Comment on Rooftop solar eats up all demand in South Australia, world’s most renewable grid

• abhibeckert@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  So, we have a “tiny roof project” on our rooftop.

  For 9 hours a day (in winter - more hours in summer) they produce four times more power than our peak consumption. When it’s cloudy… it produces about twice our peak consumption. In hindsight, we probably could have saved money with an even smaller system… but a bit of headroom is nice and it wouldn’t have saved much money, since wiring and the inverter were about the same (we installed the maximum number of panels our inverter can handle).

  We also have power now even if the grid goes down during the day, which is nice we live in a hurricane area and a few times in my life the grid has been down for weeks.

  It reduces our electricity bill by between $3 and $9 per day depending on the seasons. We sell between $1.50 and $3 per day to the grid.

  At that rate, it will only take two years to pay off the upfront installation cost… the inverter has a 10 year warranty and the solar panels have a 30 year warranty. So I’m fairly confident it will last longer than two years.

  If we couldn’t sell power to the grid, it’d still pay for itself in less than 3 years.

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  • vividspecter@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Adding onto this, there’s a benefit to decentralisation of the grid in general in making it less prone to grid wide problems, and cutting back on the need for transmission as you said (a big deal right now, given conservative farmers have been throwing a tantrum about it of late).

    And home and vehicle batteries will help move demand to the middle of the day, meaning less supply needed at night.

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    • SnipingNinja@slrpnk.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      I wonder how much effect reduced transmission is having on various things like efficiency because you’re using most of the energy where it’s being generated.

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      • vividspecter@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        It’s definitely more efficient to use energy close to where it’s generated although I’m not sure by how much.

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  • Taleya@aussie.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    We have a powerpal (measures grid usage) and i gotta say, it’s absolutely orgasmic seeing that shit show zero grid power used in the middle of winter XD XD

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• Taleya@aussie.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  …ok I know different latitudes and all that, but midwinter in melbourne we were still pulling 275kwh over the month and it was a bloody dark month

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  • PupBiru@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    i can see the “more economical” argument, but it also plays right into the hands of commercial interests… rooftop solar doesn’t allow rent seeking unlike utility solar, which at least makes me question the argument

    i’m not sure if you add management overheads (including grid management) and ROI on top of everything that it’d end up more economical, so IMO it’s really a toss up, and in that case i’d lean towards the non-rent-seeking option

    if in doubt, invest in yourself; don’t rent your life and all that

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    • princessnorah@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      In terms of rooftop solar and grid management, this is already a partially solved problem. New solar installs in my part of Australia use “Smart Inverters” that can receive signals to change the rate they’re feeding into the grid. You therefore create a “Virtual Power Plant” of interconnected rooftop solar, that reacts as one system.

      …com.au/…/victoria-smart-inverters-mb1000/

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      • PupBiru@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        oh yeah totally! i’m in vic too :)

        i mean management of the grid to a centralised location IMO is always going to be a bigger cost, which would likely mitigate some efficiency gains from installing solar en masse by a utility

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