Comment by GorbachevyChase
4 months ago
We should learn something from the Cuban heavy transformer manufacturing enterprise. I mean I get that critical theory is that easy, but the step everyone always seem to miss is a credible explanation how a centrally managed command economy is better. There is also basically no free market mechanisms functioning in power delivery in the United States. You can’t stick a solar panel in your backyard and sell the output.
> You can’t stick a solar panel in your backyard and sell the output.
While the actual economics of it may have been kneecapped, selling solar power back to the grid is very much a thing in 33 states. It's in the form of a credit and not cash. I'm not trying to nitpick, but I'm not sure what you're getting at.
>>You can’t stick a solar panel in your backyard and sell the output.
Sure you can. To everyone you run power lines to. Or did you mean you wanted a distribution system designed to profit you instead operate efficiently for everyone else?
> There is also basically no free market mechanisms functioning in power delivery in the United States. You can’t stick a solar panel in your backyard and sell the output.
Part of that is because most of the world's power grids are extremely dumb. There's no visibility anywhere, certainly not in real time - if you're lucky, there is some sort of alert monitor for overtemperature in local transformers, but no voltage/current monitoring on an individual consumer level and no current monitoring on both sides of a transformer.
Imagine a small pole transformer plus secondary-side distribution lines rated and fused for 100 kVA. Enough for a few farms. Now farm A and B each install an 80 kVAp solar panel set - and farm C, D and E consume 50 kVA each. Without the decentralized solar, the pole transformer fuse would have been triggered - but now, there's 150 kVA of consumption going on, fed by the 160 kVA solar panels, on a distribution line only supporting 100 kVA, that's now acting as a fuse. An immediate risk of damage, if not outright fire.
That is why large scale solar/wind or large consumers all need permits, plannings and sometimes dedicated lines and transformers.
The only other way to run a system without creating tons of new infra but still able to catch such dangerous situations is a detailed (!) network map on the utility side plus realtime monitoring of the transformer and all five farms input/output currents.