Norman Alexander
Penultimate Amazing
Renewable Energy
- Thread starter Puppycow
- Start date
Panel price hasn't really been an issue for 10 or so years. It is a minor component of the price of installing panels and storing excess energy to be used when the weather conditions prevent electricity generation.
I get around 10kWh a day from my panels during March-August, but literally 0-2kWh Dec-Feb (usually 0, since there is no point clearing snow from them with no sun). For now I am selling the excess production to the power company, but with spot prices being pretty small during summer, it doesn't really cover much. My system will have a payback time of ~30y without any additional costs. Significantly less if I can get neighbors EV cars charged during summer and have them pool into costs a bit, but that would be a taxation/bureucracy nightmare.
Most promising tech for storing power would be reservoirs/hydroelectric combo - fill reservoirs up during summer and use hydroelec during low production. Predictable and easy. Spends a lot of excess power tho, but when the panels work, they provide massive overproduction anyway.
I get around 10kWh a day from my panels during March-August, but literally 0-2kWh Dec-Feb (usually 0, since there is no point clearing snow from them with no sun). For now I am selling the excess production to the power company, but with spot prices being pretty small during summer, it doesn't really cover much. My system will have a payback time of ~30y without any additional costs. Significantly less if I can get neighbors EV cars charged during summer and have them pool into costs a bit, but that would be a taxation/bureucracy nightmare.
Most promising tech for storing power would be reservoirs/hydroelectric combo - fill reservoirs up during summer and use hydroelec during low production. Predictable and easy. Spends a lot of excess power tho, but when the panels work, they provide massive overproduction anyway.
The Great Zaganza
Maledictorian
- Joined
- Aug 14, 2016
- Messages
- 29,978
until the grid is upgraded and reorganized, private EV production will and probably should take a back seat to solar farms with dedicated energy storage.
But if you have an EV and roof space, PV is a no-brainer.
But if you have an EV and roof space, PV is a no-brainer.
Small caveat to that, work nightshifts or remote. It is free, but it won't be quick.
Easy swap battery packs would make my life a lot easier, could just swap the EV battery and leave it to charge for the day.
Wow. Where do you live? My panels generate 20-30Kwh a day or so for 9 months of the year and the payback will be about 5 years. If I knew it was 30 years I wouldn’t have installed them. Are you being truthful, or did you just make a stupid decision by installing panels in a poor location?
Puppycow
Penultimate Amazing
That's uncalled for. What about the other 3 months, since he said Dec-Feb, which is 3 months. And neither of you said how many (or what area) of panels you have. It's not necessarily stupid if works for 9 months a year. Does it snow where you live?
Norman Alexander
Penultimate Amazing
There's a significantly shorter payback period if you use your own solar to charge your EV. With the cost of fossil fuel (petrol, diesel) for cars approaching usury now, being able to charge an EV from solar means day-to-day car travel costs are reduced/eliminated too, not just household power.
In our case, we are running an EV and our solar went in six months ago. Since then, I have had to resort to grid-charging the car exactly once. Otherwise, it gets charged off the sun for free, even in winter. It has been driven nearly 10,000 kms in that time. That would have been the equivalent of 20 tanks of diesel for our old CX-5. At $120 per tank, that would have cost us $2400 in fuel alone. And that's just in six months. So we estimate solar will save us $5000 per year in vehicle fuel costs alone. That is a large percentage of the cost of the solar/battery installation.
NB. I don't have a hate thing for fuel vehicles. It's horses for courses. In a number of cases, they are a better solution.
Finland at the moment.. So total price for electricity is about 0,06e/kWh on a long time average. I see no point in using any other value for calculating ROI. Especially since I have to draw electricity from the grid on expensive months anyway. Economically installing those wouldn't make sense unless we have a big spike in electricity prizes. Had 1 year when it looked like they would pay themselves back faster but electricity prices went back down.
Installed it 5y ago with 8x300W panels. I mean the angle could be better, but otherwise it is running about what is expected and has produced ~2000 kWh a year (0,9ish factor)
*corrected 0,06snt -> 0,06e.. Stupid me
Installed it 5y ago with 8x300W panels. I mean the angle could be better, but otherwise it is running about what is expected and has produced ~2000 kWh a year (0,9ish factor)
*corrected 0,06snt -> 0,06e.. Stupid me
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Puppycow
Penultimate Amazing
So actually, the reason it takes so long is due to cheaper electricity.
One Australian dollar = about .59 euros. So that's about 0.14 to 0.27 e/kWh.
theprestige
Penultimate Amazing
Okay, and yet they're still carpeting vast swaths of desert with solar panels.
bruto
Penultimate Amazing
There certainly is a different bunch of numbers depending on where you live. As mentioned, where I am, not only is there a lot of snow and a dark winter, and our power grid maxed out, but my own land is badly set up for easy solar. The house is at the north end of a north-facing slope, such that though the sun hits the house roof, much of the land behind is in shade much of the time, especially in winter. The rest of the land is either cliff, forest, or swamp, with the other best locations for solar an inconvenient distance from existing power lines. It still might be possible, but I'm not likely to work out the expense and difficulty of a solar installation unless I combine it with an EV. I'd likely be looking at a system dedicated to charging the EV, with some emergency backup potential, but never primarily as a component of the grid.
The Chinese gigapark is actually a fun experiment since it now functions as a combined electric plant and a sheep farm. A similar solution should be applied to other similar desert regions as a no-brainer. Area where they built it was kinda special though with high solar capacity but relatively low temperatures.
Needs to be linked to hydroelectric facility though and build those reservoirs is something that can be hard to get thru enviromentalists.
Needs to be linked to hydroelectric facility though and build those reservoirs is something that can be hard to get thru enviromentalists.
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Norman Alexander
Penultimate Amazing
Australia is already on that.
About - Snowy Hydro
Snowy 2.0 is the next chapter in the Snowy Scheme’s history. It is a nation-building renewable energy project that will provide on-demand energy and large-scale storage for many generations to come. It is the largest committed renewable energy project in Australia. Snowy 2.0 will underpin the...
www.snowyhydro.com.au
theprestige
Penultimate Amazing
I guess as long as we're all agreed that deserts are sterile wastelands ready be paved over with solar in order to meet humanity's ever increasing demand for more power.
Norman Alexander
Penultimate Amazing
Slippery slope fallacy supreme.
novaphile
Quester of Doglets
Mine were installed in 2008 and paid themselves off in three years.
My electricity provider organised the project, and the scheme was 'too good to be true'.
i.e. They paid for everything up front, I had fixed repayments ($112 per month IIRC) for a fixed period of time.
The panels were generating and exporting $90.00 per month (on average) from the day that they were installed, so I was actually only paying about $20 per month to pay the things off.
As far as I could tell, it was free money for me, and I've never looked back.
They're still chugging away up there, making free money, and the reduced feed-in tariff.
This is from my most recent electricity bill, note that it only shows the amount of solar generation that was exported.
I'm at home full time now, and charge my car a couple of times per week.
Solar exports
My electricity provider organised the project, and the scheme was 'too good to be true'.
i.e. They paid for everything up front, I had fixed repayments ($112 per month IIRC) for a fixed period of time.
The panels were generating and exporting $90.00 per month (on average) from the day that they were installed, so I was actually only paying about $20 per month to pay the things off.
As far as I could tell, it was free money for me, and I've never looked back.
They're still chugging away up there, making free money, and the reduced feed-in tariff.
This is from my most recent electricity bill, note that it only shows the amount of solar generation that was exported.
I'm at home full time now, and charge my car a couple of times per week.
Solar exports
| Item | Description | Units | Price | Amount |
| Solar feed-in credit (incl GST, if any) | 261 kWh | $-0.460000 | -$120.06 | |
| Total exports | -$120.06 |
theprestige
Penultimate Amazing
Not at all. Look, deserts are complete biomes, with characteristic flora and fauna, interconnected in an ecosystem. Paving over 200,000 acres of desert, as China intends to do, is not guilt free land use. It may well create the conditions for a new ecosystem, just like a hydro reservoir does. But this is at the cost of the old ecosystem.
So when I learn that China is putting solar on all its rooves, and still needs another city's worth of desert paved over, I think, "it's like that, then". Let's go. Trantorize all the things. Anywhere we can't drown for hydro we should cover with solar. Line our coasts with nuke and desal plants, transform the ◊◊◊◊ out of those coastal biomes. Whatever it takes, to get the power we need. Or the power we want, more like. Because that's what we're talking about, when we're talking about China going after solar in a big way.
Norman Alexander
Penultimate Amazing
True, but only on a very limited scale. 200,000 acres is 312 square miles. That's a decent size, sure. But the Gobi Desert alone, and there are others in China, is about 500,000 square miles. So the area being considered for solar is a small nay tiny fraction of that whole desert ecosystem.
Further, as has been advised above, China does not intend to install their all solar systems only in "the desert". That's just one location out of many large-area locations already being planned or in use today. And solar is but one of the numerous alternative energy sources China is exploiting rapidly.
*SIGH* I'll just say "No, that slippery slope stuff is not the least bit true." and leave it at that. I won't respond to more of this provocation.
arthwollipot
Limerick Purist Pronouns: He/Him
Do you really think that they're actually fully covering the entire surface without gaps?