Solar power

[oil pan 4]

Originally Posted by JSH

Renewables are cheaper - they aren't free. Adding capacity still costs money - renewables are just cheaper than building a new nuclear, coal, or natural gas plant. California added almost 2 million people in that 6 year time frame as well.



Well lets start off with what I wrote not what you read.


$3.50 a week NOT $3 a month. That is about 1/2 a beer a week for a cleaner electrical grid. You can pick your own frivolous expense to use as a benchmark. However you don't care about clean air or CO2 so you aren't willing to pay a penny more for something you don't value. That is what makes the real difference in how differently we see a $0.03 per kWh increase for electricity.

As to the average person in the US - they are wasteful. Just like with gasoline we center our lifestyle around wasting energy and then complain if the price goes up. In the USA we use 2x the electricity per person as someone in Germany or France. 3x the average Brit. (I'm sure the European forum members get a good laugh at the people here complaining about energy prices when we piss away so much energy)

My wife and I live in a 1000 sq ft house that is all electric except for the hot water heater and average 6211 kWh a year. That includes the 3 years we had the Spark EV and did some but not all charging at home.

Now that we have the Bolt and installed a Level 2 charger we do more EV driving and more home charging. Last month was 1400 miles, 218 kWh charging at home, 311 kWh consumed by the car so about 2/3rd of our charging was at home. Even if I was paying for every kWh that would be $46.65 at $0.15 per kWh. When a 30 mpg gas car would have consumed 46.7 GALLONS of $5 a gallon gas that would cost $233 it seems petty to complain about paying $46.65 instead of $40.43 to drive those 1400 miles.

1/2 of people said they wouldn'the pay even $1 more per month to fix global warming. $70% said they would refuse pay $10 per month.
Renewables aren't cheaper it's been proven.
When looking at the sticker price only they appear cheaper.
But when the power grid has to be beefed up to allow for a region of the power grid that happens to be in high production to send power to a region that is seeing little to no renewable production all while keeping fossil fuel power at the ready to take over isn't cheaper.

[freebeard]

I wouldn't pay $1 for global warming, but I would pay $10 for energy independence.

Right now I'm sizing and pricing solar panels. I have room for four 40x66 panels. The utility would never know anything more than a slight drop in demand.

[redpoint5]

That's just the thing, wind and solar don't displace the generating plants, they supplement them, demanding that their energy be paid for first if they happen to be generating. The dispatchable (responds to demand) plants they didn't replace sit idle during this time, and have fixed costs which don't go away just because they aren't in use at the moment.

People say, "but the fuel is free". Right, but as Elon points out with rocketry, fuel is cheap, it's the hardware that costs a ton.

[oil pan 4]

Once you try to replace coal, natural gas, nuclear plants with "renewable" then they get more expensive.
Renewable can make electricity cheaper, but you can only use a few percent of solar and less than 20% of wind to supplement reliable power.
Any more than that an you are chasing a moving target and fossil fuel plants have to idle but stay ready to meet demand when all that renewable power suddenly can't meet deamand.

[freebeard]

Grand Coulee Dam sneers at your shenanigans.

[redpoint5]

When we refer to renewables, we're specifically talking about non-dispatchable generation. Hydro and geothermal aren't part of the discussion, especially since expanding their use isn't as simple as adding more solar panels or wind turbines.

[oil pan 4]

Originally Posted by freebeard

Grand Coulee Dam sneers at your shenanigans.

We can't build more of them and hydroelectric capacity is declining due to increased water demand.
If the US wants more hydroelectric we have to buy it from Canada.

[cRiPpLe_rOoStEr]

Originally Posted by oil pan 4

Once you try to replace coal, natural gas, nuclear plants with "renewable" then they get more expensive.
Renewable can make electricity cheaper, but you can only use a few percent of solar and less than 20% of wind to supplement reliable power.
Any more than that an you are chasing a moving target and fossil fuel plants have to idle but stay ready to meet demand when all that renewable power suddenly can't meet deamand.

The average Joe is often fooled into believing a "miraculous" one-size-fits-all approach will be the solution, at least once it's proven to fail when it's too late...

[oil pan 4]

Solars niche is to cover most of the the peak summer daytime load. Solar isn't going to make up any of the base load, nope not going to happen. It's sci-fi. Well have faster than light human travel before we have solar powered everything.
The clear winner is hydro electric. It's the one renewable that's not so renewable, you know how much will be available at least in the immediate future and so reliable you can set your watch by it. But we're capped. Can't build any more, and need the water held to keep people alive.
So next best answer is nuclear.

[serialk11r]

I was thinking about a small amount of solar capacity as backup power and to reduce costs at my parents' house, since I noticed panels are actually pretty cheap now (I found a 100W panel on Amazon for $70 shipped).

It seems pretty sensible to have ~200W of panels that can handle all the idle load during midday with a basic grid tie inverter like this: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/3256801761659631.html

At in California, 2 panels and the inverter will pay for itself in 2 years.

Once the maximum power produced exceeds the minimum power used then you need batteries and a more expensive inverter which considerably raises the cost, though that would be also more useful in a power outage.