brucet999
Active Member
Maybe if you are retired with nothing outside the home to do, or work nights, otherwise, you won't be home during the day.
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More anti-Solar shenanigans :(
- Thread starter nwdiver
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- Energy Environment Policy
In a world where there would be no incentives (which eventually is the future), it is far more cost effective on a per-Watt rate to install large scale utility-scale "anything" than small systems on each individual house requiring a separate loan, permit, install team, care, feeding on each home. 1MW Grid scale is far cheaper money spent than 100 10KW home systems. The end result may even be better if the homes don't have excellent solar coverage. Push-in posts and rapid racking along with high-efficiency high-voltage 1000W inverters work well.
Now, if someone values off-grid solutions or hybrid solutions like the Pika or SolarEdge "islanding" solutions - then great, go for those. On a kWh delivered cost, it is higher. The value falls to the single homeowner and not the community. One day, perhaps, a cul-de-sac of solar-fed homes can have its own large scale battery to allow for the community to island and go-off grid just as a hospital or even well designed college campus can do. Or apartment building using community battery, islanding and on-site solar + Nat Gas generator capability. We may see more of that type of thing in the next few decades of build-out. The cost of scale is allowing for good pricing. But there will be more push-back on the tax front where community members who don't have solar and/or batteries do not want to pay for single-homeowners incentives to go off grid "for themselves".
gavine
Petrol Head turned EV Enthusiast
If that's the case, then why do people claim that the distributed solar is getting close to the cost of just the grid, even if the fuel were free for the utility? Is it not true that the cost of maintaining the grid is more than the cost of the generation?
We need to let the market work. Utilities need to start competing instead of relying on a guaranteed profit from their monopolies. If a company can provide power from a 100MW farm and deliver it, and sell it for $0.05/kWh. Fine. If I want to install solar on my house so I don't have to buy it for $0.05/kWh. Fine. But we need to prohibit utilities from manipulating the system for their benefit.
Xcel can't deliver solar power for $0.05/kWh. Even in NM. They probably couldn't deliver it for $0.12/kWh. But I can install solar for a levelized cost of ~$0.04/kWh. What does Xcel do? They bribe the utility commission into allowing them to collect $0.036/kWh that I generate! That's absurd! If they can do it better then they should do it better but stop penalizing people for generating their own power!
Merrill
Merrill
Totally agree, but when you have a monopoly with no one watching over you you can do whatever you want. That's why when I see our power company advertising how great they are and want you to be energy efficient, incentives to install more efficient mechanicals and promote solar then start making it difficult to become more energy efficient you realize the only thing they care about is money.
You are including the benefits of large scale systems, but not giving the disadvantages. The grid is expensive. Recently our electric company was faced with adding another line down the peninsula, instead a group convinced them to invest in local solar and efficiency instead, the cost was 1/4 of the cost of a new line. This is just infrastructure, no generating plant at all.
Large may have advantages, but decentralized does as well.
Thank you kindly.
You're right and there are lots of distinct edge cases. Off-grid works in the mountains instead of when a guy needs a line run a few miles to a new mountain house he is building. Works in cases like you have noted in Maine.
In terms of "monopoly with no oversight" - each state has a law-making authority and public utility commission (PUC) that oversees utility pricing and there is only a monopoly if they are in collusion with the utilities. The grid has worked for decades - but adding distributed sources of power enhances it, and does not replace it or "disrupt" it. It simply makes it better. Many people talk about "crushing the utilities" - when in fact, we must enhance it and extend its usefulness as we grow our energy demands due to growing populations. Certainly growing demands if we turn to heavy EV deployment. If we had the reverse situation of a declining population, like Japan, we could shut down certain power plants like Japan did by shutting down some of their nuclear plants and adding some renewables. But we really are nuts if we believe that "everyone will go off-grid". We must have a grid and we must enhance it in many ways through intelligent distribution processes. And by intelligent, that is cooperative, not "distrupting and eliminating" practices where some believe "one" company will crush the others. That's not going to fly.
My point is that solar is cheaper than merely upgrading the distribution lines. Our grid needs upgrading, and we can accomplish that much cheaper if we do it with solar, than with new wires.
Which, of course, there always is.
Probably not. Replacing any vehicle with less than about 25 MPG with an EV reduces the demand on the grid (and decentralizes it as well). Just the refining of gasoline takes about 4-6 kWh of electricity per gallon.
That certainly wouldn't be my recommendation. But it is happening, in Germany, where the utilities are in a death spiral, they are losing demand (being replaced by solar), which means they need to raise their prices, which causes people (and companies) to go off-grid, which means they need to raise their prices. US utilities see this on the horizon as well. They can either dig in their heals and hope to win by colluding with the policy makers (which will precipitate the change to off-grid) or they can revise their business model, encourage solar, sell distribution & load balancing & storage, and prosper in a new way (e.g. Vermont). I am one of the people working with the Maine utilities to encourage this second choice. But it really is a choice.
Thank you kindly.
We must have a grid and we must enhance it in many ways through intelligent distribution processes. And by intelligent, that is cooperative, not "distrupting and eliminating" practices where some believe "one" company will crush the others. That's not going to fly.[/QUOTE]
Energy; not electricity. Most is natural gas. Used as raw heat to distill petroleum. You'd need >10 kWh of gas to get 4-6 kWh of electricity but gas becomes heat pretty efficiently...
dgpcolorado
high altitude member
Most of it in unknown.
but: "According to Wikipedia, quoting an Alberta Government fact sheet, 280-350 kiloWatt-hours of electricity is required to extract a barrel of bitumen from the tar sands and upgrade it to synthetic crude oil."
Thank you kindly.
There's a lot of official numbers that get that wrong... dig a little deeper and you'll see most of that energy is thermal. Dig deeper still and you'll find tar sands operations use FAR more gas than electricity.
omgwtfbyobbq
Active Member
I believe it's electricity equivalent; not energy. Petroleum refining/extraction uses a lot more than ~5kWh of natural gas.
Edit - It's ~6+kWh of nat gas on average, and up to ~15+kWh of nat gas in places where there's a lot of heavy crude, like California.
How far could an EV go on the energy used to produce a gallon of gas?
Also, I'm not sure how accurate the national averages are. I know that natural gas extracted and used on site for petroleum extraction in California is tracked, but I'm not sure if the same applies in other states. I wouldn't be surprised if some on-site nat gas usage wasn't tracked, depending on the state.
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That myth is incredibly pernicious... which is why I replied... I think that was corrected somewhere in the comments section... might have been another YouTube video I saw.
It makes sense if you think about it... by far the most energy intensive part of refining gasoline is heating the oil to distill it. Why on earth would you use electricity for that task? Why burn gas to make electricity then use that electricity to create heat? Far easier and cheaper to just burn the gas directly.
Here's a breakdown from the DOE. ~6x more gas is used in the refining process vs electricity. It looks like some refineries are actually a net generator of electricity... they've gotta do something with all those heavier distillates and burning them is one way to do that... might as well make some money generating power...
Here's a blog post I found addressing this myth too... the real number is <1kWh/gal... but it gets messy because some of that electricity was generated on-site from oil waste products...
omgwtfbyobbq
Active Member
I wouldn't call it a myth, just an incorrect characterization of where the energy is used from the well to the wheel. A little bit is used in refining, but far more is used in extraction.
I've attached a screenshot of the default energy inputs ANL uses for E10 gas in their GREET program. Natural gas inputs account for a little less than 20% of the total energy in a gallon of E10, so ~6kWh/gallon. I think electricity is ~.5-1kWh/gallon.
We can either use that natural gas/electricity to make gasoline, or we can use it to make electricity (~3-4kW) to power an EV. In the Model 3, not using a gallon of gas might free up enough energy to drive ~15-20 miles on average.
Attachments
Arizona Public Service Company under FBI investigation for campaign contributions.
Apparently using Rate Payer money to influence elections to influence rates is illegal... as it should be.
Apparently using Rate Payer money to influence elections to influence rates is illegal... as it should be.
If that's illegal, what about all the utilities contributions to Edison Electric Institute, which does anti-solar lobbying on an industrial scale?
It's complicated.
Essentially paying lobbyists to support utility objectives that support rate payers is legal. The utility is representing rate payers interest. Example; lobbying to build a new transmission line to increase reliability. However in many areas lobbying to increase the utilities bottom line is illegal because of the monopoly status of the utility. Example; legislation to deter distributed generation.
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