Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by JPKab 1729 days ago
"Net exporter" doesn't really matter for the specific conversation at hand.

A better way to quantify grid health would be to identify periods of peak demand across northwestern/central Europe, and then tally who is selling power to whom at those inflated prices.

I have solar panels on my home, as do most of the homes in my neighborhood. However, we recently had to have a natural gas substation built adjacent to the community to deal with the demand surges coinciding with supply disruptions (every time it snows).

1 comments

Just out of curiosity, assuming your internal batteries are charged to the max (e.g. after a sunny day), about how long can you go if it starts snowing or is very cloudy, before you need to start pumping in natural gas?

Maybe my understanding of how it all works using your own solar panel and the neighborhood's gas lines is too simplistic, though, to answer.

Like the vast majority of solar installations in suburban neighborhoods, none of the homes in my neighborhood have any battery paired with the solar panels.

The solar panels just feed power into the grid. This is the standard model used all over the Western US.

I don't think the comment you replied to said anything about having batteries?