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We need to be careful and not think of Solar as a silver bullet for this. Very few (likely less than 1%) of home solar installations can handle the load of the home for a full 24 hour cycle. To do so, they would need lots of batteries, expensive inverters and robust controlling equipment.

From what I’ve read here on HN, a self-sufficient solar setup is expensive enough that it will cost more than being on the grid, even when amortized over the lifespan of the setup.

Ah, nothing in my comment was intended to imply that solar was a silver bullet, but the way I phrased it was off the cuff because I didn’t want to go into the myriad of ways and emerging technologies that will allow people and businesses to take themselves off the grid at least temporarily. That’s the key, temporarily.

You’re probably giving up AC, you’re probably going to want something like Tesla’s Powerwall. You’re probably not going to be running your washer and dryer during that time. You probably want any desktop computers you have on UPS. You probably want your appliances using as little electricity as possible even during normal operation. You probably don’t want to leave all the lights on.

And I forget the name of this one, but you will need an extra piece of equipment beyond the panels and batteries to actually take your house off the grid. Personally I’m also excited for the possibility of miniature hydrogen generators as a store of power.

> From what I’ve read here on HN, a self-sufficient solar setup is expensive enough that it will cost more than being on the grid, even when amortized over the lifespan of the setup.

That’s true today and I will not dispute it, but expect prices to come down , and with PG&E’s capriciousness, the cost of doing nothing to rise, and installation opportunities to increase. If the utility is going to behave in a capricious manner, then people will respond over time. This can be on a personal level by trying to insulate their own homes from power failures as much as possible, or even at the municipal level where cities allow new utilities to come in and replace or compete with PG&E.

We don’t need PG&E, we just need electricity. People are creative, we’ll find ways to make that happen, even with PG&E fighting tooth and nail against their own marginalization.

A Tesla Powerwall 2 can hold 13.5 kWh of energy.

In the US, the lowest average home consumes around 17 kWh of electricity a day; the highest uses 42. This usage does not correlate with the hose usage, meaning that most of the power is consumed when the sun is low in the sky or during the night - putting the majority of the load on the Tesla Powerwall.

You'd need at least two Powerwalls to avoid a significant change in lifestyle, plus ~5kW of solar cells to fill those batteries every day (not accounting for cloudy days).

And a change in lifestyle may not even be practical, since most housing constructed in the last few decades was built with the assumption that AC and electric heating are available.

https://www.solarreviews.com/blog/how-many-solar-panels-do-i...

https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=97&t=3

My friend, my comrade in arms, please note what my entire post said.

I repeatedly emphasized that there wouldn’t be no change in lifestyle or quality of life for the duration of an outage, but it would be doable and will likely become less burdensome in the long term.

Allow me to re-emphasize: people are creative and adaptable. Given the necessity to adapt, people will find ways. People are or have been without power for a couple of days now, they’re angry about it. Very angry, and justifiably so, and I feel confident in saying that the market response to this state of affairs will not be zero.

I did. And as I noted - changing lifestyle to support a niche case to not include AC (so you can use solar off the grid) is not always possible, let alone reasonable to ask.

Ask yourself, which is more reasonable - a couple thousand dollars (or tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars) for an off-grid capable solar setup or a gas generator to account for the dozen or so days of inconvenience? Several cities in the north east suffered almost a month without power (in a much harsher season), and most of their solutions involved purchasing a small gas generator and moving on with their lives.

It's much more likely that the response will be political. PG&E out and install a better caretaker.

Personally, I think some rich people will likely go the solar+batteries route just because it requires less work overall after it is installed or provides peace of mind. Maintaining and refueling a generator isn't hard, but it is still one more thing to worry about. If the outages go on long enough, I predict the cost of solar+batteries will come down because enough rich people buy them and more and more people will be able to afford them.

>most housing constructed in the last few decades was built with the assumption that AC and electric heating are available.

Depends where you live. In the northern US, you're absolutely dependent on heat requiring electricity for a number of months during the year. In the south, things get pretty bad, even life threatening, without AC during a number a year. I'll go out on a limb though and say that Northern California (except at higher elevations) does not fall into either of those categories.

Added: I do agree that many newer houses don't optimize well for making effective use of natural light, airflow, etc.

What about the externalities of harvesting battery components? And battery replacements? The externalities of manufacturing panels?

Wouldn't it be easier to build several large scale nuclear plants and offset it with a small amount of renewables than try to make all of our power run off of rechargeable batteries?

Yes. The ugly truth is rechargable batteries are very hardcore, and have to be replaced every few years. The amount of very hazardous waste generated if every house was fitted with a battery system would be astronomical. Sure nuclear power produces a fair bit of radioactive waste, but it can be managed and controlled. And that is with current technology. Just imagine the advancements that could be made on future generations of nuclear technology.

The local authorities where I live told us in February/March timeframe that blackouts are coming in the fall, so I planned ahead and got some battery backed solar. It's damn expensive.

My house is mostly in the shade, and most of my roof faces north and is steeply sloped, so all I could do is a small solar array of about 2.5kW, which now, at the end of october, is producing about 7kWh per day. This solar array cost about $8000. This feeds into a Tesla PowerWall, which is the cheapest such system available. It can store 13kWh with 89% round trip efficiency. This cost $19,000 installed. Tesla advertises $7,000, but you need a whole lot more ancillary equipment and a lot of wiring complexity. So, we're at $27,000 for something that can produce 260W continuously 24/7 if the grid is out. This isn't very much. It's enough to run the fridge and a LED light or two. I realize I'm limited by my solar panels, and if I had the roof space, I could double my available power for roughly another $3,000. (these prices are pre-30% tax incentive).

A tri-fuel (natural gas, propane, gasoline) hardwired generator would have been a better way to go. I wasn't expecting multi-day outages.

your total capacity "watts" number doesnt match your description (?)

What do you mean?

A 2.5kW array will produce 2500W of power when the sun is at 90 degrees to it. This never happens to me, so I get less, 1,200-2,000W output depending on season and time of day. Now, in october, the array at best produces 1,400W, but the graph itself is sinusoidal, so the net power produced is 7kWh. Different units here - kW (which is specific power) verus kWh, which is power used.

Or have a propane refrigerator/freezer. That doesn't replace having a big electric fridge but you can keep a subset of things in there that will spoil easily and/or are expensive.

So long as you're in a climate where furnace/air conditioning isn't critical, not having electricity for a few days isn't really that big a deal modulo having young kids, elderly, medical issues, etc.

We replaced a failed generator with a 7500 watt gas-powered model for about US$950, including tax. Noisy, but handles most of a house (with careful load management). The fun part was finding a container for gasoline - Home Depot & about 10 other stores had sold out. Ended up buying a 2 gallon container of kitty litter, dumping out the litter, & rinsing out the container. Also saw a queue of about 10 Tesla owners waiting on (Super)charging spots - fun times.

> Not to dispute your later statement, but power outages aren’t a new thing in California.

Massive public safety outages due to failure to safely maintain power infrastructure are, in fact, a new thing that started only after two years of massive fire liability close on the heels of a criminal conviction for a major gas explosion bankrupted the utility in question.

The rub with this is PG&E was avoiding maintenance to pay out dividends. The situation was entirely preventable. Frankly it's scary how everyone is apologizing for the utility company's management.

They also had massive negative cashflow going back over a decade and paid for those dividends with lender’s money. The entire thing wasn’t sustainable.

It isn’t necessarily fair to single out California because many other public utilities are in a similar situation, California just has added significant natural disaster risks. Regulated utilities have been considered a safe investment for so long that many shareholders and probably management have been asleep at the wheel for years. The regulatory aspect means there isn’t much those parties can do without state/voter approval.

I’m hardly an expert in capital markets, so I’m not going to claim if PG&E did or didn’t pay dividends X would happen. I don’t know. What I do know is PG&E probably needed 3-4x the revenue they had, either by increased rates or borrowing which would lead to even greater rate increases eventually.

I would say in general this is a good thing. California’s residents are now extremely incentivized to move to home solar + battery storage. California may even hit their renewable energy goals ahead of schedule.

Modern PG&E have been repeatedly sued for raiding tree maintenance budgets, which they are legally required to use, going back to at least 1999. In the same era, executive bonuses have been consistently large. When Enron happened, during discovery, they found out that a large and carefully covered holding company had been pulling cash out of the tightly regulated main body, to buy similar power producing assets internationally, despite no charter to do so.

PG&E pays out dividends out of profits. The amount of profit it makes is strictly regulated by the government, based on the California Public Utility Commission’s rate-making. (What’s called an “authorized rate of return.”) PG&E would submit detailed proposals to the government about what it was planning to spend money on, and how much it would cost and what rates would have to be, and the government would approve those proposals and award PG&E a profit as some percentage of the investment: https://www.cpuc.ca.gov/uploadedFiles/CPUC_Public_Website/Co...

So it is 100% false to say that “PG&E was avoiding maintenance to pay out dividends.” If PG&E didn’t spend money on safety and maintenance, then the rates, and PG&E’s profit, would go down. Conversely, if PG&E wanted to spend the money on safety, that wouldn’t cut into profits. It would submit a rate case to the CPUC with that proposed spending. CPUC would authorize raising rates, and award PG&E a larger profit (in absolute terms) because PG&E was spending more.

That's right. And without that return to investors, PG&E would not have the private capital it needs to operate.

> PG&E pays out dividends out of profits. The amount of profit it makes is strictly regulated by the government, based on the California Public Utility Commission’s rate-making.

If you want to blame the state for PG&E management decisions, you are essentially saying that PG&E’s shareholder ownership and its own management are irrelevant, in which case they are at best a superfluous expense that should be avoided by making PG&E’s functions the domain of a publicly-operated utility.

> If you want to blame the state for PG&E management decisions, you are essentially saying that PG&E’s shareholder ownership and its own management are irrelevant, in which case they are at best a superfluous expense that should be avoided by making PG&E’s functions the domain of a publicly-operated utility.

Well the second part hardly follows from the first part. PG&E provides private capital for investments the State may not be willing or able to provide. PG&E provides the expertise in building and maintaining a power grid, and manages the day to day operations. For that they get a reasonable margin of profit.

But the State sets prices, and decides what is a “prudent investment” that can be recovered from rate payers. As a result, it is the State that is responsible for the trade off between keeping retail rates low and investing in infrastructure upgrades such as enhanced fire safety. The State is also responsible for setting big picture policy goals, and has done so for example by imposing requirements with respect to purchasing renewable energy. (Which I think are a good thing by the way.) When the State is the one making those decisions, then yes, it should be held accountable.

As to publicly operated utilities—they have the same problem, because their rates are regulated by agencies like the CPUC. Underinvestment in utility infrastructure is a chronic investment around the country, and there seems to be no difference between public and investor owned utilities in that regard. The problem is utility boards.