korrents

korrents · piece

Solar and batteries for generic use cases

Casey Handmer · 9 Nov 2024 · caseyhandmer.wordpress.com ↗

3 korrents from this piece

Casey Handmer did not write this page.

Every claim below was made in this piece, quoted word for word and numbered in the order the piece makes them, so you can read it there rather than take our word for it. The sentence above each quote is our reading of the claim, not their wording. Each quote was checked against a stored copy of the page at build time; where the two differ, the quote is the fact.

  1. Our reading

    A solar panel is a manufactured object that produces wealth rather than consuming it, at a hundred times the rate of the best farmland.

    Their wordsInert glass rectangles that, placed on the ground, print out wealth, at roughly 100x the rate of the best farm land.
    Interesting

  2. Our reading

    Below about a thousand dollars a kilowatt of capital cost, the right way to run a plant is intermittently on raw solar with no batteries at all.

    Their wordsFor loads below $1000/kW, intermittent operation with some modest solar array oversizing is the winning strategy. Above $1000/kW, we charge and discharge batteries daily to run them.
    Interesting

  3. Our reading

    Past a point it is cheaper to overbuild solar than to add batteries, because a battery kept for the rare bad day is barely used.

    Their wordsA battery that’s discharging every day gets great utilization, but one that’s only there in case the sun doesn’t come up for two days in a row, barely gets used.
    Interesting