There’s Cash In Them Old Solar Panels

The first solar panels may have rolled out of Bell Labs in the 1950s, with major press around their inconsistent and patchy adoption in the decades that followed, but despite the fanfare they were not been able to compete on a price per kilowatt compared to other methods of power generation until much more recently. Since then the amount of solar farms has increased exponentially, and while generating energy from the sun is much cleaner than most other methods of energy production and contributes no greenhouse gasses in the process there are some concerns with disposal of solar panels as they reach the end of their 30-year lifespan. Some companies are planning on making money on recycling these old modules rather than letting them be landfilled.

Typical solar panels are encased in glass and waterproofed, which makes recycling them somewhat of a challenge, but there are a lot of valuable materials in them that are worth recovering, including silver and copper. Even silicon and aluminum are profitable to recover, and these companies have developed specialized (but secret and proprietary) processes to recover them as efficiently as possible. As [Jon Hurdle] notes in the linked article, another major concern with aging panels that recycling solves is that they are often otherwise required to be landfilled as hazardous waste which can be extremely expensive. Recycling can alleviate this cost dramatically.

While there is a certain amount of pearl-clutching going on around solar panels, usually as thinly veiled political opposition from those invested in fossil fuels, we shouldn’t be surprised that plenty of people are springing up to recover the valuable materials that can be harvested from old panels. Solar panels aren’t going away anytime soon, and while the article notes there are only five companies currently certified to recycle solar panels, expect plenty more to spring up in time. In the meantime, make sure you are harvesting the maximum amount of energy from your solar panels while they are still working by using a maximum power point tracker.

82 thoughts on “There’s Cash In Them Old Solar Panels

    1. carbon emissions do not really matter, what matters is where and what the emissions come from.
      fossil fuels are bad, but there are many other fuel sources; green-hydrogen, methanol, dead people and the remains of the living: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6CF-umWLZg

      so do not tear down that “coal” power plant yet.

      next-gen nuclear is just a distraction, thoron reactors where invented before uranium reactors,
      but because of the cold war everyone build uranium reactors to build nuclear bombs and enrich their ammunition, ignoring the many thousands years of waste. (thoron is only many hundreds).

      and for you grandchildren, there is the always 30 years in the future fusion power..

      1. Good point, the question about nuclear fusion we need to care about today in practice is “what do we do in the meantime?”

        Even by praising nuclear 100%, we are in the transition situation that hundreds of generations after us will have to deal with. This is the precise moment where we need to react.

        If we ignore that, we deal with the previous generation’s problems by creating bigger problems for the next to solve: more nuclear to face the end of gasoline.

          1. What seems suspiciously absent from that survey, is that to get fuel for your nuclear power plant, you need a _lot_ of ore. 440,000 tons of ore, for 33 tons of uranium. Ore that’s mostly discarded, still highly radiative. But yeah, nobody cares about Kazachstan right? Let’s ignore all those reports about misformed babies in the mines’ vicinity.

            Also, in the complete life cycle of a nuclear power plant, the total amound of CO2 it procuces (including it being built and dismantled) is estimated at 8-30 times that of wind energy.

            Then there’s the tiny detail of all European depleted uranium being enriched in Russia only. So far for being independent of the baddies.

            Oh, and it seems that children in the neighbourhood of a nuclear power plant have a 5x higher risk of leukemia. But surely that’s coincedence?

          2. That study is only looking at land use, make no mention of costs or risks, doesn’t account for cleanup and remediation costs, makes no mention of environmental damage from excess heat production. etc. typical cherry picking nonsense.

          3. @Jalnl – Nuclear should be pretty clean so long as there isn’t a big accident. All the potential pollutants are kept in an isolated loop and although their is a waste problem the volume isn’t that much. Just compare it to coal, looking at you Kingston!

            AS for the big, high profile accidents that I am aware of.. Chernobyl, Three Mile Island and Fukushima… Simply not building in geographically unstable areas (Fukushima) and not allowing poor management (Chernobyl and Three Mile Island) ought to prevent problems. Well.. unless there’s a war… Here’s to hoping for the best at Zaporizhzhia.

            I don’t know anything about your claim here “Oh, and it seems that children in the neighborhood of a nuclear power plant have a 5x higher risk of leukemia.”

            But IF that is true I would suggest something to consider. People with money and power are pretty good at keeping all sorts of industry including power plants out of their neighborhoods. Instead it gets concentrated in the less affluent areas. Where there is one power plant, factory, dump or other undesirable site there are probably many others nearby. So… if you have statistics showing health problems around nuclear plants it might be revealing to see what other, perhaps more polluting industry is in the vicinity of those children who upped your statistic.

          4. @Twisty Plastic:
            “AS for the big, high profile accidents that I am aware of.. Chernobyl, Three Mile Island and Fukushima… Simply not building in geographically unstable areas (Fukushima) and not allowing poor management (Chernobyl and Three Mile Island) ought to prevent problems. Well.. unless there’s a war… Here’s to hoping for the best at Zaporizhzhia.”

            Ever heard of murphy? I think nuclear energy can be perfect save, but not in the hands of humans. They are very capable in fucking things up, by accident or malicious intent. I simply do not trust us humans enough. Your train of thoughts is perfect proof of this.

            Thank you

          5. > you need a _lot_ of ore. 440,000 tons of ore, for 33 tons of uranium. Ore that’s mostly discarded, still highly radiative.

            Good thing then that we have literal mountains of it left over after mining for rare earth elements and whatnot. Uranium mining for fission reactions is small beans compared to the amount of radioactive waste rock left over from extracting metals for batteries, semiconductors etc.

          6. > makes no mention of environmental damage from excess heat production.

            There’s no more heat production than from conventional thermal generators, because they work exactly the same. The only difference is that nuclear power plants are built bigger because of anti-nuclear policies that try to limit the number of facilities to zero by not permitting more smaller reactors.

          7. >doesn’t account for cleanup and remediation costs

            Irrelevant complaint – the question was which technology harms the environment, not how much it costs.

            Then, we have already decommissioned many reactors around the world. For example, Vandellos 1 in Spain closed down in 1990, and now it’s been 30 years and the remaining structures can be removed from the site. Cost? About €100 million. That’s peanuts. Global estimates range at around $1 billion per 1 GW, which is in the ballpark of +10-20% to the price of a nuclear plant AND the money in most countries is collected as taxes and securities from the operator itself, so it’s already paid forwards, provided the government doesn’t siphon the money away to other uses…

          8. @jalnl
            “What seems suspiciously absent from that survey, is that to get fuel for your nuclear power plant, you need a _lot_ of ore. 440,000 tons of ore, for 33 tons of uranium. Ore that’s mostly discarded, still highly radiative. But yeah, nobody cares about Kazachstan right? Let’s ignore all those reports about misformed babies in the mines’ vicinity.

            Also, in the complete life cycle of a nuclear power plant, the total amound of CO2 it procuces (including it being built and dismantled) is estimated at 8-30 times that of wind energy.

            Then there’s the tiny detail of all European depleted uranium being enriched in Russia only. So far for being independent of the baddies.

            Oh, and it seems that children in the neighbourhood of a nuclear power plant have a 5x higher risk of leukemia. But surely that’s coincedence?”

            – Kazakhstan uses in situ leach (ISL) mining. There is no ore. Canada, the biggest operating mine, does underground ore mining.
            – Those CO2 emissions are primarily from cement production.
            – Depleted uranium can’t be enriched economically, it’s almost entirely non-
            fissable uranium isotopes.
            – Leukemia is a lung cancer. An airborn radiation source would be required. Like from radon that naturally is produced by decaying underground uranium. Residential homes blow it outside, reactor don’t as their uranium is encapsulated. Only secondary radiation leaks are possible if the fuel rods aren’t breached.

            @Twisty Plastic
            “AS for the big, high profile accidents that I am aware of.. Chernobyl, Three Mile Island and Fukushima… Simply not building in geographically unstable areas (Fukushima) and not allowing poor management (Chernobyl and Three Mile Island) ought to prevent problems. Well.. unless there’s a war… Here’s to hoping for the best at Zaporizhzhia.”

            – The Fukushima accident was primarily the fault of using some diesel generators and not battery backups on all the reactors. The diesel generators didn’t function without air (underwater).
            – Three Mile Island has killed more fish with hot water than with radiation. A former submarine nuclear engineer used submarine best practices when dealing with a different type of reactor.
            – Chernobyl was the mismanagement of a Marxist regime.

    1. I would say a lie if you dont look at the bigger picture. Solar panel production emissions are in the order of 200-800kgco2eq per kwp(mostly dependant on the power mix of the production site and transportation method) so a standard chineese solar panel will offset its carbon footprint within 2 years after installation on a typical european home. In high renewable countries like Norway you will never be able to beat a hydroelectric powermix (32g for worst case chineese panels vs 20gCO2/kwh for norwegain powermix) BUT, every KWH offset during the day in Norway with a 32g/kwh solar panel will replace a 400g kilowatthour in Europe during nighttime due to export cables. So close to every single solar panel installed in the world today will be carbon negative within a few years.

    2. Nah just a confusing sentence, I had to read it a few times to see it. Look at what it says before the bit you extracted “and while generating energy from the sun is much cleaner than most other methods of energy production and contributes no greenhouse gasses in the process” – he is say it doesn’t produce greenhouse gases when generating power – I don’t think he was referring to the generation of greenhouse gases during the production process that is a well known problem.

  1. …pearl-clutching from those invested in fossil fuels? Modern media.

    Regulations force the lower 70% to finance the upper-class’s solar installs and solar farms. This is done through programs like renewable energy credits which drive up fossil fuel utility costs and subsidies, rebates and tax credits. The vast majority of residential solar panels are purchase by those in the wealthy upper 30%, yet the middle and lower-classes pay fossil-fueled utility bills, and the bulk of it.

    The actual ‘solar opposition’ are not those “invested in fossil fuels”, but rather people who see that solar is not a panacea and no longer worth the crazy amounts of resources. They WANT a sustainable future, but they’re upset that REAL solutions like nuclear are not even entertained. They’re frustrated that the government is taking away more freedoms and increasing taxes for an untenable idea. They don’t want to end up like CA.

    1. Does your comment mean that your state is willing to store spent nuclear material? Likely not so until some state is willing to risk contamination lets keep our fingers crossed for nuclear fusion and until then I will use my ecar and skip gas stations.

      1. If the entire nation was willing to adopt nuclear power I would buy a 100 acre plot of land flood it and throw all the rods in the bottom of the man made lake. I would then build a house right on the edge of that lake and confidentially experience less radiation from my lake then I would traveling internationally on a plane. It’ll be a problem in a few thousand years I guess but it buys a hell of a lot more time then pretending solar panels can even come close to our future energy needs.

        1. ” It’ll be a problem in a few thousand years I guess but it buys a hell of a lot more time then pretending solar panels can even come close to our future energy needs.”

          As opposed to pretending we know what our future needs are going to be. Never mind any improvements in conservation of energy. A couple natural disasters, several pandemics, with a war or two will wreck anyone’s betting pool.

          1. >As opposed to pretending we know what our future needs are going to be.

            Analysis paralysis. Conservation efforts are only realistic if the people are not suffering with worse problems, such as global poverty and oppressive political regimes that try to “solve” the crisis by rationing resources in the name of “efficiency”.

            For example, the UN proposes that we should make urban development denser and move all the people into the cities to save energy, because then people move less and they use less heat, less materials per square foot of housing, fewer miles of road etc.. Only problem is, since there are no real jobs in the city for so many people, the end result is a ghetto and eventually a revolution that rejects the whole green fascism for worse.

    2. That is a valid point, with subsidised rooftop solar you end up with the working poor (tax payers) in rental accomodation subsidising it to the benefit of the upper middle class homeowners, a clear cut socio economic injustice that “climate warriors” pretend that they can’t see.

      1. Well, seeing that the “climate warriors” are rarely struggling to get by themselves…

        Upper classes pretending to solve the problems of the society from the comfort of their mansions is called “champagne socialism”, or in the US, “Lexus liberalism”. What would be the equivalent term for environmental causes?

      2. That is going to depend hugely on the location and social norms – in some nations practically nobody ever buys its all rented for instance.

        And whatever the norm is subsidising the landlords will have a major benefit to their tenants – that is an enormous amount of electricity they will be getting much much cheaper, or maybe even free depending on the subsided panels are set up compared to their current bills.

        The bait taker may have a point in their local area but that won’t apply globally, and will vary a great deal more based on the stage of life as well – even your lowest 30% of the population in wealth terms can manage to own a home – Around here at least definitely happened. So they may well at some point perhaps even as they get towards retirement be able afford solar as their mortgage costs go down/disappear, and they would benefit just as much as any homeowner to a subsidy scheme (at least if their building happens to be a good candidate for solar).

          1. In the places where the system works out for everyone it absolutely should be happening if it can be afforded – in those places everyone is winning to some degree as it is helping provide a modern lifestyle in a more sustainable way.

            There is nothing morally bankrupt about acknowledging that the World is not identical in all locations for every person. So what works in one culture, ecosystem, geographic region won’t work everywhere! Can’t build practical geothermal where the access to hot rocks is too difficult, or wind turbine in the place so sheltered by the surrounding mountains it will never turn…

          2. You attempted to pretend that areas where there is not a problem (where?) negate the issue in other areas where there is the problem. You know that is fallacious and disingenuous. :-(

          3. >You attempted to pretend that areas where there is not a problem (where?) negate the issue in other areas where there is the problem.

            Not at all, I’m saying a good idea for X location is still a good idea for X even if where ever you are it doesn’t work. Just like you don’t open a beef burger joint in the middle of Hindu territory, as that is going to go down oh so well with the locals, but it might be a great business virtually everywhere else in the world. The right solution for the right place!

            As for places it might be a good idea Germany springs to mind as a nation where renting homes for your entire life is and has been it seems for ages the norm. So for them a government subsidy to let landlords and the homeowners put up solar aught to work out great for everyone including the poorest – it is energy they will get to consume quite possibly free of charge, certainly cheaper, nobody specific had to pay lots for the setup, and the wider public who did pay for it also win – making their grid less dependent on imported petrochemical energy or really really dirty coal they have been strip mining is a big win for the nation as a whole!

        1. >or maybe even free

          There is no such thing as free electricity. The end effect of hiding the cost of the power into subsidies is inflation in other prices. You still see a drop in your purchasing power which is the same thing. Buying more expensive power by the trick of subsidies makes everyone poorer, except for those who are receiving the subsidies.

          1. It might well be supplied FREE to THOSE SPECIFIC people, the poorer folk living in rented accommodation we were talking about – all depends on how you structure the subsidies etc. But as the default solar install is set up for local consumption before export if the landlord is subsidised to put up solar the tenant quite possibly do get the power free when it is available or as a discount on their normal billing rate per unit every month. Either way the poorer folk a gaining from this subsidy, and the landlord if the subsidy is sufficient will end up gaining in a reasonable rapid return time – everyone wins, including the wider public that funded it as there is so much more export electric or lower consumption that their bills get lighter too.

    3. The “peak subsidy” for solar happened around 2010, and combining both direct spending and tax breaks, it went well over $800 per MWh. These days it’s gone down below $80/MWh, but it’s still an order of magnitude more than any other technology is getting.

      Compare, normal electricity wholesale prices on the grid go for $20-50/MWh. That is, not the spot price but the regular PPA price for conventional technologies like hydro and natural gas powered generation. Grid scale solar typically gets a PPA around €20-30/MWh PLUS subsidies.

      1. Well, any other technology except wind power – but we’re starting to see suppliers competing for contracts without subsidies now. Solar – not so much.

        The issue with solar is that it can’t exist without subsidies – because the sun is up for everyone and everyone for hundreds of miles around has to sell at the same time. The more solar you build, the lower the value and price of the electricity you generate because. It always needs either net metering or price fixing paid from taxes to be profitable to the producer.

        People say, “Oh, we’ll put it in batteries and sell it later”, which is great, except batteries too cost money and lose energy, which multiplies the cost to produce whatever energy you ultimately get. You can only sell when the electricity prices are high due to short supply, so what happens when everyone buys into the solar plus battery scheme is that supply starts to meet demand, and the prices fall down again…

        1. This is not a solar problem, it is a financing a stable grid problem. Every functional solution for grid stability will kill itself, if it is forced to live off the problems it solves. You should not profit from the peaks, but from the lack thereof. Now back to the drawing board for a financing scheme that accomplishes this (may be applicable in the health sector and the disaster help sector as well, or might exist in some form there).
          After this solar will get its share by itself, until then … guess the share and subsidize to reach this point, with the true problem being not the subsidies, but the guessing.

          1. It’s a supply matching demand problem, meaning, the true value of solar power when scaled up to significant quantities is not as great as its cost. You can’t solve that with any financial scheme. You can only hide the loss into subsidies by forcing other people pay the difference.

          2. Dude: you are guessing. Consider an example net with one solar cell and one refrigerator. With the current scheme the solar cell owner will rip off the refrigerator owner in the morning and the refrigerator owner will rip off the solar cell owner on the afternoon. It would be better not ripping off each other, so the refrigerator guy gets free energy and the solar cell guy gets free food storage for the cost of maintenance of solar and refrigerator only.
            Scale this example way up to the existing grid, and as I said solar will get its share, as well as energy storage solutions and peak power plants. The financial scheme is not the solution, but it should support the development of the solution, instead of killing it at the same moment it starts to work properly.

      2. Though that’s still not accounting for local subsidies and incentives at the state and county level.

        It used to be that you could discount 99 plus something percent of your solar investment by combining different subsidies AND then get net metering on top.

      3. We spend many billions every year to play security guard for free for the oil companies, we guard their ships from pirates, where can we get our free security guards to protect our stuff?

  2. I don’t have a clue why everybody is featuring nucular here. The end-to-end cost of nuclear fission reactors – which is the only commercially available technology currently – is way higher than for any other energy source. If we’re honest, it has never been feasible without generous public subsidies anywhere on planet earth.

    1. The same can be said for every energy source.

      Coal makes a mess of the environment. The coal-fired power plant operators aren’t called upon to clean up the mess (slag, strip mines, ash) – all of that mess just hangs around. The government has to step in and handle the larger parts.

      Gas and oil have large environmental effects as well. When an oil well leaks in the ocean, it ain’t the oil company that cleans it up.

      The difference between nuclear and other energy sources is that people compare all the costs of nuclear to just some of the costs of the other sources.

        1. I left that out ’cause that’s assumed anyway. Like I said, nuclear power opponents count all the costs of nuclear power (including the exceedingly rare disasters) but ignore the costs of the catastrophes caused by other energy sources.

          Can you say “global warming?” I knew you could.

        2. Still peanuts compared to the amount of energy produced by nuclear power.

          Radioactive contamination has a half-life. Chemical pollution left by industries, including the renewables industries, is forever.

          1. Practically no pollution (if any) is really forever if you stop adding to it – nature is full of things that do process practically everything, it just might take ages and be very harmful to most living things without human cleanup efforts first.

  3. My impression is one of the big challenge is not about picking the best method to produce electricity, but best way to deal with externalities (so recycling solar panels is a hot topic!), as well as reducing the consumption.

    Any form of pollution is fine as long as it is way below a sustainability threshold. Moving to a flawless energy source, reducing nasty side effects, reducing consumption… all solve the problem of sustainability equally well?

      1. A decent structure made out solar panels really won’t be any different to a decent greenhouse/conservatory in look – you absolutely can assemble a pile of garbage that looks like a pile of garbage or you can build something that looks very meant out of it.

  4. My installer (this is Australia) says that it’s not profitable – for him – to recycle the internals yet. He told me that he will dismantle panels for the aluminium framing, worth about AUD$8 – $9/kilo, and the rest of the panels go to bulk recyclers, who hopefully manage to extract the copper and high-grade silicon for re-use.

  5. Would be nice if we could go about working out how to repair them with replacement silicon. We have plenty of need for Solar energy and recycling the panels seems counterproductive, if we could at least restore them to prior function or even upgrade them with modern cells that would be better. Reuse is vastly better for something we obviously still need than recycling it.

  6. And if solar is the way the country would like to go, how about this…Free solar panels instead of tax subsidies?

    the comments above are accurate in that they mention that subsidies only help those who have considerable finances to install solar while charging those who do not to pay for the tax incentives. I’m about to look into replacing my roof and I’ll be looking at solar alternatives and how the tax incentives help me.

    But wouldn’t the tax incentives be better spent to at least purchase the materials for installation of a solar rooftop? Shouldn’t those that insist on electric car adoption be also pushing utilities to get customers to put solar panels on their property for peak offsets? Maybe having the customer pay a lower cost for their electricity until such a time as the panels are paid off and the customer and utility can benefit from net metering??

    I see a lot of “WE’RE SERIOUS ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE” but to do anything meaningful with solar or nuclear all I see is “WHERE’S THE PROFIT IN THAT FOR US?”

    Beware those that impose their ideas. Unless they’re willing to take the first step and adopt the changes their motives are not for the good of mankind, more likely it’s to fatten their bank accounts and those of their friends.

    1. > “WHERE’S THE PROFIT IN THAT FOR US?”

      Which really is rather the problem when essential public services are run for profit, as being (often) publicly traded companies even if the management do want to push for a better deal for the customer they have to walk that tightrope of still paying the shareholders enough to keep them happy and not tanking the share price in the process. Which limits what can be done to rather small symbolic gestures really. Where if the grid was genuinely publicly owned (rather than just bailed out every time it hits trouble by the taxpayer) it doesn’t even have to cover the operating costs with what it charges the consumers, just run to the right ballpark on the budget – might even end up substantially cheaper for the taxpayer’s that way too, removing all the economic chaos and costs of bailing out these essential services at the 11th hour with a more generous but properly costed in advance pool of taxpayer money.

  7. One of these days the terrorists will figure out how to use nuclear waste as a weapon; at which point we will need to create a vast and expensive security system to protect the nuclear waste from being stolen, make sure to add this to your costs.

    Yes indeed the legacy of nuclear power is that we must stand vigilant guard over our garbage.

    1. Have you seen how waste is stored? It’s not something they’re going to grab a case or two of and turn out dirty bombs. It’s not the easiest thing to handle outside of controlled conditions without causing harm to unprotected people.

      But with Gen IV reactors the amount of material that is left as waste is significantly reduced and the half life is way lower than raw Uranium or Plutonium.

      Those that wish to do harm can find more effective ways to do it than using nuclear waste.

      1. Chemical and bio weapons are undoubtedly easier to make for terror purpose, and still cover a wide area in death and panic – case in point barrels of pretty basic chemicals dropped from helicopters in Syria relatively recently (may even still be happening, but I’ve not heard of it).

        And if they really really desperately want to create a radiological device there are easier ways than raiding the powerplant waste storage sites, as you really don’t need that much if you can distribute it well. Especially if it is a strong alpha emitter.

  8. There is value in using old panels. I personally own some. I recently read an article about a recycling facility that is also powering itself form used panels. They may not work as well as new ones but if they work don’t shred them. In areas where vacant land, desert, parking lots, etc are plentiful why not continue using them.
    https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffkart/2023/03/15/solarcycle-plans-to-recycle-1-million-panels-a-year-with-help-from-30-million-in-financing/?sh=3137117c5406

  9. As a medium-term strategy, panels could be simply stored and wait for better recycling technologies to develop.

    As for solar generation, maybe one way would be to not give subsidies to individuals wanting to install it at their homes. Allow some financing from banks, but do not “buy back” the energy produced by them. They install it to use what they produce in their own homes. Or you end up like here ( South America ) and also mentioned in the comments : rich people install that, and then sell energy to the company. And poorer people end up paying more.

    Also, at night the solar panels do not work, so the power company needs to keep their generation. But with too much people generating from the Sun, they do not have use for the energy during the day. And then they reduce/close/do not build more generating plants. And then where will be the energy at night come from ?

    1. As most human energy use tends to be during the day, most humans not being nocturnal the power required to keep the grid stable tends to be dipping rather low overnight compared to the daytime highs. So you really don’t need nearly as much conventional generation capacity overnight. There is always going to be a need for some energy store or alternative generation in most places as you just can’t import energy from where the sun is shining sanely over longer distances, but lots of solar eating that daytime spike with cheap energy isn’t a bad thing.

        1. As most car chargers seem to have logic boards that are internet connected they can stagger their charging themselves, lots of employers are putting in charging points so charge at work during the day, and most folk only go a few dozen miles a day so can be fully charged off even a very very slow charge overnight – it isn’t actually going to be that much load. It is however an additional load moving onto the grid, so the grid’s peak production capacity likely does have to grow somewhat.

  10. “… pearl-clutching … thinly veiled political opposition from those invested in fossil fuels…”

    It’s annoying enough to have comments on a technical site degrade into political sniping. Having such stuff in the summary is just flame bait.

  11. We’re really terrible about choosing when to use power and when to be patient, because most of us have always had the luxury of having power available for the same price at any time of day, and so the most we adjusted our behavior to fit conditions has been related to heating and cooling. (Opening windows or choosing when to use the oven based on the outside temperature, or adjusting the thermostat). We might or might not have the money to invest in more efficient gadgets, but there’s no gain in using them at the best time of day.

    There’s no tech breakthru needed in order to begin voluntarily and independently scheduling loads according to current power price in a household with wireless internet available; it’s just something that hasn’t been organized or adopted. It’s absolutely not as nice, especially if it means you pay very dearly for power because the power producers can’t cope with bad weather, but with protections against high charges for residential essential use, maybe we’d have a way to smooth out the evening peak demand and to waste less of the afternoon peak.

    Imagine comparing a heat pump powered by a coal plant to a plain resistive electric water heater that is set to run off of the solar peak and has a huge tank. The latter is something more people could do, if your wealthy and your companies allowed the incentive to exist for anyone else.

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