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| ▲ | dhotson 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Yeah totally, nice to be able to put the AC/heater on "for free". I even got a negative power bill once! In my specific case, I barely use much power so home solar covers basically all of the usage, my bill is dominated by the daily charge, so the usage component is practically irrelevant to me. | |
| ▲ | AtlasBarfed 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Why shouldn't that be true practically every consumer home in the world? Yes, grid scale deployments are cheaper, but I'm generally guessing a lot of the grid scale solar deployments do not price in the grid infrastructure adaptation costs, and I'm not even talking about grid storage. Consumer rooftop solar is fundamentally democratic: it reduces reliance on centralized institutions for power delivery, Make society a lot more resilient in bad weather and other emergency situations, insulates everyday people from wild variations and petroleum and other consumable energy availability. Combined with plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, it would enable electrification of 80 and 90% of daily driving without grid infrastructure costs. | | |
| ▲ | brabel 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | > Why shouldn't that be true practically every consumer home in the world? Here in Sweden nearly all of the electricity bill you pay is concentrated on the winter months when there is literally zero sunshine. Even then solar is popular here. I calculated that installing solar would take around 10 years or more to pay for itself, but I have very little hope to stay in the same house all that time so for me it seemed like a bad investment. That said, if you live in places where it’s sunny most of the time even in winter, like Australia, then solar is absolutely great, just don’t assume most places are like that. | | |
| ▲ | ghiculescu 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | 10 year ROI is what I got quoted on a solar setup. I live in Queensland. It’s very sunny here. | | |
| ▲ | brabel 33 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Wow your current electricity must be really expensive... or your solar setup is?? Also the calculation was done by the company selling it, I'm pretty sure that was far too optimistic. |
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| ▲ | grey-area 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | You should still feel some guilt for the heat pollution your air conditioning causes for those outside your house, esp. in an urban area. | | |
| ▲ | lnsru 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Can you please elaborate more on pollution from air conditioning equipment and heat pumps. I was thinking they are closed systems. | | |
| ▲ | grey-area 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | Sorry autocorrect changed heat pollution to ‘what pollution’, I’ve fixed that now. There is some impact on others, particularly those without ac. | | |
| ▲ | brabel 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | In a country like Australia where building density is extremely low that’s a negligible problem?! | | |
| ▲ | grey-area 17 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Sure if building density is low in your area and you have no nearby neighbours it probably doesn’t matter, you’d just be heating your surroundings a little. |
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| ▲ | CalRobert 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | If you’re using rooftop solar then presumably the net heat generated by your aircon is the same as the amount your roof is no longer absorbing. Otherwise you just described a perpetual motion machine? | | |
| ▲ | grey-area 20 minutes ago | parent [-] | | I imagine that absorption by the roof or panels is around the same - however the aircon moves heat from inside to outside, so you are moving heat outside for other people to deal with. In an isolated house it makes little difference. If every building has aircon in a city it does impact outside temperatures and adds to the heat island effect. | | |
| ▲ | CalRobert a minute ago | parent [-] | | Right, but energy that would have heated the roof goes towards powering the aircon (which likely is on the roof itself), which then emits the same amount of heat, no? Say a roof is absorbing 10000 watts. You install solar panels that absorb 2000 watts, used to power an airco. You now have your roof absorbing 8000 watts (released as heat) and ann airco absorbing (using) 2000 watts (also released as heat). Am I wrong? Seems like a conservation of energy problem. And you get a cooler roof so less airco demand too! |
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| ▲ | yurishimo an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Or, we could lobby politicians to actually improve the lives of their constituents by making climate control appliances so affordable and ubiquitous that it's no longer an issue and we can stop accidental deaths attributed to heat. More green spaces can also help mitigate the impact. The reality is that a lot of old western europe was built for a climate that no longer exists. Houses are built to prioritize holding on to heat and rebuilding entire cities is definitely not possible if we're already bickering so much about adding heat pumps. Yes, heat pumps may create a rise in temperatures in cities, but there are other things we can do as a society to also lower temperatures as to create a net-neutral impact. | | |
| ▲ | grey-area 16 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Schemes like the Paris central cooling one are interesting here - there are other possible solutions in cities too. And sure yes combined with other measures AC can be a net good. |
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| ▲ | CalRobert 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | This is heat that would have escaped the house anyway | | |
| ▲ | grey-area 11 minutes ago | parent [-] | | No, air conditioning units generate heat (that is how they cool!) and do contribute to local warming. Without AC the house reaches equilibrium with outside. With AC the house is cooled and that heat has to go somewhere. |
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