This really depends on the pricing mechanisms & contracts that large industrial users have with their energy provider. Many users may contract out of wholesale spot prices in favour for a more predictable contracted price - and demand response could form part of that contract. Depending on the market, financial hedges are also an option.
For instance, in New Zealand we have an aluminium smelter (Tiwai point) that constitutes about ~13% of national electricity demand. The smelter recently re-contracted its electricity supply with several of the major power companies (a 20-yr agreement) which includes a component for demand response when required. NZ has a ~80% renewable grid with hydro and wind as major variable sources, which creates both hourly and seasonal variation in the wholesale spot price (dependant on wind and rain resource). In the event of a major drought that pushes up prices due to a lack of hydro (this happened last year), the agreement with the smelter means it will shutdown some of its operating lines in exchange for demand response payments. This is exactly what occurred, whereas other industrial users that did not have such agreements in place or chose to take advantage of previously low spot prices without adequate hedging were then exposed and also shut down, without being paid to so.
> if there is no accounting to prove it's green? It's almost as if this movement is a scam. No CO2 equivalent publications on solar, or on recycling
You state this as if that's a fact - just because you haven't looked for them doesn't mean they don't exist. Here's two examples showing that wind [1] and solar [2] have good environmental payback times in my home country due to avoided emissions, a country which already has an ~80% renewable grid. Additionally, [3] is a good resource that puts the potential waste from solar farms into context with other sources (such as coal ash) and shows this is an unfounded fear. Do some research and challenge your biases before you spread misinformation.
That sentence structure of the first example ('subject, long tangent, conclusion') is very common in the German language (and a major annoyance for me when reading German), so perhaps the author has that background?
It's also a very typical sentence structure taught in US English. I learned it around 7th grade where there's a huge push to teach formulaic ways to use commas properly instead of just sprinkling them everywhere in run-on sentences.
Googling now, that usage is often referred to as using commas to offset a non-essential clause.
Notably, because German has more articles and conjugations, this writing style is very clear and easy to follow in German, at least to native speakers.
I get where you're coming from, but let me correct some of your numbers for other readers:
> you replace bricks every couple hundred years, but solar panels every 10–20, right?
Old panels perhaps, but modern solar panels come with performance warranties that guarantee they will be producing >85% of their initial output after 30 yrs.
> 2000W solar panel is like $300 or something and it's half the size of a door
2000W solar panels generally don't exist, so I assume that's a typo for 200W? Modern utility scale panels top out at ~700W with dimensions of 2.4 m x 1.3 m, however rooftop panels for commercial buildings are in the 500W range and ~ 2 x 1 m (so yeah about a door). International wholesale prices for these from Tier 1 manufacturers are now < $0.10 USD / W (although from what I understand more expensive in the USA).
Thanks for the work you've done with ShadeMap - I used this extensively when I we were looking for somewhere to rent, as living in hilly city some areas lose the sun quite quickly. Happy to say we are now living in a place that gets plenty of sun, and this summer has yielded a lot of tomatoes in a city where that can be difficult.
Yeah when it comes to these discussions, I think most people are unaware just how much the cost of solar & BESS (at the large scale) has fallen in the past couple years.
The battery installed along solar farms is usually on the order of hours of energy delivery though. Like 5 hours. It’s fine, but not everyone will be able to ornaffors to buy electricity on when it is cloudy and still for a few days.
For instance, in New Zealand we have an aluminium smelter (Tiwai point) that constitutes about ~13% of national electricity demand. The smelter recently re-contracted its electricity supply with several of the major power companies (a 20-yr agreement) which includes a component for demand response when required. NZ has a ~80% renewable grid with hydro and wind as major variable sources, which creates both hourly and seasonal variation in the wholesale spot price (dependant on wind and rain resource). In the event of a major drought that pushes up prices due to a lack of hydro (this happened last year), the agreement with the smelter means it will shutdown some of its operating lines in exchange for demand response payments. This is exactly what occurred, whereas other industrial users that did not have such agreements in place or chose to take advantage of previously low spot prices without adequate hedging were then exposed and also shut down, without being paid to so.