The underlying problem is the mismatch between
the old business model:
Generate, distribute, and deliver electricity;
charge for connection to grid and for
electricity delivered and consumed.
and the new situation:
Generate *or* purchase electricity from various providers,
including households with solar panels,
distribute and deliver electricity,
charge for distribution, delivery, availability,
and for electricity consumed.
Consider the migration of television from broadcast to CATV to cable
to the current YouTube / TiVo / Hulu / whatever model - basically,
a shift from a hierarchical top-down head-end driven model to a
widely distributed model.
Utilities are facing a similar disruption, and their challenges
include restructuring their generation / collection / distribution
system; the costing and billing to support that; the regulatory
and funding environment to cope with all of that; and to do it with
generating plant equipment that will have very long term costs. I wish them luck.
While I agree with you 100%, I think the real challenge is going to be people not wanting to pay for the invisible "availability and distribution" when they've spent their entire life being trained they were paying for the electrons themselves.
If I were in that business, I would be putting a lot of marketing dollars into retraining people that the value of availability and distribution is a good percentage of the costs that they incur today, so when a customer starts generating their own electrons, they already know there is value in being attached to the network, value that corresponds with continued revenue for the company.
You are missing one giant term in the equation: utilities are subject to a shitload (technical term) of regulation. Of course they are opposed to the changes in the assumptions behind those regulations, without a carefully considered change to the regulations such that they can repsond to disruption, and therefore have an actual chance of surviving/pivoting/whatever.
Part of the reason demand in CA is at 9 PM is due to more than 1 GW of "behind the meter" solar. From the perspective of the grid, this is a decrease in daytime demand. However, the primary reason for 9 PM demand is that it's spring. Summer peak demand is mid-afternoon, and winter has two peaks -- morning (~8 AM) and evening (~ 6 PM).
The culture of protecting existing businesses is becoming infuriating to read about. Businesses are there because they're the most efficient way to solve the needs of a group of people. If circumstances change and a better solution presents itself then both new and _existing_ businesses have an opportunity to take advantage of it. There's absolutely nothing to stop the existing utility companies being the companies that lead the charge with solar power.
This article isn't talking about protecting them, simply the problems that they are now facing and will likely face in the future.
"There's absolutely nothing to stop the existing utility companies being the companies that lead the charge with solar power."
Did you read the article? Energy infrastructure is amortized over THIRTY years. That means that they have huge liabilities until that equipment is payed off and chances are they have to upgrade it shortly after. Even pumping the solar companies full of government and investment dollars doesn't compare to all of the private equity that has gone into funding the existing infrastructure.
I acknowledge this is slightly off topic, but the culture of attacking industries seems somewhat problematic for similar reasons. Passing unfriendly restrictions and higher and higher taxes on oil companies, doesn't really help solve the problem. Sure they're oil companies now, but they're not really oil companies. They're energy companies, are the biggest investors in better solutions, and have the most to lose if they don't invest in the future so why hinder them so much?
You frustration is from your false assumption. Businesses are there to make their owners as much money as possible. This frequently does not involve efficiency.
I believe that distributed energy is the future, plugging your house into your car, charging your car with solar and selling power to the grid when your forecasted household demand is lower then your forecasted supply.
Because of the internet we now have distributed information and it is changing the world in every way. Anyone can share anything in real-time with the world. Everyone is a producer and consumer of information now.
The impact of everyone being both a producer and consumer of energy will also be profound.
As a small part of this information revolution, may I suggest a (free as PDF) book on the energy problem and the varying efficacy of its potential solutions, available from here: http://www.withouthotair.com/.
It's an eye-opening read for the most part and uses real-world figures for its estimates to show just what might and might not work in replacing fossil fuels around the world.
I wouldn't have been as interested in reading it myself if the Economist/Bill Gates hadn't given it their approval.
I'm not so sure. Unless you have huge guaranteed subsidies like in Germany, making these investment decisions carries substantial risk. Is it really smart to buy solar panels and large batteries that amortize over 10 years when there could be a technological breakthrough right around the corner? Do you really want to be in a position to operate and maintain that technology, buy insurance, deal with repairs, etc? I know I don't.
And if you're talking about disconnecting from the grid entirely (I know you don't but the OP did), you suddenly have a high availability issue on your hands. That's never going to happen.
I think at the end of the day, solar will be operated by utilities. They don't have to buy all equipment on one day, so they can spread the risk. They have professional staff to fix and maintain things when they are broken.
The analogy to the Internet is apt. But it's worth remembering that the Internet backbone was not built on the existing phone network. Instead the Internet backbone was developed as a separate infrastructure, by separate companies, which was then hooked to the existing telephone (and eventually cable) last-mile infrastructures.
I'm not sure the same thing is possible in power generation, because power plants, substations, and power lines are so much more expensive than telecomm switches.
What we need is the power equivalent to the fiber optic cable--a huge breakthrough in line capacity. The only thing that could compare is probably high-temp superconductivity.
I work in this space. I think it is worth noting that, yes this is true for some players, particularly at middle management and executive levels. However it is equally work noting that some of the resistance is just conservative engineering.
Would you just grab the latest 0.1 release of the hot new database and throw it up on your production systems because everyone keeps talking about the promise of it? This is a real concern at the engineering levels.
One of the problems with distributed generation is not that it eats away at grid profits - there is still profit from maintaining the grid that allows you to have power even if your solar panels break. There are price structures that allow this to be profitable for utilities (however everyone involved needs to look at it with fresh eyes -- homeowners need to stop thinking about it in just profit from unused kwh and utilities need to stop looking at it in terms of kwh pushed). The problem is that huge and expensive amounts of infrastructure are designed an manufactured with a one-way power flow in mind. Protection schemes are predicated on a star(ish) topology of distribution lines, where the assumption that power flows from the "hub" out.[1] Things like transformers are highly tuned for this type of flow, to the point where even small changes or running out of spec can seriously degrade the expected lifetime (usually thought out and planned on the time-frame of 30 years.) Power flowing the other way is a "break the line" event, period, to protect that equipment. A lot of substations don't have the type of capacity or equipment to handle power swings too far out of spec, because they designed that way for maximum efficience of the push model.
Something this article misses in it's analysis, is that power companies building infrastructure is absurdly expensive - getting right aways for power lines is a decade long, legally perilous, and highly prone to regulatory whim, endeavor (the NIMBY crowd is strong here). As such, once one is put in, the cost is amortized over 30+ year timelines, and efficient operation is actually strongly considered. Demand response and efficient appliances are actually in the interest of utilities, and they do recognize this. If they can't build new infrastructure to increase supply, they want demand to remain within their capability to deliver (and when done right, the base "connected" fee to the customers can be as or more profitable than more power to fewer customers).
Finally, all the understanding and models of how electricity works in an interconnected grid is based on models assuming "roughly" steady state capable generators. Things like solar and wind have some problems in this, as they can contribute instability to the overall system - if the wind dies, you have to have hot standby power to keep voltage levels up. If everyone in a region has PV, and clouds move in, they will be demanding more power from the grid. On a "partly sunny" day, this result in weird spikes, again placing strange wear patterns on transformers and generators that are ramping up and down in response.
Even the engineers I know who are all about this stuff are hesitant to just deploying it, because of all this technical challenge. Just like I would be hesitant to throw an unknown datastore into a stable working system without staging, testing, and otherwise slowly integrating it. It's even worse for the utilities, because they are in a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" position. What is worse - rolling slowly with the new technology and being blasted as obstructionists, or going head first, and being blasted when the unexpected happens and breaks a bunch of things, or finding a middle ground and making everyone unhappy?
[1] at transmission levels, this isn't true, and in dense urban centers the topology is meshier, but this statement is still true for a (geographically anyway) majority of power distribution.
I'm in the industry too. Your comments are spot on.
At an IEEE talk on this subject not long ago, the presenter said, "We've spent the last 100 years learning how to PREVENT the very type of electrical flow that distributed generation creates."
I live in Ontario, which through some poor green power policies has really expensive power now. In response, I've reduced my power usage, plus I'm often in Germany for large periods of time. Now I'm starting to notice that the connection charge is on its way to dominating my power bill. I guess this is where the future is going.
I don't understand. This might be the current problem for utilities, where laws demand that solar power can be inserted into the grid (often as a priority or for a guaranteed price) by what would normally be just consumer households.
This article is talking about using your solar power system to actually fulfill your complete power needs, without any grid.
Excuse my ignorance (I am a layperson and simply interested in this subject), but are you suggesting that the utility themselves would rollout distributed solar to their customers, and thus the utilities engineers are skeptical of the technology and how it would be rolled out?
It seems to me that the whole point is that consumers will begin the rollout themselves, generating and storing power on their own and the only visible effect to the utility would be a dramatic decrease in power use by that customer.
While having a grid where you could sell your unused energy is a great idea, I didn't see that as the focus of this article. I thought this article was simply about the distributed generation and storage.
In the context of distributed generation and storage on an individual level -- why do utility engineers matter? They don't get a say in the rollout, they don't manage it, and they certainly don't get to prevent it. All they can do is maintain their infrastructure in the face of a change they cannot stop.
Something that would be interesting: a map estimating the areas in which a typical suburban home roof covered with PV panels would produce enough energy to power a typical suburban home's worth of electrical usage, assuming some level of battery technology.
I'm not actually sure what it'd look like. Seems like there might be a tradeoff between hotter areas, which have both higher PV output and higher peak electricity usage (due to A/C running flat out on hot days), and cooler areas which are lower on both. I guess the ideal situation would be something like SoCal within a mile of the coast: tons of sun yet ocean-moderated mild temperatures. But not sure about the rest of the country.
I'm an electrical engineer and I've done these calculations for my own home.
The roof area of a 1200 sq ft ranch home is much larger than the surface area of solar panels needed to power the home. (in other words, your map would show pretty much all of north America). But covering all of a roof with solar panels is very expensive.
The biggest problem is that the "typical suburban home" is ridiculously inefficient.
In terms of bang for your buck, investing in efficiency improvements is a much better choice for the average home owner. Don't even consider solar panels until you've reduced energy needs first.
After efficiency upgrades, modern solar panels make a lot of sense financially speaking.
Not to mention lumen per dollar increase rate of LED lighting, tablets that consume 4 watts, refrigerators that use half the power of the average installed fridge, etc.
The falling prices of solar PV panels has been incredible. Most expected the price of $0.72 per peak watt to be reached in 2028, not 2013.
I doubt most people can afford enough solar and battery storage to power all the air conditioning needed for the longer, hotter summers we are having.
We'll just use less coal which is a great thing, until the coal industry starts getting subsidies to stay alive in a few decades (which is certainly going to happen considering their political power).
Grid-tie is a much better answer for people and utilities though. Solves the daytime demand problem.
While you may doubt, I am quite confident. Forklift batteries are readily available and not terribly expensive. Heavy, yes, but you weren't going to put the batteries on your roof for a bunch of other reasons anyhow.
Cooling in the summer requires much less energy compared to heating in the winter. It's also a lot more of an optional comfort than a critical survival need.
The chapter and verse of the grid utility economics as they are impacted by solar and wind is in http://smallisprofitable.org which was The Economist's Book of the Year 2003. (disclaimer: I helped edit this)
Decentralized power generation makes society as a whole far more resilient against sabotage and natural disasters.
As for the business model, Heinlein has a comment:
"There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary to public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute or common law. Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back."
Of course they might "destroy US utilities", which is why some of us appreciate them so much. Of course they won't destroy hydro or wind plants.
There was a time when power generation "had" to be centralized, just as AT&T "needed" to have a telecom monopoly and we "need" to have ISPs. Technology is sweeping us past that necessity; those days are ending.
Now that the utilities have stripped and burned most of the easily-stripped fossil fuel resources (leaving no such easy plundering for future generations) and kept the profits for themselves, we are all starting to enjoy getting a slice of the pie. Dear Utes: don't let the door hit you in the ass.
One thing that may save utilities for a while is the rise of the electric car. There will be a need for charging stations to charge these cars when away from home and solar may not be practical in all locations. This could be especially true in cities where there may not be enough room for all the solar panels needed. Electrified roads that charge up cars as they drive on them would be even better and would be a natural extension of existing utility services. If utilities were smart they would focus on helping to accelerate the transition to electric vehicles.
It's simple: A utility's costs for a customer are basically a fixed cost for a connection plus a variable cost for the power a customer uses. The fixed cost pays for the astoundingly expensive equipment needed for a connection, and the variable cost pays just for the actual power. In the US, the wholesale cost of power on the grid has long been about 0.5 cents per kWh, that is, relatively low. I have some figures from 2007 saying that the cost of power at the plant from coal is less than 3 cents per kWh and, nuclear fission, 2 cents.
Now, if a lot of consumers put solar panels on their roofs but remain connected to the grid, then they will pay less to the utility which stands to fail to get back its fixed costs.
So, eventually the customer will get an electric bill that itemizes a much larger fixed cost for the connection and a lower variable cost for the actual power.
In the meanwhile, there will be a lot of 'politics' where people with solar panels want to pay not enough for the fixed cost of the grid which will mean that people without solar panels will pay too much.
And the people with solar panels will want to be able to sell power back to the utilities which; such power will cause engineering problems on the grid, and the solution of these problems will raise the fixed costs.
For the batteries, so far they are too expensive. Same for home electric generators. Generally a big problem with electric power is that storage is very expensive.
Net, for generating electric power, super tough to improve on the results of the last 100 years in electric power engineering where the power comes from falling water, burning coal, or nuclear fission.
In simple terms, for the grid, really no one wants power from unreliable sources such as wind and solar because (1) still need the fixed cost of the present system for when the wind is not blowing and the sun is not shining, (2) wind/solar variability can cause stability issues on the grid (to be solved by a 'smart grid', that is, more fixed cost for the grid), (3) the good wind/solar sources are generally too far from the major grid demands meaning long distance transmission lines (more cost). My guess is that if take the subsidies away from wind and solar, then for the grid wind/solar will fall like a lead balloon.
Broadly, wind/solar for the grid asks us to pay for fixed cost twice, once for wind/solar and again for our current system for when wind/solar are not providing enough power.
Heck, except for dress up, I have just one pair of shoes and wear them rain or shine -- I don't have separate shoes for rain and then shine. I have one computer for night and day and not separate computers for each. I want to pay for just one source of fixed cost of electric power, not one source on days with wind or sun and another source otherwise.
Power from wind/solar may be useful, say, for smelting aluminum, generating hydrogen from water, providing energy to make gasoline for water and coal. Note something these three candidate uses have in common: The output is easily stored, that is, buffered. Then notice the problem of electric power for the grid: The means of storage are far to inefficient.
For the grid, as far as I can see, wind and solar are just nonsense pushed by a 'wind/solar subsidy industry' that wants to talk people into measuring temperature not with thermometers but pictures of polar bears.
There is another candidate, small nukes. So, from Japan can buy a 'box'. In a neighborhood, dig a hole in the ground, install the box, and cover it over. Connect the box to the grid of the neighborhood. Then the box, just buried in its hole in the ground, provides all the electric power for the neighborhood for, say, 20 years. The savings are maintaining the long distance power transmission from the power station to the neighborhood. Of course the interior of the box is a nuclear fission reactor.
Now if my startup works and I get rich and build a nice place in the rural hills of, say, New Hampshire, then maybe I will be able to get such a box! Also for my 4 wheel drive truck to get around in the winters, use that power to make gasoline from water and coal! Maybe!
This is nice if it leads to a switch to cheaper localized non monopolistic electricity. However, I wonder if the chain reaction could lead to widespread utilities bankruptcies and maybe even cascate to another debt crisis affecting the already fragile financial and government sectors.
Well, that's basically what private care ownership did to private streetcar and bus companies in the first half of the 20th century. Many of today's "public transit" agencies started life as bailouts (takeovers, the only reasonable kind of bailout) of private companies who could not compete with the car.
At least here in Michigan, DTE Energy is pushing efficiency and solar. Part of this is a legislated requirement, but I think the big motivator is how the regulator calculates their profit margin. AFAIK, they don't make their margin on selling electrons, but on capital investment. Higher utilization of their generating capacity just means slimmer profit margins. Most of their plants are 40-50 years old so they have plenty of capital investment and profits headed their way even if solar cuts into demand. I could be wrong about any or all of this, since I'm working off memory and I'm not going to read 100 page regulator reports.
I think this is a fascinating argument and makes sense. However, Is the EEI really someone we trust with a report like this? It seems - given their position - they have a lot to gain and little downside in trying to scare what are essentially politicians into helping protect them. Perhaps that's why the media ignored this report to begin with?
One of the best tales regarding an entrenched utility, costs, and an individual wanting to hook into the grid. Ken Adelman has made his name known for a number of things, but his fight w/ PG&E was one of the more memorable ones --
A similar cycle will trash the gasoline car industry when electric meets the combination of [cheap, useable] that is sufficient to trigger a demand reduction / supply contraction cycle in the less fungible parts for gasoline cars.
[+] [-] dmckeon|13 years ago|reply
Also, peak demand in CA is at 9 pm, not noon: https://www.caiso.com/outlook/outlook.html
The underlying problem is the mismatch between the old business model:
and the new situation: Consider the migration of television from broadcast to CATV to cable to the current YouTube / TiVo / Hulu / whatever model - basically, a shift from a hierarchical top-down head-end driven model to a widely distributed model.Utilities are facing a similar disruption, and their challenges include restructuring their generation / collection / distribution system; the costing and billing to support that; the regulatory and funding environment to cope with all of that; and to do it with generating plant equipment that will have very long term costs. I wish them luck.
[+] [-] SoftwareMaven|13 years ago|reply
If I were in that business, I would be putting a lot of marketing dollars into retraining people that the value of availability and distribution is a good percentage of the costs that they incur today, so when a customer starts generating their own electrons, they already know there is value in being attached to the network, value that corresponds with continued revenue for the company.
[+] [-] sophacles|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ghouse|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tedsanders|13 years ago|reply
I imagine the yearly peak might be earlier in the day, because it will occur on very hot days.
The time of day of the yearly peak is more important for capacity planning than the time of day of the daily peak.
[+] [-] ollysb|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] akiselev|13 years ago|reply
"There's absolutely nothing to stop the existing utility companies being the companies that lead the charge with solar power."
Did you read the article? Energy infrastructure is amortized over THIRTY years. That means that they have huge liabilities until that equipment is payed off and chances are they have to upgrade it shortly after. Even pumping the solar companies full of government and investment dollars doesn't compare to all of the private equity that has gone into funding the existing infrastructure.
[+] [-] gmu3|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] njharman|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|13 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] startupfounder|13 years ago|reply
I believe that distributed energy is the future, plugging your house into your car, charging your car with solar and selling power to the grid when your forecasted household demand is lower then your forecasted supply.
Because of the internet we now have distributed information and it is changing the world in every way. Anyone can share anything in real-time with the world. Everyone is a producer and consumer of information now.
The impact of everyone being both a producer and consumer of energy will also be profound.
[+] [-] luxpir|13 years ago|reply
It's an eye-opening read for the most part and uses real-world figures for its estimates to show just what might and might not work in replacing fossil fuels around the world.
I wouldn't have been as interested in reading it myself if the Economist/Bill Gates hadn't given it their approval.
[+] [-] fauigerzigerk|13 years ago|reply
And if you're talking about disconnecting from the grid entirely (I know you don't but the OP did), you suddenly have a high availability issue on your hands. That's never going to happen.
I think at the end of the day, solar will be operated by utilities. They don't have to buy all equipment on one day, so they can spread the risk. They have professional staff to fix and maintain things when they are broken.
[+] [-] snowwrestler|13 years ago|reply
I'm not sure the same thing is possible in power generation, because power plants, substations, and power lines are so much more expensive than telecomm switches.
What we need is the power equivalent to the fiber optic cable--a huge breakthrough in line capacity. The only thing that could compare is probably high-temp superconductivity.
[+] [-] sophacles|13 years ago|reply
Would you just grab the latest 0.1 release of the hot new database and throw it up on your production systems because everyone keeps talking about the promise of it? This is a real concern at the engineering levels.
One of the problems with distributed generation is not that it eats away at grid profits - there is still profit from maintaining the grid that allows you to have power even if your solar panels break. There are price structures that allow this to be profitable for utilities (however everyone involved needs to look at it with fresh eyes -- homeowners need to stop thinking about it in just profit from unused kwh and utilities need to stop looking at it in terms of kwh pushed). The problem is that huge and expensive amounts of infrastructure are designed an manufactured with a one-way power flow in mind. Protection schemes are predicated on a star(ish) topology of distribution lines, where the assumption that power flows from the "hub" out.[1] Things like transformers are highly tuned for this type of flow, to the point where even small changes or running out of spec can seriously degrade the expected lifetime (usually thought out and planned on the time-frame of 30 years.) Power flowing the other way is a "break the line" event, period, to protect that equipment. A lot of substations don't have the type of capacity or equipment to handle power swings too far out of spec, because they designed that way for maximum efficience of the push model.
Something this article misses in it's analysis, is that power companies building infrastructure is absurdly expensive - getting right aways for power lines is a decade long, legally perilous, and highly prone to regulatory whim, endeavor (the NIMBY crowd is strong here). As such, once one is put in, the cost is amortized over 30+ year timelines, and efficient operation is actually strongly considered. Demand response and efficient appliances are actually in the interest of utilities, and they do recognize this. If they can't build new infrastructure to increase supply, they want demand to remain within their capability to deliver (and when done right, the base "connected" fee to the customers can be as or more profitable than more power to fewer customers).
Finally, all the understanding and models of how electricity works in an interconnected grid is based on models assuming "roughly" steady state capable generators. Things like solar and wind have some problems in this, as they can contribute instability to the overall system - if the wind dies, you have to have hot standby power to keep voltage levels up. If everyone in a region has PV, and clouds move in, they will be demanding more power from the grid. On a "partly sunny" day, this result in weird spikes, again placing strange wear patterns on transformers and generators that are ramping up and down in response.
Even the engineers I know who are all about this stuff are hesitant to just deploying it, because of all this technical challenge. Just like I would be hesitant to throw an unknown datastore into a stable working system without staging, testing, and otherwise slowly integrating it. It's even worse for the utilities, because they are in a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" position. What is worse - rolling slowly with the new technology and being blasted as obstructionists, or going head first, and being blasted when the unexpected happens and breaks a bunch of things, or finding a middle ground and making everyone unhappy?
[1] at transmission levels, this isn't true, and in dense urban centers the topology is meshier, but this statement is still true for a (geographically anyway) majority of power distribution.
[+] [-] crusso|13 years ago|reply
At an IEEE talk on this subject not long ago, the presenter said, "We've spent the last 100 years learning how to PREVENT the very type of electrical flow that distributed generation creates."
[+] [-] rayiner|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] drpgq|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] revelation|13 years ago|reply
This article is talking about using your solar power system to actually fulfill your complete power needs, without any grid.
[+] [-] criley|13 years ago|reply
It seems to me that the whole point is that consumers will begin the rollout themselves, generating and storing power on their own and the only visible effect to the utility would be a dramatic decrease in power use by that customer.
While having a grid where you could sell your unused energy is a great idea, I didn't see that as the focus of this article. I thought this article was simply about the distributed generation and storage.
In the context of distributed generation and storage on an individual level -- why do utility engineers matter? They don't get a say in the rollout, they don't manage it, and they certainly don't get to prevent it. All they can do is maintain their infrastructure in the face of a change they cannot stop.
[+] [-] revelation|13 years ago|reply
http://www.solarcity.com/residential/energy-storage.aspx
Of course its marketed as backup power right now, but once battery costs come down this will be very viable.
[+] [-] _delirium|13 years ago|reply
I'm not actually sure what it'd look like. Seems like there might be a tradeoff between hotter areas, which have both higher PV output and higher peak electricity usage (due to A/C running flat out on hot days), and cooler areas which are lower on both. I guess the ideal situation would be something like SoCal within a mile of the coast: tons of sun yet ocean-moderated mild temperatures. But not sure about the rest of the country.
[+] [-] asynchronous13|13 years ago|reply
The roof area of a 1200 sq ft ranch home is much larger than the surface area of solar panels needed to power the home. (in other words, your map would show pretty much all of north America). But covering all of a roof with solar panels is very expensive.
The biggest problem is that the "typical suburban home" is ridiculously inefficient.
In terms of bang for your buck, investing in efficiency improvements is a much better choice for the average home owner. Don't even consider solar panels until you've reduced energy needs first.
After efficiency upgrades, modern solar panels make a lot of sense financially speaking.
[+] [-] ahi|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] EEGuy|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] madaxe|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] marze|13 years ago|reply
The falling prices of solar PV panels has been incredible. Most expected the price of $0.72 per peak watt to be reached in 2028, not 2013.
[+] [-] ars|13 years ago|reply
The energy efficiency of LEDs still doesn't beat CFL, except for really really expensive LEDs.
[+] [-] ck2|13 years ago|reply
We'll just use less coal which is a great thing, until the coal industry starts getting subsidies to stay alive in a few decades (which is certainly going to happen considering their political power).
Grid-tie is a much better answer for people and utilities though. Solves the daytime demand problem.
[+] [-] kaybe|13 years ago|reply
(But then, Europe is not too humid.. nobody uses private air conditioning.)
[+] [-] msandford|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] marshray|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] toomuchtodo|13 years ago|reply
We should be subsidizing geothermal installations because of how damn efficient it is compared to trying to push heat into the air.
[+] [-] stesch|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] leashless|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fnordsensei|13 years ago|reply
As for the business model, Heinlein has a comment: "There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary to public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute or common law. Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back."
[+] [-] teeja|13 years ago|reply
There was a time when power generation "had" to be centralized, just as AT&T "needed" to have a telecom monopoly and we "need" to have ISPs. Technology is sweeping us past that necessity; those days are ending.
Now that the utilities have stripped and burned most of the easily-stripped fossil fuel resources (leaving no such easy plundering for future generations) and kept the profits for themselves, we are all starting to enjoy getting a slice of the pie. Dear Utes: don't let the door hit you in the ass.
[+] [-] jrh555|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] graycat|13 years ago|reply
Now, if a lot of consumers put solar panels on their roofs but remain connected to the grid, then they will pay less to the utility which stands to fail to get back its fixed costs.
So, eventually the customer will get an electric bill that itemizes a much larger fixed cost for the connection and a lower variable cost for the actual power.
In the meanwhile, there will be a lot of 'politics' where people with solar panels want to pay not enough for the fixed cost of the grid which will mean that people without solar panels will pay too much.
And the people with solar panels will want to be able to sell power back to the utilities which; such power will cause engineering problems on the grid, and the solution of these problems will raise the fixed costs.
For the batteries, so far they are too expensive. Same for home electric generators. Generally a big problem with electric power is that storage is very expensive.
Net, for generating electric power, super tough to improve on the results of the last 100 years in electric power engineering where the power comes from falling water, burning coal, or nuclear fission.
In simple terms, for the grid, really no one wants power from unreliable sources such as wind and solar because (1) still need the fixed cost of the present system for when the wind is not blowing and the sun is not shining, (2) wind/solar variability can cause stability issues on the grid (to be solved by a 'smart grid', that is, more fixed cost for the grid), (3) the good wind/solar sources are generally too far from the major grid demands meaning long distance transmission lines (more cost). My guess is that if take the subsidies away from wind and solar, then for the grid wind/solar will fall like a lead balloon.
Broadly, wind/solar for the grid asks us to pay for fixed cost twice, once for wind/solar and again for our current system for when wind/solar are not providing enough power. Heck, except for dress up, I have just one pair of shoes and wear them rain or shine -- I don't have separate shoes for rain and then shine. I have one computer for night and day and not separate computers for each. I want to pay for just one source of fixed cost of electric power, not one source on days with wind or sun and another source otherwise.
Power from wind/solar may be useful, say, for smelting aluminum, generating hydrogen from water, providing energy to make gasoline for water and coal. Note something these three candidate uses have in common: The output is easily stored, that is, buffered. Then notice the problem of electric power for the grid: The means of storage are far to inefficient.
For the grid, as far as I can see, wind and solar are just nonsense pushed by a 'wind/solar subsidy industry' that wants to talk people into measuring temperature not with thermometers but pictures of polar bears.
There is another candidate, small nukes. So, from Japan can buy a 'box'. In a neighborhood, dig a hole in the ground, install the box, and cover it over. Connect the box to the grid of the neighborhood. Then the box, just buried in its hole in the ground, provides all the electric power for the neighborhood for, say, 20 years. The savings are maintaining the long distance power transmission from the power station to the neighborhood. Of course the interior of the box is a nuclear fission reactor.
Now if my startup works and I get rich and build a nice place in the rural hills of, say, New Hampshire, then maybe I will be able to get such a box! Also for my 4 wheel drive truck to get around in the winters, use that power to make gasoline from water and coal! Maybe!
[+] [-] BenoitEssiambre|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thrownaway2424|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] artificialidiot|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ahi|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dghughes|13 years ago|reply
Say a little old lady wants solar panels but is in no way capable of installing them anymore than she can install plumbing.
Power utilities should offer solar panels, wind turbines, battery storage systems. Even electrical to hydrogen foe storage.
The power company should be like an ISP only instead of modems they service power generating devices.
[+] [-] jusben1369|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] spenrose|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jmspring|13 years ago|reply
http://www.solarwarrior.com/pgebattle.html
[+] [-] JulianMorrison|13 years ago|reply