A Solar Firm's Plan to Build Off-Grid Neighborhoods in California – Slashdot

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The solution is to decouple generation from distribution. The same corporation should not be invested in both. Ideally, the state should maintain the distribution network. Let the market compete on generation. Toll roads are a bad idea, so are toll mains.
If a government utility connector existed, there’d be no argument about the cost of running services to everywhere, and we’d not be forced to over pay the utility providers to pay lip service to rural customers
How could that possibly work? Just because I drag my trailer home 40 miles into the Arizona desert and take the wheels off, suddenly the taxpayer is on the hook to pay $20M or whatever it costs to run power lines there?
Just because one pays taxes does not mean you get all services for no additional charge. For example, in many areas, you can get charged for an EMS response.
Capitalism isn’t good at keeping costs down. Look at what is happening in the UK right now.
Capitalists decided that it wasn’t worth keeping the UK’s last big gas storage facility open, so there was no way to store gas in the summer when it was cheap.
On top of that, although the price of extracting gas has not increased, the market rate has due to supplies from Russia dwindling. They could sell it to consumer at the old price and still be profitable, but of course they are going to charge market rate.
Some co
Yeah, are you trying to see just how many ways you can be wrong about energy ? Over the years I have watched you advocate for every stupid idea that has brought us to this idiocy.
Europe is going to freeze this winter because they went green.
CA Bans the sale of gas powered cars only to find out, it’s grid can’t actually deal with the electric cars it has.
As a state they have one viable choice, keep their nukes on and build new ones fast. Actually at this point they probably can’t build Nukes fast enough as t
That’s got it’s points, but I’m not sure you should really trust it. Or at least if you do that, don’t make the distribution network required to buy from anyone who wants to sell to them.
The distribution network is sensitive to the site and timing of sources of power. Demand isn’t constant, and power available needs to meet demand. So you’ve got to have a large enough ballast, of one sort or another, to handle the swings of demand. One way to do that is the have generators that you can ramp up quickly.
Toll roads are a bad idea
False [planetizen.com].
Wrong. [archive.org]
Incorrect. [archive.org]
Debunked. [sfgate.com]
I have more proof. Before I spend my time to post it, what proof do you have that tolls are a bad idea?
It really ends up more as an urban vs suburban/rural debate rather than socio-economic. Sure, there is overlap, but that is almost secondary. The core need is to have distributed energy solutions, co-located with consumption wherever possible. When you look at cities that cannot self-generate or generate on their immediate periphery then obviously solar doesn’t make sense.
But, for cities things like district heating/cooling with co-generation might make sense. Let them import during the day and export
The grid is valuable, but there are places it doesn’t go. The more people move there, the more valuable a grid interconnection becomes, so the more likely it is to happen. Flip side, if not that many people are moving there, a grid interconnection isn’t going to happen anyway.
QED, this isn’t going to change much. Everybody wants the stability you get from a grid connection. Worries about sun not shining and wind not blowing are exaggerated, but there are times when these things are true locally.
Places the grid doesn’t go? Seriously? Last I checked there was a grand total of 50K people inside the U.S. without electricity.. but they aren’t U.S. citizens they’re on “indian” reservation and part of “indian” nation. (I’ll stop using “indian” when the Bureau of Indian Affairs changes name; yes they should)
Let’s face it, essentially 100 percent of USA has electricity.

Let’s face it, essentially 100 percent of USA has electricity.
If you measure by where the population is, sure. But people live where services are, and services are brought to where people live.
There’s a whole bunch of the USA where not many people live, where there’s no grid. Some of those people don’t respond to things like the census.
Don’t we refer to those people literally as “living off the grid?”

You’re making up something you hope was true, but it isn’t.
You don’t know what you’re talking about, at all. Period. Not even a little. There are absolutely lots of people in the US who have no power connections. They are dispersed across vast areas, but many of them are within sight of power lines, just not near enough that they can afford interconnection. If you’re ignorant of their existence, that’s perfect, it’s exactly what they want.
Exactly. Letting people have their own solar is bad.
People should not be allowed to:
generate their own solar power – the poor can’t afford solar
own a car – the poor can’t afford EV
own a bike – the poor can’t afford a bike and safety gear
own roller skates – the poor can’t afford safety gear
own a home – the poor can’t afford a home
own a dog or other animal – the poor can’t afford an animal
own a computer – the poor can’t afford a computer
have internet or WiFi – the poo can’t afford monthly bills
cook their own
Sadly nowadays, I can’t tell if comments like yours are sarcasm or genuinely idiotic. I’ll bet at least a double-digit percent of people will say “right on!” to what you’re saying.
Welcome to the world of Poe’s Law [wikipedia.org].
The thing is, he’s got a point. It’s not a strong point, but it’s a valid one. Each “way of being independent in my choices” is a thing that weakens to social connection. This really *is* a true statement. That the ideal of “being independent” is an idiotic idea fostered by Hollywood than never existed and has never been able to exist (except for really short periods of time) is not normally considered.
But it’s also true that the opposite extreme isn’t very desirable.
Where the ideal middle ground is dep

That the ideal of “being independent” is an idiotic idea fostered by Hollywood than never existed and has never been able to exist (except for really short periods of time) is not normally considered.
Um what? So Pioneers were the collectivist type? You don’t get to just deny facts you wish weren’t true. The US was very isolationist for most of its history. And during the robber baron era (late 19th century) the US was extremely independent. This idea has been core to the US culture since before its founding. Did you not get taught any of this in school? If so, ask for your money back because you were ripped off.

By letting people have their own stuff we are just highlighting that poor people don’t have that stuff and make them feel bad. This bad feeling stuff must stop at all costs! Everyone should have exactly the same stuff. Issued by the government of course.
I know you’re joking but there’s a legitimate threat here in a way that isn’t comparable to EVs or roller skates.
If all the rich people get their own, completely offgrid solar power, they’ll be less and less interested in maintaining any sort of public infrastructure. Why should my tax dollars go to support the electricity grid? I don’t even use it! Let’s cut investment by 10% every year from now on.
You can see the disaster that is the US public transport and other services that work properly in other count
What are you retarded or something? Don’t answer that, we know the answer. Anyway, you don’t seem to know how solar works. If everyone has solar, solar panels will extremely dirt cheap .. cheap to the point where discard solar panels would be a problem like plastic bags are.. and so will excess power. You know how soup kitchens exist, well the same can exist for solar. We can donate an excess portion to a grid or to charge up battery packs. I am sure businesses would love to do that. Unlike donations of foo

What are you retarded or something? Don’t answer that, we know the answer. Anyway, you don’t seem to know how solar works. If everyone has solar, solar panels will extremely dirt cheap .. cheap to the point where discard solar panels would be a problem like plastic bags are..
Solar panels are already dirt cheap. What costs all the money is everything else.
It becomes very tempting to take away electricity from the poor
Come on, how does this steal from the poor? We’ll always need primary grid electricity for cities, way too many people in apartments and such.
The hint is in the name, micro services… it serves just a small number of people that can pay extra for bespoke energy that is primarily about it being renewable vs. even necessarily more reliable (though this company seems to think it will be more reliable). I think a variety of small plants like this
Because if the rich go away and do their own thing, the rest of us is stuck with mediocre service that we can’t effectively complain about. We’re not lawyers and we can’t afford them, and this is the US. You get something from government and corporations only if you somehow manage to navigate the byzantine labyrinth that is the legal system.
If a lawyer is stuck with crappy service, he has the means to not only complain about it but actually use the law to spank the service provider left and right, or at lea
Remember, it might be bespoke, but those arguing for it are actually saying that, at least in some cases, it might actually be cheaper than grid power.
You put a smartly obtained solar energy system up against a for profit electricity company who is mired in debt from bad management and practices…
How can the next Einstein emerge when morons like you, in the interest of “fairness,” will see to it that nobody has any electricity? But forget that, you don’t think it is evil to tell people they can’t own a goddamn solar panel? What the hell is wrong with you? What next? Take away cell phones and computers? Fuck off; talk about a recipe for war you’ll need a Taliban to enforce that. You’ll need a North Korea or East Germany level budget for your secret police/informant network. I’m not giving up solar pa
Also, this isn’t North Korea, where people are too cowardly to fight their oppressors.
If you think it has something to do with “cowardly”, you are an idiot and insulting moron.
It already isn’t a “public service”. You get charged money for it.
Just because something costs money it doesn’t stop being a public service. Public service doesn’t mean that it’s free but that it’s offered to everyone, publicly, and (usually, I know it ain’t always the case) at the same conditions.
“You can’t have a modern civilization that abandons a significant portion of its population to poverty and despair.:”
There are more job opening than ever right now; you seem to be of a mindset that the poor need hand-outs. How about they get a job.
A modern civilization has people that work for a living and pay their electric bills. Letting people be brainwashed into thinking they are part of some pitiful group that needs a handout is bad.
The poor don’t need handouts but they need to have an equal chance to get somewhere. If you create a two-tiered power grid with the rich having access to perfect power and the poor dealing with rolling blackouts, you abandon the idea that they can even possibly have the same chance to get anywhere.
The rich and the poor get the same grid. Yes. Only that the rich also have access to alternatives.
This in turn means that if (ok, when) the “general” grid deteriorates to the point where it becomes unusable, the rich won’t give a fuck anymore. Now, they sure do. And since they know the law and the relevant people, they get a working power grid. Once they have their own independent power grid, they will no longer give a fuck about the general one and won’t care if it deteriorates. They have disconnected them
Yeah, this is a PR stunt.
It becomes obvious when you understand how difficult it is to build in California between the NIMBYs, community extortionists/activists (just another kind of NIMBY really) and environmental groups
Yes, it can be very difficult to build anything in California. Now figure on the “micro” part, say a single gated community. The people there are relatively rich, and they already pay relatively large amounts to keep the gated community exclusive. A service mows all the lawns there, keeps the sidewalks clean, the streets clear, etc…
They’ve been plagued with power outages recently. They’re a newer community, so aren’t piped for natural gas. So no natural gas generators.
So somebody sells them the conce
Don’t worry about it. It’s never going to be enough to power your home and charge your EV.

It becomes very tempting to take away electricity from the poor. If we all have our own personal electricity instead of it being a public service then we can leave the bottom half (or more) in the dark.
This isn’t about forcing every home to have their own generation/storage solution and those that can’t afford it go without. This is about a purpose built, independent, isolated electrical grid. Think of it as an electrical HOA.
Living in an existing community that has an HOA doesn’t deny services to low income homeowners, even though most HOAs are for new communities and therefore are probably in the higher priced market. In the past, communities used to have all sorts of shared services: swimming pools
Abandon… these potential homeowners will be going in knowing the power deal, it will be more like an HOA but with its own power generation, there will be rules about usage ie. No bitcoin farming or industrial style equipment running, and no chance to sell the power generation facilities off. And let’s not forget it’s California… there’s plenty of people with money to spend there.
If everyone behaved themselves, it could most definitely work.
The summary says that they expect their grids to have 30 minutes or less of outages per year.
To me as a European that sounds really bad. But I see that for California it’s not terrible.
I think the problems with electricity supply go much deeper in the US.
>”It becomes very tempting to take away electricity from the poor. If we all have our own personal electricity instead of it being a public service then we can leave the bottom half (or more) in the dark.”
It doesn’t have to be a zero-sum game.
Even in areas where one is REQUIRED to be connected to the public grid, I assume that doesn’t exclude connection also to another grid. Sure, it does mean you will still get a zero KW/h bill that has some dollars on it for maintenance, but that shouldn’t bother most
“it’s only a matter of time before a demagogue notices that a substantial portion of the population is being left out of civilization and uses them against the rest of us.”
You have it backwards of course, but the basic idea is correct. It’s thinly dispersed rural populations that get run over by urban based armies. See Australian Aborigines, American Indians, Zulus, Gauls vs Rome.
The process of demonizing rural people is already underway. See https://www.snopes.com/fact-ch… [snopes.com]
And of course there was Hillary’
LA is seizing tiny homes from the homeless [latimes.com]
Looks to be less about solar power and more about the continued war LA and the LAPD wages against homeless camps.
Wow, when you mischaracterize the other side they sure do seem evil! You should mention that they’re all satanic pedophiles too.
It sucks. Because we already have gated communities in the education department. Anyone who can afford it already sends their kids to private schools. The poor are left with the underfunded dregs.
Yeah, our schools were the pinnacle of education until the dreaded democraps closed them for their fake pandemic…
I really don’t care who builds them, but they should be owned as a cooperative and not by a for-profit entity. It’s the only way to actually make it a solution to a problem rather than just a different problem.
A cooperative is just one kind of for-profit corporation. If this can’t be profitable then it can’t be sustainable. Well, maybe it can be sustainable without making a profit but that’s a very fine line. If it costs money then it’s likely to cost more than just buying electricity from some utility that has economy of scale on it’s side, and if it makes money then everyone else would likely be doing it in short order with economy of scale to make small time cooperatives look bad.
How is a for-profit entity
A cooperative is just one kind of for-profit corporation.
Not in this context.
I’ve lived in a number of areas in the USA, and have generally found that the cooperative utilities have the best customer customer service and very reasonable rates.
While they do “make a profit” in most cases, what happens is that after a set period, they pay back the excess to the customer/owners. This is generally a negligible amount.
it can’t be at the expense of developers being able to sell homes without reliable electricity.
As long as they disclose this fact to their buyers, why not? Why should it be illegal to live off-grid [primalsurvivor.net]?
First, a press release is “news for nerds”?
Second, I’ll believe solar power with storage is a viable business plan when I see it making a profit. So many have tried this and failed that it is difficult to believe it is going to work this time. In the fine summary it is pointed out this is possible in part because of government subsidies. Rarely does a government subsidized business make a profit. If this was such a great idea with a high probability of success then private investors would be standing in line to give them money.
Third, why make a big deal about the difficulties of selling electricity from residential rooftop solar onto the grid? If the solar power system is properly engineered then it should not need to be able to sell electricity to the grid to be viable. Being low in cost and meeting a majority of the electrical needs for the residence should mean it is a win without needing to feed electricity to the grid.
Fourth, I can see why a city government would be reluctant to allow homes inside the city to go without a connection to the grid. If there is a failure in the solar power system to meet the electrical needs of the family inside then it would be a burden on the city to keep them safe. If the family leaves the home because of the solar power problems then the city is left with a house that might be difficult to sell because it has no reliable electrical service.
Rooftop solar PV and batteries may have made big improvements on cost and reliability lately but it is still a long way from something that can be relied upon for low cost electricity when and where it is needed. Solar PV on the grid is proving to be a bad idea over and over. Yet people keep trying it over and over. I’m reminded of a joke about the definition of insanity.
I’m all good with people trying to prove solar PV with storage a viable alternative to electricity from fossil fuels. I have a problem when I’m seeing my tax money spent on this insanity. You want to prove this works? Fine, bet your own money on that horse, just don’t bet mine.
It would be nice to see the government get out of the energy business but I know that’s not going to happen. Best we can do is minimize it. Large civil projects are going to need government involvement since it involves things like interstate electrical grids. Even small projects like a “micro-grid” is going to need government involvement because we can’t have a section of a city in the dark because someone missed some important detail in the engineering. What we can certainly do without is government money being gambled on someone’s Utopian “green” energy idea.

First, a press release is “news for nerds”?
Hey it gives us something to complain about or pick apart.
Slashdot would have a lot fewer stories if it weren’t for press releases. All those whiz-bang new battery tech posts? They’re all press releases (mostly from university PR groups). Most of Intel / Apple / Microsoft / Google / Tesla stories? They’re based on thinly-disguised press releases.

If there is a failure in the solar power system to meet the electrical needs of the family inside then it would be a burden on the city to keep them safe.
And yet our city says nothing when the investor-owned utility drops entire neighborhoods for a week following a windstorm.
I live in a very sunny place. My rooftop solar + enough batteries to be effectively off grid is frightfully expansive and even with the 26% tax credit still has a pay off of over 13 years. That assumes it doesn’t break or need repairs and the panels don’t degrade too fast and rates stay the same or go up and blah blah blah. Without the tax credit, uhm no, I don’t see myself doing it at all. The credit made it barely worth doing. And that 13 years is straight payoff and does not include the opportunity

You don’t have to be completely independent. Buy two panels with two microinvertors and plug them into a power socket – no battery. That way you will save 200 to 300 dollars a year in daytime lecce.
Do this and in many areas of the US it would take about a day before you got a knock on the door by authorities.
In other words it’s definitely worth doing, it’s just the initial capital outlay that is a problem for you.
Luckily there is a solution. Governments can borrow money cheaply and lend it to you, so you can buy a solar+storage system, and pay the loan back while still saving money on your energy bill.
Then after 13 years you would only have maintenance costs. Your energy would be free. Depending on your energy bill, it might be worth taking out a loan if you can borrow cheaply.
The only real problem is that so m
Batteries don’t last forever. At 13 years many would need replacement.
“Rooftop solar PV and batteries may have made big improvements on cost and reliability lately but it is still a long way from something that can be relied upon for low cost electricity when and where it is needed”
I beg to differ, been off-grid 18 years and after a significant upgrade 5 years ago when PV became really cheap our power is cheaper and more reliable than the grid (yes, including system cost and assuming borrowed money at home loan interest rates). We don’t skimp, aircon, dishwasher etc are non-n
I’ll emphasize my point on where it is needed. You didn’t mention where on Earth you found solar power working for you is but I suspect it must be someplace that gets little rain and even less snow. The world is a big place and people live in places that get cold and cloudy, even places that get snow once in a while. Just California is a big place, with enough variation in climate that we could see solar power system work in the south but fail in the north.
I’m seeing solar power projects getting governme

Rarely does a government subsidized business make a profit.
Well that’s just not true. Maybe consider the entire oil industry and most of the agricultural industries in this country for a start.

Every aspect of solar is currently being drowned in regulation and unjustifiable technical requirements.
Unjustifiable? I have my doubts.
Because of the popularity of rooftop solar to the grid we are seeing utilities threaten to shut down the grid if they don’t have some kind of veto authority on accepting this power to their system. This is a burden on the utility and with new solar capacity added so quickly in some places they can’t keep up with the changes to the load on the grid. There’s now power coming on to the grid from homes while people are away at work and school so power is flowing in on places w
Ahhhh… we lose “Big Oil” only to gain “Big Photon”. Of course. Follow the money.
Ahhhh… we lose “Big Oil” only to gain “Big Photon”. Of course. Follow the money.
So, if we go down this route, we will be beholden to the Sun?
his agent
Second, By the same argument large parts of Texans would like freedom from regulations from Austin and strike out on their own, disconnecting their homes from the grid.
Third, … mm third,… oops I forgot.
“offer those residents electricity that was up to 20 percent cheaper”
Let’s take a quick look at that statement. Does it mean 20% savings? No. It simply promises no more than that. You might get 0% savings or anything in between. You could even pay more than those on the grid. The only promise is that you will never get more than 20% savings. It’s all up to Sunnova and their attorneys who write the contract you will sign.
And then you have panels on your roof and batteries in your garage, but, who do they bel
As a Canadian, I see public utilities as a way to buy things in bulk that the individual consumer can’t get a good deal on. Roads, water, garbage collection and medical care usually fall into this category. As the costs of small solar and wind installations drop, it’s becoming possible for small installations to compete with the grid.
Public utilities are like any other large organization of humans. After an initial period of tight focus on the purpose for which the organization was formed (in this case g
2) The grid is designed to provide power to as many people as possible, with sufficient generators and capacity to deal with generation issues. This effectively puts neighborhoods entirely on their own; if there’s a problem, you’re out with no backups. Brown outs on t
This is a most excellent idea and should be supported by everyone. If it works, it will be a demonstration for the skeptical that a real community can generate all the power it needs from the wind and the sun.
Its exactly what should have been done already, before marching whole countries off into the Net Zero swamp. Before trying to do it to the whole country, do it on a small scale and make sure it works.
One hopes that the entire green agenda will be implemented. That is, no connections to the electrici
“During a grid outage, the microgrid would island from the grid and the community would rely on its on-site power. The design allows the microgrid to operate independently for a minimum of 300 hours.
About 82% of the community’s power would come from the microgrid with the remainder coming from the grid. The microgrid would cost about $16,000 to $20,000 per home, Sunnova said in the Sept. 1 filing before the California Public Utilities Commission.”
I can tell exactly how this works … they use massive
PS. I should say a big solar farm and a big grid energy storage site. Nearly all the power generated will be sold, nearly all the income for the battery will be created by providing peaking for the normal grid.
In the rare California winter storm they will slurping off the grid pipe same as everyone else, so the microgrid solves nothing … the grid and generation has to be scaled for worst case and they do fuck all for worst case.
Very interesting point.
Isn’t it curious that the alleged goal of the green/renewable movement, net zero, does not have, anywhere, a single working demonstration site.
And that when one that purports to be that is proposed, an examination of the fine print shows that its no such thing. The way you describe this one working isn’t a community living on renewable energy at all.
And yet people in positions of power over policy are seriously proposing to spend billions or even trillions on taking whole countries t
If local generation is desirable, it seems like it would be better to go all the way down to the individual residence.
If scaling up is good, then a state sized grid seems like it would be better.
What advantage does being neighborhood sized give over the existing grid or existing rooftop solar?
Who exactly will maintain these systems? Are you really sure you’d rather rely on your HOA to do it, rather than a large diversified faceless regulated company?
Not really, at least for the US and other more developed countries.
The average carbon footprint of households living in the center of large, population-dense urban cities is about 50 percent below average, while households in distant suburbs are up to twice the average.
Suburban sprawl cancels carbon-footprint savings of dense urban cores [berkeley.edu]
Suburban living really is the absolute worst for carbon emissions [fastcompany.com]
The Suburban Wasteland: How the ‘Burbs Eviscerate the Environment [youtube.com]
Suburban sprawl significantly out greens massive cities. By far.
Who told you that? Because NYC is the Greenest City in America [archive.org].
Makes sense. It’s just like sim city where you realize late game you’ve messed up a bunch of early stuff so you just flatten 90% of your city and replace the whole thing with new zones and transport systems.
Just like that.
Although the most fun I had was taking my fully built city, setting the speed to max and going to lunch and a movie. That was the day I learned nuclear plants could explode and dropped little glowing bits all over the map you can’t build on. Without power my city has essentially collaps
Can you provide one of those numerous studies pertaining to RFI negatively affecting people’s physical health?
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