pull down to refresh
10 sats \ 5 replies \ @Undisciplined 14h \ parent \ on: Small plug-in solar panels gain traction - Regulation be damned tech
I believe those things are highly locality dependent, which means I need to look into how my locality treats them.
Back-feeding is generally a complicating variable for the grid operator which is why most utilities/regs forbid it without some kind of registration.
I assume these plug in devices, or at least the ones they're trying to make not require a permit, are designed to prevent back-feeding and just slow the rate of delivery.
These things are still fiscally unwise, and that's why solar relies heavily on subsidies.
An example from the video was $1600 to save 5-10% on the bill cost... let's assume 10% of a $250 bill... thats a 5.5 year recoup, assuming you otherwise would have let the $1600 melt by not putting it to work in another way like debt service, coin, or even a money market.
Will the panel last 5.5 years? how much time will you spend fucking with it to get that 10% payback? Once it does pay itself back, did you really make anything after depreciating the panels, how much longer to make an actual return given that?
The only real use-case for these panels is backup if your grid is unreliable, that requires another cost in a battery... and thats not saving you money, thats you paying a premium for reliability.
Hooking a solar/battery setup to a dedicated bitcoin space heater may offset some of the premium you're paying for having the backup/reliability, but there's no math that will ever make these an investment unto themselves.
reply
I’m not sure about now but I’ve lived places where I was at least under the impression that you could sell power back to the grid without permission.
I never looked into it in depth though.
Also, I live somewhere now with peak-pricing in the afternoons, which is when we use the ac most, so it might knock of a bigger chunk of the bill.
reply
It's certainly possible and available in some areas, but rare. Mesh and 4G enabled meters are a step in that direction, but the head-end/SCADA in most places would still buckle if it were to happen at scale. At my last fiat job with a big utility we couldn't even get permitted stuff connected in a timely manner, massive solar fields sitting unproductive for years (thanks government subsidies!)
Back-feeding at peak rates would certainly help accelerate amortized recoup of gear, but if you ran the numbers I have no doubt you'd find it would still be a cost, or a risky to break-even investment at best.
There's trillions of dollars chasing any whiff of energy arb that may exist, if you can plug in a panel to arb it, so can industrial scale solar. The real arb is going off-grid completely, but that's still a risky to break-even investment given the duration over which you'd have to amortize it.
reply
That’s generally my perspective too. If Walmart’s roof isn’t covered in solar panels, it’s probably not a great financial decision.
However, it becomes a fairly low cost backup power option under the right conditions.
reply
backup power option
Yep, money is where my mouth is on this one. Love my solar generator, cost on batteries and panels has come down so much it's no-brainer insurance where I live... even though I'll really get sick looking at how much it cost me in Bitcoin terms several years from now.
reply