this post was submitted on 02 Oct 2024
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This is idiotic. The fact is your electricity transmission system operator has to pay a lot of money to keep the grid stable at 50 or 60Hz or your electronics would fry. With wind and especially with solar power, the variable output is always pushing the frequency one way or the other, and that creates a great need for costly balancing services. Negative pricing is an example of such a balancing service. Sounds good, but for how long do you think your electricity company can keep on paying you to consume power?
You're answering the wrong questions. I don't think people are assuming that it's simple to manage the power grid (if so, they shouldn't be...) but rather why are we locked into a system that lets business profit motive be responsible for the continued existence of the ecosystem.
This whole thread has way too many people who see the price as some kind of made up number that dictates how people behave, rather than recognizing that the price is a signal about the availability of useful real-world resources.
Even if the prices were strictly mandated by a centrally planned tariff that kept the same price throughout the day, every day, we'd still have the engineering challenge of how to match the energy fed into the grid versus taken out of the grid.
The prices are just a reflection of that technical issue, so solving it still needs to be done.
Just have few percent of spare capacity. If suddenly it will become too sunny, you can just disconnect solar cells. If not sunny enough, then connect them back.
Obviously I'm talking only about day - the only time when solar panel output can fluctuate.
Sure, but for all the times my electricity goes negative for half an hour, the monthly bill indicates that is vastly outweighed by all the times that it isn't.
People also don't realize that too much power is just as bad as too little, worse in fact. There's always useful power sinks: pumped hydro, batteries, thermal storage, but these are not infinite.
Solar panels are easily disconnectable. Unlike conventional power plants it does not have spinning rust, that can walk away entire building.
Stupid question but can we not like, make toggleable solar panels? Like if I Just pull the plug extracting power from a solar panel does it explode or break or something?
Not really. You can discharge into the ground, but for large installations even the ground has a limited (local) capacity.
Edit: explain yourselves, downvoting cowards
Could they not just break the circuit for the panel, and stop it feeding back into the mains?
Yeah. My understanding is that most large solar complexes don't have this capability, at least not in any efficient automatic way, but most home solar systems do.
My understanding is that most large solar arrays don't have this capability in any sort of automatic way, and at these levels of power it's a bit more complicated than "just unplug it".
This seems like a massive oversight on behalf of the park designers.
One of many issues caused by the assumption that solar would only ever be a minor part of the grid.
OK, so new instalation have a breaker switch.
They currently have breaker switches, they need something more granular and automated
Look at this "manual" unplugger:
Unplug many.
"Everything is so fucking simple that I can easily figure out the solutions to giant societal problems with 15 minutes of googling" is the dumbest take I've heard all day. Granted it's only 6am but still.
Maybe you're not fucking Sun Tzu, Einstein and Jesus rolled in to one and there might be the occasional issue that's slightly more complicated than your armchair quarterback solutions.
Christ you people piss me off.
When did solar panels form society? Calm down your imagination.
You are saying that there is no way to disconnect solar panels from grid, which is obviously not true.
"Why are you so worried about this soccer game? Just kick the ball in the net"
I have no idea what i am talking about... But what would happen if you pulled a black tarp over the panel? Could even be automatic like the blends on a building. And even partial.
That's extremely expensive and not really scaleable.
You're telling me a toggleable panel that flips when it needs to is too expensive? You're already installing the panels. You're already doing all that. The only difference is the material on the back side of the panel and of course some sort of crank and shaft to rotate it.
Or if only there was some sort of powered component that could rotate it when it reached the capacity you know since the name of the game is power
Solar panels are very cheap, and any modification, even just a moving cover, greatly ramps up prices. No, really.
We just need a lot of panels to generate significant amounts of electricity, which would necessitate a large cover or a lot of mechanisms - which would get expensive on that scale.
In addition to what allero said, you seem to only be considering future installations rather than existing ones. Retrofitting existing equipment is massively more expensive than changing a design prior to building it.
Why isn't this as easy as storing some of that excess energy in a home battery and letting the rest down in a wire into the ground? Then if it's smart enough it could only give back energy when needed.
The easiest solution is to send the power somewhere else where it can offset the use of fossil fuels. This solution is fraught with political hurdles, subject to market forces (due to privatization) and often grid compatability issues(looking at you Texas). It is, however, a time tested and common method for mitigating excess production.
While water in pipes is often a metaphor for electricity, it's not particularly useful here. You can't ground out part of a charge. Energy storage is the solution though. Batteries are good, pumping water up back up into dams to be regained from a hydro plant when needed is ideal, as I understand it.
Well, that's what they're doing some places. The batteries assets are not in private homes usually though, they're by themself or run by power-consuming industries. Batteries are expensive though, and they degrade quickly if you use them wrong. In the EU, ENTSO-E defines the market rules, trade systems and messaging systems that energy companies and asset owners play by. Sometimes the revenue-generating asset is a battery, sometimes it's a hot water boiler, wind park, factory, hydro plant etc.
sounds more like we should just change away from a shitty system that needs to be a specific frequency. If only there was an alternative....
What alternative are you suggesting?
Higher frequency and voltage tolerance
high voltage DC, it was a bad idea in the past due to the difficulty of changing voltage, but Buck boost converters exist now, as due inverters.
Tell this idea to an electrical engineer, and bring a stopwatch to time how many minutes they laugh for
Now imagine replacing all transformers with buck-boost converters...
Nah. We'll go more primitive. We'll do all our voltage and AC/DC conversions...mechanically! Do what they did to power DC subway systems back at the start of the 20th century. Just have a big AC motor directly coupled to a big DC generator! And we can use gearing to convert voltages! Let's bring a needlessly complex and steampunk aesthetic to our electric grid!
Speaking as a flashlight enthusiast...there's many different ways to get a constant and consistent current. Sure we'd need to scale it up from a pocket-sized device to a whole fucking power grid, but with a big enough driver with the right arrangement of capacitors and all that, you'd easily be able to get a totally consistent current out of wind or solar
Having knowledge in power electronics i can confidently say the DC output of solar is easily and regularly inverted in phase with grid. In fact, DC is often used for undersea cables switching AC to dc then back to AC, All at extremely high voltage and varying demand(up yo 600kV/600MW but varying by installation).
Wind turbines go online after the blades start spinning and connect to the grid in the same way as any other generator, controlled by internal electronics. Power is regulated through blade feathering and can be turned off as supply exceeds demand. This, other than for maintenance reasons, is why you might see one turbine spinning while the next is standing still. This capability actually means the grid is MORE stable with wind power.
Any further fluctuation is managed in the same way as conventional power generation.