Sunday, August 28, 2022

Interesting Solar Power Problem

 A solar power system has a weird problem north or south of the equator. In the summer, it will produce a huge surplus of power if it's sized for the winter months. If it's sized for the summer months, it will be very underpowered in winter. Since the panels are getting cheap, the logical strategy is to size it for winter. The chart below shows the daily average power output by month for that system. The average US household consumes about 30 kWh per day. In this case every day is over 30 kWh in the winter months. In the summer it's way over. This system would cost about $40,000. It would be installed on a large barn roof.

For me, to get through the winter with solar power, the system will generally produce a huge surplus of power. In the summer it's approximately 3x what the house needs.

The current "solution" to that problem is: feed it back to the grid... But what happens when everyone has a solar power system? It doesn't make any sense. It makes way more sense to do something useful with it, like make ice, purify water, or something like that.

If everyone has solar power, it really does make sense to have EVs. If the issues with the batteries could be sorted out, it really does make fuel essentially "free".


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