Sun tax

[tautech]

Some years back there was experimentation for energy storage with high speed flywheels on magnetically levitated bearings in a vacuum, I wonder if it could be proven as viable ?

[PlainName]

Currently, why do you export to the grid? Is it because you just feel good about it or do you get paid for it, or get it back when the sun goes down, or what?

The power I export to the grid is paid to me at a rate approx 20% of the rate I pay for power coming from the grid. Obviously self consumption is the key thing. Use as much of that solar power yourself first and draw as little as possible from the grid.

Ok, thanks. So when it's said you would be paying them to generate electricity and export it to the grid, that's not quite correct? A less emotional version might be that the profit you make from doing so would be a bit smaller?

[m k]

If there is a good cause would you donate it?

Sure, if I could find some way of donating it, but aside from running an extension cord to my neighbours house, I don't see how I could.

So out of a perimeter screensaver is still a bit ahead, but plausible.

Like nearby Uni putting up an crypto mining farm for something more useful.
And operating their own cold fusion experiment.

So what are our feasible grid storage options ?

Excluding some flammable battery solution. 

Or is it even necessary if existing generation was to be better managed ?

It seems that I read sort of constantly that big chunk of global electricity is used for something sort of secondary.
Maybe that just is how it will be as long as big data is electrical.

Electricity is also utility and everything is in the same grid.
Maybe same grid has something, like a sub grid where high priced households are their own grid.
Would also need a suburb electricity company.

Nearby industry can eat quite a bit.
But generally industrial electricity is priced totally differently, here it's even a company secret.
My guess is that here industrial electricity is not many cents.

I have a spot electricity, its last week is in the picture.
Above stuff are
Price now, daily min/max, week avg, four week avg

Lowest is this year
January, March, May

January peak was high but now wide.

[NiHaoMike]

So what are our feasible grid storage options ?

Excluding some flammable battery solution. 

Anywhere HVAC is needed a good part of the year (that would be most areas), thermal storage is an excellent solution. Orders of magnitude cheaper than batteries.

[David_AVD]

Currently, why do you export to the grid? Is it because you just feel good about it or do you get paid for it, or get it back when the sun goes down, or what?

The power I export to the grid is paid to me at a rate approx 20% of the rate I pay for power coming from the grid. Obviously self consumption is the key thing. Use as much of that solar power yourself first and draw as little as possible from the grid.

Ok, thanks. So when it's said you would be paying them to generate electricity and export it to the grid, that's not quite correct? A less emotional version might be that the profit you make from doing so would be a bit smaller?

Any power I draw from the grid is charged to me at ~ $0.30 per kWh. Any power I push into the grid is paid to me at ~ $0.06 per kWh. If I'm generating 7kW and only consuming 3kW, the 4kW I'm putting back into the grid earns me $0.24 per hour. If on the other hand I'm generating 2kW and consuming 3kW, that's a 1kW draw from the grid, costing me $0.30 an hour (would have been $0.90 per hour without the solar helping).

Of course this varies over the course of the day. In practice, during the majority of daylight hours I'm exporting more than I'm consuming. At night of course I'm drawing 100% from the grid. The amount I can export to the grid is capped at 5kW, so there are times of good production but low consumption when the inverter throttles back to keep to the export limit. You can see the inverter ramp up to try and maintain the 5kW export when consumption increases and there is more power available from the panels.

A lot of people (and some solar companies) will say that there's no point getting more than a 5kW inverter as that's the export limit. That's crazy talk as you need to take your consumption into account. Some hot days I can have the ducted air and lots of other stuff running and still be exporting to the grid because the inverter and panels can do it. Sometimes the consumption is over 5kW and the inverter is supplying it all. My system is not massive (10kW of panels spread over 3 aspects and an 8.25kW inverter) but I'm glad I didn't do for the smaller systems offered by some.