where i lived we lose power once or twice a year. Many people have natural gas backup generators. my understanding is rooftop solar feeds the grid and not a house directly. So, millions of homes have backup generators
Are we nearing any tipping point where local solar becomes a “big thing”?
If solar's just going to feed back into the grid, I might as well just let the utility companies manage it themselves. It's more efficient than anything I can do myself.
Unfortunately, it seems like the way solar works helps that goal much less than I'd like. I hardly need multiple kilowatts of power backing a single functional outlet that almost seems begrudgingly provided.
I'd be interested in anyone who has experience in perhaps managing to set their house up the way I describe, what magic words to Google or say to installers to talk about this, and how much more money it may have been.
I wonder how many electric F-150s will get sold to people on the basis of using them as a whole-house battery.
I fully agree on your point of the lack of logic to grid-based solar. No doubt large scale facilities can be placed in better areas, be cheaper per watt, have higher uptime, are able to afford the more exotic power storage (dams for one).
Now, if it were me, I'd start with new construction designed around low power usage. LED lighting, efficient computers, chest freezer turned into a refrigerator, no electric heat or dryers or transfer fans for gas heaters. The sticking point would tend to be A/C but I think that can be mitigated via small house size, insulation, and use of efficient split systems. The smaller the electricity use the more tractable the problem.
1. Electrically, solar does feed your house first. It interconnects before the meter and into your main electric panel. The reason it doesn't work during an outage is because of regulations requiring solar to turn off during power outages so that electricians fixing downed lines don't have surprise power from random houses after they turn off the grid power.
2. If you want solar to work during an electric outage you need to install a battery backup that can feed it AC power and disconnect it from the grid during a grid failure. However, you need a pretty big battery to power a full house for a long time so it's generally cheaper and easier to have a gas generator backup if you are worried about this. Batteries are really just good for energy arbitrage purposes these days.
3. There are inverters that have an outlet that works during grid outages, even without batteries (https://www.sma-sunny.com/us/how-to-explain-secure-power-sup...). They generally cost the same
I expect we get away with it right now due to rarity.
The future of grids is orchestration between variable demand and variable generation, along with pumped storage, battery storage, and long distance transmission.
I do like the F150 as a backup power source, but there's probably a catch. I see that a Tesla Powerwall holds 13.5 kWh, and the truck is 115-155 kWh.
Average US house is 30 kWh / day? It sounds doable but not cheap.
To be clear, even at $90k that's cheaper than buying a pile of power walls or similar. So it seems like it's a power wall array plus a free truck :).
Why is that? A missing feature?
https://www.f150gen14.com/forum/threads/trim-pricing-for-202...
Judging by this article [1], the bidirectional charging is maybe part of the $1000 "Pro Power" add on.
Either way, sounds like we can get a 100-ish kWh battery backup for $50k.
[1] https://autotrends.org/2021/03/01/what-is-bidirectional-char...
Taking DC from batteries to connect to a 120V AC house is going to require an inverter which adds cost, weight, and space. Presumably the base model won't have it.
Large wind farms generate more power than solar on a per acre basis and have a lot of land that can be used for cow/sheep grazing, buildings for other purposes, and so on.
Solar is getting so cheap that people can use them for "local solar" (in the industry, that's called distributed generation).
Rooftop solar on residential homes usually power the house first, then the battery of the house, then the grid. This could change if net metering is allowed though but usually only after your batteries are topped up.
Also you could just not have batteries (since it's so expensive). In that case any excess power will just go directly to the grid.
I can see this happening more in the future when you kind of run out of space and have increased demand for power. First thing you'll probably do is upgrade the turbines to be bigger/more efficient. Then if you've maxed that out you can start adding solar panels underneath the turbines.
At the end of the day it's about lowering your costs to generate the power you need.
My guess is that solar sites will be managed to improve soil quality. And eventually we will rotate the fields under solar to give the soil a rest. It is the perfect opportunity for a win-win.
I don't see the solar site management thing happening by the way. A lot of time and effort goes into land siting and selection. It won't be that easy to just pack it up and move.
Probably not, tbh. Its getting a lot cheaper, but its really possible that subsidies will start getting smaller along the same time. In my area, rules to force utilities to allow net metering on good terms are trending weaker as well. The combination hurts solar competitiveness.
If the cost of powerwall type systems fell by at least 50% some of these things might change, as the utility interconnect might not be needed any more.
I don't think that I'd want someone that isn't a licensed roofer or electrician doing the installation work anyway.
I think it might create a long stall where solar doesn't really expand that much in consumer markets.