| ▲ | buckle8017 16 hours ago |
| Ah yes the age old story of a rich guy without a clue diving into a new industry and failing. They should be requiring batteries with solar as well. His install would have a net negative value to the Texas grid without it. |
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| ▲ | hwillis 15 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| > His install would have a net negative value to the Texas grid without it. Absolutely untrue. Solar and wind can always just be disconnected at any moment. Wind resources are also a huge inertia source- windmill blades are massive grid stabilizers. Renewable tech does not have a big coal fire they need to keep at a constant temperature. How about instead of requiring batteries with solar, we require coal plants to have sufficient bypass cooling that they don't need the load of a grid connection to stay cool. Renewables are a boogeyman. The reality is simply that they are always able to undercut any fossil plant and they don't like that. It has fuck all to do with grid stability. |
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| ▲ | giblfiz 12 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Hey, original author here. > Ah yes the age old story of a rich guy without a clue diving into a new industry and failing.
Yep, very much so. I was well aware that I didn't have a clue, and thought that I could make up for that with professional expert advice, elbow grease, a pretty good combination of tax advantages, and a willingness to learn.The project was intentionally limited in scale as to be a "learning project" for me and the whole team. I'm also sort of ok with the idea that it failed, though super frustrated with the entire underlying incentive structure changing so much that we can't use anything we learned to try a second time. Batteries were intentionally excluded because of the additional complexity overhead they added, and because the way the interconnection rules are written it would have put us into a different MW class which would have dramatically increased a number of other bureaucracy issues. You are ABSOLUTELY INCORRECT that we would have had a net negative value to the Texas grid without batteries. Batteries are valuable, and increasingly so, but so is raw power (even at mid sun). This is reflected nicely in the hourly price charts, which at this point I'm super familiar with. |
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| ▲ | Dylan16807 16 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| > Ah yes the age old story of a rich guy without a clue diving into a new industry and failing. It's a significantly bad thing if something as straightforward as buying and plugging in solar panels requires special knowledge to not get screwed over. > His install would have a net negative value to the Texas grid without it. Oh come on. |
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| ▲ | kragen 15 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Electrical generation is a competitive market. It's the expected and even desirable outcome that only the most efficient producers will remain profitable. You're not just plugging in solar panels; you're competing with other companies to see who can plug in the solar panels more cheaply. And it's even plausible that ERCOT currently can't handle additional PV in whatever area the Roby parcel was in without adding BESS, although the person you're responding to has no idea if that's true or not, since neither they nor I knows where that is. The conclusion in the post: > Run five projects through the process simultaneously. Most will fail for reasons you cannot predict. With five, one might succeed. And switching to batteries instead of solar. Or at least solar plus storage. | | |
| ▲ | Dylan16807 15 hours ago | parent [-] | | I didn't even say profitable. He can't get the ability to just hook up all the panels. | | |
| ▲ | kragen 15 hours ago | parent [-] | | He did get that ability. They just won't let him produce over 3 megawatts, making the plant unprofitable. It's a total clusterfuck. | | |
| ▲ | Dylan16807 14 hours ago | parent [-] | | That's a really pedantic answer. He can't properly hook up the panels. | | |
| ▲ | kragen 14 hours ago | parent [-] | | That's a simply incorrect answer. BESS, simple curtailment at peak hours, or angle diversity would solve the problem. If he'd known the problem was coming 18 months ago, it wouldn't be a problem. | | |
| ▲ | Dylan16807 14 hours ago | parent [-] | | > That's a simply incorrect answer. Okay, how small of a connection would they have to restrict him to for me to be correct? > BESS, simple curtailment at peak hours, or angle diversity would solve the problem. That much extra curtailment is a major problem. That much extra angle diversity hurts output. Batteries are a workaround for not being able to properly hook up the panels. | | |
| ▲ | kragen 14 hours ago | parent [-] | | You'll have to do your own calculations based on your own site data. Onsite BESS permits you to not only get by with a smaller hookup but also sell your energy at times when people are willing to pay for it. | | |
| ▲ | Dylan16807 14 hours ago | parent [-] | | > You'll have to do your own calculations based on your own site data. I did my calculation already. It said that a 1/3 drop in hookup for panels that were already hookup-constrained is not a proper hookup. Straightforward math. | | |
| ▲ | kragen 13 hours ago | parent [-] | | You're leaving out most of the relevant factors, presumably because you don't know them. | | |
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| ▲ | baking 15 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > Oh come on. He was doing it for the tax credits. Without the tax credits, this project wouldn't have come close to making sense. | | |
| ▲ | Dylan16807 15 hours ago | parent [-] | | The tax credits aren't coming out of the grid somewhere else. The project is a negative to tax revenue, positive to the grid, and positive to CO2 levels. | | |
| ▲ | baking 13 hours ago | parent [-] | | He's using the tax credits to undersell projects with storage that would have been more positive for the grid. Solar without storage in Texas is coal to Newcastle. Subsidizing bare-bones solar is not good for the grid. | | |
| ▲ | Dylan16807 12 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Projects with storage can take advantage of the cheaper solar power by shifting their balance, installing fewer panels and more storage. This leaves the grid better off overall. | | |
| ▲ | baking 38 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Projects with storage can also take advantage of lower grid connection power limits because they are not forced to dump maximum power at peak supply times of the day. |
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| ▲ | giblfiz 12 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Battery and and solar with battery have (nearly) the same tax credit advantage. |
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