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   mhoye (mhoye@mastodon.social)'s status on Saturday, 05-Oct-2024 00:46:29 JST mhoye

   Just a note here for later but: widely deployed solar plus batteries that can feed back to the electrical grid is not just green tech; it fundamentally changes the relationship between the state and its people.

   Any time a one-way relationship becomes a two-way relationship, any time a top down structure becomes a collaborative effort, the fundamental nature of the society encompassing those relationships changes.

   There's an invisible revolution happening right now, slowly, all around us.

   • Embed this notice
     feld (feld@friedcheese.us)'s status on Saturday, 05-Oct-2024 00:46:28 JST feld

     in reply to
     @mhoye let's pretend we've solved the backfeed problems of voltage sags/swells, phase sync issues, and the extreme danger to the linemen who cannot be certain if a line will remain de-energized while they're working on it
     
     If a significant amount of people do this and are essentially operating independently from the grid operator, who is paying for the maintenance of the grid now? These people aren't paying for electricity anymore. So who funds it?
     
     If the answer is "nationalize it and have the government cover the costs of everything" the game is over, this isn't gonna happen in America
     
     
     https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2021/04/08/power-quality-issues-challenge-utilities-as-solar-is-added-to-the-grid-survey-finds/
     simsa03 likes this.
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     mhoye (mhoye@mastodon.social)'s status on Saturday, 05-Oct-2024 00:46:29 JST mhoye

     in reply to

     I don't think this is an exaggeration:

     Solar backstopped with batteries in enough residences - which is another way of saying, some threshold of granular power self-sufficiency in a region and its populace - fundamentally changes not just the role of government but the nature of what a democratic state and citizen's participation in it even are, or what they could or should be.

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     feld (feld@friedcheese.us)'s status on Saturday, 05-Oct-2024 01:15:24 JST feld

     in reply to
     @mhoye Don't worry, the EU will regulate the idea to death with everything open to interpretation by committee because the laws were intentionally vague
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     mhoye (mhoye@mastodon.social)'s status on Saturday, 05-Oct-2024 01:15:25 JST mhoye

     in reply to

     • feld

     @feld Respectfully, a sneering argument that nothing can be done because everything is privatized and nobody is competent is a very American argument, but not actually real for much of the world.

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     feld (feld@friedcheese.us)'s status on Saturday, 05-Oct-2024 02:19:02 JST feld

     in reply to
     @mhoye I don't see a majority of the voter base supporting the changes required to achieve this (here). That's all.
     
     I've worked for a utility company for a couple years and they required mandatory training on how the utility works, the financial hurdles, the regulations, etc.
     
     So in the upper Midwest there's a company called ATC that owns the transmission lines. The power company does not operate or service them; they have to pay to use them. Those costs are recouped through your utility bills (likely one of the standard flat rate fees, can't remember off hand).
     
     If enough people are installing solar, who is maintaining that infrastructure? Someone's gotta pay for it. So it would have to be part of a grid connection fee. As soon as you start charging people to backfeed into the grid they'll just disconnect as it won't be worth it. People aren't going to get paid more than that fee because there will be so many people backfeeding.
     
     And now we're talking about the risk of negative energy prices which causes further problems for the generation plants. They gotta pass those losses on to the customers they have, so now the bulk energy customers like factories that can't be off grid have higher energy prices which raises the prices of the products.
     
     This is all incredibly complicated and messy. Unless you live in a society that will gladly nationalize the entire grid this does not seem like a realistic scenario to me.
     
     tbh I absolutely want solar and battery but I'd be 100% off grid and have a generator for emergencies.
     simsa03 likes this.
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     mhoye (mhoye@mastodon.social)'s status on Saturday, 05-Oct-2024 02:19:03 JST mhoye

     in reply to

     • feld

     @feld Not gonna lie, man, watching somebody fall ass backwards into the helplessness of conservatism because inaction and despair asks nothing of them in return, that never gets easier to watch. What would it take for you to start seeing big problems as solvable? What would it take for you to think that maybe better is actually possible?

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     Sick Sun (sun@shitposter.world)'s status on Saturday, 05-Oct-2024 02:22:17 JST Sick Sun

     in reply to

     • feld
     @feld @mhoye I used to work for a power company and the only way they let you run your house on solar power was you had to have a big switch to flip between grid and autonomous. Then the problem was if you dropped below a certain level of usage, you got put on standby power which raised your rate, and made it not economical. but yeah it was set up this way because it was difficult at the time to prevent frying linemen when there was still a hot wire because of someone's house. Apparently this is figured out now though we just have to get the equipment switched which will take decades.
     Haelwenn /элвэн/ :triskell: and feld like this.
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     mhoye (mhoye@mastodon.social)'s status on Saturday, 05-Oct-2024 02:48:42 JST mhoye

     in reply to

     • Sick Sun
     • feld

     @sun @feld It's not going to take decades, it's happening right now. Like, there is actually a guy drilling out the drywall in my garage, doing this right now.

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     feld (feld@friedcheese.us)'s status on Saturday, 05-Oct-2024 02:48:42 JST feld

     in reply to

     • Sick Sun
     @mhoye @sun Will yours have the ability for the utility to remotely cut off your grid backfeed?
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     Sick Sun (sun@shitposter.world)'s status on Saturday, 05-Oct-2024 02:51:30 JST Sick Sun

     in reply to

     • feld
     @mhoye @feld I meant where everyone can sell it back to the grid, not solar which is moving quite fast yes.
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     mhoye (mhoye@mastodon.social)'s status on Saturday, 05-Oct-2024 03:49:36 JST mhoye

     in reply to

     • Sick Sun
     • feld

     @sun @feld And what I mean is there is a guy putting that box on my wall right now, the sell-it-back-to-the-grid box.

     feld likes this.
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     simsa03 (simsa03@gnusocial.jp)'s status on Sunday, 06-Oct-2024 11:17:10 JST simsa03

     in reply to
     As if people paying taxes in any way creates a "collaborative effort" by which the top-down relationship between state and people ceases to exist.
     
     As long as the people have no stake in the formulation *and* enforcement of industrial regulations and #infrastructure standards, they are not part of some fancy "invisible revolution" but of the vast cohort of unpaid employees of the state and its industrial embodiment.
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     simsa03 (simsa03@gnusocial.jp)'s status on Sunday, 06-Oct-2024 12:01:04 JST simsa03

     in reply to

     • feld
     Which is fine as long as not too many private households sell electricity back to the grid. Not only are there the issues @feld mentions, the more general problem ist that (at least in Europe where I live) the various grid systems are top-down and in need of constant balancing:
     
     • Transmission grids (high voltage 220kV or 380 kV) large distance transportation of electricity
     
     • Distribution grids: transports electricity at high (60 kV to 220 kV), medium (6 kV to 60 kV) and low voltages (230 V or 400 V).
     
     In this top-down structure voltage has to be transformed down from higher voltages to lower voltages.
     
     Usually, homeowners with their solar-to-grid installation feed their electricity at the lowest voltage back into the grid. In order to counter fluctuations in the number of feeding sources as well as their quantities of electricity, the net stability has to be guaranteed by re-dispatch: shutting on and off of various feeders and consumers under the primacy of keeping the net frequency constant (otherwise there will be brown-outs with large sections of the grid shutting down). Every re-dispatch costs a lot of money (which has to be paid by all consumers) and endangers the net stability. And the more households feed back their electricity into the grid, the more instable the net and the more expensive its balancing becomes.
     
     Current grid and net structures can accomodate for up to 30% electricity from renewables. Otherwise, due to fluctuation, net balancing becomes so difficult and expensive that brown-outs become frequent. Adding household-to-grid (e.g., via private solar) or vehicle-to-grid (via car batteries) endangers the overall supply with electricity and increases the electricity prices for industries.
     
     Also not to be ignored: The cost for the re-dispatches to keep the net frequency stable is paid by all consumers. That is: Those who sell their electricity back to the grid can only do so because others pay more for the costs that arise from keeping the net stable than what the feeders pay.
     
     I thus would be very careful to cheer any "down-towards-upwards" feed of electricity. The #infrastructure is not there for such "localized" electricity "production".
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     Linux Walt (@lnxw37j1) {3EB165E0-5BB1-45D2-9E7D-93B31821F864} (lnxw37j1@gnusocial.jp)'s status on Sunday, 06-Oct-2024 12:06:35 JST Linux Walt (@lnxw37j1) {3EB165E0-5BB1-45D2-9E7D-93B31821F864}

     in reply to

     • simsa03
     • Sick Sun
     • feld
     @simsa03 @sun @feld
     
     I lived in an off-grid solar powered house in the 1980s. Later on, when "sell it back to the grid" became a thing, I read that utilities were buying the power at full retail rates. Along with all the other things mentioned in this thread, this too is a problem. As you say, who is paying for the common infrastructure if a large slice of the highest-paying customers (home users) are effectively buying zero power?
     
     Are home users' systems cost-effective enough to break-even if the utilities start paying something similar to what they pay bulk generation plants? I don't think so, or there wouldn't need to be such high reimbursement rates to begin with.
     
     If we want widespread home solar power generation, we're eventually going to have to redesign things to make it work without subsidies.
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     simsa03 (simsa03@gnusocial.jp)'s status on Sunday, 06-Oct-2024 12:22:29 JST simsa03

     in reply to

     • Linux Walt (@lnxw37j1) {3EB165E0-5BB1-45D2-9E7D-93B31821F864}
     I don't think that it is possible to neatly separate the home user market for electricity from an industry market one. The more #renewables you connect with the grid, the more traditional power plants you need to avoid net fluctuations. That is: All home users with their IMO naïve idea of "selling back to the grid" ignore that their fantasies presuppose the full-fledged operation and round-the-clock availibility of what they want to abolish: Traditional powerplants (coal, gas, nuclear) in massive sizes, ready to step in any minute. There is, again IMO, no way that renewables can be used meaningfully on a private home-owner basis. Whih is one of the reasons why I think #peakrenewables is far more realistic than some "green electricity" future.
     Linux Walt (@lnxw37j1) {3EB165E0-5BB1-45D2-9E7D-93B31821F864} likes this.