Big installations are actually well engineered. It’s the residential solar projects that cause the most issues with their microinverters. SolarEdge is a huge culprit.
The impact is being unable to use HF communications during daylight hours within 500m of a residential solar installation that does not follow good engineering practices.
No one cares about EMI violations anymore, which is funny because all that radiated energy could have been turned into useful electricity!
In the US, there is literally a single person at the FCC who handles such complaints. It is the same in every country. Anyway, what would the local RF association do? Send a letter?
There is an IEEE working group to establish residential solar installation “good engineering practices”, but we are years off from seeing anything, and even then it’s just a recommendation.
https://www.bundesnetzagentur.de/DE/Vportal/TK/Funktechnik/S... gives this example:
> Der Flughafen Bremen meldete ein Störungssignal in der Kommunikation zwischen Tower und Cockpit. Nach einer aufwendigen Ermittlung haben unsere Messtechniker einen Mardervertreiber auf dem Dachboden eines Familienhauses in der Nähe des Flughafens gefunden.
> Bremen Airport reported a fault signal in the communication between tower and cockpit. After an elaborate investigation, our measurement technicians found a marten repeller in the attic of a family home near the airport.
That sounds like EMI to me, but a different example they gave was that the wireless keyfob of the complainant's car didn't work on one side of the house (but worked on the other side), with the culprit being a small weather station at a neighbor that ran on the wrong frequency "due to a defect".
I'm not sure to what extend the offending devices affect safety critical infrastructure, but if they are sufficiently broadband, I'd expect them to hit such a frequency allocation.
In that case, the BNetzA can and afaik will order the offender to turn off and fix before turning back on.
I applaud this move, but it should be understood in the bigger picture.
Eventually the utility companies will start offering solar electric from huge farms. At that point, local solar panels will be considered inefficient and perhaps even dangerous.
So when it comes time to renew these panels, they will abandoned.
But if that what it takes to get us to utility solar, than great!
We still have way to little solar in general. We also don't have huge areas were we want to just put solar panels.
At least I thought or still think that in countries like Germany it makes total sense, even in the very long run, to keep solar locally on your roof.
Also those panels don't loose there value just because they are 20 years old. They will produce less but they will be paid of at that time. So why would I abandone them at all?
It would only make sense if suddenly energy overall becomes totally cheap from your proposed solar farms.
But that would I Claude not only energy like power but also heating.
As soon as energy hits rock bottom my assumption is that heating will be the last big energy consumer.
Rooftop actually has a few advantages that counter act its increased cost vs farms:
- Because the panels are geographically distributed it has less variance. A cloud can pass over a solar farm and you get one huge megawatt swing but when distributed it is much more predictable. If it is 50% cloudy you will get 50% generation continuously. This means grid operators can reliably bring cheaper larger sources with slower ramp rates online that day like nuclear instead of gas turbines. These also reduces the need for energy storage.
- Because the panels are closer to consumers there are less transmission losses and decreased capital cost in terms of energy transmission. Although distribution lines may need to be upgrade to compensate.
Imagine those panels at 70th parallel. Even at midsummer the sun is at 40 degrees. You could get 100% and 24 hours, if those panels were angled towards horizon and on rotating platform. But Nooo, we have to do as law lays. -- Or maybe we can use some old dead panels, they will scratch and break anyway when removing snow and ice
OTH BTW. Solar panels on marine beacons and cellphone towers on Arctic Ocean lay most often flat pointing upwards. No point of trying to catch the sun at all. Scattered light from clouds can be upto 10-20%, better than nothing.
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[ 0.20 ms ] story [ 36.2 ms ] threadI found much more on how to run it with solar.
There is also already an existing big installation base in Bavaria (Germany) without any big issues.
Are you referencing the short band interference of inverted?
Do you have a source which would describe the issue and the real impact globally?
Big installations are actually well engineered. It’s the residential solar projects that cause the most issues with their microinverters. SolarEdge is a huge culprit.
The impact is being unable to use HF communications during daylight hours within 500m of a residential solar installation that does not follow good engineering practices.
In the US, there is literally a single person at the FCC who handles such complaints. It is the same in every country. Anyway, what would the local RF association do? Send a letter?
There is an IEEE working group to establish residential solar installation “good engineering practices”, but we are years off from seeing anything, and even then it’s just a recommendation.
> Bremen Airport reported a fault signal in the communication between tower and cockpit. After an elaborate investigation, our measurement technicians found a marten repeller in the attic of a family home near the airport.
That sounds like EMI to me, but a different example they gave was that the wireless keyfob of the complainant's car didn't work on one side of the house (but worked on the other side), with the culprit being a small weather station at a neighbor that ran on the wrong frequency "due to a defect".
I'm not sure to what extend the offending devices affect safety critical infrastructure, but if they are sufficiently broadband, I'd expect them to hit such a frequency allocation. In that case, the BNetzA can and afaik will order the offender to turn off and fix before turning back on.
Also note the german amateur radio club's information on the subject: https://www.darc.de/der-club/referate/emv/emv-abhilfemassnah... "EMC (the EMI-sense) mitigation measures".
Eventually the utility companies will start offering solar electric from huge farms. At that point, local solar panels will be considered inefficient and perhaps even dangerous.
So when it comes time to renew these panels, they will abandoned.
But if that what it takes to get us to utility solar, than great!
We still have way to little solar in general. We also don't have huge areas were we want to just put solar panels.
At least I thought or still think that in countries like Germany it makes total sense, even in the very long run, to keep solar locally on your roof.
Also those panels don't loose there value just because they are 20 years old. They will produce less but they will be paid of at that time. So why would I abandone them at all?
It would only make sense if suddenly energy overall becomes totally cheap from your proposed solar farms.
But that would I Claude not only energy like power but also heating.
As soon as energy hits rock bottom my assumption is that heating will be the last big energy consumer.
- Because the panels are geographically distributed it has less variance. A cloud can pass over a solar farm and you get one huge megawatt swing but when distributed it is much more predictable. If it is 50% cloudy you will get 50% generation continuously. This means grid operators can reliably bring cheaper larger sources with slower ramp rates online that day like nuclear instead of gas turbines. These also reduces the need for energy storage.
- Because the panels are closer to consumers there are less transmission losses and decreased capital cost in terms of energy transmission. Although distribution lines may need to be upgrade to compensate.