Solar power is bailing Texas out this summer | Hacker News Reader

Solar power is bailing Texas out this summer

texasmonthly.com

43 pointsBender24 comments

Residential solar is an imperative when heat waves become more common. I live in Queensland, Australia where we are headed into an El Niño summer. Which means sweltering heat for many months.

My current 10 kW solar setup plus Tesla Powerwall is already sufficient to cover 85% of my electricity needs. That includes charging an EV, running pool pumps, a heat pump warm water system and everything else. Shifting these loads into the day means no loss of comfort at all. Exception being the aircon, which we didn’t run as often during the past 3 (cooler) La Niña years. I will add another 10 kW solar panels to my roof this year to also be able to run the aircon on hot days. Without taking electricity from the grid. Which (sadly) is still mostly based on burning coal in this country.

You’re in a very privileged situation to be able to afford $20-$25k up front for a big system like that. These problems are technologically solved, they’re just not solved from a cost perspective for the average Joe. Average Joe is therefore stuck paying per kWh from the grid.

10u152, I don't know where you live, but you seem to be quoting US solar prices. Tragically, US prices are 2x-3x that of Australian residential solar prices. Generally Australian prices are $10k-AUD for a 10kw array or roughly $6.6k USD for 10kw,[1] compared to the $20-25k USD in the US depending on location.

High US residential solar prices are a policy/political choice the US makes! [2]

[1] Austrialian solar prices, article from Jan. 2023. https://www.canstarblue.com.au/solar/solar-installation-cost...

According to google Australian dollar is $0.66 US Dollar

[2] https://www.amazon.com/Electrify-Optimists-Playbook-Energy-F...

That’s solar though? What about the power wall?

Peak temperatures (and thus peak air conditioning/heat pump usage) correlate well with peak sunlight; solar reducing demand during those hours is a significant benefit even without any additional storage.

Taking an alternate perspective on this: this up-front cost issue is why government programmes to offset costs of installing renewables systems, and/or mandates for either new-construction or retrofit installation, are so critical.

Efficiencies of scale mean that individual homeowner or property-owner installations are not as effective as large-scale deployments, new-construction developments, and/or large-scale retrofits. But greasing the skids for new installation helps considerably to promote the technology.

Who says they paid for it up front? Home improvement loans exist, and depending on your jurisdiction there may be subsidized low-interest loans for energy-efficiency projects. When I had solar panels installed on my house ten years ago, I put $0 down.

Of course the ERCOT political appointees put out a release [1] blaming the wind, when the problem was the fossil fuel sources.

Why there was a projected supply shortage:

1. Expected: low wind production (as is normal on a summer day)

2. Unexpected: "...The problem is that they only expect 4.0 GW of thermal to be offline (see Typical planned and unplanned outages, thermal). FYI, thermal includes, gas, coal, and nuclear.

According to ERCOT, 12 GW of thermal ("dispatchable") is offline today." – quote from thread: https://twitter.com/AndrewDessler/status/1546528816272654337

[1]: https://dentonrc.com/news/denton_municipal_electric/grid-hol... (via https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/renewable-energy-...)

This article has the nicest way I’ve ever seen of saying that ERCOT lies:

“It would be nice to be able to read a press release from ERCOT and just trust that it’s down-the-middle information”

Unbypassable paywall so far as I can determine.

This is likely the same article, the title is identical.

https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/renewable-energy-...

Thanks, I've suggested that as an alternate URL to the mods via email.

Changed from https://subscriber.politicopro.com/article/eenews/2023/06/26.... Thanks!

Appreciated, as always.

(My top-level comment applied to the original URL, and is no longer relevant.)

My submission was originally for scientificamerican.com but HN rewrote it to that domain. I guess SA are embedding articles that others wrote. FWIW it wasn't a paywall on SA's site.

Interesting. A couple of your submissions got pointed to PoliticoPro, FWIW.

It seems that is the case. I've never actually visited that site.

Might want to email the mods to find out what's up. hn@ycombinator.com

HN's software looks for a canonical URL and switches if it finds one. The SA article had https://subscriber.politicopro.com/article/eenews/2023/06/26... as its canonical URL. Weird.

Going forward I will just inspect the source of their articles to see if it has a canonical URL to that domain and if so I will skip it.

If I'm reading this correctly, HN rewrites the URL based on canonical regardless of what was submitted.

I've just done a test using 'https://example.com/original' to see if I as submitter can edit a URL after it's been submitted, and the answer appears to be "no". (Titles can be edited ... and I deleted the test.)

Which means you've got to watch carefully to see whether the URL you'd submitted is actually being presented, and email the mods if that's not the case.

(I suspect HN will tweak their canonical referrer handling for SciAm at least with regards to PoliticoPro.)

The focus on "renewable" energy has tanked investment in base load for well over a decade now - congratulations, solar helped solve a problem it indirectly caused? And that's supposed to be a good thing?

Less fossil Carbon added to the atmosphere? Sounds like a good thing to me.

Hah, this is new... are you really blaming the sun for the heat?

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