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posted by CoolHand on Wednesday April 29 2015, @07:18PM   Printer-friendly
from the rich-energy-mogul dept.

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...

 
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  • (Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday April 29 2015, @09:05PM

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday April 29 2015, @09:05PM (#176832)

    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.

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  • (Score: 2) by TrumpetPower! on Wednesday April 29 2015, @09:09PM

    by TrumpetPower! (590) <ben@trumpetpower.com> on Wednesday April 29 2015, @09:09PM (#176836) Homepage

    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

      by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday April 29 2015, @09:23PM (#176838)

      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

        by TrumpetPower! (590) <ben@trumpetpower.com> on Wednesday April 29 2015, @11:25PM (#176867) Homepage

        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

    by sigma (1225) on Thursday April 30 2015, @01:00AM (#176888)

    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

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 30 2015, @03:37AM (#176927)

      California Wants To Make It Easier To Cover Old Mines With Renewable Energy [thinkprogress.org]

      The California Assembly Committee on Natural Resources unanimously passed a bill Monday that will allow mining companies to install solar and wind power without triggering the state’s lengthy environmental review process.

      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_