Simple calculation. If you pack solar panels on the giant flat roofs of shopping malls (and maybe add them as shade covers on the giant parking places AND add some big storage batteries, you can offer FREE charging for all EVs, cover most of the power usage of the complete shopping mall and on good days even sell electricity to the grid. Same for airports. What's not to like? cc @isotopp
@isotopp Technisch bald kein Problem das als Folie a la Dachpappe anzubieten. Selbst wenn Wirkungsgrad vergleichsweise 10-20% niedriger. Jede Zelle hilft.
Jan ich weiß nicht, ob dir das aufgefallen ist, aber ein Stromnetz muss balanciert werden. Man kann nicht einfach unendlich Strom einspeisen.
Im benachbarten OÖ ist in einigen Dörfern sprichwörtlich das gesamte Stromnetz ausgefallen, weil einige fleißige PV Betreiber sich nicht an ihre vereinbarte maximale Einspeiseleistung gehalten haben, und das Dorfnetz überlastet haben.
@jwildeboer@isotopp
Tja, wie wir uns erinnern haben die großen Betriebssystemhersteller haben diesen komischen freien Kernel der ja nie was anderes als 386er und AT Platten ja auch mit offenen Armen in die große Familie der Betriebssysteme aufgenommen. Bill hat Eric zum Taufpaten seiner Kinder gemacht.
Ah, richtig, falsches Universum.
Back to reality: Da ist es üblicher entspannt aber leicht negativ auf Änderungen, die einem das Geschäftsmodell ruinieren können zu reagieren.
@jwildeboer@isotopp
Nach wie vor, wie viele Unternehmen kennst du, die mit Freude eine Änderung ihres Geschäftsmodells begrüßen? Insbesondere, wenn ihnen dieses über Jahrzehnte sichere Renditen in die Kassen gespült hat?
@jwildeboer@isotopp Aber bis sie das mussten, haben sie einige Zeit darauf bestanden, dass ein Fahnenträger vor diesen neumodischen Automobilen im Schritttempo voranschreitet.
Kann nur noch eine Frage von 50 bis 100 Jahren sein.
Naja, mit der niederländischen Salderingsregeling ist “keine Solarpaneele” ja schon fast strafbar dumm.
Meine Nachbarn haben in den letzten 4 Jahren nacheinander alle die Dächer voll gemacht, Ladepunkt installiert, Tesla 3 gekauft mit Subsidie und dieses Jahr Aircondition/Luft-Luft WP eingebaut mit Aardgasvrij Subsidie. Ich glaube nächstes Jahr sind Batterien dran, Ende 2024 läuft ja die Salderingsregeling aus
@isotopp Seit einem Jahr Diskussion in der Eigentümerversammlung vom 6 Parteienhaus ob ich mein 400 Wp Balkonkraftwerk am Balkon montieren darf. Weil es ja die Optik verschandelt. Und eventuell nicht sicher ist. Und ob ich denn auch eine offizielle Energiesteckdose vom Elektriker einbauen lasse.
@jwildeboer@isotopp Pf. Wie dürfen hier nicht.
Denkmalschutz. Sogar noch besser: Ensembleschutz der gesamten Siedlung.
Da geht gar nichts. Selbst der Sichtschutz beim Nachbarn (gut, richtig hässlich) wurde beanstandet...
@jwildeboer
Da bin ich schon auf unsere nächste Versammlung gespannt: Hab mal etwas rumgerechnet und mit sehr optimistischer Herangehensweise hätte unser Haus das Potential für knapp 70 Module. Wenn man euphorisch an die Sache rangeht geht es auf die 100 zu.
I think capital costs are what's holding that concept back.
Photovoltaics are less expensive than before, and so too batteries, but it is still a substantial up-front cost that needs to be amortized over the life of the investment.
I'm on your side. It's just very expensive. Some off-take agreements in the retail solar sector have paybacks measured in decades.
It will probably get better. Utility scale PV installations are now cheaper than continuing to run existing coal plants.
@jwildeboer@isotopp That's all well and good, but what about all the future generations that will be born, live, and die below the solar panel layer. Never seeing the sun with thier own eyes?
@isotopp@jwildeboer Und wir brauchen dringend günstige Batterien ohne Lithium.
Aber in der EU ist nicht einmal eine Fabrik für Sodium-Ion Batterien in Planung.
Aktuell gehe ich von ca. zwei Jahren aus, bis Sodium-Ion Batterien für lokale Speicher in größeren Mengen zu angemessenen Preisen verfügbar sind.
Und in der EU überlegt man, ob man für ein Lithium Vorkommen in Portugal einen Nationalpark umgräbt.
My point being: Don't see solar as a way to sell electricity, but as dog-fooding, as we software people say. Meaning to use things yourself first as a priority. I did the math. For most rural areas, with this approach, we can end up with effectively free electricity for the majority of the people, IF we accept a bit of change. Like switching off fridges during the night when we sleep. Fridges are quite good at surviving power outages fr up to 24 hours. Etc.
Solar, geothermic, batteries and heat pumps, combined with LED lighting and a few other things can really make electricity effectively free in rural areas. NOT for industry. But free electricity for the people using natural resources sounds quite convincing to me. Neighbourhoods owning the grid and adding some shared battery/hydro energy storage capacity. Simple. Can be done. Is already being done.
Putting on my flamewar vest for the "yes, but" crowd ;) I stand by my idea. Free energy for the people can be done. Without fossile fuels. And sure, the electricity providers will not like this approach. But it's not a pipe dream.
These are traditional Italian style roof coverings. They are also (low efficiency) solar panels. They have been installed at Pompeii to keep the look but also generate enough electricity. This is the future, IMHO. And it is already here. https://www.dyaqua.it/invisiblesolar/_en/index.php
@jwildeboer Wow! This could be a game-changer. I've never heard about dyaqua: sadly Italian media prefer to spend time covering "VIP" gross behaviors and soccer games.
Honestly I think integrating Solar in the roof of newly built buildings is a nobrainer. And combining it as shingles even more so.
Having done roofing in the US on flatbed roofs I think mounting Solar there makes more sense. Especially given that ACs are becoming increasingly important. And having AC + PV is a perfect fit.
I am not sure about the "free energy" part, but that is for bitcoin proof of stupidity by some groups.
If you do a optimized new house for solar, going integrated solar roof instead of traditional shingles might have advantages in material and workmanship. It has better resistance against wind and snow, has the disadvantages of hotter modules. That means slightly less efficiency.
If you do American style roofs (mostly bitumen which I saw in Ohio 20 years ago), which I have never seen in Germany that might be true.
The real bummer in a couple of areas of Germany is that your house needs to fit into the sorrounding, hence you you can not even do solar w/o mimicking old shingle styles (like in Regensburg)
Building in Germany has always been super expensive in comparison to rural US due to building code and style. Preference to build forever.
Yes, right now they are really expensive. But prices will come down. Radically. Soon. In max 5 years there will be no excuse to NOT use solar on any new roof construction. In 10 years it will also be competitive for replacements. We are getting there. Step by step. Patience is a superpower.
You want something more modern looking? German company Autarq has you covered (pun intended): https://www.autarq.com/en-de/solar-roof-tile/ They take high quality interlocking roof tiles, add solar in the same color and off you go.
@jwildeboer I already got a PV installation but only on one side of the roof. The other side of the roof couldn't take more weight. These look like a nice tile replacement for a future upgrade!
@jwildeboer They are also great for listed buildings and other places where you’re not allowed to add visible roof PV. Only downside I see is you tie your roofing to your PV, so you can’t exchange one without the other.
Places with difficult roofs can also add vertical PV to the sides of the building. The economies are so good, it’s even worth it to place panels facing north.
But for year-round autarky, you’d need to move towards the sunbelt or add local wind power.
@jwildeboer Totally! I wouldn’t even aim for full autarky, it’s just not very efficient. Empowering people (pun intended) to make and store their own electricity is also a great way to generate buy-in to other climate action efforts. They see it works and are part of the solution.
@jwildeboer Well no, it depends on so many different aspekts, efficency first, this is a isle solution. And you have to cover a roof only once in about 80-100 years, and covering is a hell of a work. But you need to refurbe the solar panels as far as I know every 15-20.
You may keep some buildings as historic examples, but the majority has to change the look.
You plan residential home roofs for 30 years too usually. At least that is what everyone in my environment is calculating on, having to redo the roof after 30 years (from grandparents to us)
25 year warranty on solar is normal nowadays, and that means they stay in certain spec. Afterwards they are degraded, but still produce.
Catastrophic damage (water, hail) is possible, as with regular roofs.
Bitumen roofs (common on commercial roofs) have a limited lifetime as well @RalphStark
@mwfc@jwildeboer Yes that are the planning nowadays, but thats not sustainable, I guess we need to get back to planning houses to stay for the next 100 years.
And I'm sure there won't be any bitumen roofs in the future.
Just to make it clear. We redid the clay tile roofs and planned for them for 30 years lifetime.
The houses are 60+, 40, and the newer ones in <30.
That is everything very permanent ;)
I think, at least for Germany, we will see less detached isolated housing in the future. Already the old houses are basicly worthless, especially calculated against retirement homes and other care in age. So most likely we talk single family home for a few rich.
@jwildeboer Lese ich es richtig: „100 square feet can generate 1 kilowatt-hour of electricity“. Umgerechnet wäre es also: 9.29 m² kann 1 kWh Strom erzeugen?
@jwildeboer
Bei denkmalgeschützten Gebäuden mag das ja Sinn machen. Aber privat wäre mir das ja egal, ob die Panel auf den Dachpfannen sind, oder das Dach selbst sind.. @echobit
@jwildeboer These are much, much less efficient than panels. This is a niche product. They point out that it’s ‘artisanal’, small batch, manual production.
@jwildeboer Electricity in summer won't be a problem. There will be plenty and overcoming the night is not a big problem. Electricity in winter when solar panels produce 15% of summer production at average and nothing at all on some days, and when other renewables are not powerful enough yet to cover the gap and when we don't have cheap ways to save energy from summer to winter is the real challenge.
@jwildeboer my house is new, very power efficient (passive, heat pump), basically neutral in yearly total, but it produces 1.2 MWh/m in summer when I need 0.5 and 0.2 MWh/m in winter when I need 1.2. And until we find a way to save the summer surpluses for winter, I'll heavily rely on fossil/nuclear energy in winter. The numbers on the national scale happen to be very similar. Of course, it's a lesser problem for countries around the equatorial.
@jwildeboer Not a rebuttal, but a note of caution. How much CO2 does it take to acquire raw materials, process and transort them, and to manufacture tech like solar PV? I worry that, with the best of intentions, these high-tech solutions may do little to help overall.
The real gains are made by low tech, local, mainly passive solutions—the number one being insulation. Another great one would be a global ban of cryptocurrency!
Side note: I'm getting solar PV installed. Today, in fact!
@jwildeboer I would love to buy a fridge that has 1-0 control input informing about surplus from PV. We already have this for wallboxes. I know I can use a smart socket. But that is not the same. I have to control it from somewhere and when I cut the power I lose the light in the fridge.
@mirek@jwildeboer seriously, why? If you don't open the fridge during the night, it doesn't have to run the compressor at all and new fridges have minimal standby consumption. If you wanna run it according to solar energy production during the day, you will get variability in temperature which is probably not the best for stuff stored in the fridge.
@mirek@jwildeboer interestingly enough, if you try to minimize night power consumption in a house with photovoltaic and batteries it will result in higher consumption from the grid because every inverter has a threshold under which it turns itself off because it's not efficient any more due to inner consumption. My inverter's threshold is around 200 W.
@sesivany our household consumption baseline is about 400 W. I have space for saving. Fridge is one of the big consumers. The compressor does not need to run in night. But it runs sometimes.
@jwildeboer@mirek how do batteries help with this? The batteries use DC and your household is on AC. So if you want to get power from the batteries there is an inventer involved and the inventer switches off when the household consumption is too low and DC->AC conversion is not efficient. So if our consumption during night is 210 W, we consume nothing from the grid, if it is 150 W, we consume 150 W from the grid.
@sesivany@mirek@jwildeboer this is something that actually surprised me - That there are no fridges out there with some thermal storage, allowing you to run compressor only from your PV or in household with 2-rate meters, only in times of low rate.
@jwildeboer for me that should be a default feature of a fridge - switch yourself off a night when anyway no one will open it. No need to impose it on people to think about to do it - just do it automatically :)
@jwildeboer Fridges are not designed for that kind of power outages and may not handle them well. BUT: modern ones will only need about 300 Wh to survive a day, which could easily be designed into them as a buffer accu. Not much bigger than a current small electric bike battery.
@ben@jwildeboer or better, recognize that the fridge serves a particularly important safety function and look for this energy savings elsewhere. There will always be more energy savings to have with better building envelope optimization than focusing on refrigerators, which do thankfully draw a lot less power for most people. (Currently monitoring my fridge power use with a meter and very aware of actual draw.)
If you unpack the driver out of a F250 truck (a perfect average US vehicle for transporting a single person), the driver uses certainly 10x less space than inside his truck wrapping.
So the 3x must be on the low, or an estimate for some communist places where people share cars or even use such crazy communist ideas like public transit.
@jwildeboer@isotopp or do like my local supermarket with solar panels on the roof - charge over double the rate people would pay at home. Maybe they need more panels ;-)
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