Puerto Rico's Solar Microgrids Beat Blackout | Hacker News Reader

Puerto Rico's Solar Microgrids Beat Blackout

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382 pointsohjeez238 comments

Does anyone have a good link/step-by-step for doing some sort of home solar system where:

- it's sufficiently small-scale that no building permit is required

- it looks nice enough that neighbors won't complain

- the wiring is essentially plug-and-play

The best approach I've been able to come up with is to purchase a medium size battery pack such as is used for glamping (glamour camping), plug it into the wall and connect my refrigerator and a couple of other high-draw appliances to it (basement dehumidifier comes to mind), build a small roof for the back deck, using poured footings with short posts and then attaching the vertical pillars for the roof to that (which should side-step the need for a building permit since it's not a permanent structure), then placing the solar panels on that roof and running a wire to the battery placed in the kitchen.

Companies like Ecoflow sell mobile battery packs which you can connect foldable/small panels to by just plugging them in. No roof installation required. Those panels can be bought as a bundle with the packs. Those packs can then be connected to extension cords. It’s a starting point for short term outages.

That is the company whose products I've been considering --- my idea was to attach the solar panels to the roof so as to not need to fold/unfold, and to be able to take advantage of them all day without any further clutter on the deck (gaining a roofed area on the deck is a nice bonus).

I'm interested in doing something like this as well. Build a pergola with a solar roof instead of just a metal one from Costco. I've seen a few videos online doing a similar sized system with like a Jackert or Anker Solix. Realistically with 2-3 harbor freight panels they're only enough to power like your home office. A fridge will burn through the battery pretty fast. I do believe you can have them do input and output straight into your wall outlet and you don't have to plug right the appliances into the battery/inverter.

I agree, a solar pergula would be good and hardly noticeable.

A fidge is only going to use 1.5-2kWh per day. A medium sized pergola would give you more power than that. Since you aren't opening and closing the fridge in the middle of the night, a 1 kWh battery would keep it running all day on normal days.

There is a ton of DIY solar info online, but it is very much regionally dependent. Both for permits and system design.

Here in Florida, I can get high output from an average panel, but there are a lot of permit issues (and rightly so, a poorly installed panel can become a severe hazard in a hurricane).

Where I lived in Michigan, there weren't many permitting or zoning issues, but I'd need 3-4x the number of panels to get usable output in the winter time.

Most truly small scale solar systems don't provide enough output/value to be worth the effort, unless you're living a very low-power lifestyle.

True energy independence in even a small capacity has a value beyond just money.

True [x] independence in even a small capacity has a value beyond just money.

..water.. ..food.. ..housing.. ..information..

I get what you are trying to conveying, I just wanted to highlight the semantic generality of the statement if it stands alone.

If you have a house in the countryside, then water and food are relatively easy. You've got your own well and septic system for water, and plenty of room to stock up on food, plus you can supplement your diet by growing your own vegetables and raising chickens, fishing or hunting as seasonally appropriate per your local regulations.

The well and septic system require no real effort on your part once installed, though you may find harvesting your own food to be too time consuming or labor intensive to really be actually independent.

Lol. I grew up in a house in the countryside. Dealing with the well, water storage tank, and pressure booster pump were far from "easy". They required frequent maintenance and occasional large expenses. The well got clogged with sand. The pump motor burned out. The tank float sensor got stuck and caused an overflow (several times). The tank had to be emptied and cleaned. An earthquake caused a pipe to shear off and dumped thousands of gallons of water out of the tank. The pressure booster pump burned out. The pressure booster tank corroded and leaked. The water was hard and required a softener to prevent mineral buildup. Etc.

What is the water storage tank for? We've never needed one, and the only time I've heard of someone getting one was for trapping rainwater or they were a farmer.

I've lived with well water for all of my life except my college years and a few years after. In all that time, the only maintenance that's been needed has been to replace a water pressure tank (not a difficult job unless you've never seen hand tools before) and adding salt to the softener once a blue moon.

My sister in law had to get a new well put in, but that was because it needed a new well pump and the plumber she called told her he couldn't work on the existing one because it was out of code and her well wasn't grandfathered in.

The storage tank was for storing water. Obviously you don't want to run the well pump every time you flush the toilet.

Sure, that's what the pressure tank is for. The well pump keeps the 20 gallon tank pressurized, and as the pressure drops the pump kicks on until it is stable again.

Maybe you could get a bigger one if you have a large family, but I've never heard of one that would be large enough to dump that much water except for mountainside cabins that are too far from the water table for a well in the first place.

Yes, but on a limited budget solar may not always be the best option to some kind of energy independence. It really depends on what you are trying to solve for. Solar alone won't carry loads at night, the panels are generally not portable, they won't produce much output in the middle of a storm, etc.

As an example, during one of the hurricanes that came through FL last year we lost power shortly after the storm hit. I had a smallish leak with water coming in, it was entirely manageable with a wetvac, running off my generator. But solar panels would have been producing zero output at the same time. Even a large battery bank would have been sufficient.

IME, Solar is something where there is often a case where the minimum investment to get a truly worthwhile system is higher than other things like generators, or recently even battery banks. People often overlook all the situations where solar won't produce any output. I look at solar as more of a second-tier energy independence solution than a first-tier. And it worth nothing this is speaking primarily for applications in North America that have generally stable power. If you're in a remote area with no reliable power infrastructure then the parameters are way different.

I got a solar system installed at end of 2022 due to working from home and the large amount of load shedding South Africa was having at the time. Was absolutely justifiable for me:

https://imgur.com/a/hXeVAGr

(Worth noting that during load shedding only a subset of people are turned off depending on the stage of load shedding, but on average I experienced about 25% of those totals)

The money aspect is interesting.

Where I am the companies charge a ‘line charge’. It’s about 20-25% of the monthly bill.

I generate somewhere between 80-110% of the power I need, but in winter I only get half what I need from solar.

A larger system would cover this and negate the need for the line charge, suddenly saving a lot.

Also in Michigan.

I primarily want to generate enough solar to run my AC in the summer because that’s the dominant electricity consuming appliance in our house (except for the EV).

At least with DTE you receive credits for your production, which you can use within 12 months. So generating an excess in the summer to offset the winter is a viable strategy.

Michigan unfortunately represents a mismatch of when you need power vs when power is generated. Arizona, Texas, New Mexico are sweet spots. High power demand in the summer (A/C), relatively high proportion of sunny days.

Michigan is just like the south: highest electricity consumption is during summer.

This may change with increased use of heat pumps for heating, but it’s still a while out before seasonal electricity consumption patterns invert.

+/- on what effect electric cars will have: people drive more in summer but efficiency goes down in winter.

Arizona, Florida, etc are not really in a sweet spot we all think it is because PV efficiency/output goes marginally down when it’s really hot (ie: when A/C demand peaks). Unless you install the panels at high altitude.

we are likely there already.

Ontario, just to the north of Michigan, already has a winter peak very close to the summer peak. The provinces subsidises heat pumps. Ontario will be a winter peaking region in a couple of years.

Annual demand in Ontario peaked 20 years ago and has been overall flat for 3+ decades.

https://www.ieso.ca/power-data/demand-overview/historical-de...

Surprisingly difficult to find monthly data though :(

Interesting that PV efficiency is impacted by peak heat. Why are there so many solar farms in the desert near Las Vegas and in West Texas then? Serious question, would love to know the answer. Are these inefficiencies just now coming to light?

The effect has long been known, but it's pretty modest. Here's the data sheet for a typical modern solar panel:

https://static.trinasolar.com/sites/default/files/Datasheet_...

It loses about 0.29% of (relative) power output for every degree Celsius of temperature increase. If the module is operating at its maximum rated temperature of 85 degrees C, it's still about 83% as efficient as it would be under standard test conditions (25 degrees C).

Solar farms in sunny, hot regions generate more energy per year than identical installations in cooler, less sunny regions. The benefit of extra light dominates over the efficiency loss from higher temperatures. A location with as much sunlight as Las Vegas but the temperatures of Anchorage would be ideal, but there are few if any locations with those characteristics. That's why Las Vegas is still a good location for solar farms despite the heat.

That’s why you want high altitude to get the sun without the heat. I carefully left New Mexico out of my list of “not seeet spots” for that reason.

I did see some citizen science that showed a cooling fan added more power overall to panels, but I guess that’s another moving part and the way the subsidies work… who cares about increasing panel life.

That actually sounds like a pretty good plan.

I did something similar with my lawn mower. I bought a battery and a single solar panel from Harbor Freight, along with the controller and wires need to hook it all together. I'd set the panel in the yard when I needed to charge the mower's batteries.

The whole thing, including the mower, cost less than half a year's fees from a yard crew, and I ended up saving money overall.

After the experiment was done (and I realized the mower was too low for my grass and was harming it) I sold the mower and gave the rest to my father-in-law for his shed.

We then got professionally installed solar panels for our house and a full-house battery. (It isn't strong enough for the air conditioner, but oh well.)

If I had it to do over again on the small scale, I'd buy an Ecoflow battery (which I have actually bought) and a solar panel made for it, and your fridge idea is a good one. It'd probably also power a fan, a light, and some light entertainment, I think.

Edit: Might go with "Anker" or "Jackery" instead of Ecoflow now, as it might be cheaper for the same thing.

For comparing those brands (EcoFlow, Anker, Jackery), you might want to check the wh/$ ratio - it's basically the best way to compare power station value (for newer LFP systems). I went through this same analysis recently - gearscouts.com [1] has a pretty good comparison table that tracks actual street prices vs capacity.

I've found the sweet spot is usually in the 500-1000Wh range for emergency backup. Enough to run a fridge for 8-12 hours but not so big that the solar panel costs get crazy. The LFP (LiFePO4) models tend to last way longer than the regular lithium ones - worth the extra cost if you're planning to use it regularly.

Your lawn mower experiment sounds like it was a good learning experience! Those small Harbor Freight panels are great for tinkering. I started with something similar before going to a full house system.

[1] https://gearscouts.com/power-stations

In Europe it's somewhat common to have a small solar panel just on your balcony (i.e. not permanent attached to the building) and simply plugs into a nearby wall receptacle. https://www.theverge.com/24150901/ecoflow-powerstream-review...

For those wondering, the article did discuss the safety matter of using a power outlet as an inlet. And the article also points out that while this is allowed in several countries in Europe it's not allowed in the U.S., but I suppose you could always plug appliances directly into the battery instead.

Wild. I wonder how they deal with the back feeding issue. Is there something about the home wiring in those countries that prevents it? (or do they just not care and line workers know to check if a line is truly dead?)

The device detects that and prevents back feeding. So in case of a power outage it completely shuts itself down.

So when the power goes out it no longer powers your fridge or whatever else you need powered. But it's easy enough to unplug the fridge from the wall and directly into the battery.

I feel the real danger of back feeding is not that american line workers can't be bothered to check if the line is truly dead before starting to work. It's that the line could be reenergized at any time.

Lineworkers will ground/earth the line with a very good connection (e.g. metal rod into the ground) before working on it, as far as I know.

(At least, this is what electricians working with 33kV in industry in Europe do, e.g. if doing maintenance on a cable to a datacentre.)

I haven't seen them doing that on power outage post storm line repairs near me, usually during those they're working as fast as possible because they have dozens of other spots they need to repair.

Hopefully they're bonding the line to their bucket at least.

Probably I've just not seen them ever drive in a ground rod while doing basic line repair work.

Also just the frequency with which work happens on the distribution grid. Most of Europe has almost all distribution lines underground (only running high-voltage transmission lines above ground), and unless somebody digs in the wrong spot they tend to just stay there. In the US meanwhile they are mostly above ground where they are susceptible to storms, falling trees, aluminum ladders and all kinds of other stuff that would cause a line worker to be called out

Automatic transfer switches are a thing, but generally you want the supplies sync’ed.

A manual break-before-make transfer switch will do the job. Not much help if you’re not home and the mains goes out and your food spoils, though fridges will stay cold for hours if left shut, and longer if there’s a lot of thermal mass in them - try to keep most of the empty space in your fridge and freezer filled with water bottles.

The microinverter just turns itself off if it doesn’t detect line voltage in the outlet. In the U.S. evidently it’s required to also have some sort of backflow preventer in the panel as well.

Fair, I always forget that most inverters require an existing line voltage to follow instead of being able to generate their own ex nihilo. I was also picturing one of the battery banks that do have the ability to create their own signal too.

if there is no power, the inverter shuts down and doesn't feed power in.

it is actually simpler. The inverter stops power flow if it does not detect a grid voltage.

The actual power coming from a balcony setup is tiny, a thousand watts ballpark. The typical house will consume the vast majority of that capacity.

Even if some flows back to the grid, it will likely be consumed by losses in the transformer and wires.

You’d be surprised how few watts a fridge and a TV draw, 500 watts combined, and that’s only while the compressor in the fridge is running. Don’t open the fridge very often, or keep a lot of thermal mass in the form of filled water bottles in there, and the compressor in a fridge will spend most its time not running.

Now I'm curious... Is your last suggestion correct? Wouldn't the time to cool down between pause intervals be proportionally longer due to the higher thermal mass and cancel out any savings gained by the long pause? Maybe the overall energy draw is even higher because the heat losses are higher when you spend a longer time with a high dT.

The water bottles don't warm up as quick as the air they replace that flows out of the fridge when you open it; so they have two effects first they take up space that new hot indoor air can't move into and second they then help chill that air slightly through their own thermal mass.

We are starting to have this in the US, in fact I have a company coming by to do an install of a system like this on Monday. Technically you should be able to mostly diy it, but it uses a smart panel that gets attached to the main to prevent backflow, which needs an electrician, and for now they are running its own circuit.

Depending on where you live, that you can buy solar panels+battery kits that plug into the wall and feed the circuit that way, no need to run extension cords to plug in individual appliances. However I don't think those types of setups are legal in the US, they don't trust the backfeed protection

Some resources:

  * https://www.mobile-solarpower.com/
  * https://diysolarforum.com/

Note: You'll probably need a permit for the electrical work if it's more permanent and/or grid tied.

But watch the video at https://www.mobile-solarpower.com/mobile-48v-system.html for something similar to a Goal Zero or Jackery

> no building permit is required

This will be the main issue. No matter what you're going to be doing work inside the main service panel on your house adding new feeds and you'll need to install a transfer switch to disconnect your house in case of a power outage. Most electrical work inside a panel like adding circuits will require a permit in the US. Seems like your plan doesn't involve any of that though so you should be ok permit wise except maybe needing one for the pad and structure.

It would also be nice to think of your neighbors in terms of not starting a fire and someone capable of doing permitted work will be handy when you go to sell the place and bright red flags show up during inspection.

In my jurisdiction, you don't need a permit if you're doing it yourself, and it's on your side of the panel.

So the plan I came up with is essentially the plan you have, but I connect my refrigerator to the battery by the panel rather than running an extension cord from my kitchen to the battery.

I disconnected the fridge and 2 other circuits from the panel, and terminated them with a nema 5-15p inlet receptacle like this: http://www.levitonproducts.com/catalog/model_5278-CWP.htm

I then put 4 solar panels on a 45 degree angle on the ground leaning against a south facing wall, anchored to the wall and ground.

The "solar generator" I used is this one: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/apex-300#/

It's similar to the glamping batteries you refer to, but is more targeted to home backup / off-grid / RV use than glamping.

The glamping approach is probably your best bet if you want to avoid paperwork. The equipment has gotten very good and quite cheap in the last few years.

Before buying a "glamping battery", you'll want to ensure that it can be run unattended in your desired configuration.

I previously had a Bluetti EB70S and while it almost did what I wanted, it could only charge from AC or Solar, but not both and didn't have a way to set desired levels.

Now I have a Bluetti Apex 300, and I can set it to charge to X% off AC during overnight off-peak rates, and never drop below Y%.

Hybrid Inverter. Main power and solar power go in, house power goes out.

No feeding of solar power to the grid so no permits.

You can add a battery if you want to reduce your reliance on the grid. Or use it with a battery but without solar panels as a whole house UPS.

>No feeding of solar power to the grid so no permits.

If it becomes popular the slimy solar farm developers and the utility will join hands to hire a lobbyist who will ensure the rules get changed to close the loophole.

Depends on your jurisdiction, but roof mounted solar installs generally don't need building permits. Electrical permits on the other hand are almost always required.

If you actually want to offset cost, don't buy a portable battery pack. Get an AIO solar inverter and a server rack battery. They're generally plug and play - wire the panels to it, connect the battery.

If you want to run your home loads, the cheapest/simplest way (without going grid-tie) is to have an electrician add a critical loads panel supplied by your inverter output, then plug your inverter in to the grid for backup (in case no solar or batteries are low).

cheapest/simplest way (without going grid-tie) is to have an electrician add a critical loads panel supplied

Cheaper way is have electrician wire a manual transfer switch at the existing panel. When you loose power, turn off non-essential breakers and then flip transfer switch.

Does that work?

Our solar inverter uses the 60hz AC from and grid to do the DC->AC conversion. The inverter stops functioning if the power is out. I thought they all did that for safety.

Those home batteries mush have some solution.

They don't all need the grid - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44023226

https://eg4electronics.com/categories/inverters/eg4-18kpv-12...

You lose all benefits of solar/battery except for during a power outage and you have to flip all your breakers? (you also won't immediately know when the power is back).

Might as well save money and not install anything- use an extension cord for those rare times.

"If you want to run your home loads, the cheapest/simplest way (without going grid-tie) is to have an electrician add a critical loads panel supplied by your inverter output ..."

No, that's actually not the simplest.

Far simpler is to install a solar breaker in your main panel and a physical lockout[1] between utility power and the new solar breaker.

There is no ATX, there are no smarts, the power goes out and you flip two breakers. There is nothing simpler than this.

The beauty of this is, you can keep scaling up your solar generation, adding panels as the years go by, and you are never locked into these ridiculous "preferred breakers" sub-panels.

Will you have to be smart about your total power use while you are on solar ? Yes, you will - just don't run the dryer and the microwave at the same time.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/QYZZRS-Generator-Interlock-Compatible...

Changing your usage pattern isn't simpler.

When I mean simplest, I meant a solution that doesn't rely on doing anything. If/when Solar isn't enough or your batteries deplete, it just falls back to grid. Power outage? Your critical items automatically are backed by solar/battery.

Having to think about your what high draw appliances are running and using additional power adds mental load (ie complexity) and is an immediate no for most people.

Changing your usage pattern is ultimately at the heart of any serious proposal for solving energy scarcity. We have enough energy to power our civilisation without catastrophe: we're just using it in an extremely inefficient manner.

'Simple' and 'Easy' are very different things

How is "using poured footings with short posts" not a permanent structure? Are you pouring the footings into buckets and not into the ground?

Guessing that code doesn't mind the footings if they don't stick out, and then whatever is on top is removable.

I have a massive array+battery (20kWh generation, 19kWh storage) and while it's great, some things to pay consider:

- if you need roof repair/replacement, do it before you get solar. Alternatively, make your array free standing

- prioritize the circuits you want to cover. Not every one is critical but health & safety (water, fridge, cooking capabilities) are key

- MOST jurisdictions won't require permitting for the grid (especially if it's not connected to your house) but MOST will require an inspection if you want to connect to the grid

- if you connect to the grid, make sure you understand how your electricity provider addresses net metering. I wrote about it here: https://geekamongthetrees.com/what-is-solar-net-metering-or-...

Pretty much exactly what you’ve described.

Where I am ya don’t been a permit for a shed if it’s under a 18 square metres, so 6x3m sheds are common.

You could look in to off-grid / caravan appliances, thereby saving on a smaller inverter, but they tend to be around 3x the price of regular appliances.

Highly recommended going for 48v system if you’re starting from scratch to save on ridiculously large diameter cables and stupidly high amperage you’ll be dealing with with a 12v system.

I did a repair this week on a poorly designed 12v system that had a 12v to 230v 7amp (1600 watt) inverter powering a 230v 10amp cook top in a camper van. That cooktop was pulling 235 amp from the battery through a very hot 175amp slow blow fuse.

Which is great if you want to melt the fuse post and the supply cables and… I found the fault before the fire started.

The answers here have been pretty solid, a lot of what you want depends on where you live. For example, it is very likely that this is not possible if you're property is covered by an HOA. The definition of "it looks nice" is super hard to pin down (neighbors will complain at everything), and unless you're doing something really small, there is going to be some wiring involved. None of that should discourage you however.

"Zero emission generators" (aka battery boxes) are pretty easy to build, and even a 2kW inverter is relatively easy to hide/disguise. If you're doing this in a home situation (vs a camping situation) the 6V "golf cart" lead/acid batteries are really solid. A couple of those will give you 240 AHrs of 12V that can run a bunch of stuff. 240W panels can be stored at night and brought out during the day so keep them 'temporary.' Etc. Victron[1] makes nice chargers and monitors and are popular in the RV / Vanlife communities. Lots of online resources for hooking them up. And generally things you can roll around your property to different places are pretty easily defined as 'not a building' so immune from the permitting process generally.

[1] https://www.victronenergy.com/chargers

https://craftstrom.com/how-it-works/ is closest to what you want.

You don't need permit, and you don't even need new wiring.

Solar power is working wonders for rural and urban Pakistan. In fact, we became the largest importer of solar panels.

I learned about it on this episode of Volts

Fascinating consequences

https://www.volts.wtf/p/pakistans-solar-boom

This is actually fantastic news. I wonder if you're also utilising their secondary purpose (shading and improving microclimat https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00489...)

India has had good luck building solar panels over irrigation canals. The shade substantially reduces the evaporation losses in the canal system. The framing is a bit tricky of course.

California announced they were going to do the same.

Yeah the channelized sections of the Colorado would be a good candidate as well, though I personally believe the bigger solution is reintroducing beavers into the upper water shed, to increase total average flow.

How do beavers increase total water flow? I can see them causing more water to be held upstream.

It's counterintuitive, but beavers fundamentally change the soil conditions and cause a lot of the overall flow to be away from the surface.

Beavers are one of the sadly misunderstood creatures and are almost entirely responsible for all the good valley farmland we have thanks to their thousands of years of terraforming.

If you can afford the medium term loss of land, a beaver setting up a dam on your property is a good thing. Unfortunately, most cannot, or are unaware of the benefits they bring and only consider them pests.

Forests make rain, and beavers make better forests.

I don't know much about electrical grids, but I'm wondering if something like this concept could help South Africa with its endlessly struggling electrical grid problems. My city constantly has power outages and the majority of people cannot afford installing solar into their homes.

From what I understand, South Africa's electrical problems have been long term political.

That's the case everywhere in the world, it's not a tech issue. The tech exists.

The technology certainly exists, though some of it is pretty new and not all of it is mature or commoditized (particularly in the context of high levels of penetration of variable renewables on the grid).

That being said, politics aren't the only reason why it might not be deployed. Capitalization issues, for one, are also common. Additionally, you have to make a judgement call about what you consider included in "politics" -- for example, does corruption count?

Not always, sometimes its logistics, sometimes outside forces which create time pressures.

Not everything can be solved by money, sometimes its a mythical man month/9 women can't produce a baby in 1 month issue.

However in this scenario, its pure neglect which is causing power issues.

In this case though, high reliability electricity delivery is very doable. Many countries achieve 3 9s or higher. Sure there are the issues like the recent Spain/Portugal blackout but even that has some political roots.

Renewables solve logistics problems.

Running a fossil fuel grid requires a bunch of logistics to source, refine, and deliver the fuel. In addition to general equipment upkeep.

Renewables only require equipment upkeep.

It's the upkeep problem that is a problem in South Africa. It's like government doesn't understand the concept of "maintenance"

Most of those problems are politically motivated. You know how fast towns tend to grow. Someone new the grid was going to need upgrades. Someone else decided it would be better spent on something else. That’s politics.

And if a town grows surprisingly fast, that may also be politics. Even geopolitics (eg, refugees).

> Not everything can be solved by money, sometimes its a mythical man month/9 women can't produce a baby in 1 month issue.

I mean, its not like they just discovered electricity. Sure sometimes things take time, but that is still a money issue because it means there was insufficient budget for maintainance and future capacity planning

It’s a corruption issue where certain people use it as a personal bank. Lots of deferred maintenance, no build out, but lots of greed -not just a little.

The political system there clearly allows for high levels of corruption.

Yup, it is deeply political, and I think ordinary citizens such as myself don't even understand how deep the corruption goes.

It is not necessary for the majority to install solar.

Pakistan had similar problems with rolling blackouts, and mass import of photovoltaic equipment and batteries from China has reduced the load on the grid so that outages no longer occur frequently. In fact the demand has shrunk so much that it jeopardizes financing of coal power companies.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43620309

> In fact the demand has shrunk so much that it jeopardizes financing of coal power companies.

That is something that I think would be the impetus needed to motivate reduction in coal power plants. If they become unprofitable to operate, then will the market finally decide to stop using them? Sadly, I could see the current US administration deciding to offer subsidies to keep coal.

Yes, it is happening already (both the pivot away from unprofitable non-renewable energy, and US government intervention to tax imports of photovoltaics).

Levelized Cost of Electricity (LCE) from PV is below the fossil fuel range since 2020, and since 2024 it is also below if you include battery storage, which you need to turn solar into near constant energy supply.

https://www.irena.org/Publications/2024/Sep/Renewable-Power-...

https://electrek.co/2025/06/20/batteries-are-so-cheap-now-so...

Subsidies is too technocratic, trump style is to just order utilities to keep the plants operational at negative profit https://edition.cnn.com/2025/06/06/climate/michigan-coal-pla...

This has been happening in the US for the past 10 years. The big switch has been away from coal and some slower natural gas generators towards more nimble natural gas generators. Coal and other natural gas generators take a while to start up and shut down (think on the order of a day), which don't work well for coordinating with renewables and are much more expensive to operate. So companies have been switching to faster natural gas generators that start up in minutes to hours to support when demand is higher.

Eskom is already trying to take people to court over "non-compliant" solar panel installations [1]. I wouldn't hold my breath. Like most things in ANC South Africa this is a political issue where Eskom wants to get their cut for providing a non-existent service - and then funnel that money back to their friends and family for their non-existent services.

[1] https://www.ecr.co.za/shows/stacey-jsbu/eskom-cracks-down-no...

More likely it is local goverment. Theymake a profit on reselling cheap energy provided by Eskom.

Yup... It's about feeding the greedy fat cats at the top.

A simple solution like "just install solar" isn't going to solve the problems necessarily, because it originates from greed, mismanagement, corruption at the core. Solar is more of a downstream solution in my mind (correct me if I'm wrong).

Demand for coal will be reduced, which might most likely lead to massive job losses in not only the coal mining sector, but also logistics, exacerbating the troubling unemployment issues the country also faces. I don't really want to go down THAT rabbit hole :D

They tried that - especially companies like BMW - and they got no permits, because the state run power company wants money for providing nothing.

The problem is also that thieves steal the copper cables, even for micro-grids. You can not tech your way out of social/cultural problems.

Socialist cultural rot is real and the only way out is to eradicate cultures that encourage that mindset. All the ingredients are there- but the people are still set on telling themselves that robin hood story that destroys everything.

Could you please explain the "socialist cultural rot" and the "eradicate cultures"? You might mean something totally sensible but this wording is quite triggering to me.

Everywhere socialist movements like the ANC take hold- there sets in a "im going to extract as much as i can from the state as he extracts from me - while giving him nothing" mindset. Its prevalent in the older generations in the eastern european block countries, china - its almost universal where the socialist experiment was run. The idealized society does not mesh and work with human nature at all, in fact it brings out the worst.

The old people of china, still steal paper towels on public toilets, because "take it all, while its there, before its gone" is the mindset encouraged. They brought you the tourists-"buffet rush"-genre of videos on youtube.

Of course this leads to dysfunction and misery- which then leads to conspiracy - of "they took it". Its ultimately another version of low-thrust society unable to function. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-trust_and_low-trust_socie...

A ugly side-effect that lingers for decades. Re-distribution and retribution, do not increase the size of the cake. Hard work rewarded does!

Ok, this makes sense. I would only add the low-trust society evolving in the west, including the US, which is definitely not caused by socialism. Maybe it's just the way we (all) fall?

> which is definitely not caused by socialism

Currently, in western countries, socialist policies to import the 3rd world and open borders are directly responsible for the lowering social trust.

> “immigrant rights are workers rights” is not mere rhetoric, and that the defense of migrants and refugees – the vast majority of whom are poor workers – is pivotal to the struggle of the entire global working class regardless of national origin. [1]

[1] https://sfarchive.dsausa.org/issues/fall-2019/editorial-note...

== Currently, in western countries, socialist policies to import the 3rd world and open borders are directly responsible for the lowering social trust.==

I don’t know of any western country with an “open borders” policy, can you provide one? Is there a part of the US’s 250 year history where we weren’t bringing in immigrants from poorer countries to provide cheap labor?

For very specific examples you can look towards the EU's decades long stance on immigration which resulted in the refugee crisis since (and before) 2015, as well as countless integration and immigration issues (cf Sweden, France, Italy, etc.).

The socialist and left wing coalition have consistently voted against measures to improve border security and tighten the restrictions for people wanting to enter [1]. As people have become increasingly frustrated with these policies they've increasingly voted in right wing and conservative parties (in comparison to the ruling parties) [2].

We can also look towards the UK where socialist politics have been a mainstay since the 90s, to the point where now the Prime Minister (Kier Starmer, Labour) is a self-proclaimed socialist [3]. This is of course directly tied to the waves of mass migration under Tony Blair (Labour) which also resulted in the Socialist Party splitting from Labour because he wasn't "radical enough" [4].

[1] https://theconversation.com/what-are-the-eus-new-migration-r...

[2] https://www.brookings.edu/articles/understanding-europes-tur...

[3] https://www.vice.com/en/article/keir-starmer-i-still-see-mys...

[4] https://www.socialistparty.org.uk/articles/94799/27-04-2022/...

The refugee crises are largely "Push" driven not "Pull" driven.

...and the "push" was caused by alliances of western countries destabilizing the migrants' home countries.

I don’t see an Open Borders policy in any of those links. Most of them are about how the countries are tightening their rules for allowing migrants. You cannot tighten rules unless they already exist, they wouldn’t exist if the policy was Open Borders.

Invoking “socialists” over-and-over doesn’t prove anything about Open Borders and kind of undercuts your point. There’s also no mention of right-wing leaders like Ronald Reagan or George Bush. They both pushed policies that increase immigration and asylum seekers.

==We can also look towards the UK where socialist politics have been a mainstay since the 90s,==

The UK was lead by the Conservative party continuously from 2010-2024. You somehow skipped all of that and went straight from Tony Blair to Keir Starmer.

> Is there a part of the US’s 250 year history where we weren’t bringing in immigrants from poorer countries to provide cheap labor?

Pretty sure they're referring to a de facto open border policy, where you basically permit all sorts of illegal immigration and don't really enforce the laws. Accepting immigrants at Ellis island was not illegal immigration, for instance, but crossings at the southern border often have been.

== Pretty sure they're referring to a de facto open border policy,==

I’m summary, not open borders. There have been about 20k border patrol agents in the US each year since 2008. Seems like a lot of agents for an open border policy.

https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/border-issues/...

De facto policies are still active policies, even if they aren't de jure.

You haven't demonstrated that it is de facto policy, only asserted that it is.

The West is slipping because the rich privatize the profits and socialize the costs. It's the worst of both models.

The USA thrived when free markets and value creation were encouraged yet heavily regulated. That way the benefits and costs didn't become too concentrated

I just want to add on to your reply to justify why it's correct to call the ANC a socialist party that is causing the cultural and economic collapse of South Africa.

You could look towards their policies inspired by socialist thought a.k.a. "social justice" (BEE and expropriation). These policies are actively harmful to development while also turning off any potential investors, and are deeply rooted in socialist ideology.

You can look towards their roots being funded and directly aided by the Soviets, China, Cuba, and several others. Especially their military (terrorist) and propaganda training which was heavily influenced by Soviet foreign policy.

You can look towards their re-alignment of the country's economic and foreign policy to engage with the 2nd world, while turning off 1st world investors. This has given us strong economic ties with Russia, China, and Iran. While most of these relationships are useless, the Chinese relationship has been especially damaging to the development, maintenance, and sovereignty of our national physical infrastructure.

But the most damning evidence is the insane socialist parties that have spawned out of the fracturing of the ANC such as the MK and EFF parties (both militant socialist parties, formed by ex ANC leaders). While their socialist rhetoric had to be contained while apart of the ANC (so as to not further turn off investors), the ANC's weakening grip has allowed these nutjobs to become serious contenders in the political race. If you were wondering what the "kill the boer" chants were about they were at political rallies held by the EFF (Julius Malema) - part of the EFF's kit is a red beret (I wonder where they got that from?).

Voetsek to any champagne socialist that wants to ruin yet another country because it makes them feel good to support people and ideologies they do not understand.

> Voetsek to any champagne socialist that wants to ruin yet another country

I take it you don't consider the country to have veen ruined under apartheid - aka socialism for whites, rugged-capitalism for everyone else.

Care to explain how an ethno-nationalist government implemented socialism?

> I take it you don't consider the country to have veen ruined under apartheid

Wether or not I consider the country to have been ruined under apartheid is irrelevant to the fact that the ANC is dragging it back to the stone age.

The ANC was handed a functioning economy, solid infrastructure, and hope for a better future - there are now rolling blackouts across the country, soaring unemployment, and a birth rate higher than the GDP growth rate. And that hope for a better future? All but gone - There are more race based laws _today_ than there were under apartheid.

I'm glad apartheid ended 30 years ago, I'm not glad with the direction we're going now. These are not the same thing - you trying to portray it as such says more about your views than it does mine.

Your responses are filled with non-specific references to online memes that suggest that you don't actually understand the problem in any deep sense (i.e you just have a gripe). I'm not going to defend ANCs policy decisions, but you can just point to specific decisions they made and the resulting outcome. You can't just handwave and repeat socialism/capitalism/Trotskyites like some mantra and expect everyone to take you seriously.

Not sure exactly which part of my response repeated socialism/capitalism/Trotskyites? And I gave 4 specific outcomes which are easily tied to ANC policy decisions given they've ruled the country for the last 30 years (blackouts, unemployment, birthrate > GDP growth, number of race based laws).

I'll grant you "dragging us back to the stone age" is an obvious meme.

Did you even read my comment?

> Care to explain how an ethno-nationalist government implemented socialism?

By using the state treasury to provide disproportionate infrastructure and services to the ruling ethic minority, while leaving the bantustans - with no say in national politics or budget - to largely fend for themselves. This incidentally has similarities to the US/Puerto Rico dynamic.

All the things you complain about can be explained by regression to mean[1], which the not even the apartheid government would have been able to prevent had they decided to adopt an egalitarian governance model.

edit: I didn't even get into how the "ethno-nationalist government" seized the means of production for the express benefit of a specific ethno.

1. I fully expect that the per-capita X (for any X you're claiming is worse) has actually improved for South Africans - all South Africans - between 1990 and now.

> State capacity has collapsed across many government functions that are essential for a functioning economy. Critical network industries, including electricity, transport infrastructure and services, security, and water and sanitation have experienced major deteriorations over the last 15 years [1]

> While the racial composition of wealth at the top has changed, wealth concentration in South Africa has not and remains very high. [1]

> while the standard of living has increased for a minority of formerly disadvantaged South Africans and a small black middle class has emerged, there are still huge disparities in both material and subjective well-being [2]

> In 2010, the majority of citizens still hoped for basic necessities, income and employment, to enhance their quality of life. [2]

So no, there is no mean reversion caused by a broader sharing of (the same set of) resources - in fact the policies leading to worsening infrastructure and economic disproportionally negatively impact the poor, black population [3]

The examples I've given (blackouts, unemployment, etc.) are governance and capacity failures above and beyond any "regression to the mean" effect.

[1] https://conversableeconomist.com/2023/11/20/south-africas-ec... [2] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11205-012-0120-y [3] https://qz.com/africa/1435910/blackouts-in-africa-affect-the...

I am sure a capitalist system will NOT work great for a tribe of hunter gatherers!

The problem is not the socialist type of ideas, it is whom you are applying them to and at what point. The society must have certain complexity, capabilities and resources to be successful "socialist".

Going from feudalism to socialism was shown repeatedly not to work (ex: Russia, China). The countries that are currently more socialist and successful were not primarily feudal when they applied the socialist ideas. Also, there are huge differences in what is called "socialism"...

Even in the USA, capitalist came with "socialist ideas", like Henry Ford that said that one more free day will boost his overall sales, but the moment was right. I think he could not have done the same 100 years before.

> eradicate cultures

Political movements that have sought to “eradicate cultures” have generally gone pretty poorly in history.

I read the clarifications downstream; and I gather that the intent here is not as malicious as it sounds. That said, I don’t see how the mindset of “I’m going to maximize my extraction from the system.” is substantively different from “I’m going to minimize my input into the system.” The net effect is similar. For example, the current U.S. president paid no taxes for years through various dodges, a fact about which he boasted and which he defended. But without a doubt he is extracting disproportionate benefits.

Undoubtedly corruption is rampant in the systems you refer to; but all of these things exist in democratic free-market economies as well.

Islamism has eradicated basically every other culture in the middle east. Western market capitalism has supplanted a ton of cultures in east asia. If its toxic and dysfunctional it has to go, or your country deteriorates into another Zimbabwe or Russia.

PS: There are a ton of versions of working culture out there, that are not western. Pick one and run with it. But picking a repeatedly failing one is a sentence for decay and destruction.

South Africa's problem is the ANC stopped Eskom building what it needed with foreseen growth when they came into power in the 90s. They wanted to introduce competition into the generation market.

They didn't introduce competition, as you might expect from a hyper-incompetent government, and just let the issue languish, and South Africa now just doesn't have enough power plants to serve its population when it takes one offline for scheduled maintenance.

But at least a lot more people got to buy Audis with the freed-up money sloshing around.

In cases where transmission lines are hitting capacity particularly on hot days, this is a place where batteries can help. Peak shaving is can’t help you with grids that are oversubscribed for more than a few hours a day but they can help load shift for part of the day. The batteries can still have value for emissions reductions if and when you finally get right of ways for more power distribution.

South Africa's problems with the electrical system and structure are well documented but also complicated. Here's a good recent video covering it, there are many others. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUnR8PBtVW8

I love solar, but this "those who can afford microgrids can shield themselves from blackouts" paired with net metering where "the wealthy get paid a premium for excess generation and can buy expensive high-demand power back at a discount" probably aren't steps on the path to improved grid resiliency for any definition other than this weird "no island-wide outages" definition.

The alternative way to look at it is that early adopters get the volume up such that the price comes down to where more people can afford it?

This doesn't solve the issue of either storage or continous (and controllable) supply.

Solar output is also proportionate to area of sunlight projection. This means the theoretical capacity available to you is proportionate to real estate, area of planetary surface, under your ownership.

And the area you own is theoretical proportionate to your avaibale money.

So yes, rich people can obviously have more of it all, like with everything else that money can buy. But is this really a point worth going in deeper here?

I see the point as in "solar power plus battery is good", creates resillence, please more of it.

Unfair distribution of wealth is a different problem.

And here concreteley the article lacks for me details, what exactly the work on the grid means, if it is really about fossils vs solar, but microgrids that can connect to each other sounds like a pragmatic solution to me.

> Unfair distribution of wealth is a different problem

Unfortunately, all problems are eventually going to come down to this. Or many problems are, if not "all"

We can't fix a lot of the problems facing our society and our planet with "only wealthy can afford this" solutions

"We can't fix a lot of the problems facing our society and our planet with "only wealthy can afford this" solutions"

And I think, we can't fix a lot of technical problems if we make everything about money distribution.

Besides, solar plus battery became really cheap. And get cheaper every day.

And this work to connect such microgrids is potentially beneficial for poor areas all around the world.

But no, it doesn't solve the issue of extreme poverty, but why would it?

Microgrids at that size are the most expensive way to get resilience. If they're pragmatic for many people then something has failed and we should work to fix it.

Bigger ones have a better tradeoffs, so I'm not so harsh on towns having their own grids. Still unsure whether it's a good use of funds.

It's not just redistribution, land is an already heavily overcommitted resource on Earth. China, for example, holds basically same amount of land as US, for its 4x population, and they house the people in things like dozens per each clusters of 50-story condominiums.

In places like that - that but not necessarily specifically China or Asia, local proprietors would head to forested mountains unfit for residences, and actively desertify it to put on PVs to collect incentives, if incentivized. The cost is externalized and paid collectively in such forms as raised atmospheric CO2 levels and micro disasters like mountain landslides.

Resilient solar-battery off/micro-grid is great if you live "by yourself" in relative sense and doing so would allow removal of electrical transmission lines with own costs and externalities, but it's far from panacea, if not opposite - it's a specific and somewhat radical solution to specific problems.

Now, as to whether such dystopian Bladerunner cities on Earth that has to rely on fission/fusion should exist in real life, it's probably deeply wrong that they do. But we're not cutting down Earth's population by 90% to fix that, and wealth redistribution is a minor part of the reason it would be wrong.

"local proprietors would head to forested mountains unfit for residences, and actively desertify it to put on PVs to collect incentives, if incentivized."

Can you give me one example, where PVs contributed to desertification?

Usually it is the contrary, in the shade of the PVs, more can grow than in direct burning sunlight.

And there are plenty of non forest land, or literal dessert land tp put PV there and if forest gets cut, than for other reasons than PV. And china is actually quite active in combating desertification with green belts and recently, PVs.

https://coloradomtn.edu/news/cmc-news/new-solar-array-and-ba...

https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/sci-tech/mountaintop-solar-farm...

www.gettyimages.co.uk/detail/photo/birds-eye-view-of-the-solar-power-plant-and-lush-royalty-free-image/1338844539

www.gettyimages.co.uk/detail/photo/aerial-view-of-solar-power-station-royalty-free-image/1045649830

https://www.ecoportal.net/en/carpeting-mountains-with-solar-...

Just go look at it if you were looking for shocking images. Notice how suspiciously flat patches appear in the mountains just for the PVs and notice how panels often seem recessed below top of existing trees. The process of solar farm construction in such areas begins by clearing out existing life. That's how it's done. It doesn't go like, you just pick a dead land on map and giving out a free nice shed for local scorpions.

I mean, look at even East Coast of the US on Google Maps. Pick any areas just off a city and zoom in. There would be towns, farmlands, forests, mountains, or combinations thereof. If you do the same in the West Coast, you are more likely to hit such suitable flats that can host mega electricity farms and benefit from it, sure, but that's not even universally American thing.

Then you'd ask, can't those deserts like Gobi or Sahara or whatever provide enough land for PVs and PVs be good for those? Maybe, but that's terraforming scale of projects. Not microgrids.

It's not like skyscraper residential buildings exist solely because it's convenient to confine workers near factory sites or because the laborers own nothing - it starts appearing when it becomes impossible to simply distribute immediately available lands and land had become a contested resource. Think why they don't just expand cities outward or build new city cores. They don't because those buildings are solution to that becoming impossible. And with that, think again why they just go out and build those microgrids in cheap unused flat areas outside the city. Because there is no cheap unused flat areas outside the city.

Ok, I checked the one link about swiss where I have local info .. and can you please show me the shocking image?

I am not a fan of building much on top of the mountains in general, but the claim was about desertification and at least that link provided nothing about it. Are the others more worth it?

The gettypictures just show solar panels on what was grasland before.

Solar panels are already so cheap that household solar is mostly about the installation price.

And more people affording their own panels is still a lot more expensive than fixing the grid.

But batteries aren't, and batteries are both the key technology for load shifting and the biggest expense in modern installations.

5kWh of batteries is under $1000. That's enough for load shifting for most people. Even if you need several of them, that's still going to be cheaper than installation labor.

where are you buying 5 kWH of batteries for under $ 1,000? The typical 5 kWh battery in Canada is C$ 3,000 - 4,000.

https://signaturesolar.com/all-products/batteries/?_bc_fsnf=...

Server rack style, 1200 USD for 4.8 kWh = $250/kWh. Wall-mount, 14.3 kWh for $3.3k = $231/kWh.

These guys seem to be the biggest DIY solar equipment supplier in the US.

Afaik you can get batteries from China (AliExpress) for quite a bit cheaper too.

Yep I bought several Huawei 4.8 kWh batteries for about $450 each for an off-grid house in SE Asia. They've been working great a year later, running AC throughout the night.

That really depends on where you live.

I set up the batteries and inverter myself, but paid a local installer and his 2 helpers a grand total of $45 to install and ground 10 x 600w panels on my dangerously high metal roof.

Agreed. From first hand experience, even for regulated electricity markets, games get played to maximize profit per power generated that are directly making stability worse. Fixing these loop holes is hard for the regulator since they are instructed to encourage both increased renewable penetration and stability, despite traders/operators/producers not acting in good faith and just gaming whatever they can.

A healthy regulated will encourage maximizing profit for power and bring in competition which drives the cost down until energy is a commodity and the cost of electricity is actually based on the price of production and a small profit based on the cost of capital. Any situations that cause price spikes result in investment to harvest the difference.

The fact that you can add to the grid by installing solar and battery and connect to the grid in a single afternoon makes it pretty easy these days to have an elastic market that grows until you hit the limit of decentralized production vs. existing transmission architecture... but with the right equipment you can have community sized islands that can be much more immune to instability.

> A healthy regulated will encourage maximizing profit for power and bring in competition which drives the cost down until energy is a commodity and the cost of electricity is actually based on the price of production and a small profit based on the cost of capital.

That is not how the electricity market works, in Australia anyway, and somewhat fundamentally everywhere. The network needs to maintain a frequency and voltage for it to be reliable. These change as load and production change. So consumers don't get a choice of which electrons power their house, only who they pay. They pay a 'retailer' who usually has nothing to do with production for a known cost per kwh + fees ahead of time. The market then operates where agreements between parties including retailers and produces (traders and others as well) has a 'market rate' that essentially arbitrage between longer term fixed rates and market rates.

The fact that the stability is tied to frequency and voltage (and infrastructure) means there is a limit to the rate of production and consumption, not to mention electricity is a necessity in the modern age.

In Australia at least we are finding out the hard way about what happens when you privatize a necessity. People will pay whatever it costs, and since the market needs a high level of regulation just to function, a market IMO is just a bad fit for trying to bring costs down rather than just rent seeking.

> The fact that you can add to the grid by installing solar and battery and connect to the grid in a single afternoon

That has become harder in recent time due to areas being over saturated by solar. Cities in Australia can deny you connecting to the grid if there is too much, as well as we have high network voltage detection on inverters which now kick in on many sunny days due to again, too much solar. Electricity network operators pay a large amount of money to services to predict/model how much of the power in their network is coming from solar and where because they commonly don't know, so it becomes a difficult balance of how much solar you are allowed to connect.

> but with the right equipment you can have community sized islands that can be much more immune to instability.

Agreed, but due to the required _shared_ infrastructure for this to work will need public land to connect these islands or even within an 'island', as well as the now private vested interests in rent seeking, this will be a fringe solution only available to those with larger amounts of land like communes or other rural setups. Again, speaking to Australia.

What it sounds like is Australia needs negative energy prices during peaks, again arguing for market forces, if you pay people to take electricity (charging people who produce electricity more than you pay people to take, keeping the difference) the "having more electricity than we can use" problem goes away and you don't have to prevent people from hooking up new capacity.

Well regulated markets enable this, charge consumers 0 or even pay them to use energy during the solar maximum, same for industry. People will build storage to make money.

You must have variable pricing driven by markets when you have a lot of variable renewables, fixed rates just don't work. Too much electricity is one of those good problems to have if you manage it correctly. Free or very cheap energy could be a huge competitive advantage for Australia.

It does have negative prices as well as interconnects between most states, but it is risky for consumers (average household) to be exposed to these price swings. I don't like retailers, but they do shield the average consumer to wild swings in prices that could 50x their daily cost.

In 2022, a lot of retailers nearly went under due to the max price of $14.4k per MWh ($14.4 per kWh, which is usually ~$0.25 for households) being sustained for a longer period cause a few producers had the market over a barrel. The federal government needed to step in and restrict the maximum price for gas (despite Australia exporting >10x more than in produces, we still have to buy it at international market rates), which flowed down to gas peakers which during times of lower than expected energy production act as short term stablisers. In this case we had multiple coal plant failures due to their age/poor upkeep, and likely some manipulation by producers.

Your average household doesn't want to have their energy consumption behaviours dictated by a market. We have a national battery program that creates a VPPs (Virtual Power Plant) and other mechanisms to enable households to somewhat benefit from these market prices and theoretically provide stability to the grid, but it is all quite complicated, and suffers from being able to be gamed. There isn't a simple solution when a market is involved because you have a group of people acting in bad faith to extract the most value for a shared resource that relies on shared infrastructure.

If the network and producers were publicly managed (like the electricity networks use to be and still are in some states), the incentives are a lot better aligned with a stable grid that is affordable for the most number of consumers. It still would be complicated, but a bunch of problems would be simplified, likely traded off for other issues.

Net metering is gone in most of California (for new solar). I think it's going away in general. Distributed solar supports a more stable grid for everyone (per UL 1741-SB requirements).

the article is about Puerto Rico, not California, and specifically mentions net metering.

I think the poster’s point is that net metering is a tool to promote early adoption of solar, and (in at least one prominent example) when solar penetration becomes high enough for it to impact grid stability, larger grids have removed net metering. So to address GP poster’s point: net metering affecting grid stability in a substantial way is more a theoretical concern that’s already been addressed in one of the locations where it stopped being theoretical.

It depends on the terms of the net metering.

If it's the ancient practice of crediting on a one for one basis, yeah that doesn't help. (A look around says that's probably where PR is now). If they credit power delivered to the grid based on conditions when it was delivered, then that might help. With appropriate controls, storage can increase grid stability. It would probably be more cost effective to do utility scale storage projects, but project management is difficult in PR; letting those with personal capital hook up solar+batteries and send some of that onto the grid when demand is high seems useful?

What's the alternative? Equity is important, sure, but to swing all the way towards "only a centralized grid should be allowed in order to make sure all have the same level access" is a head-in-the-sands approach that ignores realities such as how the centralized grid out there has metastasized into a non-functional bureaucratic blame-shifting machine (at least measured by the increasing frequency of outages). A centralized grid also never actually delivers true equitable access.

One alternative is decentralization, and the article talks about that:

> The town’s local environmental nonprofit Casa Pueblo teamed up with researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tenn., to develop a way to connect multiple microgrids to exchange power with one another, all without having to be hooked up to Puerto Rico’s grid. The strategy, called grid orchestration, ensures that if power is knocked out on one of the installations, the others aren’t compromised.

Is it the wealthy that are doing that? Maybe? Probably? But isn't that how any R&D technology investment starts?

It's also involving a government-funded lab to re-envision how these systems could work to achieve resiliency through coordinated decentralization. And if there's any truth to trickle-down economics, it would have to be in something that allows for a decentralized approach accessible to many, not a centralized approach that only rewards r > g accumulation. Sounds like a good use of government research funding to me.

Just taking the article’s title at face value, what does it mean to have a blackout with microgrids?

Microgrids are, by definition, impervious to blackouts.

If a microgrid loses power due to a fault, neighbouring grids are unaffected. If all the neighbouring grids lose power due to a common fault, but your local grid is unaffected due to design or implementation choices, you’re golden.

Microgrids aren’t a solution to blackouts, and blackouts are not an issue microgrids have.

Looking at the article, the first paragraph claims:

When power went out across all of Puerto Rico on 16 April [well, clearly it didn’t as the very next sentence goes on to claim] a lot of the lights in the town of Adjuntas stayed on.

It can’t be both. It’s not a blackout and the lights stayed on.

Grid segmentation and multiple generation sources can do this too, and is a common feature of existing, traditional, power grids. The city I live in has these features with feed-ins from multiple hydro electric plants and wind factories, and a HVDC link to the next state over which has a full spectrum of generation sources bar nuclear.

As a result, the electricity here is very stable, and I don’t recall the last time we had even a brown out that affected the entire greater metro are and satellite towns.

Microgrids with interconnects are grids.

We can build grids that work, thereby leaving the general population free to pursue other, more important, economic endeavours.

Failing that, build microgrids.

I think the average reader will understand exactly what they are trying to say.

Is this more of a battery cost issue - if you owned a battery that charged off the grid and discharged during blackout periods then that might just about cover you if you budget for the expected outage duration.... And assuming you can afford said battery in the first place.

Depends on the length of the blackouts, if it's more than a day then solar panels will allow you to lower the amount of batteries you get.

> if you owned a battery that charged off the grid and discharged during blackout periods

This wouldn't work. The reason isolated units can inject electricity back into the grid without issue is that they can observe frequency. If a blackout occurs, this information is gone. You need to perform a black start, which can't be done by isolated, uncoordinated equipments.

Pretty sure GP was talking about a UPS, not feeding the grid.

I don't think that applies for microgrids, or at least, it's not really an issue in my case.

I know what you're talking about though: I think that more applies to generators that are operating with megawatts and take time for turbines to spin up and stuff. Microgrids are normally instantaneous battery buffered type things. They can instantly deliver power at the frequency range mandated for the national grid.

What you actually need is islanding equipment which discharges the battery for local use only, but cuts off (or islands you from) your main incoming power connection.

Many of the PV systems you can buy from the big players (SolarEdge, Tesla and more) support this, often calling it "whole home backup".

Same principle as having a generator with an interlock.

The problem is the blackouts can go for lengths of time that would require impractically large battery installs. You can powerwall your way around a grid that frequently goes down for a few hours to a day, but one that may go down for days to months you are practically forced into some form of generation (solar or otherwise).

Batteries keep getting cheaper but are unlikely to get to where it’s more affordable to store a month’s worth of electricity than just buying some generation.

Meanwhile, in third-world, overly bureaucratic Italy, one has to wait several months to get all the paperwork in order to take advantage of a solar installation. Self-deployed solutions are also limited to 800 watts, which is peanuts in today's world.

That is the case only if you want to give your surplus back to the grid. If you avoid that, you are only limited to a maximum power of 20kW of solar panels installed.

20kW seems to be ample for home usage. Half should be good enough.

I recently got a 10kWh system installed and it should cover about half my usage. I live in meh-irradiance Canada. Full coverage of my bill in summer, pathetic generation in the summer. So yeah, sunnier places like Italy 10kWh would be perfect -- especially for places with heat pumps and warm winters.

You have clearly never spent anything but holiday time in a underdeveloped county. If ever. You won’t draw similarities otherwise. Completely different standing points.

Italy is third world country now?

So the bit thats not clear here is are they defining rules for what happens when there are interconnection failures?

or is it that to connect to the grid you need to have your own storage as well as PV? it sounded like they joined three "islands" together.

From what I understand, most homes that are connected to both solar and the grid require the grid to be active to produce solar. This is for two reasons. One, not to endanger lineman working on the grid. And two, the solar AC cycle must be synchronized with the grid AC cycle.

Are these homes not also connected to the grid? Or is there some technology that addresses these two issues that are in use in Puerto Rico?

If you use a string inverter not a emphase style microinverter, most of them are capable of running without the grid- Particularly if you add any sort of battery system.

These use a form of transfer switch like you’d use when you connect a generator- they disconnect the upstream.

You can run sans grid with Enphase (with their "system controller").

This is true, but if you add in local batteries attached to the solar, you can have a device that works in basically all situations. If disconnected from the grid, it can run off battery instead of just not working.

I haven't read the OP link yet, but my guess is they are doing something like this: Grid, Solar and batteries.

"Grid, Solar and batteries."

They are doing microgrids, that connect to each other.

Aka a grid. Sure, this is a newer version of the grid, that allows local failover, but it's just a grid.

Maybe we can upgrade the other grids to do this too. That would be fabulous.

It's just a coordination problem.

You are also sort of conflating "loss of interconnect" with "outage'.

What is the difference?

Microgrids use specialized inverters with islanding capability and automatic transfer switches that disconnect from the main grid during outages, allowing them to operate independently while maintaining their own frequency regulation.

If your home is isolated from the grid you don't have to worry about syncing your 50/60 Hz. A UPS during a blackout is an example. I experienced it myself.

I have no idea about the hurdles of keeping in sync many batteries in many homes connected together. This is not even something I thought about before the news of the blackout in Spain months ago.

Keeping in sync isn't as much of a problem as you might think, it simply requires that everything able to feed into the grid has to accept the grid as authoritative for syncing.

Relevant are some of Chris Boden's videos about bringing up a hydro power plant and his comment that you have to be in sync with the grid when you actually connect because the turbine WILL sync to the grid at connection and if it was incorrect before then there will be a lot of loud angry noises from the equipment. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGQxSJmadm0

I think you're looking for the term "islanding".

It's becoming more and more common for PV systems with a battery system to be able to work in an islanded mode, and more importantly - they're legal and code compliant to do so.

When the grid goes down/out of spec, they disconnect the home from the grid and continue to power locally.

Examples of this include Tesla and Sigenergy.

Some are able to do this in very short periods and able to operate effectively as a whole-house UPS. Some will have a flickr of the lights and maybe some sensitive devices will restart. Others will take some period of time to disconnect from the grid and run in islanded mode.

For general interest, Western Australia's State Power company has a variety of battery application cases that it assists with; home batteries, community batteries, fully stand alone, microgrids (with batteries).

https://www.westernpower.com.au/resources-education/consumer...

https://www.wa.gov.au/organisation/energy-policy-wa/wa-resid...

West and South Australia are a fair way down the integrated renewables pathway with a high percentage of household rooftop solar, mixed rural PV farms, wind power, battery farms, etc.

I would love to have just enough solar to flatten my peak usage on the hottest days of the summer. They naturally coincide with tons of sun. I don't need a huge system to be all solar all the time or even care about credits from the power company. I just don't want a $300 bill in the summer and a $50 bill in the winter. Has anyone designed a good solution for this?

I have installed 200kw+ worth of rooftop (Florida) and ground mount (NorCal) resi systems (primarily Enphase, but I'm familiar with the operating requirements of other inverters), and am currently riding shotgun for a ~200MW solar PV project in the Midwest. If you share more details (general location, utility, and energy cost schedule [static, seasonal]), I am happy to provide some guidance.

With solar panels being so much cheaper than 10-15 years ago, it seems like installation costs are the biggest hurdle to wider adoption. Do you see anything reducing those costs in the future?

Maybe we need a push to make standing seam metal roofs more mainstream and people can install their own without having to drill into their roof

Soft costs are a majority of residential system cost [1], and there are some efforts to cram those costs down. One example is SolarApp [2], an automated permitting platform that directly integrates with local jurisdiction systems to streamline the permitting process (which was incubated at NREL [3]). Another are coop buys [4], where a community will open a registration window, and once a pool of buyers have committed, an RFP is put out of installers to bid to install the entire pool of systems. This drives down sales and marketing costs.

While I am a big fan of standing seam metal roofs for longevity reasons, they cost anywhere between 2x-3x the cost of a premium (architecture shingles vs 3 tab) asphalt shingle roof. This is due to increased labor costs to have the rolled steel cut and formed on site. If you could drive the down the cost (training and similar evangelism efforts sponsored by domestic steel manufacturers perhaps to stoke demand to replace other more volatile demand like auto sales), certainly friction based solar racking mounted to such a roof is superior to something requiring penetrations through the roof material and decking.

Regardless, we should assume most home owners are not going to do these installs themselves on their roofs. When new homes are built, solar installs should be required but in a way that makes the cost competitive vs unreasonable profit capture through whomever is building the home. When roofs are replaced, also an excellent time to have a solar PV system installed. These systems have a lifetime of at least 25 years, so it's important to have the stars align to make the choice as inexpensive and frictionless as possible when its made.

[1] https://www.energy.gov/eere/solar/solar-soft-costs-basics

[2] https://gosolarapp.org/

[3] https://www.nrel.gov/news/video/nrels-solarapp-streamlines-s...

[4] https://solarunitedneighbors.org/resources/the-ultimate-sola...

I'd love to have some form of solar work out cost-wise for me here in Seattle -- there just aren't enough sunny days throughout the year to make solar financially make sense, even over a 20-year period. At least from what the solar calculators I've found on the web would have me believe.

That is wrong. I’m over 2000km north of you in a tight valley that snows a lot. The 7.8kw system on my roof will be paid back in about 7 years.

How cloudy is it up there though? Seattle has a lot of overcast days.

Very. It snows a ton and is almost a rainforest

Solar or battery (to load shift for nights and weekend pricing)

HVAC being so much of a load is tricky for smaller battery systems.

My best small step is dehumidifying with battery

In Oregon we have the Community Solar program, which I've heard good things about - rather than building your own rooftop solar, you invest in a solar farm subscription as part of your electric bill, and receive credits for power produced. I haven't signed up for it yet personally but I've heard good reports from some other folks.

https://www.oregoncsp.org/

We put 7.8kw on our roof on a snowy mountain town in Canada in a tight valley. In 12 months it generated $950 worth of power at $0.13/kwh, and we now have no power bill for our house and all heating and cooling with a heat pump.

We tore out the old natural gas furnace and had the line disconnected, saving us about $2k/year for the heating.

Game changer.

I know this isn't what you're asking about, but my electric company has a budget billing program where they average out your usage and charge you the same amount each month.

I use it mainly so that I can set it up and with my bank's bill pay system and then forget about it for a year. But it's also nice for avoiding those huge bills in the summer.

It might be worth looking into.

I appreciate that! It's not the cost fluctuation that is a problem, just the fact that usage and price goes up in the summer and the cost scales so quickly. Battery storage is a hack that may work financially for now but I'm more interested in shedding the additional consumption at peak even if it's just the few hottest hours of each day.

Get a direct solar AC minisplit, EG4 makes one that I haven't tried but it's around $1500 not including panels.

It won't ever make excess electricity and you won't be able to run it after dark, but it'll keep you nice and chilly, I bet.

I keep seeing these "grid synchronizing" inverters that don't require transfer switches and can generate to offset the energy pulled from the grid - in the event of a full grid outage, you can always manually hit the disconnect and run the home - provided the load doesn't surpass the generation capacity (or storage capacity if running with batteries).

It seems like this hasn't really made it's way into North America, which is unfortunate as it would lower the barrier of entry for home solar considerably vs traditional grid-tie/net metering which requires a ton of permits, electricians, meter changes, disconnects (or transfer switches) and generally lots of delays and cost.

I would be very curious how the "migrogrids" interconnect in PR - it seems there is some kind of synchronization and neighborhood-level disconnects to isolate from the shared grid.

Grid synchronizing is not the same as being able to operate in island mode. The only reason you can run those inverters without an automatic transfer switch is because they don't function when there's no grid to follow so they shut off when power goes out meaning they don't backfeed the grid outside the home.

A lot of inverters are just grid following and you need some other source creating the 60-hz signal for the solar inverters to follow. Generally this is either a battery or generator because solar has a really hard fall off in the power provided the instant you try to draw too much so instantaneous spike loads like motors starting (compressors/fans/etc) will often collapse off grid solar only installs.

> motors starting

This is a big problem when working with single stage HVAC condensers. These motors can have a LRA rating of well over 100 amps.

There are solutions like Microair easy start - these are pretty common on generator setups too as these peak starting amps can snuff a generator too.

The bang-on, bang-off compressors are a dying breed, however. The efficiency and output modulation of the inverter units means even the conventional split systems have been switching over. Likewise, the 'minisplit' (originator of these efficient compressors) definition has expanded to include ducted models, even ducted models with conventional high-cfm blower wheels.

Putting semiconductors in front of a 3+ ton heat pump when you live in a rural area is guaranteed bad times.

Not only can you not find many people who have parts or knowledge on hand, but you also have to deal with the fragility of the system. A single stage compressor is very robust to electrical transients. These units can take direct lightning strikes and continue to function normally. Worst case, you replace a contactor, capacitor and some wire. Every hvac tech on earth has these things in their truck right now.

Efficiency and gently ramping loads are nice, but these things don't matter so much if the system is going to have maintenance issues.

the factors that kill semiconductor switches are heat and voltage switching transients. This is why the 800 V electronic components in some EVs fail - the voltage.

The voltage in a heat pump is 240 V. The power is typically a couple of kilowatts. Reliability of silicon switches at that voltage is excellent. This is just not a widespread problem.

Based on what I see in the photo in the article, PV array codes in Puerto Rico must be quite different from those in California, because the arrays seem to cover almost the entirety of the roofs. In California fire access codes [1] prevent the entire roof from being covered like in PV that.

1. https://energycodeace.com/site/custom/public/reference-ace-2...

The vast majority of roofs in Puerto Rico are flat and the vast majority of buildings are made of cinder blocks and concrete.

Likely because they have building codes that prevent the construction of houses from matchsticks.

It has nothing to do with construction and everything to do with rainfall.

I can throw a lit road flare into my back yard and nothing will happen, because I don't live in a glorified desert. PR is an order of magnitude wetter than where I live.

PR has a dry season when the island receives less rain, and there are dry regions that generally get less rain. In fact, there are sometimes forest fires [1].

Regarding construction, I've never seen a smoke alarm inside a residential building in PR. I would hazard a guess that this is allowed for concrete/cinderblock; presumably the roof thing is the same.

[1] - https://www.elnuevodia.com/noticias/seguridad/notas/incendio...

What's the rationale for that? It's not a rule in the UK. I'm not sure who's going to be walking on the roof of a building that's on fire.

looking at the linked doc, its so that the roof can easily be opened to let smoke out.

I'm not an expert, but I've not seen in the UK (well apart from thatched roofs) firefighters opening the roof to get access.

technological advances for off/tied grid solar are now maturing into high quality solutions for all scenarios, costs are in free fall. I was an ultra early adopter of solar pv in 1991 in Takilma, Oregon living in a school bus,and continue to live off grid in Nova Scotia. As to Peurto Rico, my first question was answered by a quick look at a topograpgical map, and Peurto Rico looks a lot like Nova Scotia....lots and lots of hills and little valleys and rivers, which means that for them topography has a big part to play, also looking at pictures of the instalations there, basic roofing is clearly a price consideration before other things, so developing solar that assembles into a physical roofing product, that entirely replaces other roofing, would be important for anyone who is carefullt crunching numbers on a new build in a choice location, add in charging for cars and scooters which can double as extra house power when needed and the inevitability of the comming switch becomes obvious.

i live in puerto rico. I talk with my luma friends all the time, we need baseload. We need more gas. We've made huge investments in solar that have been destroyed by hurricanes and are a huge waste issue.

i got really tired of Luma and after the new year blackout i jumped ship to windmar. i'm fairly rural so it's actually decent and in a good spot where other neighbors have fared well during hurricanes.

my prediction, for the US: electricity demand from AI will exceed supply at least in the short and medium term, driving up electric prices for consumers

Increased demand for air conditioning in the US is increasing demand at about the same rate as AI is. We're expanding the grid fast enough to handle one, but not both.

interesting, i haven't heard that. where can i go to learn about that? historians cite AC as one of the things that changed the american south in the 20th century, making it more habitable.

This article looks like it completely embraces the pov of solar providers, and describes maintenance of the grid as serving the interests of the fossil electricity industry.

...And not far from the end:

> The next milestone, Massol-Deyá says, will be successfully connecting microgrids that are not in close geographic proximity.

Yeah... great journalism here IEEE.

They should buy a nuclear power plant instead. Only nuclear power plants can prevent blackouts.

A nuclear plant wouldn't prevent the specific types of blackouts that Puerto Rico suffers from, as described in the article. Hurricanes and aged infrastructure means the power coming from centralised producers fails to arrive at distributed consumers. The advantage solar has in this regard is that the energy is produced within 1/2km of its consumption.

France enters the chat ...

I have to wonder how you envision a small community building nucular when the state has already failed them. That's the real neat thing, that cooperations smaller than the entire territory of Puerto Rico can take action and help themselves, and even take away pressure from the rest of the grid doing it!

> Only nuclear power plants can prevent blackouts. That sentence is so maximal that it is trivially maximally wrong. Clearly, other tech can do that too. Like, blindingly obviously.

yes it is so easy to build nuclear https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nukegate_scandal

Timely post as a TN power plant is offline

https://www.local3news.com/local-news/tva-takes-sequoyah-nuc...

I don’t have data but I have a hunch most blackouts in PR are weather related. In that case (stormy skies), solar probably won’t help much.

Don’t most storms happen at night? So really it’s the battery doing the work either way.

The amount of battery capacity required to sustain power demand for this to be scaled to a meaningful population is high (PR average daily power demand is ~50 GWh per day). Most power outages in PR take 48 to 72 hours to fix. You would need batteries that can store 150 GWh of power. That’s a LOT of money to install.

Even this assumes that you wouldn’t want any breathing room on battery capacity (i.e., every power outage will be fixed in under 72 hours).

My hope for America is once Optimus robots are up and running, have 1-2 legions worth work 24/7 setting up a huge farm in Arizona, then creating an energy transition line to the east coast.

It sounds crazy, but given the rate of advancements in robots and the fact that solar panels are already mass manufactured, why isn’t this feasible in 2 years?

Yeah if Musk now clears his head, gives up politics, enters his villain redemption arc and focuses on something he's actually good at - making technology wonders happen through the force of will, workforce manipulation, trial and error and duct tape - it might happen.

Are you a tesla bot?

Are solar panels still being produced in the U.S.? I thought we strangled that golden goose.

Remove the Chinese Tariffs on them, then just import massive amounts.

That would be playing right into the Chinese evil plan to spend trillions giving away solar panels to America so Americans go woke (and have cheap electricity) /s

Your vaporizing is forth coming.

Setting up huge installations in the desert is already nearly labor-free. Anyway this article is about small installations.

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