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Rooftop solar eats up all demand in South Australia, world’s most renewable grid
(reneweconomy.com.au)
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this post was submitted on 19 Sep 2023
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i can see the “more economical” argument, but it also plays right into the hands of commercial interests… rooftop solar doesn’t allow rent seeking unlike utility solar, which at least makes me question the argument
i’m not sure if you add management overheads (including grid management) and ROI on top of everything that it’d end up more economical, so IMO it’s really a toss up, and in that case i’d lean towards the non-rent-seeking option
if in doubt, invest in yourself; don’t rent your life and all that
In terms of rooftop solar and grid management, this is already a partially solved problem. New solar installs in my part of Australia use “Smart Inverters” that can receive signals to change the rate they’re feeding into the grid. You therefore create a “Virtual Power Plant” of interconnected rooftop solar, that reacts as one system.
https://www.solarquotes.com.au/blog/victoria-smart-inverters-mb1000/
oh yeah totally! i’m in vic too :)
i mean management of the grid to a centralised location IMO is always going to be a bigger cost, which would likely mitigate some efficiency gains from installing solar en masse by a utility
Oh hell yeah :)
It’s actually not as high of a cost as you might imagine. The signals to control the smart inverters actually work through the same system that communicates with smart meters. Which as you know, are already universal here. Whether it’s smart or not, an inverter is an essential part of a solar installation. Part of its job is automatically sensing if there’s a power outage and disconnecting from the grid. This is vital for the safety of repair crews and linesmen.
In talking about utility-level solar though, did you see this article about a prototype project in Western Vic? It’s a combination of solar and storing energy as heated water underground. It can then be turned back into electricity using the process geothermal uses. If I recall correctly, extra electricity from the grid can be fed into the system to be stored as well.
The genius part of that IMO is storing energy as cold, not just as heat.
You need a heat difference to run a heat engine, and the energy lost refrigerating the cold block is more than made up for by making the "waste heat" into usable energy.
Dandrews gov has some great strides to that front, the neighborhood battery initiative is one I'm particularly fond of. Not only islands areas in event of grid failure, but solves the issue of 'overfeed' with shitty street inverters