States/Cities Attempting To Limit You Self Produced Power...

[NPhil]

ok had to look that one up. LOL

Me too!

 

[OffGridForGood]

I think the number of people inputting solar PV anywhere in N.America is so small it has nearly zero effect on the current grid, like a flea landing on the back of an elephant. Correct me (with real data) if you have it, but all I can find shows the solar PV from home based solar is tiny. The main PV inputs are solar farms, and that is another whole matter. I think they have good self-interest reasons to make us believe they are suffering some problem due to solar PV inputs, personnally I don't buy it, and don't see any real data that supports the claims.
If the grid 'being there' is an issue, I don't see that either, 0.05% of Canadian/Americans are 100% off grid, a larger but again tiny percentage are using both solar and grid, most homes are just using grid.
Years of neglect to the power grid - deferring costs - have been very profitable, getting the pubilc to pay for upgrades now "because of solar" would be even more profitable.

 

[Ampster]

More or less anyone I hear from seems to assume that the grid will just be there, because it has been there.

I think the grid will be there but it will be inadequate for todays distributed generation. Currently all the controls and switching gear is unidirectional because it was built and designed for electrical flow from centralized generators. Now the grid controls and switches need to be designed for bidirectional flow. Fortunately the transformers in the field are biidirectional but most of the substation equipment needs to be updated.

 

[Ampster]

I think the number of people inputting solar PV anywhere in N.America is so small it has nearly zero effect on the current grid,

That may be true for North America, but Hawaii has experience serious backfeed of energy and the grid is not designed to handle that. The growth of distributed energy resources is not confined to rooftop solar. In my County we have several large solar farms and a soon to be constructed large battery storage facility capable of several megaWatts.

 

[OffGridForGood]

I think the grid will be there but it will be inadequate for todays distributed generation. Currently all the controls and switching gear is unidirectional because it was built and designed for electrical flow from centralized generators. Now the grid controls and switches need to be designed for bidirectional flow. Fortunately the transformers in the field are biidirectional but most of the substation equipment needs to be updated.

Yet, we see Australia with 70% of the homes PV grid tied, and no issues? I wonder if we are making assumptions that are not really concerns - at least not at the level of home PV we see so far today.

 

[OffGridForGood]

distributed energy resources is not confined to rooftop solar. In my County we have several large solar farms and a soon to be constructed large battery storage facility capable of several megaWatts.

We see large solar farms and clearly these are commercial enterprises that are carefully planned for, and controlled to work with the grid.
The large battery storage facility may be the 'solution' to the increasing distributed solar inputs, giving that new energy source somewhere to go, until night, when the local area needs power but the sun has set.

 

[cs1234]

Seems to me all they really need is zero export ct's or export controls on grid tied inverters. All this taxation and bill padding nonsense needs to stop.

 

[Nobodybusiness]

ok had to look that one up. LOL

Ok I’m old but still played EverQuest..

 

[EastTexCowboy]

I'll add to this that it seems a little crazy for the feds and some of the states to be pushing solar with serious incentives (with our tax dollars but it's good to get some of those back) while the POCOs and municipalities, and other states, are fighting it every step of the way. Of course they parrot the lines about supporting solar but many of us have dealt with their real agenda. Then there's the whole push to EVs when the grid will barely support the existing load and the technology isn't mature enough to meet expectations. They don't even want to talk about how to deal with all the negatives of having a few million EVs added to the fleet, dealing with disposal, or the fact that when you look at the environmental impact of mining and refining raw materials for solar and/or EVs it negates a big chunk of the "green" benefits. Too many conflicting agendas and too many powerful public and private entities with their fingers in the pie. Throw in a big ole bucket of politics and its quite the mess.

Which is why I suggest we do as much as we can in the way of DIY solar while we still can. I'd like to think we can fight the push to regulate out most of the DIY and off-grid production, but I just don't know if we'll ever have the numbers to do so. I hope I'm wrong and DIY solar is around and thriving for a long, long time.

 

[OffGridForGood]

Seems to me all they really need is zero export ct's or export controls on grid tied inverters. All this taxation and bill padding nonsense needs to stop.

When I looked into what Australia is doing, where they have far more home PV attached to the grid, the answer was exactly as your suggesting, a limit on export. In some cases 10kWh/day and other cases more or less than that target depending on the situation: how much solar/other damands on the local area grid it appears.
I suspect there is no issue at all in our (N.American) case to this point (someone pointed out Hawaii, okay that is a special isolated case, sure) for the bulk of N.America though, the residential PV inputs are tiny compared to the demands and the chatter and demands for money are nothing to do with fixing a problem, they are just looking for your money. It is pretty clear the overall electical grid infrastructure has been left somewhat or entirely neglected for a considerable length of time, now in need of huge investment. How "nice" would it be if the public paid that for the utility companies, all we have to do is convince them the need comes from solar PV, and EV's instead of 30-years of kicking the infrastructure costs down the road.

 

[JJJJ]

Hmmm. Aging infrastructure. Talk of increasing costs. Plans for increased demand for non peak hours.

Nothing to see here. Its going to be fine.

 

[Q-Dog]

The thing that really pisses me off the most about my local power companies is their reaction to huge disasters. We get hurricanes every couple of years that destroy lots of the power infrastructure. Swarms of trucks and crews from around the country show up to rebuild it all. They work around the clock (I imagine the overtime $$$ must be huge?) to get the power back on. But they rebuild it all exactly the same, and the next storm takes it all down again. Then they tell us it would be too expensive to harden the grid. "Oh by the way, we need more money to pay for the repairs so we are adding another $8 "hurricane charge" to your bill." It is pure insanity, and the grid still is no better than it was before the storms.

 

[wattmatters]

Yet, we see Australia with 70% of the homes PV grid tied, and no issues?

One in three homes have grid-tied solar PV. It's still growing strongly each year but I think 60-70% will be about the upper limit as not all homes have suitable rooftops, rentals etc where it may not be suitable, economic etc. Plus apartments etc.

The other trend is the older smaller PV systems are being upgraded with larger ones. Average PV system size being installed today is 8 kW.

It's a challenge but our grid operators are working on ways to enable it with requirements such as the current fixed export limits and over time the introduction of dynamic export limits (the smart way of doing it). The distributors have lagged a bit and are playing catch up with such innovation to integrate more rooftop solar PV but I think we'll do OK.

I think the grid is an amazing invention and benefits society in so many ways. It makes sense to protect and nurture it but as is the way in many places, vested interests seek to leverage it for their personal gain at the expense of the people and communities it was designed to serve.

There is some of that here but I don't see it being quite as bad as many of you in the US are relating here. Partly because we still have a chunk of govt ownership of the system in many parts, plus the companies which are privately owned/operated are heavily regulated. The grid is an essential service and needs to be managed accordingly.

The privatisation of public assets was a big theme of governments here in the 1990s and 2000s. In the energy sector it was supposed to usher in a more efficient system, increased competition and lower prices. It did none of the above. This is not opinion, it's been reviewed and studied in detail. In the end it was just a transfer of wealth from the public to a few private operators and we are all the poorer for it. Worse, it has meant the transition in our energy sector is going to be far more difficult than it needed to be.

 

[NPhil]

I think the number of people inputting solar PV anywhere in N.America is so small it has nearly zero effect on the current grid, like a flea landing on the back of an elephant. Correct me (with real data) if you have it, but all I can find shows the solar PV from home based solar is tiny. The main PV inputs are solar farms, and that is another whole matter. I think they have good self-interest reasons to make us believe they are suffering some problem due to solar PV inputs, personnally I don't buy it, and don't see any real data that supports the claims.
If the grid 'being there' is an issue, I don't see that either, 0.05% of Canadian/Americans are 100% off grid, a larger but again tiny percentage are using both solar and grid, most homes are just using grid.
Years of neglect to the power grid - deferring costs - have been very profitable, getting the pubilc to pay for upgrades now "because of solar" would be even more profitable.

Probably, to understand my point, you need to be able, and willing, to understand that the normal behavior of complex systems with interactions which are not fully understood, even by the designers, is collapse. The reason we are accustomed to the power grids not doing that, and feel surprised when they do, is that large organizations of people with specialized knowledge and experience adjust them, in real time, to prevent it. Of course you could argue, as Karl Marx did, that those organizations exist because of greed, and that I haven't "proved" to anyone who starts with different assumptions that there is a real risk complex systems failing when perturbed, but I do think I have good reason to assume that you have missed my point.

 

[NPhil]

Yet, we see Australia with 70% of the homes PV grid tied, and no issues? I wonder if we are making assumptions that are not really concerns - at least not at the level of home PV we see so far today.

There are always "no issues" until there are.

 

[NPhil]

Too many conflicting agendas and too many powerful public and private entities with their fingers in the pie. Throw in a big ole bucket of politics and its quite the mess.

Which is why I suggest we do as much as we can in the way of DIY solar while we still can. I'd like to think we can fight the push to regulate out most of the DIY and off-grid production, but I just don't know if we'll ever have the numbers to do so. I hope I'm wrong and DIY solar is around and thriving for a long, long time.

That's one reason I wound up with what I call my mobile solar power testbed. I am living in the purported world headquarters of the high tech revolution (Silicon Valley), and they can't keep the lights on . I first noticed over 30 years ago, when I got a Sun Workstation on my desk, and discovered the utility "uptime". I thought it should count higher than a year, but, it routinely did not, mostly because of power outages. Since then, the reliability of power, in my direct experience, has not improved here, but declined.

Another reason I have solar power on a vehicle is that over the last 30 years, the need for security equipment has grown, to more than the starter battery can support if the vehicle should remain idle, and was not located where an extension cord could connect it to grid power conveniently. I don't think a decline in power reliability and a general decline in physical security are entirely unrelated.

 

[Hedges]

Hi, neighbor.

I was using Sun workstations at the same time, didn't have any significant issue with the power. Maybe because this was CAD, not a system requiring 100% uptime.

The use of the grid has grown and changed. Once, it might have powered factories and provided rural electrification. Telephones were powered by battery. Machinery has momentum that coasts through glitches. Power distribution has contactors that make/break repeatedly in event of a short, possibly blowing off the squirrel, branch or whatever and restoring power.

Was your Sun upset by a very brief outage, or a sustained one? Everything requires resiliency, not just the grid but also your computer. We put equipment being qualified through various surge, brownout, dropout tests. Even prior to your experience, computers were designed to handle that situation. Some would put CPU state into RAM when given a power fail interrupt, and batteries kept memory alive, at least for a while. UPS, generators, etc. support various installations depending on the uptime needed.

Yes, power could/should be made more reliable, but the more critical loads need to be protected locally. I think a big part of the equation is load control and load shedding. This applies to off-grid systems as well as the utility grid. The grid simply can't always supply all loads under all conditions. Could approach that, but at higher cost for everyone. Back in the '90's, a fire up north took out one transmission line, and over 3 days the grid gradually collapsed from Vancouver to Ensenada. I think if large loads like A/C were taken offline (despite the excessively hot weather), then other loads like refrigeration, fans, pumps could have been supported, and grid would not have collapsed. Pagers connected to thermostat wires would be a trivial solution giving the grid automated control to achieve stability.

 

[skwirl]

So, after reading this heres my understanding.
The doofus in office says we need to go green. Solar and wind. Other govt entities say we need to tax you to save the grid if you make your own power.
Got it.
Hi, I'm from the gooberment, I'm here to help.
Lol.

 

[Ampster]

The large battery storage facility may be the 'solution' to the increasing distributed solar inputs, giving that new energy source somewhere to go, until night, when the local area needs power but the sun has set.

It will be a solution to several issues but as you mentioned, I am sure some upgrades will be necessary to control the power when discharging into the grid. Especially if that power is needed upstream of that substation.

 

[cs1234]

In general I think people might be more tolerant of electrical grid failures if they had even the tiniest bit of local redundancy. If you can power your fridge/freezer, some box fans, and an electric blanket if it's cold that would help a bunch. Having a house with absolutely no power, and fridge/freezer full of spoiled food isn't funny. It doesn't help that homes don't have, by default, any sort of generator backup outlet or critical loads panel for the necessities.