrogen, or to a dam (pumped-storage hydroelectricity)... or sent to another region (even quite remote, via some (U)HVDC line) which will use/store it.
The solution is obvious and cheap. You don't need powerwalls in 2025 all the major backup battery manufacturers now make $3-4k models which you can wheel around and can take your excess with zero conf off the shelf.
Takes like this are why corporations will plunge humanity into a painful end through climate change.
If wed had invested to in socialism,we would build out batteries.
What a selfish techno dystopia
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.
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.
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.
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-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...
Not sure you can blame solar for that. The rest of the world seems to manage solar without death spirals.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42971311
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?
If the tax payer is ultimately on the hook, then the tax payers should own the utility.
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!
https://knowledge-center.solaredge.com/sites/kc/files/feed-i...
An inverter can limit its output, right? So measure current at a few different points in the system, do some math, and use that to set the inverter's limit.
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?)
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...
I have to say, my days of not taking economics seriously as a science are certainly coming to a middle
This is self inflicted behavior from monopolies that ignore user research.
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.
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.
https://www.comed.com/smart-energy/my-green-power-connection...
6 month turnaround sounds pretty weak.
https://secure.comed.com/MyAccount/MyService/Pages/RequestIn...
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.
If the solar-roofed house can involve home batteries, problem solved.
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.
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.
