Virtual Power Plants: Where Home Batteries are Saving Americans from Blackouts (msn.com) 123
Puerto Rico expects 93 different power outages this summer, reports the Washington Post.
But they also note that "roughly 1 in 10 Puerto Rican homes now have a battery and solar array for backup power" which have also "become a crucial source of backup power for the entire island grid." A network of 69,000 home batteries can generate as much electricity as a small natural gas turbine during an emergency, temporarily covering about 2 percent of the island's energy needs when things go wrong... "It has very, very certainly prevented more widespread outages," said Daniel Haughton, [transmission and distribution planning director for Puerto Rico's grid operator]. "In the instances that we had to [cut power], it was for a much shorter duration: A four-hour outage became a one- or two-hour outage."
Puerto Rico's experience offers a glimpse into the future for the rest of the United States, where batteries are starting to play a big role in keeping the lights on. Authorities in Texas, California and New England have credited home batteries with preventing blackouts during summer energy crunches. As power grids across the country groan under the increasing strain of new data centers, factories and EVs, batteries offer a way for homeowners to protect themselves — and all of their neighbors — from the threat of outages. Batteries have been booming in the U.S. since 2022, when Congress created generous installation tax credits for homeowners and power companies.
Home batteries generally come as an option alongside rooftop solar panels, according to Christopher Rauscher, head of grid services and electrification for Sunrun, a company that installs both. More than 70 percent of the people who hire Sunrun to put up solar panels also get a battery. With the tax credits — and the money saved on rising electricity costs — solar panels and batteries make financial sense for most American homes, according to a study Stanford University scientists published Aug. 1. About 60 percent of homes would save money in the long run with solar panels and batteries...
Those batteries can have broader benefits, too. Utilities pay customers hundreds of dollars a year to sign their batteries up to form "virtual power plants," which send electricity to the grid whenever power plants can't keep up with demand. California's network of home batteries can now add 535 megawatts of electricity in an emergency — about half as much energy as a nuclear power plant... [H]omeowners can make thousands of dollars a year lowering their energy bills, selling solar power back to the grid or enrolling their batteries in a virtual power plant, depending on their power company's policies and state regulations. "Over time, you would get the full payback for your system and basically get your backup for free," said Ram Rajagopal, an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering who co-authored the Stanford study.
But they also note that "roughly 1 in 10 Puerto Rican homes now have a battery and solar array for backup power" which have also "become a crucial source of backup power for the entire island grid." A network of 69,000 home batteries can generate as much electricity as a small natural gas turbine during an emergency, temporarily covering about 2 percent of the island's energy needs when things go wrong... "It has very, very certainly prevented more widespread outages," said Daniel Haughton, [transmission and distribution planning director for Puerto Rico's grid operator]. "In the instances that we had to [cut power], it was for a much shorter duration: A four-hour outage became a one- or two-hour outage."
Puerto Rico's experience offers a glimpse into the future for the rest of the United States, where batteries are starting to play a big role in keeping the lights on. Authorities in Texas, California and New England have credited home batteries with preventing blackouts during summer energy crunches. As power grids across the country groan under the increasing strain of new data centers, factories and EVs, batteries offer a way for homeowners to protect themselves — and all of their neighbors — from the threat of outages. Batteries have been booming in the U.S. since 2022, when Congress created generous installation tax credits for homeowners and power companies.
Home batteries generally come as an option alongside rooftop solar panels, according to Christopher Rauscher, head of grid services and electrification for Sunrun, a company that installs both. More than 70 percent of the people who hire Sunrun to put up solar panels also get a battery. With the tax credits — and the money saved on rising electricity costs — solar panels and batteries make financial sense for most American homes, according to a study Stanford University scientists published Aug. 1. About 60 percent of homes would save money in the long run with solar panels and batteries...
Those batteries can have broader benefits, too. Utilities pay customers hundreds of dollars a year to sign their batteries up to form "virtual power plants," which send electricity to the grid whenever power plants can't keep up with demand. California's network of home batteries can now add 535 megawatts of electricity in an emergency — about half as much energy as a nuclear power plant... [H]omeowners can make thousands of dollars a year lowering their energy bills, selling solar power back to the grid or enrolling their batteries in a virtual power plant, depending on their power company's policies and state regulations. "Over time, you would get the full payback for your system and basically get your backup for free," said Ram Rajagopal, an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering who co-authored the Stanford study.
Excellent technological idea (Score:3, Insightful)
Problem is, investor owned utilities pay little to nothing for using the battery power and charge customers a lot for the power
We need a fair payment system with the customer being in control of how and when their batteries are being used
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You need an open standard for communication with the batteries and an electricity reserve market which allows the agglomerated storage to participate.
That said, larger players will soon drop the value of battery storage on the reserve market through the floor through economy of scale.
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larger players will soon drop the value of battery storage on the reserve market through the floor through economy of scale.
Wouldn't that be a win for everyone?
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We already have that. There is no requirement that end users tie their solar or batteries to the grid, and even with grid-tied systems, they can be disconnected.
I have solar that is grid-tied. PG&E pays me for the electricity I feed back into the grid. I can turn that off by flipping a switch.
Of course, they pay me less than they charge me for the power I pull, but that is reasonable. Grocery stores do the same: the farmers are paid less than what the grocery stores charge customers.
Re:Excellent technological idea (Score:4, Interesting)
Of course, they pay me less than they charge me for the power I pull, but that is reasonable. Grocery stores do the same: the farmers are paid less than what the grocery stores charge customers.
It is reasonable up to a point. PG&E takes it way beyond that point, though, IMO, paying between 2 and 8 cents per kWh, while charging 37 to 63 cents per kWh for power consumed.
It is pretty clear that PG&E only pays you anything for excess solar because they were forced to do so by California Assembly Bill 920, and that if they could get away with it, the compensation would be zero.
With regulated utilities like this, they should be required to pay homeowners a rate that is close to what the average amount of money they would spend to buy the power from other providers, which is quite a lot higher than what they actually pay.
Actually, no, not even that. They should be required to treat it as a negative count towards the number of units of power for that time-of-use tier, e.g. each 1 kWh sent back counts as a credit for 0.95 kWh at the time it was sent to the grid. And if any TOU tier is negative, that entire negative tier cost should be credited towards your account, including the distribution portion, because (realistically speaking) that tiny amount of power that you generate is not being distributed beyond your neighborhood, unlike power generated by separate generating companies far away.
It just isn't reasonable to bill rooftop solar and separate solar farms similarly. Rooftop solar power reduces strain on the grid when it is active, because the generation is distributed. It should therefore count strongly negatively towards the distribution portion of your power costs, not provide zero credit.
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People will buy more batteries so they can store and use the energy themselves.
They are going to end up making it cost effective to simply leave the grid entirely, or set up a community micro grid to replace it.
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They are going to end up making it cost effective to simply leave the grid entirely, or set up a community micro grid to replace it.
They already have that one figured out. It's illegal in much of California. You are required to connect your house to the grid.
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Just delivering some power to save on gas is not very valuable, having high availability reserve power available on demand is where the money is.
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Problem is, investor owned utilities pay little to nothing for using the battery power and charge customers a lot for the power
Not really, no. Last night PGE was paying a premium over the buy price for my battery surplus being sold back into the grid.
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We need a fair payment system with the customer being in control of how and when their batteries are being used
I don't know where you live, but here in California he have exactly that.
Re:Excellent technological idea (Score:4, Interesting)
We need a fair payment system with the customer being in control of how and when their batteries are being used
I don't know where you live, but here in California he have exactly that.
Does it actually cover the wear and tear on the batteries? Have you calculated it? Because I did, and they're paying for only about 64 minutes per day [slashdot.org] at current battery costs, assuming the actual power distribution and replenishment comes out price-neutral for the homeowner. Meanwhile, their big test of the system ran for two hours. If that becomes normal, then it's anything but a fair payment system, unless they're paying a *huge* premium per kWh on top of that.
It's PG&E, so you can generally assume that nothing they do is done in a way that actually benefits the consumer. :-)
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Your calculations are naive. I have done them too, but I don't have time to go step by step to explain it to you. A key thing you're missing is that the Powerwall has a finite lifetime in years,
Nope. Not for LiFePO4 batteries (PowerWall 3). They exhibit minimal degradation from long-term storage for an entire decade [sciencedirect.com].
and for some reason you assume 4k cycles results in a non-functioning battery.
The general consensus is that at the 80% mark, you should not continue using the cell, for several reasons:
But sure, if you want to take that risk, go for it. Nobody is stopping you.
You further misquote the cost. In California, I'm seeing a net cost of $7,500 when installed with solar, which is how most people acquire these. You need a better understanding of the subject to properly analyze it. Disclaimer: I worked in the electric utility industry and had to do these kinds of analyses for a living.
Nope. The true cost of wear on a PowerWa
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The battery is going to be cycled once a day no matter what
That's not really a safe assumption. Yes, it can be cheaper to buy power at night and use it during the day, but it only makes sense to do that if the cost of the power at the peak is higher than the cost of power at the bottom plus the cost of wear on the system. At 28.52 cents per kWh of wear plus 38 cents per kWh, it only makes sense to do that if the cost of power is at least 66.52 cents per kWh. The maximum price for power from PG&E under a residential TOU plan is only 62 cents per kWh. Therefo
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Powerwall 3 includes the previously separate (and separately priced) solar charge inverter and backup gateway, which simplifies installation & complexity. They are not directly
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JFC, you could look this stuff up. The Tesla warranty on Powerwalls is unlimited use for ten years when used in typical domestic solar/arbitrage/backup applications and for 37.8MHw throughput when used with VPPs or the like. Throughput wear and tear is irrelevant in the former application, you could have saved some arithmetic.
Interesting. My understanding was that it did not cover arbitrage. However, you're misreading that warranty policy in a rather critical way:
"Any application not listed above, or any combination of applications that includes one not listed above".
That means as soon as you enable any use that falls outside the scope, including time shifting for use by the grid operator, your warranty becomes 37.8MWh. It doesn't matter if 99% of your use was covered by the first policy. As soon as you use start using it for VPP, you no longer have 10 years of unlimited wear and tear.
Powerwall 3 includes the previously separate (and separately priced) solar charge inverter and backup gateway, which simplifies installation & complexity. They are not directly comparable with Powerwall 2s ... which you would know if you understood the subject and did a little research.
Yes, it makes installation simpler, but if y
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However, you're misreading that warranty policy in a rather critical way:
Only if you refuse to read what I wrote. You went to a lot of trouble to triumphantly repeat what I said.
Yes, it makes installation simpler, but if you don't need the inverter, you're still paying for it.
Don't need the inverter? I guess you could run all your household appliances off DC--or try if you don't know how anything works. I'm on my third inverter in seven years, they get worked pretty hard and are considered wear items. (You could look this up ... [thepowerfacts.com])
An ideal system would *NOT* have all of that in a single unit. The battery would be one unit, the controller/inverter/brains would be one unit, and would be sized for the number of panels and the number of batteries.
It's sized for the battery, and that's the point. As for installers lashing together a bunch of shit onsite ... have you seen the work a lot of peopl
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However, you're misreading that warranty policy in a rather critical way:
Only if you refuse to read what I wrote. You went to a lot of trouble to triumphantly repeat what I said.
Gah. No, I misremembered what I had written, and you didn't quote what you were responding to, so I misinterpreted what you wrote.
Yes, it makes installation simpler, but if you don't need the inverter, you're still paying for it.
Don't need the inverter? I guess you could run all your household appliances off DC--or try if you don't know how anything works.
In context, I assumed my meaning was clear. I was talking about the situation where you already own the inverter, but are forced to replace it anyway because you're replacing the whole unit. But also, if you have multiple Powerwalls, you could use a single inverter that takes power from all three rather than multiple inverters.
I'm on my third inverter in seven years, they get worked pretty hard and are considered wear items. (You could look this up ... [thepowerfacts.com])
Are these Powerwall inverters you're talking about
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It should work like net metering, where the meter runs backwards when running on battery.
No. Because that's just being paid the same rate as the power you buy. During "emergencies", you should receive the spot market electricity price. That could be 10x the retail purchase price.
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During "emergencies", you should receive the spot market electricity price. That could be 10x the retail purchase price.
I don't disagree but currently utilities are not legally obligated to provide uninterrupted power which means they would simply not buy the power and allow the power to go out.
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The spot market price is already the price that they have agreed to pay somebody. I'd like to see them justify paying $X to the Children of Enron but not the person with a Tesla Powerwall. Particularly when your lights go out but his stay on.
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Not only that, we they don't even refund the part of connection fee for days you were without power.
Suckers game (Score:5, Insightful)
In an attempt to be isolated from outages, Individual households will spend large amounts of money installing solar and batteries, but the utilities will take over those household batteries whenever they want to supply power to stupid AI datacenters.
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In an attempt to be isolated from outages, Individual households will spend large amounts of money installing solar and batteries, but the utilities will take over those household batteries whenever they want to supply power to stupid AI datacenters.
Exactly! When PG&E pays for the batteries and installs them at their cost, then they can have access to them.
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Excuse me! Excuse me! This person was OUTRAGED on the internet. How dare you attempt to add facts or reasoning into the situation! Its obvious that PG&E will force them into putting the battery on the wall and then use it any time they want at gunpoint! And even if it's not true, it _could_ be true because they imagined it, so that's just as good!
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Re:Suckers game (Score:4, Informative)
PG&E pays a large premium for that power, do you know nothing at all about the subject? See others on this thread who participate in these programs.
"The Tesla and PG&E ELRP will compensate you $2.00 for every additional kWh that your Powerwall delivers during an event beyond typical behavior. As of 2024, there will be a minimum of seven events each year. Typically, customers can earn up to $20 per Powerwall per event. If the California grid has a significant number of emergencies, however, there could be as many as 60 hours of events. This can result in customers earning between $200 and $600 per Powerwall, depending on the number of emergency events during the summer. Other factors, including your Powerwall’s energy capacity and charge behavior, play a role into your total compensation."
Hardly a large premium for a 5-10k instillation. At the stated rate it should only take ~50 years for ROI. Sign me up!
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If only you knew how anything, like math, worked.
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If only you were old enough to know how the real world works, you would realize the the world rarely concerns itself with your HP-12C of which you seem strangely proud. There is no way PG&E would continue a program where they are not making ever increasing profits. They're history with solar instillations proves that and like that example, home owners will be left feeling a bit screwed. I get that you are trying to justify (at least to yourself) your purchase, don't expect the rest of us to follow suit
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I don't own a battery, there's another stupid assumption.
You still haven't figured out there/their/they're and you think you can figure out electric utility issues? I, on the other hand, worked in the electric utility industry and was paid a lot of money to analyze tariffs, load profiles, and a bunch of other stuff you manifestly don't understand.
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"I, on the other hand, worked in the electric utility industry"
That says it all right there. I'm through talking to an industry shill.
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Have you had any severe head injuries recently?
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Yes but actually, no. (Score:3, Interesting)
In an attempt to be isolated from outages,
Are they not being isolated from outages? Besides, being part of the Virtual Power Plant (VPP) is voluntary, you can always quit.
Individual households will spend large amounts of money installing solar and batteries,
True and per TFS "About 60 percent of homes would save money in the long run with solar panels and batteries."
the utilities will take over those household batteries whenever they want to supply power to stupid AI datacenters.
No. The whole VPP scheme is a stopgap measure for energy generation. This means merely stabilizes the grid load while other power plants come online to meet the electrical demand. Also note that excessive utilization of the distributive capabilities will no doubt place a g
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Only if the battery owner agrees to it. You don't have to set up your battery to be capable of feeding power back onto the grid. The primary benefit to the battery owner is that they can charge it on off-peak hours and then be safe in the event of a brownout or blackout during peak hours.
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You DO realize that participation in virtual powerplant operation is opt-in, right? And that you typically get paid quite well for the power you provide (which didn't cost you anything to produce because sunlight is free).
If you have access to a VPP program it's a pretty good way to accelerate the payback of the installation costs.
=Smidge=
Re: Suckers game (Score:2)
Care to link us to some evidence on this?
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Evidence of what, exactly? What claim are you doubting and what standard of proof are you prepared to accept?
I want to know before you waste my time.
=Smidge=
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Yes that's fine, they can pay for it. 100% of VPP participation is in the hands of the person who owns the battery. Don't like the fee you are getting paid, don't participate.
Batteries generate? (Score:2)
"A network of 69,000 home batteries can generate as much electricity as a small natural gas turbine during an emergency..."
No they can't, batteries cannot generate electricity at all.
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"A network of 69,000 home batteries can generate as much electricity as a small natural gas turbine during an emergency..."
No they can't, batteries cannot generate electricity at all.
You are technically correct, the best kind of correct.
That said, I assume that the person meant to say "A network of 69,000 fully charged home batteries can provide to the grid as much electricity as a small natural gas turbine during a fairly short emergency."
In other words, until the batteries run out, they can provide the same power (and, for a fixed period of time, the same energy) to the grid as a small natural gas turbine.
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generate /jn-rt/ [Slashdot can't cope with special characters in 2025, lol]
transitive verb
1: To bring into being; give rise to. "generate a discussion."
2: To produce as a result of a chemical or physical process. "generate heat."
3: To engender (offspring); procreate.
4: To form (a geometric figure) by describing a curve or surface.
5: To produce (a program) by instructing a computer to follow given parameters with a skeleton program.
6: In generative grammar, to construct (a sentence, for example) through the successive application of linguistic operations, rules, and conditions.
7: To beget; to procreate; to propagate; to produce (a being similar to the parent); to engender. "every animal generates its own species"
Similar: beget procreate propagate engender To cause to be; to bring into life.
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My definition came from American Heritage, not Merriam-Webster--mea culpa. But if you check M-W you will see a specific reference to electricity in the definition for "generate".
You learned something today, be thankful.
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This predictable pedantry accompanies every single discussion of batteries on /.
Batteries can serve as a source of energy to feed into the grid in times of need. In a practical sense, for the purposes of this discussion, they are an energy source.
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No they can't, batteries cannot generate electricity at all.
Of course they can, it's one of the only two things they do.
Non-rechargeable batteries do one thing: generate electricity from chemical reactions.
Rechargeable batteries do two things: generate electricity from chemical reactions and consume electricity to drive chemical reactions from a lower energy energy state to higher energy state.
Are you maybe confusing batteries with capacitors? You might be correct in saying that capacitors cannot generate electricity since they simply allow electrons to move around
Joint the exploiters at neighborhood scale (Score:4, Interesting)
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the missing information is what is being paid to gas peakers running on spinning reserve during these spikes. It's been quite a while since I worked in the ERCOT market, so I'm out of touch. But I recall the horrors of unhedged positions and market rates well enough to know that even with price caps it could be brutal.
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Sounds like a good project for an HMO.
How Does It Work? (Score:2)
In my experience, those that install home batteries install enough capacity to run their home, or a subset of its load, for a period of hours. Perhaps over night. The idea is that the panels stop generating and you have the battery to carry you overnight, maybe.
But, in this case we're talking about outages, so your home will be on solar and battery only. Yet, you'll have enough to let the grid pull from your battery? How does that work? In a hour or two your batteries are dead and you're out of power like t
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It depends on your agreement, but generally the utility will never fully discharge your battery or come anywhere close to it, and you will know in advance approximately when they will enable discharging (e.g. "for a period of up to one hour some time in the next two weeks").
Also it should go without saying, but if there actually is a blackout condition the utility is not going to be drawing power from your home batteries...
=Smidge=
Thanks China? (Score:2)
I wonder where (a large % of) the solar panels come from, and why their prices are being driven down.
Puerto Rico power grids is worse than Texas's.... (Score:2)
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apropos of nothing (Score:2)
The other thing that can prevent blackouts (Score:2)
Re:Americans are obsessed with individualism (Score:5, Insightful)
Your home battery is no substitute for a proper electric grid maintained by a proper civilization.
Your "proper electric grid" is no substitute for a real grid. It's predominantly tree-structured, with generation far from the point of consumption. What would actually be as robust as possible would be a system which could break itself into small pieces and allow local generation and storage systems to provide power to as many users as possible in scenarios where there is damage to the network. The place for centralization is in standards for that equipment to follow so that they can cooperate to deliver that without presenting a threat to linemen who are trying to restore connections to the so-called "grid".
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Grids aren't tree structures, that's why they're called grids.
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Grids aren't tree structures, that's why they're called grids.
They are called grids, but they are a hybrid of a grid and a tree structure, and many cities (or even entire counties) are fed by only a single connection. Virtually no neighborhoods are multiply connected. At the interstate level it's fairly gridlike, but the closer you get to a house, the less like a grid it becomes.
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Tough to explain stuff to people who don't have the technical background to understand it.
Does it even take a technical background? Just a little paying attention and a willingness to look things up if you lack personal familiarity goes a long way. There's maps of power connections, you can download free GIS data that shows where the transmission lines are and load it up in free software... (I use QGIS)
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What damage do you imagine happening? (Score:3, Insightful)
Because right now it just seems like you are anxious for the collapse of civilization because you think you're going to somehow come out ahead during that mess.
Re: So no answer then (Score:2)
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Pretty typical. Right wingers always retreat to baseless accusations
You wouldn't know an actual leftist idea if it fucked you in the eye socket.
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you usually rush to post to call anybody a LLM bot when they note the craziness of rsilvergun's comments.
I take it you're the author of the rsilvergun-impersonating LLM based on your accusation. What a surprise that you're also a coward.
As many other extreme leftist here, you are so blind that you keep on defending rsilvergun
I've opposed people using Ad Hominem arguments about things he's said, which is not the same thing.
and modding him up
I've been marked unwilling to moderate for years. I didn't get mod points for years before that anyway.
Leftist of your kind will defend anybody wanting to destroy America especially Hamas and China
Your trolling is really dumb considering my posting history where I criticize China more than anyone else who can construct a complete sentence.
Hamas is funded by Netanyahu, just
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I see you interestingly didn't reply to that part of my message:
It wasn't interesting enough. Do better.
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A wide area grid is not really necessary if buildings were far more self-reliant, which is possible with good design. Passive and active solar, R-60 insulation values, heat exchangers, max solar orientation, battery and mass walls, heat pumps, and EVs would allow many if not most us not to rely on Big Energy, which is what the upper class fears the most; that we should become independent of their classist and exploitive transnational corporations. People, this is exactly what economic slavery looks like.
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A grid is great because it allows power to be moved around to where it is needed. It's a thing we should definitely pursue having. But we should also be promoting community microgrids and other similar organization structures for power generation to make power delivery as robust as possible in disaster scenarios. Especially as AGW increases severity and frequency of severe weather events, we're going to suffer increased numbers of power outages which threaten lives by disabling oxygen concentrators and CPAP
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sure, grids are useful but not when they are used to control us and expolit from us, otherwise i see your point, however, these used to be public utilities and now, not so much
freedom comes from detachment
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freedom comes from detachment
Freedom comes from being able to be detached if you want or need to, but efficiency and greatness come from group effort. One possible goal is to make everyone able to be as independent as possible, but also to be as good at cooperating as possible. Is that not the best and most resilient solution?
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A distributed grid with many sources of power (solar, wind, battery) distributed over the entire service area is much more resilient than the current design of large fossil generators far from the points of consumption.
Actually, Puerto Rico has the right idea. This came about not because of careful planning but as a result of incompetent planning of the state.
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> Your home battery is no substitute for a proper electric grid maintained by a proper civilization.
So I guess all of Europe isn't a proper civilization then, 'cause this kind of thing probably could have averted the Iberian Peninsula blackout a few months ago.
As renewable energy takes a larger share of the capacity, the stability offered by the large physical mass of turbine wheels is reduced. We need to add more capacity to absorb and supply energy to the grid, and batteries do that pretty well.
Also th
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Also this is like, the exact opposite of individualism; It's collectivism. People contributing their individual resources for a common good.
It looks a lot more like cooperation to me. Collectivism is people's individual resources being redirected to some central authority, if you're lucky it's for a common good. We haven't been lucky often.
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> Collectivism is people's individual resources being redirected to some central authority,
That central authority being the electric utility, yes.
=Smidge=
Re:Americans are obsessed with individualism (Score:4, Interesting)
The Iberian peninsula blackout was caused by a reactive power oscillation that caused plants to disconnect due to being out of phase. Renewables played a role insofar as they do not provide the inertia that the spinning mass of a generator does to soak up reactive power spikes. This was exacerbated by geography as such spikes are felt more acutely at the edges of the grid. The solution is to build more reactive power management devices such as shunt caps and STATCOMs, which are grid scale installations, not for the home gamer.
Home solar and batteries are all well and good, but they are not necessarily good for the overall health of the grid and they are economically regressive. Each home solar installation means another home that does not pay as much into the maintenance of the grid as other households. These are usually homes of people more able to pay as well, so as more affluent people lower their grid utilization or disconnect altogether, this leaves apartment dwellers, home renters, or less affluent home owners to bear an increased proportion of the gird maintenance costs. Subsidies for home solar would be better spent on grid scale solar, wind, grid batteries, and the aforementioned voltage regulation devices.
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> Each home solar installation means another home that does not pay as much into the maintenance of the grid as other households.
Now, maybe it's different where you live, but for me the utility bill has separate line items for grid connection/maintenance, fuel surcharges, actual kwh used, and of course tax on all that. So as someone with solar panels and home batteries, even if I'm a net exporter of power on any given billing period I'm still paying the utility company money for the privileged of being
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Consider the parts of the United States where solar and wind are relatively easy to capture and store. They could easily have well north of 10% of their annual electricity produced by renewables in a few decades if they choose to.
Note: I recognize that you said "median" and I'm talking about "average." I think "average" is probably a better measure for this than "median" anyway.
Re:Americans are obsessed with individualism (Score:4, Informative)
I don't think this counts residential solar since it's not properly on the CAISO system and ends up simply being less load to serve.
Our energy is expensive, but it's rapidly going green and I love it.
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As I write this CASIO reports none of California's load is being served by solar.
You were wrong: batteries, charged by solar, were serving multiple GW of load.
The real problem is that our use of electricity is not a fixed amount. It is increasing over time and much of that increase is being provided by new natural gas plants.
[citation missing]
I don't even know where to begin with this load of nonsense or what followed. Please don't post this where anyone who has ever worked in the electric utility industry (like me) will see it, you will suffer humiliation.
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That is not what the CASIO web site reported at the time I posted. And it is doubtful that they were using any battery power at that time, They would likely have used it (or be saving to use it) during peak demand when power is most expensive.
You posted at 8:40PM Pacific Time on the 16th (local date), at which time CAISO reports 8.77GW or 28.7% of load was being served from batteries--and that was the top source, followed by imports at 16.8%. At 1:00AM local time this morning, batteries were still putting out 1.56GW. There's no "likely", the data is public. I follow along from residual professional interest.
I advised you to not post about this around people who know what's going on because you are crushingly ignorant. It also appears you can'
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You are right the batteries weren't fully discharged until around 2:40 AM this morning. Then they started being charged again - before the sun went up. There was a slight usage between 5 and 7 and since then they are being charged.
And you are also right, I pay very little attention to the specifics of the California grid since it is an anomaly in a lot of ways. My original point was that the GW they produce from batteries at a specific point in time is not really relevant. As I said:
Neither of those statements tell us much about the ability of renewables to provide all our electric power.
That would have still b
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You are right the batteries weren't fully discharged until around 2:40 AM this morning.
You have data to support that assumption? All I see is decisions by the load dispatchers. We have no way of knowing why they're doing a certain thing at a certain time. Your logic would assume they started to run out of water at the larger hydro sources around 7:00AM.
As for the ability of renewables to provide all our electric power, we're well on the way. Battery storage has been the missing piece and eliminates so much wasteful spinning reserve, etc. The money is on renewables. ERCOT's interconnection
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You have data to support that assumption?
No. But regardless of the the reason, there was no load from batteries at 3:00. And that is just as meaningless to the discussion as the claim there was a large load from batteries 12 hours earlier.
Is there any evidence to show the batteries are being solely charged by solar power? No. Batteries can be used to store cheap coal power to use when they would otherwise need to fire up an expensive natural gas plant.
Which is also irrelevant to the discussion of whether solar and batteries can replace all o
Re:Americans are obsessed with individualism (Score:4, Informative)
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I am well aware of how it works (Score:2)
And is I already made clear it allows people to let the grid collapse and still have electricity for themselves. Or at least it makes them think they can. It's already two or three prepper types who think they don't need civilization commenting on here.
And Jesus fucking Christ man how the hell is wanting a proper and fully functional electric grid hipster? Are you just using tha
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And it's going to be the death of us.
Your home battery is no substitute for a proper electric grid maintained by a proper civilization.
This is a classic Band-Aid on a bullet wound. We know AI is coming for both our jobs and our electricity. And our solution is to retreat into our castles.
But we don't have castles we have moderately sized housing. We aren't Kings we are peasants. Just because we've got PlayStations and air conditioners doesn't mean we have become Kings.
It's that hyper individualistic hubris encouraged by the upper class and the elites so that we don't form communities that could cause them problems.
We should all fight the good fight to somehow fix our broken civilization, but in the mean time you can either sit in darkness during blackouts, or you can take action to make yourself self-reliant for home energy.
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Electrolysis/fuel-cell might become as cheap as an air conditioner and seasonal hydrogen storage as cheap as a septic tank.
Then peasants can be their own power companies.
Our power grid is being devoured by AI (Score:2)
You are a perfect example of the problem that I'm talking about. The billionaires aren't going to let the peasants have anything because they are not content being billionaires they want to be trillionaires and the only way you do that is to claim all the property and g
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"But we don't have castles we have moderately sized housing."
And we don't own it, we rent it from the slum lords that are taking our electric. They will be buying all the castles along with everything else.
So a bunch of us technically owned property (Score:2)
They will use access to that medical care to extract the property that the people here own. Your mortgage your house to afford medicine and before long the bank and the guy with a gun call
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This is not individualism, not even close, this is classism and corporatism, which are the result of selfishness and greed. Ethics matter more than money but overy affluent people don't want to see how their lifestyle is both unsustainable and rooted in economic exploitation.
Money is power and power corrupts. This is what a corrupt and decadent society in decline looks like.
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This entire submission demonstrates how individualism saves the power grid from failure. Call it a band-aid or whatever else you want to call it. You're still an asshole.
"If only more Americans would kneel and obey!". No, fuck off.
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Your home battery is no substitute for a proper electric grid maintained by a proper civilization.
Millions of people around the world who live off grid don't have a clue what you're on about.
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Thats absolute bullshit.
Microgrids are the way forwards and the way towards reslient.