Balcony solar panels can save 30% on a typical household’s electricity bill and, with vertical surface area in cities larger than roof space, the appeal is clear
a mix of both is good, there’s arguments for doing local co-generation. Where you essentially turn a community into it’s own power plant, and when you’re talking about things like micro inverters, the cost doesnt really change.
Is it more efficient to do it at a utility grid scale? Yes, does that make it overall better? Not really, you still have to deal with grid inefficiencies, and maintenance, and well, you still have to deal with installations, so the cost isn’t that significant at the end of the day.
Solar is one of very few renewable energy sources that you can actually locally build and maintain on a small scale, no sense in removing that utility from it, that’s part of the reason it’s so popular.
Transformers, power lines, roads, trucks, and maintenance teams to move from large scale plants to houses also doesn’t grow on trees, but if maintenance in remote places doesn’t happen it can burn a lot of them.
Sometimes large scale plants make sense, but as the back up too microgeneration where the costs of infrastructure to move from unpopulated to populus areas make sense.
I am also a fan of less inverted power in microgeneration though. More and more of power usage is DC anyways. The need to convert to AC as much IMHO, but that is my far more radical take
microgeneration purely in DC only really makes sense in stuff like campers and RV’s where you’re going to be using primarily nearby, low power consumption devices.
AC is still better, plus modern switching technology while still fairly expensive, is considerably more efficient now. If you’re doing AC you also get a number of other benefits, notably, literally every existing appliance and device uses and works with AC voltages, the entire standard around electricity and home wiring is based on AC mains, all of the accessible hardware is also produced for AC mains, not that you can’t use it for something else, it’s just not intended for that.
Certain appliances will use induction motors, and similar other tech (clocks for example, often use the frequency of the power grid to keep time) based directly on the AC sinewave. You could still run them on DC, it’s just significantly sillier. Plus transmission efficiency is a BIG loss in DC (even now with modern solid state switching components, it’s still just, not ideal), granted thats less of a problem on a micro grid scale, it’s still a concern and potential restriction, nothing beats the simplicity and reliability of a simple wire wound iron core transformer. There are a handful of other technical benefits, and drawbacks as well, but fairly minor.
Having a dedicated DC supply side might be nice for a home environment, but the question is what do you standardize on? DC/DC voltage conversion is fairly efficient as it is already. Converting from AC/DC is incredibly easy and not particularly inefficient at lower power consumption, it’s more of a problem with higher draw devices. But you can easily get around that by using a higher voltage to convert down from.
Agreed. I maybe a radical DC home evangelist but yeah AC has its place still and it being THE standard for home appliances is a good example of the powers of scale.
So far for my home usage I’m standardizing on 48vdc because that is the last multiple of 12 before you go above OSHAs low voltage regs.
From there I really want to standardize further on the power delivery spec, because I just love the idea of smart grid for my home. I can then have dispered batteries in my home for either the primary benefits of that device is portable but doesn’t always need to be (laptop, power tool batteries, little robot thing, car, etc) or as a way to reduce some crazy limited time power draw (like servers starting up, oven running for an hour a day, etc).
From there maybe just Microadapter for a few standard circuits so the outlets work the same.
These microinverters aren’t made of fairy dust. Doing this stuff at utility scale uses a lot less nasty minerals and chemicals.
a mix of both is good, there’s arguments for doing local co-generation. Where you essentially turn a community into it’s own power plant, and when you’re talking about things like micro inverters, the cost doesnt really change.
Is it more efficient to do it at a utility grid scale? Yes, does that make it overall better? Not really, you still have to deal with grid inefficiencies, and maintenance, and well, you still have to deal with installations, so the cost isn’t that significant at the end of the day.
Solar is one of very few renewable energy sources that you can actually locally build and maintain on a small scale, no sense in removing that utility from it, that’s part of the reason it’s so popular.
Transformers, power lines, roads, trucks, and maintenance teams to move from large scale plants to houses also doesn’t grow on trees, but if maintenance in remote places doesn’t happen it can burn a lot of them.
Sometimes large scale plants make sense, but as the back up too microgeneration where the costs of infrastructure to move from unpopulated to populus areas make sense.
I am also a fan of less inverted power in microgeneration though. More and more of power usage is DC anyways. The need to convert to AC as much IMHO, but that is my far more radical take
microgeneration purely in DC only really makes sense in stuff like campers and RV’s where you’re going to be using primarily nearby, low power consumption devices.
AC is still better, plus modern switching technology while still fairly expensive, is considerably more efficient now. If you’re doing AC you also get a number of other benefits, notably, literally every existing appliance and device uses and works with AC voltages, the entire standard around electricity and home wiring is based on AC mains, all of the accessible hardware is also produced for AC mains, not that you can’t use it for something else, it’s just not intended for that.
Certain appliances will use induction motors, and similar other tech (clocks for example, often use the frequency of the power grid to keep time) based directly on the AC sinewave. You could still run them on DC, it’s just significantly sillier. Plus transmission efficiency is a BIG loss in DC (even now with modern solid state switching components, it’s still just, not ideal), granted thats less of a problem on a micro grid scale, it’s still a concern and potential restriction, nothing beats the simplicity and reliability of a simple wire wound iron core transformer. There are a handful of other technical benefits, and drawbacks as well, but fairly minor.
Having a dedicated DC supply side might be nice for a home environment, but the question is what do you standardize on? DC/DC voltage conversion is fairly efficient as it is already. Converting from AC/DC is incredibly easy and not particularly inefficient at lower power consumption, it’s more of a problem with higher draw devices. But you can easily get around that by using a higher voltage to convert down from.
Agreed. I maybe a radical DC home evangelist but yeah AC has its place still and it being THE standard for home appliances is a good example of the powers of scale.
So far for my home usage I’m standardizing on 48vdc because that is the last multiple of 12 before you go above OSHAs low voltage regs.
From there I really want to standardize further on the power delivery spec, because I just love the idea of smart grid for my home. I can then have dispered batteries in my home for either the primary benefits of that device is portable but doesn’t always need to be (laptop, power tool batteries, little robot thing, car, etc) or as a way to reduce some crazy limited time power draw (like servers starting up, oven running for an hour a day, etc).
From there maybe just Microadapter for a few standard circuits so the outlets work the same.