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Open Source.com has raised an interesting issue.
With household and municipal scale electricity generation becoming commonplace, it appears that the energy market is about to experience a major technological disruption. Of course, with disruption comes opportunity, and there's already some clear contenders in the field, from Tesla with their cars and batteries, Suntech with their solar panels, to Vestas with their huge turbines.
There's a big caveat with all of this large-scale investment though, and that's contending with the existing centralized power grids and the utilities that manage them. Open source models are a good fit for this new paradigm, with collaboration replacing monopolies and open systems displacing proprietary vendor controls. High quality open source software tools exist already, including the well-supported PowerMatcher suite, but how will this collection of solutions wrest control of the key "last mile" hardware from the hostile and entrenched utilities?
Any suggestions from the SoyLentil team? If we get it right, all of us could become unfeasibly wealthy...
(Score: 5, Interesting) by TrumpetPower! on Wednesday April 29 2015, @08:40PM
First, I think it's worth noting that solar customers are the most profitable ones the utilities have. You're familiar with the concept of "buy low, sell high"? The utilities buy green energy (the most valuable kind) from their solar customers with utility credits. The utilities sell that energy to the solar customers's neighbors at peak rates. When the solar customers redeem that energy, the utilities aren't selling back on-peak green energy but off-peak baseload energy, the cheapest kind there is.
Even if you don't pay a dime in electric bills, the utilities are making out like bandits on the arbitrage.
All that writ...your recommendation to drop off the grid is, indeed, the way to go. If you have the capital to invest, no matter where you are in the States, you should be able to get an effective rate of return on an off-grid solution that's better than anything your bank will give you. Depending on where you are, you could be looking at better than a 5% annual return on an off-grid solution, with that investment being rock-solid safe and invulnerable to inflation, especially energy inflation. (If you can go grid-tie, your rate of return is likely doubled.)
That's assuming retrofitting an existing grid connection. If, on the other hand, this is new construction...the capital cost of setting it up from the start as an off-grid property is all but guaranteed to be less than the capital cost of connecting to the grid, making the off-grid solution a no-brainer. Especially for cost-conscious builders, with the "green factor" being a nice added bonus for marketing and upsell possibilities.
The utilities are really screwing the pooch on this one. They're doing everything in their power to maximize the profits of grid defection in their misguided attempts to "recoup expenses." It's the Ma Bell story all over again. How many people don't even have a landline, despite all that Ma Bell did back in the day to stand in the way of, for example, number portability or what-not. If the utilities were smart, they'd embrace the new technology and be at the forefront of rooftop solar installation, maintenance, financing, and the rest -- and also be pushing batteries and anything else that might come along. ("Here, buy or lease this cheap-to-you whole-house backup battery that'll let you go a day or so in the event of a power outage. We'll maintain it and everything. Footnote: we'll backfeed from the battery if it's over 80% full if we feel like doing so.")
Ah, well. Such is life. The grid really is a wonderful resource...but it's not going to survive its current management, and we'll manage just fine without it.
b&
All but God can prove this sentence true.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday April 29 2015, @09:05PM
The big problem is insurance, a baseball to a panel is a cost someone at my income level can eat with only a little blinking, but the median $30K/yr dude would be pretty much Fed from a simple baseball. Then again that median dude living in his median $300K house he's pretty much screwed the first time the furnace breaks or the roof needs replacing so whats one more expensive appliance, sorta?
I have about $20K of electric company utility stock and they have some cool deals where the dividends go to pay your bill and you get the rest of the cash, basically. Its kinda annoying at tax time to have that much taxable dividend income. Anyway owning $20K of nuke and coal plants isn't cool, but now that solar is about as cheap as traditional power, yeah, $20K or so is pretty much enough capital to go energy independent.
What I don't understand is the distributed nature and why is no one building vast solar plants on former dairy farms or whatever? I'd invest in that. The energy market is about as far from a free market as you can get and is I'm sure corrupt as all hell so that's why this doesn't exist, but in a free world it could happen.
(Score: 2) by TrumpetPower! on Wednesday April 29 2015, @09:09PM
I don't know about other panels, but mine are basically bulletproof. They'll protect my roof from hailstorms as big as they come...but, of course, just the parts that're covered by the panels....
b&
All but God can prove this sentence true.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday April 29 2015, @09:23PM
How about a foot of snow followed by a rain storm? Happened where I live, collapsed quite a couple house roofs. I was outside with my roof rake clearing the snow off in the rain, quite annoying although collapsing the house would have been more annoying. I would imagine it would take a lot less to snap a panel.
How a roof rake in general works around panels is unclear to me. Need to do it in this climate or you'll get ice dams. I suppose I could just panel the unheated garage.
What I'd really like as a product is something like a pagoda for my back yard holding endless rows of 45 degree angle panels as a shaded roof in the summer. I have enough carpentry skill to get far enough to really F that up. I wonder what kind of brick the planning commission and permit offices would shit were I to actually try to implement this as a "patio shade, also holding solar panels" or some kind of BS like that. I've been wanting to build something like that for many years for my patio, maybe in my infinite spare time I could enlarge the patio and cover it.... cover it with solar panels.
(Score: 2) by TrumpetPower! on Wednesday April 29 2015, @11:25PM
I can't comment on building codes for places that get accumulations of snow, save to note that that's a truly ancient engineering problem that has very little to do with solar panels.
My panels are installed according to local codes that required that they be attached to the roof trusses. Nothing short of a tornado is going to get them off the roof, and anything that would puncture them would embed itself in the foundation's concrete slab if it hit a part of the roof not covered by panels.
I would hope that installations done in different locations similarly take local hazards into account -- earthquakes in California, snow in New England, and so on. I just know that my panels are up to code and a definite improvement to the safety of my home over not having panels...not that the improvements are to any dangers I'm likely to face, but still....
b&
b&
All but God can prove this sentence true.
(Score: 2) by sigma on Thursday April 30 2015, @01:00AM
What I don't understand is the distributed nature and why is no one building vast solar plants on former dairy farms or whatever?
Some are, though as it turns out, it's more efficient to float them on reservoirs instead. You get better cooling of the panels for greater efficiency, less evaporation from the reservoir and a few other benefits besides.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-04-29/solar-power-plant-at-jamestown-wastewater-site/6431872 [abc.net.au]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 30 2015, @03:37AM
California Wants To Make It Easier To Cover Old Mines With Renewable Energy [thinkprogress.org]
With all the activity underground, all that above-ground area has just been idle.
There are still lots of ways to be discovered to turn "waste" and "idle" stuff into deliverables.
-- gewg_
(Score: 2) by sigma on Thursday April 30 2015, @08:07AM
That's assuming retrofitting an existing grid connection. If, on the other hand, this is new construction...the capital cost of setting it up from the start as an off-grid property is all but guaranteed to be less than the capital cost of connecting to the grid.
Do you think there would someday be benefit to municipalities buying the last-mile infrastructure from the utilities and going it alone?