[franciscop]

A bit of context: In Spain, one of the European countries with better sunlight for solar production, some laws were passed recently that make it basically impossible for individuals to resell excess energy to the grid, so selling/buying from the grid on demand instead of using batteries is not really an option.

That's why when we see countries like Germany (not so much sun) going strong for solar Spanish people complain and try to change a corrupt government that passes laws that strongly favors utility companies. Not to say that some of this government relatives work in these utilities.

[frgewut]

Wouldn't it be possible to create micro grids? E.g. tenants of one house or small town. They could sell electricity to each other then.

[franciscop]

> Y se añade "en ningún caso un generador se podrá conectar a la red interior de varios consumidores". Esta medida habría beneficiado a las comunidades de vecinos.

And it adds "under no circumstance a generator will be connected to the inner network of several consumers." This rule would have helped neighborhood communities.

[wolfhumble]

Seems like you are quoting an article from El Páis and not directly the law itself.

http://economia.elpais.com/economia/2015/10/09/actualidad/14...

[narag]

https://www.boe.es/boe/dias/2015/10/10/pdfs/BOE-A-2015-10927...

5.2.B - En el caso de que existan varias instalaciones de producción, el titular de todas y cada una de ellas deberá ser la misma persona física o jurídica.

(In case there are several production facilities, the owner of all of them must be the same natural or legal person)

[wolfhumble]

"Y se añade "en ningún caso un generador se podrá conectar a la red interior de varios consumidores". Esta medida habría beneficiado a las comunidades de vecinos."

Baterías y trabas burocráticas (right column):

http://economia.elpais.com/economia/2015/10/09/actualidad/14...

[narag]

I'm not arguing it's not quoted from the article, just providing a source to the original in case someone is interested.

[ryanlol]

Should this be interpreted that the tenants could just form a company that owns (or even rents?) the equipment and then have the company pay them rent for the locations?

[narag]

Sorry, the Decreto Ley, like any other legal text is complex and needs careful interpretation. As a native speaker I can quickly locate (what I think is) the relevant section, but a detailed analysis would take a lot of time.

Anyway, I've followed these news for a while and heard the defense that the promoters of these measures did, so in case they were thinking in other interpretation they would have said so. It has been massively unpopular for the people that understand this issue at all, that are not many, and only was defended by the gov. party and the companies.

The industry minister, by the way, had to resign after he couldn't explain why his name was found in the Panama Papers as owner of offshore companies. And no, it wasn't a big deal, if you think the whole government has been under suspicion since the party treasurer was jailed four years ago for outright corruption and the prime minister Rajoy sent him a SMS telling him "to be strong". There are an acounting papers by the treasurer that show in detail how everyone in the party received monthly cash filled envelopes with money that came from building companies briberies.

Also the Valencia mayor is being investigated in another case that has every of her councillors formally accused already. You would think that the party would have her resigned. Instead they put her in a Senate commite to protect her.

This is the governing party, the one that, after all those smoking guns showed, still had the most votes last December and (after nobody could form a government) is expected to also win next month elections. So if you were thinking this Sun Tax, as it's commonly known, couldn't be so obviously corrupt, think again.

I'm not specially partisan, more of a "swinger voter", but the situation here has been disgusting for too much time. The worst of all is that many people's reaction has caused the rise of a party that is very close to Chávez and Maduro, actually there's strong suspicion that it was ilegally financed by Venezuela gov. party (Edit: and Iran!), so we could fall from the pan to the fire.

[franciscop]

I totally missed linking the article, thanks for linking it. I quoted a part that quotes the law, but the actual law is normally too cryptic. I'll link newspaper and law in the future as I agree it's important for some people.

[narag]

Wouldn't it be possible to create micro grids?

Expressly forbidden. This law is a custom suit for electric companies.

[hyperpallium]

The problem is demand will vary the same for all those in the same locality with time of day.

Now, if you could somehow form a grid with people on the opposite side of the globe...

BTW I like the idea of hydrobatteries: hydroelectric power stations sometimes pump water back up into the resevoir. One could do this with local water towers; perhaps even dual-purpose existing rain tanks, per house. Maybe not large enough; haven't done the math.

[MrsPeaches]

Here you go:

E = mgh

1000l tank = 1000kg

7m high roof (~2 stories)

E = 1000kg * 9.81ms^-2 * 7m

=~ 70 000j

1Wh = 3600j

So a 1000l tank on your two story high roof would be able to store ~19Wh

Not including mechanical losses

For comparison a single decent sized SLA battery will be able to store 1000 Wh

[hyperpallium]

Thanks! Not as good aa I'd hoped...

[LeifCarrotson]

The numbers work better with increasing size, because volume is the cube of the dimensions. Also, you can build a pond on a hill with some excavators much more efficiently per unit volume than an enclosed plastic container.

A 1m cube weighs 1,000kg and has about 20Wh. A 10m cube weighs 1,000,000 kg and has about 20,000 Wh. A 50m deep, 1 km square reservoir has 1,000,000 Wh. And that's still assuming that it's 7m above the turbine!

[dharma1]

can you elaborate on this? You mean the feed-in tariffs for individuals were cut in Spain? Is it different for companies who build solar farms?

[franciscop]

Sure, just a quick search. Worth noting that not following this law has a higher penalty than having a nuclear leak in a nuclear plant:

> The new law also prohibits PV systems up to 100 kW from selling electricity. Instead, their owners are required to donate the extra electricity to the grid for free.

http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/articles/2015/10/spain-a...

http://cleantechnica.com/2016/01/15/solar-policy-spain-still...