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Comment by enjo | Hacker News Reader

Utilities across the country are changing how they handle net metering (buying back at the wholesale instead of retail rate). It greatly changes the payback on these solar installations... I’m guessing that has more to do with any slowdown than Tesla’s management. Not to mention that the low hanging fruit may already be largely picked.

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What we need is a new grid, one that's designed to move power in any direction. The current grid was built to move power in one direction, from the plant to the home. If we set up a grid that allowed home-to-home transfer of electricity, we'd be able to support an energy market where the price of electricity is set by market forces instead of centralized utilities. Any producer of electricity can put his or her power on the market and compete with everyone else, and consumers can shop around the market for the best prices. It would be the internet analogue of power delivery.

This is not some kind of libertarian dream world. This infrastructure will have to be created and maintained by the government, just like roads. There will probably have to be laws to regulate sale and prevent things like monopolies and non-discrimination. But otherwise whatever happens on this infrastructure will be more or less "free" for the market to decide.

If our answer to climate change is for each home to be essentially an island responsible for maintaining all of the solar/wind infrastructure to meet their own power needs, then we're doomed. We need to be able to move and price power efficiently, and the current model of delivery is broken.

Simplest way to make this technically feasible is to switch from AC grid to DC grid, which is not exactly small change.

On the other hand running your whole house on 290-310V DC is surprisingly simple (in places with 230V mains) beacause most typical home devices either don't care at all or have SMPS which rectifies mains voltage to DC. Probably only large-ish home appliance that needs AC is european-style (two knobs and big transformer) microwave oven.

> most typical home devices either don't care at all or have SMPS which rectifies mains voltage to DC

Linear power supplies are still somewhat common, and they'll blow up when connected to DC. Aside from old power adapters, they're also likely to be found in home stereo equipment.

Anecdotally, the door-to-door sales and the aggressive sales guy camped out at the entrance to Home Depot seem to have largely gone away. I suspect it's a combination of, as you say, a less attractive financial payback and the fact that people who really want to do it have already done it.

(I'm not sure what the tax incentive situation is. As I understand it, that's still in place.)

I really want to get it even though I missed out on some of the savings, but really doesn’t make much since here in Portland. My house is basically always in the shade.

It would be huge if I could run my homelab without worrying about how much power I’m eating up.

Wait till the masses discover cryptomining as an alternative to measly net metering rates.

I have solar and generate far more electricity than I could ever use. I investigated cryptomining as a way to use up that electricity, and no matter how I crunched the numbers I couldn't make it profitable.

How did you arrive at that conclusion? Any amount of mining will be profitable since your electricity is free. You could dig out a used Thinkpad from the closet and even though the hashrate would be miserable, you would still be making money since your electricity cost is zero. Of course you would probably want to use more efficient hardware to mine, and that's in terms of $/kWh.

I've got a GPU mining ethereum right now at about $0.75/kWh. Even in my apartment where electricity is $0.10/kWh I'm still turning a profit.

Thanks, you've inspired me to take another look. When I looked into this the first time, the $/kwh versus hardware cost never added up. I have no hardware lying around I could use, so chances are I'd have to buy something.

There's also the opportunity cost. If getting the hardware, learning everything and regular maintenance only nets me say a $5/month profit, it doesn't seem worth pursuing.

It's been a few months since I researched this, I'm happy to be wrong so I'll take another look.

If that shifts the mining away from large datacenters run by coal, would that be a net benefit for society/environment?

Mining is not done by coal, or by residential places right now.

Mining is done in Datacenters placed next to hydro power plants in China, using their almost free excess electricity.

Not according to the recent spate of articles claiming bitcoin is causing all the global warming.

I live in Florida. Almost no solar here. Lots of fruit to be picked.

It’s my impression that this is from utility companies blocking solar.

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-koch-brothers...

Yes. This is exactly what is going on. In the same time period described the power dinosaurs (Google autocorrected companies to "dinosaurs" but it kinda fits in more than one way so I'm keeping it) have implemented polices to slow down adoption of PV claiming they can't build the infrastructure fast enough to hold the growth but all the while just hoping to figure out a way to remain relevant while not embracing any kind of change.

California's "Net Metering 2.0" basically gives you net metering credits in Time-of-Use (ToU) "buckets" which means you don't get the full credit you would have gotten under Net Metering 1.0 if you generate the most from, say, part peak hours of 10am-3pm, but use your air conditioning during peak hours from 4pm-7pm.

But from everything I've read, this means I'd actually come out ahead if I had solar on my house. I don't have air conditioning, so much of my usage is constant demand, plus some lighting and TV and such late into the evening, plus laundry and other appliances, also typically later in the evening (after the 7pm peak ends). But the solar would be generating me TONS of part-peak during midday and even a fair bit of peak hour generation at 4-5 and even towards 6pm as the sun goes lower angle.

I'm really curious and interested in doing it, just never went so far as to invest in solar.

I wonder if the falling SolarCity installations means panels and labor have fallen in price a bit?

yup, its exactly this. shame on Reuters. that article felt as if it was paid for by big oil.

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