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While solar power is great and possibly the future, I sure hope they fully thought this through. A lot of areas with large numbers of solar panels are struggling to manage overcapacity. Solar energy produced is not always sent to the grid but wasted, as there is often not enough grid-scale storage capacity to absorb it. I’m no expert, but I wonder if mandating smart in-home sodium-ion batteries which intelligently charge and discharge based on grid capacity wouldn’t be more effective.
Sunlight hitting a roof without solar panels is also often not sent to the grid but wasted. In fact, I’d say that more solar energy is wasted on roofs without solar panels than with.
People who install solar on their roofs usually expect to recoup some of the costs by sending energy to the grid. When, increasingly often, they have a choice of either shutting the system off and wasting this energy or sending it to the grid at low or even negative rates, this becomes a problem. The expectation of “my solar system will pay for itself in X years” might become “my solar system will never break even”. At least that’s an issue in some places with high PV density.
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Is it? We (all countries) need wayyyyy more storage, and we need it yesterday if we’re going to transition in time to avoid catastrophic climate change.
Using substantial resources on solar panels that just end up getting curtailed, on roofs not angled in an optimal way, is a huge waste
The UK is no where near the point of having too much power through the daytime. Today was pretty sunny, better than average day especially for time of year. At mid day there was still 5.8GW of fossil fuel use and 3GW of biomass, so about 8.8 GW of CO2 production. Or to put it another way of the 32.5 GW of power needed solar contribute 3.41GW.
There will come a moment where there is an issue where more storage is required to use that power through the evening and night or negative power pricing but its not the issue yet there still isn’t enough renewables to make it through a day without burning gas even on a windy sunny day so promoting more Solar and Wind is still necessary to get to netzero for grid power in 2030.
Where did you get those stats from? I wasn’t aware there were places where you could see such granular numbers
https://grid.iamkate.com/ and https://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/. https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/72h/hourly is also of interest as it shows some comparison across countries on CO2e intensity across nations.
You can’t check historical granular data but you can look at that granularity for the past 24 hours. If you look at this over many years on many different days you get an impression of the max and minimums of demand and production of the various types as I do now. Wish they did some more stats breakdown however so this was clearer from someone coming new to the site without experience of the data.
Look at the date on the article you linked. It was published on July 7th.
When solar panels are seeing 15 hours of high-angle summer daylight and clear skies, generation should be considerably overcapacity.
Come back to me when you can write that same overcapacity article in November, when your panels are struggling with 9-hours of low-angle overcast.
When you have sufficient solar capacity to meet winter demand, you’ll have 200% - 400% of demand in summer. That is simply the nature of solar production outside of the tropics.
Of course, it depends on the conditions. But any (temporary) overcapacity becomes a problem for people with solar panels when they expect to pay off the cost of the panels not just with a reduction in drawing power from the grid but also with credits from sending power to the grid.
However, there are problems, with some grid operators even charging customers for energy sent to the grid during peak times, such as in NL: https://innovationorigins.com/en/solar-feed-in-tariffs-climb-18-in-six-months/
Solar without storage is less ideal than most people think.
Yes I literally have to pay when I produce more than I use, like every day in April.
I looked into batteries, but they cost 10 times my annual power bill, and of course they wouldn’t replace all electricity, so would take like 20 years to be cost neutral.
I’m considering buying a high power laser and turning it on to consume extra electricity. I’d rather send photons back into space than pay the power delivery company.
Try bitcoin.
The ROI on bitcoin is substantially greater than that of a high power laser aimed into space.
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well with reform UK replacing conservatives, solar panels might be deemed too woke in the next couple years
I heard our glorious leader will be making an upcoming EO mandating all homes be retrofitted with coal-burning stoves.
Oh say can you see
By 2027? Why not now? These things have never been cheaper. Mandate batteries as well, LiFePo is cheap as hell and it would save so much money it’s stupid not to.
Educated guess:
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To allow the supply chain to adjust so we don’t cause a sudden shortage skyrocketing the price of solar, making homes more expensive to build or delaying construction
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A lot of new build are basically copy pastes of the same design, so companies have time to properly adjust designs for them and not just haphazardly slap them on to existing ones which could cause problems
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Red tape and Bureaucracy. Updating laws and regulation takes time, then there’s risk assessments environmental planning, maybe adjustments to the grid layout on new estates.
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I like it, but with housing prices already out of control I wonder if this is the wisest? It’s just going to make housing that much more expensive. Long term it’s great! But I hope they have some fancy financial footwork to curb the upfront costs.
That’s the point. They want to squeeze the lower classes.
A few decades late, but needed nonetheless.
If Reagan had had a hint of forward thinking he wouldn’t have un-installed Carter’s solar panel. It was among the FIRST solar panels installed for any residence in the US and it was mentioned as part of his farewell speech.
/c/unexpectedUSAmerican
Now harness the power of gravity and rain. 🙈
You hang a tub from a rope outside. The rope is connected to a set of gears with a super high ration. Connect the gears to a generator. When it rains, the tub will fill with water and will add to the energy going into the generator. Reset it by draining the water from the tub when it touches the ground, and then putting the tub back in the original position.
We many times lament when the government overreaches. This is the kind of Trojan horse that enables the government to overreach.
One might think, this seems innocuous and beneficial, so go ahead, right? You have to ask yourself, how is it moral for the government to, with the threat of violence, force every home to be built with solar panels? Because that’s the implication.
If I’m a small business, and I build a house without solar panels, is it right that I be bankrupted or/and be put in jail?
