Renters get to join in on the solar boom
May 5, 2024 11:22 PM Subscribe
On a patch of earth big as a Bunnings car park, renters get to join in on the solar boom. A five-hour drive from Sydney, a community garden of sorts has sprouted. But instead of sharing tomatoes or lettuce, "gardeners" harvest solar energy. And it's already a hit with people otherwise excluded from the rooftop solar boom.
Grong Grong! I once made a 100km round-trip detour on the trip home from the Riverina to Canberra just to photograph its sign (maybe the one in that article, or whichever one was standing in 2000). Because hey, Grong Grong.
Excellent to see that it now has such a worthy claim to fame beyond its highly amusing name.
posted by rory at 3:09 AM on May 6 [2 favorites]
Excellent to see that it now has such a worthy claim to fame beyond its highly amusing name.
posted by rory at 3:09 AM on May 6 [2 favorites]
Here in Ca this middle class renter is getting walloped by the monthly electric bill, but can’t take advantage of the (now meager) incentives to add solar and battery storage.
I’d jump like a joey after a butterfly at an opportunity like this.
posted by notyou at 6:49 AM on May 6
I’d jump like a joey after a butterfly at an opportunity like this.
posted by notyou at 6:49 AM on May 6
If folks in the US want to try something like this out, look up "community solar." This model has been going strong here for a decade.
posted by rossmeissl at 7:47 AM on May 6 [5 favorites]
posted by rossmeissl at 7:47 AM on May 6 [5 favorites]
Yeah, the US version of this is community solar. It hasn't worked well in California, apparently because of bad regulatory decisions. But then we just destroyed the incentives for homeowner rooftop solar too so now it's all a mess. Also California is unfortunately producing more solar than we can use or store. It is a time of flux. (Part of the answer is more pumped hydro storage but no one wants to build new dams.)
Rooftop solar makes sense because it is free real estate. But when I put 11kW of panels on my west-facing roof I kept thinking about how those same panels would generate 40% more power if I'd put them in perfect alignment somewhere 200 miles south of my house. It's all grid-tied anyway, what do I care where the panels are? For that matter why should I own individual panels at all, why not just invest in a large more efficient solar generation company?
I keep hoping that microgrids or own-house power were more practical. The consumer solution for that now is a battery in your house and timing things like EV charging or clothes-washing for when you have excess solar. But in California under the NEM 2 regulations there's been no economic incentive to do that. And home batteries are expensive and don't work great, in particular you can't really store enough power to survive the 3 day power outages PG&E regularly saddles on us. NEM 3 has changed some of that, encouraging batteries, but it's been such a disaster (new installs are 1/5th of what they were before).
posted by Nelson at 8:14 AM on May 6 [6 favorites]
Rooftop solar makes sense because it is free real estate. But when I put 11kW of panels on my west-facing roof I kept thinking about how those same panels would generate 40% more power if I'd put them in perfect alignment somewhere 200 miles south of my house. It's all grid-tied anyway, what do I care where the panels are? For that matter why should I own individual panels at all, why not just invest in a large more efficient solar generation company?
I keep hoping that microgrids or own-house power were more practical. The consumer solution for that now is a battery in your house and timing things like EV charging or clothes-washing for when you have excess solar. But in California under the NEM 2 regulations there's been no economic incentive to do that. And home batteries are expensive and don't work great, in particular you can't really store enough power to survive the 3 day power outages PG&E regularly saddles on us. NEM 3 has changed some of that, encouraging batteries, but it's been such a disaster (new installs are 1/5th of what they were before).
posted by Nelson at 8:14 AM on May 6 [6 favorites]
My experience matches Nelson. I have some pretty trees to my immediate west that are costing me $2/day I guess. Instead of 25 370W panels with several holes in my roof I would much rather had the utility rack 12 commercial panels 50 miles away up in the solar hills.
posted by torokunai at 8:47 AM on May 6 [1 favorite]
posted by torokunai at 8:47 AM on May 6 [1 favorite]
And yeah, if I want to let the utility do the solar expansion, I get to pay for it outright with no return other than the contentedness of doing the right thing for Mother Earth, which.. Ugh. And yeah, my roof isn't a great candidate for solar to begin with, above and beyond not wanting to put new holes in a very expensive aluminum roofing product that still looks as good as the day it was installed 15 years later, but between a north/south ridgeline and a gigantic old elm tree to the east that would shade most of the morning's sun, my house isn't a great candidate. Looks like community solar is hung up in state legislation here, on the other hand.
posted by Kyol at 8:54 AM on May 6 [1 favorite]
posted by Kyol at 8:54 AM on May 6 [1 favorite]
For those of us who technically own our homes (or, you know, the credit union owns our house and we pay them a mortgage) but can't afford the up front cost of a solar installation, residents of Georgia, USA are piloting a new type of solar leasing program that came out of the Inflation Reduction Act. We are part of the first round of Georgia BRIGHT, and so far it's pretty amazing.
posted by hydropsyche at 4:57 PM on May 6 [2 favorites]
posted by hydropsyche at 4:57 PM on May 6 [2 favorites]
I think this scheme is great, ignoring my reservations that the energy retailers will find some way to hobble it lest someone get something as critical as electricity without paying them on the way. When retail energy privatisation was being touted way back when, I knew it would increase costs despite the lies of governments and (like so, so many others) I was right. Worse than that, there is almost no incentive to install rooftop solar now because the feed-in tariffs are so low that you won't get the cost back within a reasonably predictable lifespan of the system. I did the exercise about year ago and it would take around 20-25 years to get back the cost of a solar/battery system based on current tariffs. There's very little value in installing new solar without a battery because, even with one of the highest peak solar times in the country, the difference between feed-in tariffs and consumption tariffs is too high to make them feasible financially. As the cost of electricity gets steadily higher and higher, this will change, of course, but I'm not quite ready to bet on politicians continuing to refuse to do anything about the cost of electricity just yet.
I do think schemes like this could be a big part of the future for electricity, much more so if they can include storage into the equation. As always, it's small towns at the forefront of 'doing community'.
posted by dg at 9:27 PM on May 6
I do think schemes like this could be a big part of the future for electricity, much more so if they can include storage into the equation. As always, it's small towns at the forefront of 'doing community'.
posted by dg at 9:27 PM on May 6
Getting in before NEM updates meant my payback cycle was estimated to be around 9 years at the time of install, and I think it’s actually doing a bit better than forecast. One of the best things I did to my house; paying a $11 utility bill (all taxes and “non-bypassable” interconnect fees) is pretty great.
The NEM update process sucks; they’re obliterating solar.
posted by aramaic at 9:44 PM on May 6 [1 favorite]
The NEM update process sucks; they’re obliterating solar.
posted by aramaic at 9:44 PM on May 6 [1 favorite]
I'm a bit weirded out by the shadows cast by the panels in the pictures and video accompanying the article. All the shadows seem to be on the side that the panels are tilted towards so I don't understand what the tracking system is doing.
when I put 11kW of panels on my west-facing roof I kept thinking about how those same panels would generate 40% more power if I'd put them in perfect alignment somewhere 200 miles south of my house.
Maybe they would, but then they wouldn't be such a good match to peak demand, which happens in the afternoon when people figure out that their houses are hot now and turn on all their aircons.
There's some interesting work being done on using bifacial panels mounted vertically, forming walls that run north to south so that their peak output happens earlier in the morning and again later in the afternoon. This nicely complements the noon peak output from rooftop solar, most of which is tilted toward the equator for maximum overall energy transfer.
Walls made of solar panels can usefully double as fences in a lot of circumstances as well, so they take up very little land area. And bifacial panels mounted this way still provide quite surprising amounts of output even when the sun is directly overhead, capturing scattered light from the sky and the ground nearby.
The wholesale price of power dips noticeably during the noon solar peak, so additional vertical bifacials might be a better investment for this kind of community-scale grid-tied solar farm than single-axis mechanical trackers.
posted by flabdablet at 11:12 PM on May 6
when I put 11kW of panels on my west-facing roof I kept thinking about how those same panels would generate 40% more power if I'd put them in perfect alignment somewhere 200 miles south of my house.
Maybe they would, but then they wouldn't be such a good match to peak demand, which happens in the afternoon when people figure out that their houses are hot now and turn on all their aircons.
There's some interesting work being done on using bifacial panels mounted vertically, forming walls that run north to south so that their peak output happens earlier in the morning and again later in the afternoon. This nicely complements the noon peak output from rooftop solar, most of which is tilted toward the equator for maximum overall energy transfer.
Walls made of solar panels can usefully double as fences in a lot of circumstances as well, so they take up very little land area. And bifacial panels mounted this way still provide quite surprising amounts of output even when the sun is directly overhead, capturing scattered light from the sky and the ground nearby.
The wholesale price of power dips noticeably during the noon solar peak, so additional vertical bifacials might be a better investment for this kind of community-scale grid-tied solar farm than single-axis mechanical trackers.
posted by flabdablet at 11:12 PM on May 6
This reminds me of how early Danish efforts on wind energy required local ownership of wind turbines, and also limited your share to a given annual output. One o the benefits of that model was to ensure those people profiting from wind energy were also living close to them and sharing in the perceived downside. This doesn't have that, but still a good model for investment and encouraging buy in from other than corporations. There are several models of community ownership of renewables of course.
One key thing that the article doesn't seem to mention, small rooftop solar typically costs about 50% more than large scale solar farms in terms of capital investment per installed kW (I don't have Oz specific data but that's a general rule of thumb). So going with this approach makes the economics considerably better, I suspect this helps to mitigate the higher costs of finding a large number of small investors rather than seeking a few large investors. It may well mean plots on large solar farm are competitive with small rooftop installations.
posted by biffa at 7:01 AM on May 7
One key thing that the article doesn't seem to mention, small rooftop solar typically costs about 50% more than large scale solar farms in terms of capital investment per installed kW (I don't have Oz specific data but that's a general rule of thumb). So going with this approach makes the economics considerably better, I suspect this helps to mitigate the higher costs of finding a large number of small investors rather than seeking a few large investors. It may well mean plots on large solar farm are competitive with small rooftop installations.
posted by biffa at 7:01 AM on May 7
On the storage / load shifting question, good big article today: Giant Batteries Are Transforming the Way the U.S. Uses Electricity. A particularly interesting comparison between California and Texas, where different policies have resulted in different buildouts and usage of battery storage.
posted by Nelson at 8:39 AM on May 7
posted by Nelson at 8:39 AM on May 7
going with this approach makes the economics considerably better
Power drawn from rooftop solar in Australia currently costs well under 5c/kWh over an installation's expected service life, while juice bought from the grid retails for well over 30c/kWh in most places. The main issue for solar PV here isn't so much raw economics as matching time of peak production to time of peak demand, and I expect to see that improve over the next decade now that we have a government that isn't overtly dedicated to suppressing EVs at any cost.
posted by flabdablet at 9:10 AM on May 7
Power drawn from rooftop solar in Australia currently costs well under 5c/kWh over an installation's expected service life, while juice bought from the grid retails for well over 30c/kWh in most places. The main issue for solar PV here isn't so much raw economics as matching time of peak production to time of peak demand, and I expect to see that improve over the next decade now that we have a government that isn't overtly dedicated to suppressing EVs at any cost.
posted by flabdablet at 9:10 AM on May 7
Sorry, I didn't think that through. So the wholesale cost is likely better for the large farm, but they're not getting electricity wholesale of course.
Can I also say that the page set up for that article is horrible. It was fine on mobile but on desktop screen it is like an attack on my eyes.
posted by biffa at 3:45 AM on May 8 [1 favorite]
Can I also say that the page set up for that article is horrible. It was fine on mobile but on desktop screen it is like an attack on my eyes.
posted by biffa at 3:45 AM on May 8 [1 favorite]
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