Turn the sun off!!!
 

Hawaiian power company, HECO, simply can't make money from those darn solar panels and smart meters, so we'll shut down the program! And by the way if you install one of your own, you can't sell power back and you're OFF our grid!

Private PV market, we have seen the future.



A Solar Boom So Successful, It's Been Halted: Scientific American

Wow, that one has enough interesting points to fill a book.

I've been considering an investment in solar panels, basing my cost rationale at least partly on the expectation that electricity costs will continue to climb. If the utility can change the rules this radically, my whole cost/benefit calculation goes out the window.

That's strange. 4.6% is way below the share of solar enery in Germany. It works there, what is Hawaii doing wrong?
Maybe it is causing a problem because they want to keep running their oil generators at some minimum rate?

Apart from that, the wisdom of taking a loan for a seriously oversized PV installation when the monthly payment is higher than the energy bill without it defies me. Unlike they really gone ecomental.

I want PV panels too, but I expect some improvements and lower cost in the coming years, don't want to throw money yet.

German power is federal, Hawaii's is commercial, ie: "...GREED IS GOOD, charity is NOT."

I'm sure that all of the other corporation-bashing electrical engineers in this thread will be more than willing to go fly over to Oahu to tell HECO how they can connect residential power generation equipment onto a grid that the article mentioned was not ready to accept residential power generation. After all, it must be simple to do! Just connect up two wires, and you're good to go! Don't have to bother with A/C phase matching, or load balancing, or overvoltaging the supply transformers, right?

Oh, that's right! Them ******* HECO corporate types should have just jacked up the rates on their customers to invest in residential power generation capability, back when their grid was first being built. Why didn't I think of that? After all, it would have made perfect sense to jack up electricity rates and make residents pay even more for electricity, to support being able to have residents pump power back into the grid, when said residents would have already have had to pay out the nose just to have said expensive power generation equipment shipped out thousands of miles by ocean, let alone installed. I mean, that's what people do all the time, right? I sure can't wait for my $20K PV cell installation to arrive, just so I can save $40 / month on my electric bill!

The "grid" across all of USA is HUGE, the "grid" across that one, single, Hawaiian island is "miniscule"...sounds to me like HECO just wants to 'protect' it's income.

True, there can be problems with stupid customers doing stupid things, but MOST power companies (our local Tucson Electric Company, for example) will not allow ANY person or installer to simply "...connect & dump..." power onto the grid without THEIR inspection/test/checkoff. Simple philosophy: No connection until system is PROVEN safe/OK for addition onto the grid.

A smaller grid is less resilient than a larger one, especially one that was designed decades prior to the invention of relatively cheap residential power generation that is capable of supplying a grid. Factor in the "out-in-the-middle-of-the-ocean-which-makes-everything-cost-more-because-it-has-to-be-shipped-in" factor, and I can see that HECO also wants to do the right thing by all of its customers, not just the small minority that wants PV and utility electricity.

It's a sensible philosophy.

These companies knew this day was coming should have been better prepared. In some areas the electric company job may be to supply nighttime and high demand usage only. They should look at this as someone else making a capital investment in equipment they won't need to maintain but can still make a profit from.
I do think that the Hodgepodge of private installations will be a challenge. But as they surely tell their workers change or become obsolete.

$36,000 and still not off the grid? I think we have found the couple that grow the legendary maui wowie. :D

35 grand for 18 panels?!?!?!?!? :eek:

"Silly-cone" co$ts more in Hawaii.

Hawai'ian electric generation has always seemed really strange to me: they ship in fossil fuel to run generators when they're quite literally sitting on top of what's probably the second biggest (after Iceland), if not the biggest, geothermal resource on Earth? Meanwhile the geothermal plants at the piddling little hot spring up the road from me have been cranking out ~100 MWatts for decades...

jamesqf, exactly!!!!

Im just glad my energy usage isnt tiered. I use to work for a bank and saw a lot of power bills for folks. Some had a flat rate, but many were tiered and I could see where a small solar array with a grid tie inverter could help to offset their usage and really rack up the savings fast by keeping them under a previous or even the first tier. Of course the biggest savings would come from better usage and a hot water heater timer. :thumbup:

+1 on using Pele's HEAT to power steam-powered turbine power generators!

Of course to get at the Geothermal energy requires (wait for it) Fracking.

And Renewables are not working out well for Germany, the new government is looking to cut back on subsidies and they are building more coal plants.

We've had this discussion before but there is a big misunderstanding by a lot of folks (not on here obviously), especially those "in charge" that see the "grid" as some big magic power wharehouse. You can put energy in and it somehow stays there until someone wants it out.

If that was true (large scale grid storage) then that would be wonderful but it isn't on any large enough scale. Which is why individuals (and in the UK government funded big corporations) buy Petrol or Diesel generators for when the sun doesn't shine and the wind doesn't blow.

Germany also decided to close all nuclear installations. And they are right about cutting back subsidies; they were quite high, and with the price of solar panels gradually dropping they don't need to be.

The biggest problem in Germany is the law that solar and wind power must be used no matter what. A storm can put the grid under stress because the wind farms in the north then outproduce local need big time.
It would be way more sensible and economical to either shut some of them off or increase the blade angle on all of them to slow them down; that would also reduce wear and maintenance needs.

The same could be done with solar; simply hook them up with a device controlled by the grid owner that reduces or prevents delivery to the grid when it cannot use it. In that way the grid owner could create a buffer capacity to quickly adapt to changing production or demand.
In an ideal world... Ah well.

I'm just not a fan of them using their monopoly as a power delivery company to maintain their monopoly as a power generating company.

So what do you do with excess power even during the times when the company says they can't accept it? I think you still need local storage options (or use it to cool some thermal mass?) and your generation capabilities need to be "right sized", or even undersized. You can't really expect a company to invest in infrastructure that makes it easier to lose customers or turns them into a customer, with a peaky supply. A government entity on the other hand...

We are going OT from the original subject of personal panels but...

Germany decided to shut off it's nuclear plants in response to the incident in Japan. A very blinkered approach as nobody died from the nuclear accident in Japan. They have switched to using coal which is the most dangerous and dirtiest form of energy available.

Genius!

I think that decision will become more "elastic" over time.

A better approach for Solar Panel owners would be to simply allow them to use the panel power they generate to reduce what they themselves draw from the grid and not allow them to feed back into it. This could be done easily, remove the subsidy. If a panel owner can save enough to cover the cost they win, otherwise only they lose - it becomes their risk and not one others have to cover. And the grid becomes more stable.

The underlying assumption behing renewables is that the alternatives would become increasingly scarce and more expensive resulting in the cost of renewables starting to match those of gas or nuclear. This simply hasn't happened and there is no sign of it happening in the near or medium future. As for the long term nobody knows and the technology of today's renewables would be dead anyway.

Also what abut land use for large scale energy production, you know for factories, shops, offices, towns, the technology we are all using just now...

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/fi...nfographic.jpg

AC power cannot be "stored" but DC power can. So, the problem (or solution) actually depends upon the source!

• When the power comes from solar panels, it's DC, which is usually "captured" in batteries, THEN converted to AC which THEN must be synchronized with the grid "phase" before it can be exported onto the grid.

Interestingly, power companies are fighting a "lagging" POWER FACTOR (PF less than one) most of the time due to the predominance of inductive reactance (XL) due to motors' winding inductance. However, MOST DC-to-AC convertors have a "leading" power factor (due to capacitors) and thus actually HELP the power companies "balance-out" a lot of their PF problem(s).

• When the power comes from AC generator systems, such as in wave-action and wind-farm generators, it starts out as AC, then is converted to DC, which is then reconverted back into AC (to match grid "phasing"), which AGAIN helps the power companies with their lagging PF problem.

The PROBLEM with either arrangement is that the power company(s) have NO inherent control over when or how much power is being pushed back onto to the grid from the customers, and they do NOT have control over the PF-balancing aspects of all those different customer sourced semi-capacitive PF sources. In effect, the DOG (power company) is being SHAKEN by the TAIL (customers).

well PF is a factor (hyuk), the correcting needs to be near the source to not affect the grid. And I don't know that a properly designed inverter is going to deviate from PF=1 much (I mean what's the point of designing a "faulty" inverter)? I think folks are going to have to get creative with how to use excess peak power, or minimize it somehow.

jamesqf

Hawai'ian electric generation has always seemed really strange to me: they ship in fossil fuel to run generators when they're quite literally sitting on top of what's probably the second biggest (after Iceland), if not the biggest, geothermal resource on Earth? Meanwhile the geothermal plants at the piddling little hot spring up the road from me have been cranking out ~100 MWatts for decades...

In different areas Geothermal can have different problems with recovery. I worked for a company, who in the 70's Fracked a Geo-well for the DOE near Los Alamos New Mexico. The results were positive but there was so much Sulfur in the down-hole strata, the resulting steam was too acidic with Sulfuric Acid to allow the Equipment to live very long. I went by the site last year and it brought back many memories...Anyway, Geo-thermal wells cannot be done "Just Anywhere" there is hot rock close to the surface. We even have a well drilled by Exxon for IBM here in Tucson, I believe in the Eighties, the tests showed potential for power production.

Wrong. There may be some low-quality resources where fracking has been used, but it's certainly not required, especially for high-quality sources like Hawai;i. Suggest you read up on the tech.

Where there is an Injection well and a Retrieval well, fracturing the rock is required to get the water-steam from one well to the other. It also increases the "Area" of absorption.

For better-or-worse, "fracturing" is the down-hole physical equivalent of a radiator, both of which perform the process of gathering as much HEAT as possible into the coolant/fluid as possible, ie: maximum surface area.

Beats the hell out of me, but I assume it goes to my neighbors. In all I have a hundred dollar power bill, so I use mo than I give,but those moments when the meter stops or spins backwards are lovely.

Plan B if I couldnt bank power in the grid I would use a charge controller in the mix with some batteries so I can store power and use the surplus for the grid tie inverters during the day.THen at night use the batteries charge for the grid tie inverters.

Yes, and equally unlovely to the company :D But local storage is the only solution that doesn't tie your excess to the grid, and hence to the company. I can see more and more companies playing this "excuse" and I don't think it is their problem to solve since they didn't create it and there is negative incentive.

To be clear, I'm not entirely convinced they didn't create it. I have trouble imagining the network topology where the wires would be more taxed with multiple sources and fixed demand (as long as you don't put out more than your service rating) Maybe some components in the network have trouble w/reverse power flow or something...

Funny you should mention that. It wasnt long ago when the leaf came out that there were articles about how evs could be used as banks to even out electrical load and how your ev could pay for itself by connecting it to the grid when not being driven.

I use to work for a company that sold utility trucks. In some areas they lease lines, lease telephone poles, etc.

Except that your EV is going to be plugged in overnight, when the sun isn't shining, adding to the deviations, not typically smoothing out peak solar generation.

I believe this was a barmy plan cooked up by the EU to try and regain grid stability, another is smart meters which (allegedly) have the option of allowing "demand" control - i.e. just shutting off consumers when the grid gets too tight, or businesses can volunteer - best wishes for that idea ;)

I few summers ago, Tucson had some "Brownouts" due to a major power line being shut down due to a wildfire. In order to lessen the possibility of that happening again, the Power Company was going to instal some gas turbine on demand generators, at a large substation near where I live, but a local "Homeowners Association" raised so much stink, the Power Company canceled the plan. I hope the next time the Brownouts have to happen, "That" community gets the Brown. Maybe they could plug in all their Prius's and keep their TV's on.

Where would the gas have come from ?

An El Paso Natural Gas pumping station located right next to the TUcson Electric Power substation. The NIMBYS in the subdivision, a couple of miles away, complained of the noise and air pollution which would affect them, yet they did not even know that there are gas turbine generators at a site where an old oil fired power plant used to be located.

VA Power has built a lot of those on demand gas turbine power stations around here too. Ironically they seem to fire up on a lot of major holidays like new years eve, thanks giving, july 4 as well as when the temps sore over 100 and close to zero degrees. Use to be about 5 pm the lights blinked or dimmed when they switched it on.

So what is so "barmy" about that? It's called load-shedding, and has been done for decades with industrial-scale customers. As for instance water pumps, either for irrigation or into storage tanks: a few hours delay doesn't really matter, so you let the utility shut them down when demand is high, then run later with cheaper electricity.

When I lived in hampton we had 2 programs. 1 where they controlled the water heater and another that controlled the ac. They say just turning it off for 15 minutes an hour helped demand and gave us a credit on our bill.

In Richmond they have a program for the AC only. Now we could go to the digital meter where we are metered on peak and non peak rates, but the unpeak hours is like 11 to 4 am. Kind of late to wash cloths, dishes, bathe and other power hungry activities.

Pretty easy to put timers on dishwashers & washing machines. As for bath/shower, some of us go to bed late and shower before. Then the hot water re-heats, and is ready for the morning.

An "On-Demand" water heater system heats the water only as it's needed. It isn't cheap to buy & install but it only consumes power when called for...the water isn't being continuously "held" at a high constant temperature.