Ask HN: How can I start a business to generate electricity?
I know that the capital costs for building a working power plant of any kind are pretty high. However, I still want to learn and see what is possible.
1. What is the thinnest vertical slice of end-to-end power-generation functionality that an individual would be able deploy and maintain on their own?
2. What are the names of necessary things that I would need to learn and research?
3. What parts are too easy to dismiss early on, but are likely to bite me later on?
136 comments
[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 192 ms ] threadDon't show me a free energy device. That's skipping a whole bunch of steps. Start by showing me proof of even the tiniest violation of the First Law. That's a Nobel Prize on its own.
The fact that this doofus has been working on this machine for as long as he has, without publishing a paper establishing a violation of the First Law, is enough to tell me that this machine plays by the same rules as the rest of the universe.
Would be cool if the Second Law wasn't true either, though! The whole "heat death of the universe" thing bums me out.
Second Law: You can't break even.
Third Law: You can't opt out.
So far, anyone who has claimed to break one of those laws is either missing some experimental error source, or is trying to sell something without the slightest bit of valid scientific proof as to their claims...
If someone actually had a working "free energy" device of some sort, I'd reasonably assume them to make Elon Musk and Bill Gates look like paupers, not be working in their garage making YouTube videos long on hype and short on details.
If “free energy” was a thing, power companies would already be using it.
https://www.kryonengine.org/
Edit: the FAQs address the first law issues - and I can't summarize here - I wish I was such a creative writer.
Please be serious.
You really need to do a lot of research to figure out if it's feasible and if you have enough sunlight, area for panels, etc. to make it worthwhile. There's a lot of upfront costs too with the panels, meters, and extra protections necessary for when you're interfacing with sending power onto the grid--a lot of folks need to run their system for 5-10 years or more before it breaks even and starts making them money vs. all the initial costs.
"Citation?", "[Citation]", "Citation Needed" - these all bother me when the research is literally just copy/paste/search.
[1] https://guides.lib.uw.edu/research/citations/citationwhat
More electrical systems in your house means more risk of fire.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitchens%27s_razor
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
"More than 90% of inspected rooftops had significant safety and fire risks. Here’s how to protect your solar asset."
Lots of bad wiring. Get a 3rd party inspector.
May be best to watch the inspector do the inspection?
The stats showed that the rooftop isolation switches shorting out was the leading cause of fires. We no longer fit them.
You put some modern panels on your roof that absorb power from the sun that now no longer gets absorbed by your roof - so your roof is now a little cooler. A wooden roof is now actually less of a fire risk and a tiled roof will now absorb and radiate less heat - bonus!
I live in the UK. We build from sticks n bricks. We've had a bit of a heat wave recently that concentrates the mind somewhat. My office (I'm the MD) has a vast expanse of red brick double skinned which is south facing. My desk environment is around 10C warmer than the external temperature (I have a lot of sensors deployed). I have now decreed that when my desk temp is 30C then we abandon ship and work from home.
I'm going to investigate skimming the red brickwork with a white render. My parent's house is a modern build and that seems to help.
Oh, fire risk? What on earth are you on about? Insurance risk? What are you on about?
Easily said but ... don't
Properly installed? Sure, no or minimal risk.
But insurance companies deal in aggregate, which includes improperly installed panels.
Adding a whole bunch of electrical equipment (that's exposed to the elements, wildlife, etc.) absolutely increases the risk of fire. Panels are heavy as well, so you're increasing the load on the roof, could increase risk of collapse (especially in areas that get lots of snow). Plus, if you don't notify your insurance company, it's at best not going to cover replacement cost of panels if something goes wrong and at worst invalidate your whole policy.
I trained as a Civ Eng in Plymouth (the British one). I now own an IT company. I have a fair idea about fire risk (I'm our fire officer too) and how some materials behave in general and under loads and incident (eg fire).
In my opinion, roof mounted solar panels have very few risks in the UK. The likeliest risk is wind related. We are seeing increasingly strong gusts - virtually nothing compared to tornados but this is a land that does not have tornadoes (yet).
We need to consider surviving Beaufort force 12 as a minimum standard.
https://www.bbc.com/news/education-33136737
My understanding is that the legislation actually requires the working environment be cooler than that, so I get the sentiment, and ironically probably many of your employees' homes will be hotter, but I think you've set the bar too high.
I am the H&S bod, and shortly I'll be first aid accredited (again). Mind you I've done first aid for sailing and skiing back in the day too, so I know what you are supposed to do when hit by an avalanche ("swim" and pray, or soil yourself and pray - which is more likely) and how to treat or at least mitigate hypothermia.
For some reason we have had loads of practice in working from home recently. I'm an expert in VPNs and all my staff have home phones virtually wired up to our PBX.
The other 75% of solar energy heats up the panels themselves I guess and/or is reflected.
Pre the latest increase today 'leccy costed around 30p per KWH - after today it will be at least 45p. 7.5p for self generated is nice but I suggest you use your own generated power.
I could do something economically productive with the billing credit, like charge EVs or mine crypto, but I consider that more a knock-on effect than a moneymaker.
[1] EU; I gathered that solar is significantly more expensive in the US.
Without it that access, you are likely going nowhere even with a small commercial solar farm.
Regulation. (Highly depends on where you live, though).
That said, get acquainted with:
- How the electrical grid works. You will at the least want to have a working understanding on how generators synchronize to produce a coherent grid and how frequency regulation works. You should be able to at least immediately tell the difference between a MW and a MVAR, or to clearly explain the impact of power factor correction on transmission line capacity.
- The various different primary energy sources (fossil fuels, nuclear, wind, solar) and how they differ.
- Your local electricity grid regulator will have published rules for the local wholesale electricity market. Learn those and how to interact with them. You should probably be aware that for most markets the minimum bid size is in the order of megawatts, which is enough for about a thousand homes.
- The economics of how power generation works. Power generation has massive economies of scale and single-person initiatives are unlikely to be able to compete.
- Last but certainly not least, get yourself up to date with safety regulations. Grid level electricity will not only kill you, it will hurt the entire time too.
If you want to "just" make enough electricity for yourself, get some solar panels on your roof. I'm sorry this post is probably not what you were hoping for but electricity is really really dangerous and not something you should be going into if you don't have a firm grasp of what you are doing.
The only "in" for a small player is remote/rural where the cost of distribution infrastructure dominates. Also dispatchable service to provide frequency stability seems to be a niche.
Even then, you still have the same high cost for distribution infrastructure (actually higher once you factor in economies of scale) with none of the experience building said infrastructure. And you're probably not going to be able to build an isolated grid because (at least in the US) power companies have already run wires basically anywhere people are willing to pay for power.
The biggest market I can see is neighbors pooling funds for a large solar installation and wiring up everyone's houses to reduce power bills, but that would probably be a permitting nightmare (and that's assuming there's no legislation prohibiting this already).
Building-level electricity is the type where a dropped spanner instantly becomes a faceful of gaseous metal. If you think you have time to feel the pain, you don't understand grid level energy yet.
Yeah, was about to say - grid level arc flashes don’t even require being particularly close to a conductor, let alone provide enough time for the miscreant to feel pain before becoming chunks or vapor.
It can leave cool scorch marks though!
People probably discouraged the Wright Brothers, Amelia Earhart, and Thomas Edison too for safety reasons.
Don’t be discouraged OP. If you want to do it, go for it.
Civilization has had grid scale electrical power for over a hundred years. It’s sheer hubris to ignore the fact that this is a mature industry with experts that have studied the problem for decades.
Yes, there are specific parallels to the Wright brothers - if you want to make and fly a plane exactly like the Wright brothers did, well, you can't simply do that anymore, you need to follow FAA regulations and safety standards which didn't exist back then; and recommending that someone "just do it" would be irresponsible.
See also: those "crazy/wacky/funny laws in <city/state/country>" books and listicles that feature antiquated laws that are still on the books (some of which are most certainly unconstitutional) but nobody cares about enforcing them, so there exists no political will to repeal them.
For example, with an ultralight you do not need any sort of pilot's license or medical certificate.
EDIT: Actually the wright bros aircraft would be too heavy to qualify as ultralight nowadays. But with today's materials I'd bet if they did it again they could get it under the weight limit.
Not to me tonight your examples are a bit off. This is nowhere like the first powered flight. Earhart when missing swing her risky thing and was never seen again. Edison intentionally extracted large animals to drive artificial fear over the safety of AC, not to mention many of his most famous inventions are considered to be the fruit of his employees rather than his own intellect.
Also, the people you cite had expert level knowledge in their field when they built novel projects; they weren't asking beginner questions on HN.
Earhart had been a pilot for eight years before attempting to cross the Atlantic.
The only exemple of someone entering a highly regulated industry without being an insider I can think of is Musk and SpaceX and even then he was previously rich, started by building the connection which would allow him to get public funds through the Mars Society and his first move was hiring Tom Mueller, an industry insider.
In my experience, people with a software background who don’t have an industrial background heavily underestimate the complexity involved.
And for reference, a MW of Solar panels costs close to $1M - so this is not really a feasible industry for the average Joe to enter.
People would take out loans to afford them, or rent them from the real "franchise owner".
Not everybody aspires to a unicorn exit. Predictable returns are worth a lot too, even small ones. The drivers who took out loans for their medallions really got screwed when Uber came in, but if the demand for electricity drops catastrophically, we'll probably have bigger problems than a bit of debt.
2) you might need to have 10x that much (in just panels).
3) I'd be amazed if you could find financing for this.
Or you can do a deep tech startup like mini Varda. $1MM can get you far enough that you attract VC money and that’s all you need.
It might look more like a micro financing idea than a franchise. Most of the commercial-scale solar installations today are built by a developer and then either a) held in their portfolio or b) sold to a utility
Or perhaps it would make more sense to colocate with someone already producing such a product and selling them electricity so that you don't actually have to deal with making the product yourself?
I'm thinking aluminum, hydrogen, synthetic hydrocarbons, etc.
I'm completely uninformed, correct me if this is a stupid idea.
If you are an an electric deregulated market:
- Utility commission (PUC, etc.). They will typically have a lot of sway in your day to day.
- Retail Electric Providers: companies that operate as hedge funds and try to buy from you cheaply and sell to customers on a spread
- Aggregators: aggregate customers that purchase energy as a bloc
- Transmission & Distribution: the wires folks
- Power market: your area will vary, but this is an open market where you can sell. Typically you'll sell forward or futures contracts of a sort. There is often a day-ahead market and a real time market as well to help plug any gaps. A power provider that can spin up quickly does well here. Someone with a bunch of airplane turbines can also help here when supply > demand if they wire their turbines up (turbine = generators, backwards). There is a lot of creative financial focus in this space since the returns are more apparent than in power generation
2. There is a tariff for interconnection, and you need anti islanding. Inspections are backlogged by 6-12 months in the area. You’ll need an electrician to draw up the plans for submission to Centerpoint.
3. Even though Texas’s power market is famously “unregulated”, it’s still very regulated. I recommend starting here: https://www.ercot.com/services/training/courses/details?name...
ERCOT has a wealth of information available so that you can get up to speed.
Do you have some examples? I think those that were successful despite not knowing anything had other advantages, as the parent is saying (a lot of money, some friends, some expertise in some other field that was applicable to this problem...). So I think it's a fair question.
Then understanding battery storage for the solar and integrating this.
You should become licensed to do all of this or be prepared to build a business that employs people to do so.
Next would be to build a solar grid in your yard or buy some land to build on. Then offer to sell it at below market rates to neighbors and integrate your solar grid into their homes.
The end goal being something analogous to a WISP which you could continue to add on to as capital and experience permits.
https://www.wispa.org/what_is_a_wisp.php
Get enough amps from / to the grid.
(check out electricity infra. posts made by crypto miners)
https://insideevs.com/news/606725/tesla-powerwall-owners-sel...
Be your own tiny power company.
That said, my approach was to find businesses or individuals as near as possible to a given piece of land (a lot I own) and see if they would buy power directly from me. I also contacted the local utility provider (as other commenters suggest) to see if I could sell them power or lease them equipment or land.
The idea was something like: find a large power consumer nearby - someone heating a hot tub, running a woodworking shop, data centre, whatever; undercut the local utility, see what the payback period would be on the capital equipment, then get a legal consult on how to paper it, then hire electricians to hook it all up.
tldr I suggest validating the market first.
However, if you can conceivably generate emissions-free power on-demand at a cost lower than what they're paying now, you will likely have hundreds of companies knocking your door down trying to help fund your scale out.
If you really do want to operate a business generating electricity, start by learning how the power market operates in your area. Unless you live off-grid with a high degree of autonomy, you're likely to find that there are zero opportunities for an individual to enter this market on their own. Providing stable power to the grid requires unbelievable amounts of capital, planning, compliance, person-hours, and way too many other elements to list here.
If what you're actually interested in is generating electricity for yourself or your community, the good news is this is much more approachable. Developing and operating small-scale off-grid renewable energy system for a small home is achievable with off-the-shelf components and a basic understanding of electronics. You'll still want an electrician to validate and perhaps perform some of the work, but it's all pretty basic.
If what you're actually interested in is spearheading a renewable energy campaign for a large community currently dependent on other forms of power, take a look at community solar programs and energy cooperatives. Both are in practice all over the US.
I kind of want of something in between the first two potential interests. Imagine something that is like a cross between a solar panel and a night light that you plug in to an AC outlet, but that plays nice with the local power grid in every which way. Sure the amount of power it could produce would be negligible, but being able to create something that is able to feed the grid and meet all appropriate regulations for the electrical code would be an accomplishment in itself. I don’t know what the physics and capital costs behind creating something like that would be or if this idea absolutely infeasible because of the same physics and capital costs, but that is also what I am trying to learn. I am also not married to this idea at all: it is just an illustration of my level of knowledge on the subject matter as a whole, and the kinds of questions that first come to my mind.
For what it’s worth, the scenario you describe is basically how the state of the art home systems work in the markets that support them. Distributed generation (via solar), energy storage (via batteries), and bidirectional grid connections for feeding surplus energy to the grid. Some companies even aggregate homes to act as a virtual power plant which can be dispatched on demand. There is a ton of interesting stuff happening in this area, I hope you find an opportunity that suits you!
[0] https://climatescape.org/categories/energy [1] https://projectdrawdown.org