The Stampede of the Green Lemmings

Solar energy has a huge problem. Even on sunny days almost nothing is generated to meet the demand peaks around breakfast time and dinner time - the solar energy union only works a six-hour day, goes on strike with little warning, and takes quite a few sickies.

So, for at least 18 hours of every day, electricity must come from somewhere else. Then around noon, the millions of solar panels pour out far more electricity than is needed, causing electrical and financial chaos in the electricity grid.

Naturally our green “engineers” see wind power as filling the solar energy gaps. But wind power has a union too and they take lots of sickies when there is no wind over large areas of the continent. And they down tool in storms, gales or cyclones in case their whirling toys are damaged.

So the green planners claim that batteries can solve these intermittent problems of the green energy twins.

Batteries are just a crutch for a crippled generation system. And with fierce lithium battery fires reported regularly, who wants a humungous fire-prone battery over the back fence or in the basement?

A battery is not a generator of electricity – every battery (including Snowy 2) is a net consumer of electricity. Batteries are very expensive, most lose capacity as they age, and every conversion between DC storage and AC transmission triggers energy losses. To collect, back up and re-distribute green electricity will require a continent-spanning spider-web of transmission lines with all the costs and energy losses that network entails.

Still nights, and calm cloudy days, are what really expose the problems of wind-solar-plus-batteries.

Suppose electricity consumers require 100 units of electricity every day. A well designed coal, nuclear or gas power station can do that, 24/7, day after day, whatever the weather.

But to insure a wind/solar system against, say, 7 days of calm/cloudy weather would require a battery capable of storing 700 units of electricity. To re-charge this huge battery while still supplying consumers will require much larger wind/solar generating capacity. However if several weeks of windy/sunny weather then occur, this big battery will sit idle, connected to a bloated expensive generation system that is capable of delivering far more power than is needed.

Sunny/windy weather brings a deluge of green energy, causing power prices to plunge at irregular intervals, and forcing reliable generators to stop producing and lose money. Eventually they will close. Once all coal-gas generators are all gone, every (inevitable) green energy drought will awaken the spectre of extensive blackouts.

On top of all these practical problems of green energy, we have the massive carbon credits scam, where speculators sell green fairy stories to greedy bankers, and real producers are forced to buy these fictitious “products”, passing the costs onto real industry and consumers.

Germany once produced abundant reliable electricity from coal and nuclear power – the backbone for German industry. Then green ants started nibbling at this backbone, replacing it with wind-solar toys. Now Germany has expensive electricity, a grid in danger of collapse and must rely on imported gas from Russia, nuclear power from France or hydro-power from Scandinavia.

UK is also following similar foolish energy policies, even banning exploration of their own oil/gas resources.

Australia is almost alone in the southern oceans, with no near neighbours to buy, beg or borrow electricity from. We cannot afford to follow the green energy lemmings or their billionaire pied pipers.

For the record, I get a 96% throughput from my overall solar DC to battery storage to convert to AC to use in the house.

I agree wholeheartedly with the premise of this article and that solar can't be the see-all-do-all that the Dims make it out to be. I'm just saying solar has helped me avoid the sky-high inflation the Dims keep putting on electricity and natural gas rates (I converted my house to all-electric right after I put solar onto the house).

If I could drill my own oil or natural gas I'd do it because those are much more efficient and dependable than solar. But I can't do those. So I went with solar to pull most of my energy budget back out of the Dims' grubby hands and into my hands where my money belongs (except what I give to God and real charity). I no longer worry about natural gas prices at all and I worry about half as much about power prices as I used to.

IMHO that's the only good thing about solar, at least decentralized solar. It's one less thing in my life the Dims can have control over.

My solar inverter stores detailed telemetry in 5-minute candles that I can export. I see the # of watts coming in from the panels, the # of watts consumed by my house, the # of watts going into or out of the batteries, and the # of watts I pull from the utility at any point in the day, the total for the day, etc. I import that into a T-SQL database service (the data stuff is the easiest part for me because that's what I do for a living) and run aggregate queries to summarize it from different perspectives.

Of course, none of that matters in reality except for me studying it as a hobby and every now and then contemplating the avg # of hours per day I have full battery charge (thinking about how I can apply that power to good use, like getting an EV). For the real money stuff, all that matters is how much power I consume vs how much I pull from the grid (the difference being how much I saved with the solar system, regardless of how much came directly from the solar panels or how much was stored in batteries and was used later). For that, it's been 53% saved since I installed it last spring. Combine that with a data table of my power bills including the # of kWh I bought from the grid each month with the amount they charged me for it (from that I derive in a SQL view the true rate per kWh they charged me that month, minus the base monthly fee we pay just for being a customer plus 4% tax). So I know the exact dollar amount saved each month (so far it's $1,091 for 9 and a half months since I bought the solar system, not counting what I saved on natural gas by going all-electric shortly after installing the solar system, but that gets complicated calculating the exact savings because I added some kWh usage by going all-electric, thus it's not a 100% savings of my old natural gas bills). By the time this spring is over and I have a full year I estimate it'll be between 60% to 65% saved for the first 365 day year.

Assuming a 3% rise in power costs (thus more dollars I save in future years) but a gradual degradation in both battery storage (19-year warranty with guaranteed 50% use at the end of the warranty) and solar throughput (25-year warranty, 70% as good at the end as they were new), it ought to pay for itself near the end of the 10th year, including the interest on the HELOC I took out to pay for most of it. Obviously, if the Dims keep getting their wish and jack up energy costs higher than 3% inflation, the system will pay for itself sooner.

In a way you're right. This kind of project is not the kind to take on unless you're willing to do a lot of homework up front. Look at the past years' worth of power bills, study the angle of the south facing portion of your roof, if your roof shingles are getting old and needing replaced consider doing what I did years ago and replacing it with a metal roof (I was amazed how little extra it cost to go with a metal roof to keep from having to replace the roof again, and that was before I thought about going solar), look up the avg peak hours your area gets per month with a tool like http://tsi.tyconsystems.com/html/nrel_lookup.htm, get a list of the past year's worth of temperatures and sunny-vs-cloudy-vs-rain record of each day from a place like https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cdo-web/search. That's what I did. For instance, I was pleasantly surprised to learn that, at least in my area, during the winter when it's really cold (read: have to use the heater more often) those tend to be days that are sunny (read: could take in lots of power from the sun). Also, pick your battles. Don't spend so much on a system trying to allow you to completely go off-grid, that's too cost prohibitive. In my case I realized that spending enough on battery storage to make it through about 2/3rds of the nights on average in the winter on battery power alone was the threshold of battery storage that reached the best ROI. The same for calculating the solar input you need to cool your house during the summer about 2/3rds of the time with the avg solar peak hours per day of your summer months. (Another nice thing about weather here, during the hot months when it rains and I get very little solar those tend to be the days the temperature is cool anyway and I don't use much power cooling the house. Those days aren't battles I have to win because I don't use much power anyway. The main battles to win are the hot days which tend to be sunny days -- making those the winnable days.)

Agreed. That's especially do-able here in the south, where we both get plenty of sun and hate Dim policies about as much as Tennessee Vols fans hate their head coach by the 2nd year.

My home is a hair over 50% energy independent. In effect, I've implemented some of Trump's energy independent policy for the nation to my home. When I eventually replace my old used pickup I'm thinking about replacing it with an EV truck instead of my usual tendency of buying another old used pickup truck. If I do that I think I'll get about 50% of the miles I drive free from my solar system on the days I have excess power that's not going anywhere useful.

I can't think of anything else I've done personally to implement libertarian/small-govt conservative protection for myself from gubment control than making myself as energy independent as I can in a feasible manner.

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