Posted by ohjeez 5 days ago
- it's sufficiently small-scale that no building permit is required
- it looks nice enough that neighbors won't complain
- the wiring is essentially plug-and-play
The best approach I've been able to come up with is to purchase a medium size battery pack such as is used for glamping (glamour camping), plug it into the wall and connect my refrigerator and a couple of other high-draw appliances to it (basement dehumidifier comes to mind), build a small roof for the back deck, using poured footings with short posts and then attaching the vertical pillars for the roof to that (which should side-step the need for a building permit since it's not a permanent structure), then placing the solar panels on that roof and running a wire to the battery placed in the kitchen.
For those wondering, the article did discuss the safety matter of using a power outlet as an inlet. And the article also points out that while this is allowed in several countries in Europe it's not allowed in the U.S., but I suppose you could always plug appliances directly into the battery instead.
A manual break-before-make transfer switch will do the job. Not much help if you’re not home and the mains goes out and your food spoils, though fridges will stay cold for hours if left shut, and longer if there’s a lot of thermal mass in them - try to keep most of the empty space in your fridge and freezer filled with water bottles.
(At least, this is what electricians working with 33kV in industry in Europe do, e.g. if doing maintenance on a cable to a datacentre.)
The actual power coming from a balcony setup is tiny, a thousand watts ballpark. The typical house will consume the vast majority of that capacity.
Even if some flows back to the grid, it will likely be consumed by losses in the transformer and wires.
* https://www.mobile-solarpower.com/
* https://diysolarforum.com/
But watch the video at https://www.mobile-solarpower.com/mobile-48v-system.html for something similar to a Goal Zero or Jackery
Here in Florida, I can get high output from an average panel, but there are a lot of permit issues (and rightly so, a poorly installed panel can become a severe hazard in a hurricane).
Where I lived in Michigan, there weren't many permitting or zoning issues, but I'd need 3-4x the number of panels to get usable output in the winter time.
Most truly small scale solar systems don't provide enough output/value to be worth the effort, unless you're living a very low-power lifestyle.
I primarily want to generate enough solar to run my AC in the summer because that’s the dominant electricity consuming appliance in our house (except for the EV).
At least with DTE you receive credits for your production, which you can use within 12 months. So generating an excess in the summer to offset the winter is a viable strategy.
This may change with increased use of heat pumps for heating, but it’s still a while out before seasonal electricity consumption patterns invert.
+/- on what effect electric cars will have: people drive more in summer but efficiency goes down in winter.
Arizona, Florida, etc are not really in a sweet spot we all think it is because PV efficiency/output goes marginally down when it’s really hot (ie: when A/C demand peaks). Unless you install the panels at high altitude.
https://static.trinasolar.com/sites/default/files/Datasheet_...
It loses about 0.29% of (relative) power output for every degree Celsius of temperature increase. If the module is operating at its maximum rated temperature of 85 degrees C, it's still about 83% as efficient as it would be under standard test conditions (25 degrees C).
Solar farms in sunny, hot regions generate more energy per year than identical installations in cooler, less sunny regions. The benefit of extra light dominates over the efficiency loss from higher temperatures. A location with as much sunlight as Las Vegas but the temperatures of Anchorage would be ideal, but there are few if any locations with those characteristics. That's why Las Vegas is still a good location for solar farms despite the heat.
Ontario, just to the north of Michigan, already has a winter peak very close to the summer peak. The provinces subsidises heat pumps. Ontario will be a winter peaking region in a couple of years.
As an example, during one of the hurricanes that came through FL last year we lost power shortly after the storm hit. I had a smallish leak with water coming in, it was entirely manageable with a wetvac, running off my generator. But solar panels would have been producing zero output at the same time. Even a large battery bank would have been sufficient.
IME, Solar is something where there is often a case where the minimum investment to get a truly worthwhile system is higher than other things like generators, or recently even battery banks. People often overlook all the situations where solar won't produce any output. I look at solar as more of a second-tier energy independence solution than a first-tier. And it worth nothing this is speaking primarily for applications in North America that have generally stable power. If you're in a remote area with no reliable power infrastructure then the parameters are way different.
(Worth noting that during load shedding only a subset of people are turned off depending on the stage of load shedding, but on average I experienced about 25% of those totals)
Where I am the companies charge a ‘line charge’. It’s about 20-25% of the monthly bill.
I generate somewhere between 80-110% of the power I need, but in winter I only get half what I need from solar.
A larger system would cover this and negate the need for the line charge, suddenly saving a lot.
..water.. ..food.. ..housing.. ..information..
I get what you are trying to conveying, I just wanted to highlight the semantic generality of the statement if it stands alone.
The well and septic system require no real effort on your part once installed, though you may find harvesting your own food to be too time consuming or labor intensive to really be actually independent.
If you actually want to offset cost, don't buy a portable battery pack. Get an AIO solar inverter and a server rack battery. They're generally plug and play - wire the panels to it, connect the battery.
If you want to run your home loads, the cheapest/simplest way (without going grid-tie) is to have an electrician add a critical loads panel supplied by your inverter output, then plug your inverter in to the grid for backup (in case no solar or batteries are low).
No, that's actually not the simplest.
Far simpler is to install a solar breaker in your main panel and a physical lockout[1] between utility power and the new solar breaker.
There is no ATX, there are no smarts, the power goes out and you flip two breakers. There is nothing simpler than this.
The beauty of this is, you can keep scaling up your solar generation, adding panels as the years go by, and you are never locked into these ridiculous "preferred breakers" sub-panels.
Will you have to be smart about your total power use while you are on solar ? Yes, you will - just don't run the dryer and the microwave at the same time.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/QYZZRS-Generator-Interlock-Compatible...
When I mean simplest, I meant a solution that doesn't rely on doing anything. If/when Solar isn't enough or your batteries deplete, it just falls back to grid. Power outage? Your critical items automatically are backed by solar/battery.
Having to think about your what high draw appliances are running and using additional power adds mental load (ie complexity) and is an immediate no for most people.
Cheaper way is have electrician wire a manual transfer switch at the existing panel. When you loose power, turn off non-essential breakers and then flip transfer switch.
Might as well save money and not install anything- use an extension cord for those rare times.
Our solar inverter uses the 60hz AC from and grid to do the DC->AC conversion. The inverter stops functioning if the power is out. I thought they all did that for safety.
Those home batteries mush have some solution.
https://eg4electronics.com/categories/inverters/eg4-18kpv-12...
A fidge is only going to use 1.5-2kWh per day. A medium sized pergola would give you more power than that. Since you aren't opening and closing the fridge in the middle of the night, a 1 kWh battery would keep it running all day on normal days.
"Zero emission generators" (aka battery boxes) are pretty easy to build, and even a 2kW inverter is relatively easy to hide/disguise. If you're doing this in a home situation (vs a camping situation) the 6V "golf cart" lead/acid batteries are really solid. A couple of those will give you 240 AHrs of 12V that can run a bunch of stuff. 240W panels can be stored at night and brought out during the day so keep them 'temporary.' Etc. Victron[1] makes nice chargers and monitors and are popular in the RV / Vanlife communities. Lots of online resources for hooking them up. And generally things you can roll around your property to different places are pretty easily defined as 'not a building' so immune from the permitting process generally.
I previously had a Bluetti EB70S and while it almost did what I wanted, it could only charge from AC or Solar, but not both and didn't have a way to set desired levels.
Now I have a Bluetti Apex 300, and I can set it to charge to X% off AC during overnight off-peak rates, and never drop below Y%.
So the plan I came up with is essentially the plan you have, but I connect my refrigerator to the battery by the panel rather than running an extension cord from my kitchen to the battery.
I disconnected the fridge and 2 other circuits from the panel, and terminated them with a nema 5-15p inlet receptacle like this: http://www.levitonproducts.com/catalog/model_5278-CWP.htm
I then put 4 solar panels on a 45 degree angle on the ground leaning against a south facing wall, anchored to the wall and ground.
The "solar generator" I used is this one: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/apex-300#/
It's similar to the glamping batteries you refer to, but is more targeted to home backup / off-grid / RV use than glamping.
I did something similar with my lawn mower. I bought a battery and a single solar panel from Harbor Freight, along with the controller and wires need to hook it all together. I'd set the panel in the yard when I needed to charge the mower's batteries.
The whole thing, including the mower, cost less than half a year's fees from a yard crew, and I ended up saving money overall.
After the experiment was done (and I realized the mower was too low for my grass and was harming it) I sold the mower and gave the rest to my father-in-law for his shed.
We then got professionally installed solar panels for our house and a full-house battery. (It isn't strong enough for the air conditioner, but oh well.)
If I had it to do over again on the small scale, I'd buy an Ecoflow battery (which I have actually bought) and a solar panel made for it, and your fridge idea is a good one. It'd probably also power a fan, a light, and some light entertainment, I think.
Edit: Might go with "Anker" or "Jackery" instead of Ecoflow now, as it might be cheaper for the same thing.
I've found the sweet spot is usually in the 500-1000Wh range for emergency backup. Enough to run a fridge for 8-12 hours but not so big that the solar panel costs get crazy. The LFP (LiFePO4) models tend to last way longer than the regular lithium ones - worth the extra cost if you're planning to use it regularly.
Your lawn mower experiment sounds like it was a good learning experience! Those small Harbor Freight panels are great for tinkering. I started with something similar before going to a full house system.
Where I am ya don’t been a permit for a shed if it’s under a 18 square metres, so 6x3m sheds are common.
You could look in to off-grid / caravan appliances, thereby saving on a smaller inverter, but they tend to be around 3x the price of regular appliances.
Highly recommended going for 48v system if you’re starting from scratch to save on ridiculously large diameter cables and stupidly high amperage you’ll be dealing with with a 12v system.
I did a repair this week on a poorly designed 12v system that had a 12v to 230v 7amp (1600 watt) inverter powering a 230v 10amp cook top in a camper van. That cooktop was pulling 235 amp from the battery through a very hot 175amp slow blow fuse.
Which is great if you want to melt the fuse post and the supply cables and… I found the fault before the fire started.
- if you need roof repair/replacement, do it before you get solar. Alternatively, make your array free standing
- prioritize the circuits you want to cover. Not every one is critical but health & safety (water, fridge, cooking capabilities) are key
- MOST jurisdictions won't require permitting for the grid (especially if it's not connected to your house) but MOST will require an inspection if you want to connect to the grid
- if you connect to the grid, make sure you understand how your electricity provider addresses net metering. I wrote about it here: https://geekamongthetrees.com/what-is-solar-net-metering-or-...
No feeding of solar power to the grid so no permits.
You can add a battery if you want to reduce your reliance on the grid. Or use it with a battery but without solar panels as a whole house UPS.
If it becomes popular the slimy solar farm developers and the utility will join hands to hire a lobbyist who will ensure the rules get changed to close the loophole.
You don't need permit, and you don't even need new wiring.
This will be the main issue. No matter what you're going to be doing work inside the main service panel on your house adding new feeds and you'll need to install a transfer switch to disconnect your house in case of a power outage. Most electrical work inside a panel like adding circuits will require a permit in the US. Seems like your plan doesn't involve any of that though so you should be ok permit wise except maybe needing one for the pad and structure.
Beavers are one of the sadly misunderstood creatures and are almost entirely responsible for all the good valley farmland we have thanks to their thousands of years of terraforming.
If you can afford the medium term loss of land, a beaver setting up a dam on your property is a good thing. Unfortunately, most cannot, or are unaware of the benefits they bring and only consider them pests.
Fascinating consequences
Pakistan had similar problems with rolling blackouts, and mass import of photovoltaic equipment and batteries from China has reduced the load on the grid so that outages no longer occur frequently. In fact the demand has shrunk so much that it jeopardizes financing of coal power companies.
That is something that I think would be the impetus needed to motivate reduction in coal power plants. If they become unprofitable to operate, then will the market finally decide to stop using them? Sadly, I could see the current US administration deciding to offer subsidies to keep coal.
Levelized Cost of Electricity (LCE) from PV is below the fossil fuel range since 2020, and since 2024 it is also below if you include battery storage, which you need to turn solar into near constant energy supply.
https://www.irena.org/Publications/2024/Sep/Renewable-Power-...
https://electrek.co/2025/06/20/batteries-are-so-cheap-now-so...
[1] https://www.ecr.co.za/shows/stacey-jsbu/eskom-cracks-down-no...
A simple solution like "just install solar" isn't going to solve the problems necessarily, because it originates from greed, mismanagement, corruption at the core. Solar is more of a downstream solution in my mind (correct me if I'm wrong).
Demand for coal will be reduced, which might most likely lead to massive job losses in not only the coal mining sector, but also logistics, exacerbating the troubling unemployment issues the country also faces. I don't really want to go down THAT rabbit hole :D
Not everything can be solved by money, sometimes its a mythical man month/9 women can't produce a baby in 1 month issue.
However in this scenario, its pure neglect which is causing power issues.
Running a fossil fuel grid requires a bunch of logistics to source, refine, and deliver the fuel. In addition to general equipment upkeep.
Renewables only require equipment upkeep.
And if a town grows surprisingly fast, that may also be politics. Even geopolitics (eg, refugees).
I mean, its not like they just discovered electricity. Sure sometimes things take time, but that is still a money issue because it means there was insufficient budget for maintainance and future capacity planning
That being said, politics aren't the only reason why it might not be deployed. Capitalization issues, for one, are also common. Additionally, you have to make a judgement call about what you consider included in "politics" -- for example, does corruption count?
They didn't introduce competition, as you might expect from a hyper-incompetent government, and just let the issue languish, and South Africa now just doesn't have enough power plants to serve its population when it takes one offline for scheduled maintenance.
But at least a lot more people got to buy Audis with the freed-up money sloshing around.
The problem is also that thieves steal the copper cables, even for micro-grids. You can not tech your way out of social/cultural problems.
Socialist cultural rot is real and the only way out is to eradicate cultures that encourage that mindset. All the ingredients are there- but the people are still set on telling themselves that robin hood story that destroys everything.
Political movements that have sought to “eradicate cultures” have generally gone pretty poorly in history.
I read the clarifications downstream; and I gather that the intent here is not as malicious as it sounds. That said, I don’t see how the mindset of “I’m going to maximize my extraction from the system.” is substantively different from “I’m going to minimize my input into the system.” The net effect is similar. For example, the current U.S. president paid no taxes for years through various dodges, a fact about which he boasted and which he defended. But without a doubt he is extracting disproportionate benefits.
Undoubtedly corruption is rampant in the systems you refer to; but all of these things exist in democratic free-market economies as well.
PS: There are a ton of versions of working culture out there, that are not western. Pick one and run with it. But picking a repeatedly failing one is a sentence for decay and destruction.
The old people of china, still steal paper towels on public toilets, because "take it all, while its there, before its gone" is the mindset encouraged. They brought you the tourists-"buffet rush"-genre of videos on youtube.
Of course this leads to dysfunction and misery- which then leads to conspiracy - of "they took it". Its ultimately another version of low-thrust society unable to function. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-trust_and_low-trust_socie...
A ugly side-effect that lingers for decades. Re-distribution and retribution, do not increase the size of the cake. Hard work rewarded does!
The problem is not the socialist type of ideas, it is whom you are applying them to and at what point. The society must have certain complexity, capabilities and resources to be successful "socialist".
Going from feudalism to socialism was shown repeatedly not to work (ex: Russia, China). The countries that are currently more socialist and successful were not primarily feudal when they applied the socialist ideas. Also, there are huge differences in what is called "socialism"...
Even in the USA, capitalist came with "socialist ideas", like Henry Ford that said that one more free day will boost his overall sales, but the moment was right. I think he could not have done the same 100 years before.
You could look towards their policies inspired by socialist thought a.k.a. "social justice" (BEE and expropriation). These policies are actively harmful to development while also turning off any potential investors, and are deeply rooted in socialist ideology.
You can look towards their roots being funded and directly aided by the Soviets, China, Cuba, and several others. Especially their military (terrorist) and propaganda training which was heavily influenced by Soviet foreign policy.
You can look towards their re-alignment of the country's economic and foreign policy to engage with the 2nd world, while turning off 1st world investors. This has given us strong economic ties with Russia, China, and Iran. While most of these relationships are useless, the Chinese relationship has been especially damaging to the development, maintenance, and sovereignty of our national physical infrastructure.
But the most damning evidence is the insane socialist parties that have spawned out of the fracturing of the ANC such as the MK and EFF parties (both militant socialist parties, formed by ex ANC leaders). While their socialist rhetoric had to be contained while apart of the ANC (so as to not further turn off investors), the ANC's weakening grip has allowed these nutjobs to become serious contenders in the political race. If you were wondering what the "kill the boer" chants were about they were at political rallies held by the EFF (Julius Malema) - part of the EFF's kit is a red beret (I wonder where they got that from?).
Voetsek to any champagne socialist that wants to ruin yet another country because it makes them feel good to support people and ideologies they do not understand.
I take it you don't consider the country to have veen ruined under apartheid - aka socialism for whites, rugged-capitalism for everyone else.
> I take it you don't consider the country to have veen ruined under apartheid
Wether or not I consider the country to have been ruined under apartheid is irrelevant to the fact that the ANC is dragging it back to the stone age.
The ANC was handed a functioning economy, solid infrastructure, and hope for a better future - there are now rolling blackouts across the country, soaring unemployment, and a birth rate higher than the GDP growth rate. And that hope for a better future? All but gone - There are more race based laws _today_ than there were under apartheid.
I'm glad apartheid ended 30 years ago, I'm not glad with the direction we're going now. These are not the same thing - you trying to portray it as such says more about your views than it does mine.
I'll grant you "dragging us back to the stone age" is an obvious meme.
Did you even read my comment?
By using the state treasury to provide disproportionate infrastructure and services to the ruling ethic minority, while leaving the bantustans - with no say in national politics or budget - to largely fend for themselves. This incidentally has similarities to the US/Puerto Rico dynamic.
All the things you complain about can be explained by regression to mean[1], which the not even the apartheid government would have been able to prevent had they decided to adopt an egalitarian governance model.
edit: I didn't even get into how the "ethno-nationalist government" seized the means of production for the express benefit of a specific ethno.
1. I fully expect that the per-capita X (for any X you're claiming is worse) has actually improved for South Africans - all South Africans - between 1990 and now.
> While the racial composition of wealth at the top has changed, wealth concentration in South Africa has not and remains very high. [1]
> while the standard of living has increased for a minority of formerly disadvantaged South Africans and a small black middle class has emerged, there are still huge disparities in both material and subjective well-being [2]
> In 2010, the majority of citizens still hoped for basic necessities, income and employment, to enhance their quality of life. [2]
So no, there is no mean reversion caused by a broader sharing of (the same set of) resources - in fact the policies leading to worsening infrastructure and economic disproportionally negatively impact the poor, black population [3]
The examples I've given (blackouts, unemployment, etc.) are governance and capacity failures above and beyond any "regression to the mean" effect.
[1] https://conversableeconomist.com/2023/11/20/south-africas-ec... [2] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11205-012-0120-y [3] https://qz.com/africa/1435910/blackouts-in-africa-affect-the...
Currently, in western countries, socialist policies to import the 3rd world and open borders are directly responsible for the lowering social trust.
> “immigrant rights are workers rights” is not mere rhetoric, and that the defense of migrants and refugees – the vast majority of whom are poor workers – is pivotal to the struggle of the entire global working class regardless of national origin. [1]
[1] https://sfarchive.dsausa.org/issues/fall-2019/editorial-note...
The USA thrived when free markets and value creation were encouraged yet heavily regulated. That way the benefits and costs didn't become too concentrated
I don’t know of any western country with an “open borders” policy, can you provide one? Is there a part of the US’s 250 year history where we weren’t bringing in immigrants from poorer countries to provide cheap labor?
The socialist and left wing coalition have consistently voted against measures to improve border security and tighten the restrictions for people wanting to enter [1]. As people have become increasingly frustrated with these policies they've increasingly voted in right wing and conservative parties (in comparison to the ruling parties) [2].
We can also look towards the UK where socialist politics have been a mainstay since the 90s, to the point where now the Prime Minister (Kier Starmer, Labour) is a self-proclaimed socialist [3]. This is of course directly tied to the waves of mass migration under Tony Blair (Labour) which also resulted in the Socialist Party splitting from Labour because he wasn't "radical enough" [4].
[1] https://theconversation.com/what-are-the-eus-new-migration-r...
[2] https://www.brookings.edu/articles/understanding-europes-tur...
[3] https://www.vice.com/en/article/keir-starmer-i-still-see-mys...
[4] https://www.socialistparty.org.uk/articles/94799/27-04-2022/...
The UK was lead by the Conservative party continuously from 2010-2024. You somehow skipped all of that and went straight from Tony Blair to Keir Starmer.
Invoking “socialists” over-and-over doesn’t prove anything about Open Borders and kind of undercuts your point. There’s also no mention of right-wing leaders like Ronald Reagan or George Bush. They both pushed policies that increase immigration and asylum seekers.
Pretty sure they're referring to a de facto open border policy, where you basically permit all sorts of illegal immigration and don't really enforce the laws. Accepting immigrants at Ellis island was not illegal immigration, for instance, but crossings at the southern border often have been.
I’m summary, not open borders. There have been about 20k border patrol agents in the US each year since 2008. Seems like a lot of agents for an open border policy.
https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/border-issues/...
And more people affording their own panels is still a lot more expensive than fixing the grid.
I set up the batteries and inverter myself, but paid a local installer and his 2 helpers a grand total of $45 to install and ground 10 x 600w panels on my dangerously high metal roof.
Server rack style, 1200 USD for 4.8 kWh = $250/kWh. Wall-mount, 14.3 kWh for $3.3k = $231/kWh.
These guys seem to be the biggest DIY solar equipment supplier in the US.
Afaik you can get batteries from China (AliExpress) for quite a bit cheaper too.
So yes, rich people can obviously have more of it all, like with everything else that money can buy. But is this really a point worth going in deeper here?
I see the point as in "solar power plus battery is good", creates resillence, please more of it.
Unfair distribution of wealth is a different problem.
And here concreteley the article lacks for me details, what exactly the work on the grid means, if it is really about fossils vs solar, but microgrids that can connect to each other sounds like a pragmatic solution to me.
Unfortunately, all problems are eventually going to come down to this. Or many problems are, if not "all"
We can't fix a lot of the problems facing our society and our planet with "only wealthy can afford this" solutions
And I think, we can't fix a lot of technical problems if we make everything about money distribution.
Besides, solar plus battery became really cheap. And get cheaper every day.
And this work to connect such microgrids is potentially beneficial for poor areas all around the world.
But no, it doesn't solve the issue of extreme poverty, but why would it?
In places like that - that but not necessarily specifically China or Asia, local proprietors would head to forested mountains unfit for residences, and actively desertify it to put on PVs to collect incentives, if incentivized. The cost is externalized and paid collectively in such forms as raised atmospheric CO2 levels and micro disasters like mountain landslides.
Resilient solar-battery off/micro-grid is great if you live "by yourself" in relative sense and doing so would allow removal of electrical transmission lines with own costs and externalities, but it's far from panacea, if not opposite - it's a specific and somewhat radical solution to specific problems.
Now, as to whether such dystopian Bladerunner cities on Earth that has to rely on fission/fusion should exist in real life, it's probably deeply wrong that they do. But we're not cutting down Earth's population by 90% to fix that, and wealth redistribution is a minor part of the reason it would be wrong.
Can you give me one example, where PVs contributed to desertification?
Usually it is the contrary, in the shade of the PVs, more can grow than in direct burning sunlight.
And there are plenty of non forest land, or literal dessert land tp put PV there and if forest gets cut, than for other reasons than PV. And china is actually quite active in combating desertification with green belts and recently, PVs.
https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/sci-tech/mountaintop-solar-farm...
www.gettyimages.co.uk/detail/photo/birds-eye-view-of-the-solar-power-plant-and-lush-royalty-free-image/1338844539
www.gettyimages.co.uk/detail/photo/aerial-view-of-solar-power-station-royalty-free-image/1045649830
https://www.ecoportal.net/en/carpeting-mountains-with-solar-...
Just go look at it if you were looking for shocking images. Notice how suspiciously flat patches appear in the mountains just for the PVs and notice how panels often seem recessed below top of existing trees. The process of solar farm construction in such areas begins by clearing out existing life. That's how it's done. It doesn't go like, you just pick a dead land on map and giving out a free nice shed for local scorpions.
I mean, look at even East Coast of the US on Google Maps. Pick any areas just off a city and zoom in. There would be towns, farmlands, forests, mountains, or combinations thereof. If you do the same in the West Coast, you are more likely to hit such suitable flats that can host mega electricity farms and benefit from it, sure, but that's not even universally American thing.
Then you'd ask, can't those deserts like Gobi or Sahara or whatever provide enough land for PVs and PVs be good for those? Maybe, but that's terraforming scale of projects. Not microgrids.
It's not like skyscraper residential buildings exist solely because it's convenient to confine workers near factory sites or because the laborers own nothing - it starts appearing when it becomes impossible to simply distribute immediately available lands and land had become a contested resource. Think why they don't just expand cities outward or build new city cores. They don't because those buildings are solution to that becoming impossible. And with that, think again why they just go out and build those microgrids in cheap unused flat areas outside the city. Because there is no cheap unused flat areas outside the city.
I am not a fan of building much on top of the mountains in general, but the claim was about desertification and at least that link provided nothing about it. Are the others more worth it?
The gettypictures just show solar panels on what was grasland before.
Bigger ones have a better tradeoffs, so I'm not so harsh on towns having their own grids. Still unsure whether it's a good use of funds.
If it's the ancient practice of crediting on a one for one basis, yeah that doesn't help. (A look around says that's probably where PR is now). If they credit power delivered to the grid based on conditions when it was delivered, then that might help. With appropriate controls, storage can increase grid stability. It would probably be more cost effective to do utility scale storage projects, but project management is difficult in PR; letting those with personal capital hook up solar+batteries and send some of that onto the grid when demand is high seems useful?
The fact that you can add to the grid by installing solar and battery and connect to the grid in a single afternoon makes it pretty easy these days to have an elastic market that grows until you hit the limit of decentralized production vs. existing transmission architecture... but with the right equipment you can have community sized islands that can be much more immune to instability.
That is not how the electricity market works, in Australia anyway, and somewhat fundamentally everywhere. The network needs to maintain a frequency and voltage for it to be reliable. These change as load and production change. So consumers don't get a choice of which electrons power their house, only who they pay. They pay a 'retailer' who usually has nothing to do with production for a known cost per kwh + fees ahead of time. The market then operates where agreements between parties including retailers and produces (traders and others as well) has a 'market rate' that essentially arbitrage between longer term fixed rates and market rates.
The fact that the stability is tied to frequency and voltage (and infrastructure) means there is a limit to the rate of production and consumption, not to mention electricity is a necessity in the modern age.
In Australia at least we are finding out the hard way about what happens when you privatize a necessity. People will pay whatever it costs, and since the market needs a high level of regulation just to function, a market IMO is just a bad fit for trying to bring costs down rather than just rent seeking.
> The fact that you can add to the grid by installing solar and battery and connect to the grid in a single afternoon
That has become harder in recent time due to areas being over saturated by solar. Cities in Australia can deny you connecting to the grid if there is too much, as well as we have high network voltage detection on inverters which now kick in on many sunny days due to again, too much solar. Electricity network operators pay a large amount of money to services to predict/model how much of the power in their network is coming from solar and where because they commonly don't know, so it becomes a difficult balance of how much solar you are allowed to connect.
> but with the right equipment you can have community sized islands that can be much more immune to instability.
Agreed, but due to the required _shared_ infrastructure for this to work will need public land to connect these islands or even within an 'island', as well as the now private vested interests in rent seeking, this will be a fringe solution only available to those with larger amounts of land like communes or other rural setups. Again, speaking to Australia.
Well regulated markets enable this, charge consumers 0 or even pay them to use energy during the solar maximum, same for industry. People will build storage to make money.
You must have variable pricing driven by markets when you have a lot of variable renewables, fixed rates just don't work. Too much electricity is one of those good problems to have if you manage it correctly. Free or very cheap energy could be a huge competitive advantage for Australia.
One alternative is decentralization, and the article talks about that:
> The town’s local environmental nonprofit Casa Pueblo teamed up with researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tenn., to develop a way to connect multiple microgrids to exchange power with one another, all without having to be hooked up to Puerto Rico’s grid. The strategy, called grid orchestration, ensures that if power is knocked out on one of the installations, the others aren’t compromised.
Is it the wealthy that are doing that? Maybe? Probably? But isn't that how any R&D technology investment starts?
It's also involving a government-funded lab to re-envision how these systems could work to achieve resiliency through coordinated decentralization. And if there's any truth to trickle-down economics, it would have to be in something that allows for a decentralized approach accessible to many, not a centralized approach that only rewards r > g accumulation. Sounds like a good use of government research funding to me.
Microgrids are, by definition, impervious to blackouts.
If a microgrid loses power due to a fault, neighbouring grids are unaffected. If all the neighbouring grids lose power due to a common fault, but your local grid is unaffected due to design or implementation choices, you’re golden.
Microgrids aren’t a solution to blackouts, and blackouts are not an issue microgrids have.
Looking at the article, the first paragraph claims:
When power went out across all of Puerto Rico on 16 April [well, clearly it didn’t as the very next sentence goes on to claim] a lot of the lights in the town of Adjuntas stayed on.
It can’t be both. It’s not a blackout and the lights stayed on.
Grid segmentation and multiple generation sources can do this too, and is a common feature of existing, traditional, power grids. The city I live in has these features with feed-ins from multiple hydro electric plants and wind factories, and a HVDC link to the next state over which has a full spectrum of generation sources bar nuclear.
As a result, the electricity here is very stable, and I don’t recall the last time we had even a brown out that affected the entire greater metro are and satellite towns.
Microgrids with interconnects are grids.
We can build grids that work, thereby leaving the general population free to pursue other, more important, economic endeavours.
Failing that, build microgrids.
or is it that to connect to the grid you need to have your own storage as well as PV? it sounded like they joined three "islands" together.
Batteries keep getting cheaper but are unlikely to get to where it’s more affordable to store a month’s worth of electricity than just buying some generation.
This wouldn't work. The reason isolated units can inject electricity back into the grid without issue is that they can observe frequency. If a blackout occurs, this information is gone. You need to perform a black start, which can't be done by isolated, uncoordinated equipments.
Many of the PV systems you can buy from the big players (SolarEdge, Tesla and more) support this, often calling it "whole home backup".
Same principle as having a generator with an interlock.
I know what you're talking about though: I think that more applies to generators that are operating with megawatts and take time for turbines to spin up and stuff. Microgrids are normally instantaneous battery buffered type things. They can instantly deliver power at the frequency range mandated for the national grid.
Maybe we need a push to make standing seam metal roofs more mainstream and people can install their own without having to drill into their roof
We tore out the old natural gas furnace and had the line disconnected, saving us about $2k/year for the heating.
Game changer.
I use it mainly so that I can set it up and with my bank's bill pay system and then forget about it for a year. But it's also nice for avoiding those huge bills in the summer.
It might be worth looking into.
It won't ever make excess electricity and you won't be able to run it after dark, but it'll keep you nice and chilly, I bet.
HVAC being so much of a load is tricky for smaller battery systems.
My best small step is dehumidifying with battery
It seems like this hasn't really made it's way into North America, which is unfortunate as it would lower the barrier of entry for home solar considerably vs traditional grid-tie/net metering which requires a ton of permits, electricians, meter changes, disconnects (or transfer switches) and generally lots of delays and cost.
I would be very curious how the "migrogrids" interconnect in PR - it seems there is some kind of synchronization and neighborhood-level disconnects to isolate from the shared grid.
A lot of inverters are just grid following and you need some other source creating the 60-hz signal for the solar inverters to follow. Generally this is either a battery or generator because solar has a really hard fall off in the power provided the instant you try to draw too much so instantaneous spike loads like motors starting (compressors/fans/etc) will often collapse off grid solar only installs.
This is a big problem when working with single stage HVAC condensers. These motors can have a LRA rating of well over 100 amps.
Not only can you not find many people who have parts or knowledge on hand, but you also have to deal with the fragility of the system. A single stage compressor is very robust to electrical transients. These units can take direct lightning strikes and continue to function normally. Worst case, you replace a contactor, capacitor and some wire. Every hvac tech on earth has these things in their truck right now.
Efficiency and gently ramping loads are nice, but these things don't matter so much if the system is going to have maintenance issues.
The voltage in a heat pump is 240 V. The power is typically a couple of kilowatts. Reliability of silicon switches at that voltage is excellent. This is just not a widespread problem.