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points by johnea 3 days ago | 0 comments
Typical non-informed incorrect opinion.

The overwhelming majority of generation and storage is best deployed at the point of use.

Grid scale anything, is a massive inefficiency.

The only reason grid and city scale is so prevalent in public discourse is because this is the only electricity the utility is paid for, and they are very actively impeding any other solution.

In the US, there is a very large inventory of flat roof industrial buildings, in the industrial parks that are using huge amounts of electricity. Covering all of those roofs with solar (especially here in the west US) would prevent a tremendous amount of grid scale generation, and implementing storage there would eliminate a large part of the transmission line upgrades the utilities are calling for.

The biggest problem in the US isn't technical, it's the governments desire to primarily support the solutions that are best at serving utility shareholder returns, instead of the technically superior solutions.

[–] prawn 3 days ago
How common is it that these industrial/commercial buildings have roof-top solar? If not common, what stops it?

It's quite common in Australia for commercial and residential.

[–] footydude 2 days ago
> How common is it that these industrial/commercial buildings have roof-top solar? If not common, what stops it?

One factor is weight - a lot of low-cost industrial units may well need modifications to the roof to strengthen them to be able to take the additional weight of solar panels.

Certainly where I work (science research facility in the UK) our business has only been able to install roof-top solar on a comparatively small proportion of our total roof space because a large amount of the seemingly viable space would require substantial works to make the roof strong enough for solar.

[–] kulahan 2 days ago
In the US, there is a slowly-growing trend of covering parking lots with solar panels, rather than buildings. You can put up very cheap i-beans + corrugated metal structures with the added benefit of shading cars. It doesn't work everywhere, but in sunny - and especially dry - regions, it's great.

edit: I could see this working well in AUS and USA because we've got lots of space and sun. Might be harder in Europe and northern Asian regions

[–] acdha 2 days ago
It’s becoming common but the current administration has been highly committed to preventing that because it cuts into their fossil fuel donors’ business.
[–] missinglugnut 2 days ago
You're not making any sense. If things worked like you say, the industrial manufacturers would just put solar on their roofs, save a bunch of money, and that'd be the end of the story.

If rooftop solar power were so economically efficient, the manufacturing companies would get far more shareholder money lobbying for rooftop solar than utilities can make lobbying against it. But your conspiracy thinking doesn't account for this.

Heavy machinery uses dramatically more power than the roof space above it can produce. And you can't shut the factory down every time there is a cloud in the sky, so you need a utility hookup that can power the whole factory anyway.

The grid is the technically superior solution. That's why megacorps with capital and lobbying might keep willingly connecting to it.

[–] IAmBroom 2 days ago
Your first paragraph is nothing but an ad hominem. You lost all credibility there.