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Not an upgrade for me Corrugated steel roof on the current house, and loving it!
However, it is a really interesting concept, particularly if they can bring it in at the price point Musk is talking about.
The pain point will be around underlying connections - once you replace the tiles, and have some form of connective media to get the electricity down to the inverter, how is that going to be affected by the internals like roof sarking, bracing straps, metal fittings etc. Is it even advisable on a steel framed house?
I'm sure smarter people than me have thought of all this, but the workforce required to safely install this kind of thing doesn't exist, so I can only assume the SolarCity+Tesla merger is critical, not only for the project to proceed, but also for the labour market to support it.
Maybe the extra strength and insulation will make the sarking redundant? Maybe the fitting system will provide an extremely safe environment no matter what the scenario is.
I reckon they won't sell many in Tornado Alley though
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Roofing is so regional anyway I am sure it will be limited to certain markets. A corrugated steel roof would not be permitted nearly anywhere in France. The local town hall would claim its just too ugly. Also steel framed house? Hahah yeah we don't have those I am not sure if the yanks do.
I just love the idea of well it costs the same as re roofing anyway so just coat the whole roof in these things and don't worry about if its south facing or what not you will get some energy from every single tile.
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@mooshld said in Solar Power and Storage - a nerd's view:
Also steel framed house? Hahah yeah we don't have those I am not sure if the yanks do.
I just love the idea of well it costs the same as re roofing anyway so just coat the whole roof in these things and don't worry about if its south facing or what not you will get some energy from every single tile.
Couple of things
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Which country are you based in? NZ is certianly adopting steel framing
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In terms of cost, it will be more expensive than roofing tiles initially. They are careful to say the 'total cost' is the same or less, ie conventional roof+power >= special solar roof + much reduced power bill.
This doesn't worry me, because commercialisation and capitalism are very very good at driving costs down. Look at cellphone: 98% reduction in costs in 10 years. Cars are the same - the technology and capability went from 'an oddity that people walk in front of with flags' to a car in every household in a few decades.
I'm excited. I think this is the future, and I don't think it will be decades away.
For info too, Vector here have put in a battery substation - for them it's all about chopping off the peak demand. That is what drives a massive part of teh whole network costing
https://www.vector.co.nz/newsdisplay/Vector-Network-News-for-the-week-ending-23-October-2016 -
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He's in France, which is an interesting landscape in that it has a metric fuckton of nuclear, so renewables aren't a huge thing there, yet.
Contrast that to the countries around it - particularly Germany which as also big on nuke but is now probably leading the Euro renewables charge, particularly in community-owned solar. They have several companies like Sonnen who are turning out quality batteries and solar kit, and with the German bent for engineering, doing well.
The low countries are heavily into offshore wind as its abundant. Spain is going deep into concentrated solar thermal (but doesn't have anything like a decent domestic solar rebate). The UK is now moving to more offshore wind and encouraging solar as it shuts down coal and awaits Hinkley to come online (some time in the next ten years and 6 billion pounds).
Here in Oz, we're the proving ground for a lot of this tech, when the shareholders and gold-plating can see past the now money into the future money.
It was announced yesterday that the dirtiest of our brown coal stations in Victoria would close.
Sucks for the workers, but they'll be generously compensated and retrained. The district should now throw itself into the practice of decommissioning these old power plants (there are another three around) and turning the LaTrobe valley into a pinnacle of renewable energy farming.
The great thing is the power transport infrastructure is still there, and a mix of solar and wind farms would kick arse, particularly once the big dirty power station is removed from the horizon and replaced with something better.
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Yip in France they tend to hold onto tradition a little bit longer. I can't speak to much about new build houses as they don't exist in Paris its all concrete slab appartements that are going up. In the countryside there is not a lot of building but from what I understand its mostly traditional timber framed or prefabbed concrete.
Everything has to fit in with what is already there so if you fancied a copper roof or something you would have a really hard time selling that to the planning people.
There is a decent amount of wind generation here you see it driving around the motorways but as NTA has said its nothing in comparison to the Nuclear.
I have just picked up a place in the south and will be looking to get into adding some renewable energy generation in the coming years. So very interested in the developments in this area.
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http://www.stuff.co.nz/motoring/news/86678475/tesla-confirms-new-zealand-launch
Loving some of the negative commentary on there. "FUCKING RUCH MAN'S CAR BRO!"
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What are the green vehicle incentives like in NZ?
Base cost AUD is about $110K so I imagine you're looking at something a little higher over there, depending on tariffs.
The Model 3 is saying about US$35K when they start shipping, which will be AUD$50-55K, but we have rubbish EV incentives.
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@Crucial said in Solar Power and Storage - a nerd's view:
@NTA said in Solar Power and Storage - a nerd's view:
New power bill. Electricity company owes me fifty bucks
If they don't pay up by the end of the month cut them off then charge them a hefty fee to 'reconnect'
Writeup here for those suitably bored:
http://unleashthepowerwall.com/2016/11/22/positive-billing-spring/
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We were talking on the US Election thread about renewables, which reminded me of this:
https://arena.gov.au/media/first-batteries-installed-worlds-largest-virtual-power-plant/
A new power station is being built in South Australia’s capital, but don’t expect a dusty construction site, concrete trucks and cranes. This plant is clean, quiet and spread across homes and small businesses in a prototype that could potentially be rolled out nationally.
With support from the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA), homes in Adelaide have now started receiving the first battery installations as part of AGL Energy Limited’s (AGL) world leading Virtual Power Plant trial.
Each household battery can ‘talk’ to each other through a cloud based platform using smart controls. When complete, this connected system will be able to operate as a 5 MW solar plant, powering hundreds of local homes.
The concept of VPP (Virtual Power Plant) boils down to a distributed, grid-connected set of resources for the power company to address peak issues without having to call on uplift in gas generation.
Using connected storage like this is far quicker than any large power source, and taps into the existing solar spill that users are generating anyway.
A company I've worked with (Reposit Power) set up something similar in South Australia with SA Power Networks (SAPN) using Powerwalls starting back in May.
Its an interesting solution that addresses a different need to, say, remote communities who don't have the grid to start with.
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I may have mentioned this, but I believe implementations of storage technology like this will have some consequences for non-battery households.
Firstly, the solar feed in tariff that you get for excess solar generation is probably on the way out. To recap, when the sun is out, my solar system:
- Powers the house - self-consumption
- Fills the battery with any excess generation
- Exports the rest to the grid for 8 cents per kWh
Keeping in mind I pay about 15 / 25 / 35 cents for offpeak / shoulder / peak respectively, then 8 cents doesn't look like a tremendous deal.
Original schemes in NSW, SA, and QLD were paying users up to 60 cents per kWh on a "gross" export method i.e. everything you generated went on the grid, and you imported all your regular power. This is different to "net" tariff like mine where I have the panels hooked up to the house as above.
When you're exporting at 60c and importing at 25c or less, its a pretty sweet deal. Of course, the system sizes were only 1-2kW back then because the cost was high, but a few people did well out of it and had the capital to install systems of 10kW! Big investment, but worth it once the government's stupidity became apparent. And we ended up with a gold-plated network anyway
Many of those schemes end as of January 1st, so people are now looking at batteries.
The reason FiT (Feed in Tariffs) are now so small is reliability of solar - it isn't there on cloudy days, so you have to plan around it, That means altering your large generators to cater for it. You can't just crank up a coal-fired power station, and even those using gas need lead times.
There is also the issue of the "Duck Curve" they're seeing in California:
This is where you've got potential over generation of solar during the day, and then the upsurge in required power during the night when people get home.
Storage can help address this as a domestic or industrial level, however I think there is a better, and more efficient, way to get around this in the longer term: EVs
Particularly for workplaces with large carparks, or shopping centres, investing in a solar + storage + EV charging infrastructure could be a financially viable cash generator in coming years.
Big array on the roof feeds car chargers directly, and trickles leftover power to the battery for use when the sun is NOT out. Customers with EVs can use the installed chargers for a nominal fee - roughly equivalent to parking in the shopping centre, and the system advises available charge based on sunshine.
As the technology becomes more efficient right through the chain - from the solar PV through to battery efficiency to control systems - you can have customers book and pay for their power via app or even the car's internal software.
In a self-driving world it will be different again.
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I wrote a blog about the above, to enter a competition - completely unlikely I'll win, but if I do I'm off to present my bullshit in Abu Dhabi.
http://unleashthepowerwall.com/2016/12/21/climate-change-risks/
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Also there is this awesomeness in terms of microgrids - it means the island will move from 100% diesel to about 14%, the remaining 86% supplied by solar with storage.
EDIT: the project cost about $8M according to some estimates. If their generator uses about 110,000 gallons of diesel a year, the economics work out to something like this:
Fuel is ridiculously cheap in the US, with diesel today being about $2.30 a gallon (or around $65c / L), but about $2.60 on the west coast. Adding shipping to the island and let's say its $3 per gallon. So the saving is about $330K per year. Let's assume the maintenance costs for the system are about $30K per annum.
Therefore, you couldn't say the payback time is anything special BUT it has the added benefit of being reliable and allowing the place to have a bit of certainty. It'll teach Tesla a shitload about their Powerpack, too.
I believe Vector has installed a Powerpack or two in Auckland to help with grid stability.
Solar Power and Storage - a nerd's view