All I’m hearing is excuses not to invest in battery storage at the grid level.
Grid scale storage will be built en masse the moment it becomes economical, or when governments decide to use tax payer money to do it or subsidize it.
That’s fair, but the reason it’s not economical right now is mostly poorly thought out contracts and subsidies. We are already paying for this mess.
From the calculations I’ve seen in recent scientific reports, that doesn’t seem to be the case, barring major economic changes on a global level.
Even the cheapest grid scale storage solutions are an order of magnitude more expensive than constructing more electrical generation capacity.
Particularly closed cycle fossil gas thermal plants have a massive advantage in markets where variable renewable electricity generation (wind, solar…) achieve high degrees of market penetration due to the volatility they cause in the grid.
Hydro, transmission and nuclear are currently the most accessible non-fossil options to counteract the disadvantages of solar & wind.
Is your area not undergoing a massive expansion? I’m in NW Florida, hardly a hotbed of environmentalism, and brother, business is booming.
I fully expect the 20-miles between the edge of town and my camp to be covered in the next decade. Any non-residential and non-commercial land is getting bought up and covered. I expect to see solar panels all they way in the space between the interstate and the state highway, already a few spots where you can see clear from one road to the other over the panels. Very exciting!
Where I live (Sweden) our grid has been essentially fossil-free since the early 90’s, thus we haven’t had the same need. Particularly since our electricity prices (excluding grid fees) already dip into the negatives in the summer, and solar is useless in the winter (<3hrs of light and snow cover).
Unfortunately though, recent politically motivated shutterings of nuclear plants during the 2010s combined with higher volatility in continental Europe has led to the volatility of our own electricity market skyrocketing, and more decentralized electricity production has led to huge increases in grid fees (state monopoly).
During a recent winter we had prices (when accounting for taxes and fees) in excess of 1$/kWh. This, in a country where almost all heating is electric, is disastrous. For context, we live in a small villa with a geothermal pump, and despite keeping indoor temps as low as 12°C at times we ended up with 1000s of USD equivalent in power bills for the winters 22/23 and 23/24.
Quite sad really.
I wish we could. That capacity is already booked. The batteries we are deploying needs to be used as local storage. And this is before the EU mandate on solarpanels on all roof tops has taken effect. The grid can’t expand at that rate, unfortunately.
What do you mean? Worst case put the batteries with the panel?
That’s what we are reduced to. That is what I mean. I also say that in the EU directive called EED, the union demands that, starting 2026, every public body needs to put PV-cells on the roofs of the buildings they use.
That will be noticeable.
And a good idea, right?
As long as we find a way to make use of the excess electricity produced, yes. Today we don’t have enough intermittent energy users. For storage, or otherwise.
There are initiatives calling for/demanding an expanded hydrogen infrastructure, for instance, so that could be one thing. I believe Germany is the leading country of such initiatives.
Yes, it’s a rocky road but it looks like it’s going forward IMO!
Plug in EVs are the most immediate solution to battery storage.
But they are not home at peak solar.
But generally they would be parked, right? At the office, or transport hubs? Maybe that’s where the batteries need to be installed. Take the responsibility off private citizens and install it where there’s going to be a mass of cars parked.
It’s almost as if a proper energy grid isn’t compatible with private equity.
We had a nice setup, quasi public/private power company. Prices were low and we voted on the governing board. Cool.
The the county sold us out to a strictly private firm and most people’s prices spiked 40%, literally overnight.
I’m not much of a socialist, government solutions carry their own issues and inefficiencies, but a service as vital as power (and water and sewage) should be public works.
You’ve got to at least have a seat at the table as a community, for it not to be an entirely predatory relationship.
Just export the power to the next timezone over.
In the UK, the average wait for a grid connection is more than 5 years, and over 40% of queuing projects have a connection date beyond 2030.
That’s a grid connection to allow residential solar to feed back? (I thought it “just worked”)
Or any grid connection, like for a new building?
I’m assuming for large scale commercial solar
Ahh, I’ve got wrong end of the stick. TY!
Fpl artificially stifles solar panels on private homes by demanding a 1 million dollar policy be taken out payed by the homeowner in case solar damages something.
They also lobbied to get a law approved that says Insurance companies can refuse to insure houses with panels. Mine dropped me for my solar
What’s FPL?
Florida Power & Light
Duke energy in NC has basically already made it to expensive or at least not worth it to install solar. They reset the power credits to generate and you basically still are stuck paying a power bill regardless of what you generate.
Get batteries; fuck em.
I fear for induced demand. If electricity is cheap, why build more efficiently? Why not do bitcoin mining or AI training?
It wouldn’t be so bad if there weren’t plenty of places around the world that could desperately use solar panels, that are building fossil fuel infrastructure instead. Climate change is a global problem, so the obsession with getting your individual emissions down to zero is selfish and sometimes even detrimental to the climate if “your emissions” don’t include the cost of manufacturing and limited availability.
We should be sending solar panels to the developing world as fast as humanly possible, not making electricity so cheap in California that multinationals can open up a couple more data centers.
We should be sending solar panels to the developing world as fast as humanly possible
More of addendum than criticism - sending random stuff to developing countries is one of the problems. Solar panels need proper infrastructure and maintenance. Instead of sending them for the west to feel good, we should rather empower governments of those countries to take their own initiative, build infrastructure, train people and make the panels very affordable for them.
sending random stuff to developing countries is one of the problems.
Relevant Video.
Already happening in Northern California. PG&E (Pacific Gas & Electric), which is a FOR-PROFIT utility, reduced the price it pays individuals for selling extra power to the grid. The reason cited was there is too much power being sold at the wrong time of day.
Take a look at California ISO to see real-time graphs of electricity generation and usage.
Solar is currently generating about 50% of total electricity. A percentage of that is going to batteries.
Pretty exciting!