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Understanding Solar Energy

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261 points chmaynard | 1 comments | 20 Mar 25 12:09 UTC | HN request time: 0.212s | source
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ZeroGravitas ◴[20 Mar 25 18:11 UTC] No.43426814[source]▶
There seems to be a real cultural obsession with going off grid, that this article reflects.

It's therefore confusing if they're talking about a nation/state or a household.

For a household, assuming you don't want to disconnect from the grid, the calculation is about how to offset as much of your energy costs you can displace with solar, and how to shift cheap energy from overnight with batteries as well as time shift solar generstion. A different and in many ways more interesting question in the abstract while also more practical too.

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1. zejn ◴[21 Mar 25 17:07 UTC] No.43438261[source]▶
Evolving this line of thought further, if you do not want to disconnect from the grid, there's also an option to participate in the electricity market.

Someone with a battery can buy up cheap electricity at night or whenever their electricity supplier deems it off-peak and thus cheap, so a battery can heavily influence the average price of energy as calculated here by Michael de Podesta: https://protonsforbreakfast.wordpress.com/2025/02/16/the-mos...

The other way to participate in the electricity market is that in EU the end users can access a plan that in some way reflects day-ahead market prices. If you have a battery, you can now buy the midday solar dip around 0 eur/mwh energy plus network charges and sell at the evening price of 300 eur/mwh.