It’s often said that probably the biggest challenge with switching over all the cars and heating to renewables here in Germany, is going to be the transport of so much electricity to all the homes.
That’s what I also really like about the balkonkraftwerk, that it produces electricity right where it’s used.
i mean yeah the power lines struggle (today) to transport these amounts of power around, but that’s mostly due to mismanagement and not an inherent problem with the technology itself. building big power grids is technologically possible, and i dare say it’s not even so difficult. it just needs to get done, which till today didn’t happen because there was simply no political will to invest into the grid.
it’s a complex problem. often, it seems to me, when investments are done, they’re investments into the wrong things. Like when germany was about to donate $10 billion to Intel (which fortunately was cancelled/(indefinitely?) delayed).
Like, it is utterly predictable that the cost of electricity will fall and eventually be significantly cheaper than fossil fuels. It makes utter economic sense to research into electrifying large-scale industrial processes including steel and cement production, yet from what i can tell these research areas are completely dormant. I can already tell the news of 2030 when the rest of the world will say that China is far ahead in electrifying these large-scale industrial processes, and everybody else has to catch up.
I agree. I often discuss this with friends and the argument of “our electricity network cant supply all that power” (which is true) is one i often counter with adding more solar panels, even to apartments.
The idea for the when-part is that people will have electric cars at home, which can double as a big battery, or as the other guy already said, you can buy dedicated storage, too.
You could also hook these storages up to the grid, and then have an algorithm decide to sell to the grid when electricity is expensive, or to charge from the grid while electricity is cheap, possibly even taking the weather forecast into account.
Definitely still lots of details to figure out, but I expect things to head that way…
It’s often said that probably the biggest challenge with switching over all the cars and heating to renewables here in Germany, is going to be the transport of so much electricity to all the homes.
That’s what I also really like about the balkonkraftwerk, that it produces electricity right where it’s used.
i mean yeah the power lines struggle (today) to transport these amounts of power around, but that’s mostly due to mismanagement and not an inherent problem with the technology itself. building big power grids is technologically possible, and i dare say it’s not even so difficult. it just needs to get done, which till today didn’t happen because there was simply no political will to invest into the grid.
it’s a complex problem. often, it seems to me, when investments are done, they’re investments into the wrong things. Like when germany was about to donate $10 billion to Intel (which fortunately was cancelled/(indefinitely?) delayed).
Like, it is utterly predictable that the cost of electricity will fall and eventually be significantly cheaper than fossil fuels. It makes utter economic sense to research into electrifying large-scale industrial processes including steel and cement production, yet from what i can tell these research areas are completely dormant. I can already tell the news of 2030 when the rest of the world will say that China is far ahead in electrifying these large-scale industrial processes, and everybody else has to catch up.
I agree. I often discuss this with friends and the argument of “our electricity network cant supply all that power” (which is true) is one i often counter with adding more solar panels, even to apartments.
Where but not necessarily when it’s needed. Still it’s good to connect to grid through a wall plug, without expensive or permanent equipment.
There are now small scale storage systems available to flatten the curve of production and increasenlocal consumption.
The idea for the when-part is that people will have electric cars at home, which can double as a big battery, or as the other guy already said, you can buy dedicated storage, too.
You could also hook these storages up to the grid, and then have an algorithm decide to sell to the grid when electricity is expensive, or to charge from the grid while electricity is cheap, possibly even taking the weather forecast into account.
Definitely still lots of details to figure out, but I expect things to head that way…