Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by pshirshov 325 days ago
I have negative energy bills and high net export with my moderate system in Ireland which is definitely not considered a good solar country.
1 comments

Most power generation is not used for peoples homes, though
What exactly changes at larger scale?
It's a completely different ballgame

Houses don't tend to have consistent electricity usage. Think of the electricity usage for a suburb. Chances are it's almost 0 most days. People get home and turn on the stove, the washer, the TV, etc. Big demand spikes at certain times of day, low demand for the rest

Commercial usage goes the opposite direction. Higher during the day when stores and offices are open, lower overnight

Industrial usages tend to be more consistent, but constant. Factories don't shut down overnight, but they have high constant requirements

But as a power company you are supplying all of this. You have to supply a consistent load that satisfies all of these usecases. It's all one grid after all, outside of some very unusual cases

And if you oversupply too much you break the grid. If you undersupply then stuff that relies on you shuts down and breaks

It's very much a goldilocks problem, which is non-trivial to optimize or automate

These are questions of getting the storage capacity to a certain level.