[imglorp]

I'm having trouble with the power industry terminology.

I /think/ they mean there's going to be more demand, which could overload parts of the distribution grid, causing its overload protections to trip. Is that right? The solar connection is not clear aside from it contributing more power on the grid when it's sunny.

[blake1]

Solar cells generate DC, but this is converted to AC with power electronics: the inverter is the main one. These are all just very high wattage semiconductors, but like all semiconductors, they can be destroyed by a transient event like a lightning strike, or a high fossil-fuel power plant dropping offline. To prevent the power electronics from being destroyed when this happens, they are protected by safety systems which "trip," and isolate them from the grid.

There are loads of designs for grid isolation, but most are big circuit breakers, and break the connection by rotating the conductor out of contact, powered by gravity or a spring.

So I think you're basically right, and right to be confused. The solar connection of the risk isn't really clear. But as far as I can tell, they're concerned about a positive feedback loop, where a thermal plant dropping offline will cause a solar plant to trip, which might cause other solar plants to trip. Perhaps solar plants' power electronics are more delicate, and more likely to trip, than thermal plants' switchyard gear. Again, it's not totally clear.

[parrellel]

A lot of the rules for disconnecting solar were written when solar wasn't expected to be a major part of the grid, so the logic has them trip because that was the sane default.

That's no longer the sane default and the utilities have been slow walking software and hardware updates to fix it.

...and now that might be a problem.

[gabereiser]

Worse still are areas where laws were enacted that _required_ you to get your solar from your utility vs your roof. Or there's a "minimum service fee" even though you don't consume any energy. In the early days you could "sell" your excess energy back to the grid. Now you can't and worse still, they don't know how to handle the infrastructure they have to meet the ever changing climates of the western United States.

[benglish11]

Where are you where you can’t sell excess electricity back to the grid? You definitely can here in SE Pennsylvania. Amongst the few people I know with solar panels on their roof it’s the most common scenario. Several of them have no battery either so they cannot store excess electricity.

[gabereiser]

Net-metering has only just been introduced in many southern states after much lobbying from power companies against it. Here in Florida (where I am now) it’s illegal to disconnect your house from the grid if you have solar. There’s a minimum “service fee” of $60 from FPL even if you only used $10 of energy.

In many other states run by a certain political party, they have been making it so your net-metered connections are selling back at wholesale rates instead of retail rates, or limiting just how much you _can_ sell back (sell limits).

When I used to work for an energy intelligence company back in 2017 it was worse with legislation across the Midwest and western states that prohibited solar on roofs and required homeowners to pool together for community solar projects (run by the power company) to get their renewable energy.

Now, most 47 states have some sort of net-metering at least for wholesale prices but more and more of them are requiring a minimum service fees and making hardships for people to live without them.

[tremon]

There’s a minimum “service fee” of $60 from FPL even if you only used $10 of energy.

I don't see how this is a problem: the maintenance of the electricity grid must be paid somehow, and this is more or less a flat, predictable cost. If you're coming from a situation where the maintenance was previously factored into the price of energy consumption (not a bad way), you're going to have to redesign your billing.

Are you arguing against a maintenance fee in general or just how much it costs?

[etimberg]

Not exactly. The concern raised in the article is that rooftop solar can disconnect off the grid automatically causing a small problem to be cascade to a larger one. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31463342 has a ton of good info on this

[gjvc]

> I'm having trouble with the power industry terminology.

:-) In the UK, the term "prosumer" is the official term for an electrical system which produces to and consumes power from the supply. (example https://electrical.theiet.org/wiring-matters/years/2019/74-m... )

(In the past it was widely taken to mean "a customer who wants to buy very high-quality technical products or equipment", https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/prosumer )

[dotancohen]

First context: prosumer: Portmanteau of "producer" and "consumer".

Second context: prosumer: Portmanteau of "professional" and "consumer".

[gjvc]

i fail to see what your comment adds

[dotancohen]

I too take pride in admitting my failures.

[kkfx]

The tricky part is not much "power production" but "keeping the grid at a certain frequency" witch means balanced between consumers and producers.

A classic large-enough but not too large grid is sized like that to achieve a somewhat constant load so their generator have to supply a certain amount of power without sudden high or low loads spike. A small personal example, I have a small domestic p.v. system for self-consumption, when my dishwasher start heating water my micro-grid load suddenly spike +~2kW my inverter take time to produce more, like few seconds, so without a grid or a battery my micro-grid will simply collapse because the frequency goes too low. Similarly when water heating phase is ended there is a sudden -~2kW load and the micro-grid frequency skyrocket. Again without a grid or a battery my micro-grid will simply collapse due to a too high frequency.

Instead a small sudden load change, like a light that turn on or off, have essentially no impact since such so small amount of power vary the frequency of the micro-grid so little that the solar inverter have no issue to keep anything in place.

At a classic grid scale ±2kW are just background noise on the frequency, like for my microgrid the led light turned on and off.

However at a classic grid scale with massive p.v. things start to be far less constant, sudden spike for so many microgrids means sudden spikes projected to the main grid causing much more frequency perturbations. Also Sun power tend to peak really fast witch means that a grid with an actual production of let's say 1GW at 10 a.m. this morning around my latitude suffer a sudden drop in demand, witch means a high frequency peak because that when most p.v. systems in sunny days quickly goes from few hundreds W to few thousands W in a very little time. So the grid need to reduce power quickly, let's say a quick perturbation pass varying much the p.v. production, again a load peak for them, a big drop in frequency they need to boost production in very few seconds to keep up the frequency. The alternative is rolling blackouts to cut most perturbation and keep the overall grid up, something that do not touch much those how have a p.v. system with battery storage since actual inverters are fast enough to keep homes powered on most load cases BUT touch all other citizens...

grid-connected EVs can help quickly absorbing loads and quickly releasing energy BUT for far such applications are just on paper and I doubt we can allow private EVs to talk with the public grid since any vehicle is a mass of proprietary crapware crap built by countless of private parties, many outside national Govs. control, in unknown health shapes, response time, ... such grid is theoretically possible, but practically probably as unstable as without such system, with many smaller rolling blackouts and much higher risks of large scale ones...

Long story short:

- with climate change we know we have to adapt and adapt means change, changes we can't much design up front due to too many variables, witch means we can't build large/complex systems because they solve a PRESENT issue, taking years to be built, and we do not know if such issue will be solved in the same way once we finished such large systems.

- the ideas some from Green New Deal push is: we need to cut such complexity. Witch means making autonomous homes who can be powered locally without a grid, smaller cities with their own local small networks etc instead of nation-wide systems. The very same happen for transportation networks where we start preferring small/medium water and air born systems because we can re-organize them fast instead of rails and roads that take decades to be build and changed.

- the issue here is that PERHAPS we can do so, but very unlikely for anyone, probably only of less than a third of the whole humanity and of course those who are excluded for a reason or another would not be happy of that, and not "being happy" means unrest, revolutions, violence, instability etc that beside the carnage and suffering also impede to build pretty anything for anyone.

Energy grids operators are just some of the party who start understanding the amplitude of such issue and start blowing all whistle they have alerting: "we can't do that, we do not know alternatives to put on the table".

Probably the sole viable alternative we have is PUBLIC only nuclear waiting for tech progress, but so far build such massive nuclear move takes decades.