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Solar will get too cheap to connect to the power grid. (climate.benjames.io)

submitted 2 months ago by poVoq@slrpnk.net to c/energy@slrpnk.net

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[–] ChaoticNeutralCzech 30 points 2 months ago (12 children)

There is a lot of operations that aren't timing-critical (their work is cumulative) and can be made cheaper by only using excess energy in daytime.

Pumped hydro
Charging grid-tied batteries and EVs
Air heating/conditioning (especially when used with physical heat storage)
Water heating/cooling for residential use
Water heating for pools
Reverse osmosis
Furnaces in glass/metal/aluminum factories, crematoriums etc.
Computation-heavy tasks (AI training, simulations, rendering, crypto mining...)

Solar can be built wherever there's demand for any of these, right? Also, more customers should adopt a real-time energy pricing model.

[–] frank@sopuli.xyz 18 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

I will say, from my time being a process engineer in metals:

-Everything runs 24/7 cuz the equipment is so expensive and there's always too much demand

-furnaces are gas, probably too hot to reach in a reasonable space with electricity

Totally agree with storing temperature/water locally as a battery, especially at home levels

[–] wewbull@feddit.uk 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I believe the electric funaces are called "Arc furnaces" and you heat by making electricy jump between conductors.

One of the advantages over blust furnaces is that production can be varied more easily as there isn't a whole lot of ancillary parts of the furnance which all need to get up to temperature. So only running them on excess energy might be more practical.

[–] frank@sopuli.xyz 2 points 2 months ago

Oh I wasn't even thinking of it, but for secondary in iron that is probably perfect. Still not gonna be able to continuously anneal or anything due to the massive amount of thermal mass needed, but for the "spot" stuff that sounds perfect

I also have no idea about titanium production and it could easily be useful there

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