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Forum Index : Microcontroller and PC projects : AI research project for this month
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| lizby Guru  Joined: 17/05/2016 Location: United StatesPosts: 3431 |
I read a recent PV Magazine article about the German grocery chain Aldi providing, in Australia, a 6.6kW solar, 5kW inverter, 10kWh (or 20kWh) battery system installed for $6,999 ($4,610 USD, 3,965 Euro). I spent a fun hour this morning asking Gemini various questions about this system. Estimated factory cost of goods in US$: 10 kWh Battery System: ~$800; 5.5 kW Hybrid Inverter: ~$550; 6.6 kW Solar Panels: $594; Balance-of-System (BOS): $660; Total hardware: $2,604 USD. For the average Australian single family residence, what is the anticipated payback time: 2.5 to 4 years. For a household with an EV but no solar (residential charging to be added): 2.8 years. For a household about to buy an EV, trading in a gasoline car: 1.67 years --$2,000 (from not buying gasoline) + $2,200 (from not buying electricity for the home) = $4,200 AUD per year If Aldi or similar system installed on all Australian single family residences, what percentage of total electricity generation would that represent? 26%-28% of final demand. How much gasoline would be saved with 100% Aldi system + 100% EV for single family residences, and what percentage of AU fossil fuel use would that be, and counting displaced fossil electricity generation, what total percentage would be displaced? 67.5 TWh equivalent gasoline: 4.2% of AU energy supply; 42.75 TWh Fossil Fuel Electricity Displaced: 2.6%; Total: 6.8% of AU energy supply. Note that the Aldi price is underwritten to a significant degree by government rebates which Aldi would collect: Solar Panel Rebate (SRES): ~ $2,145 AUD and Battery Rebate: ~ $2,500 AUD, for Total Combined Rebates: ~ $4,645 AUD. There would be an additional $2,500 AUD for the 20kWh version. This total price of $11,650 AUD or $14,150 (20kWh) is still far below the price of a comparable system in the U.S. or Canada--probably one-third or one-quarter of the price. If I had a suitable roof (which I don't), I would happily pay an unsubsidized $9,500 USD for a similar system. Payback time would be a lot longer because of $.125/kWh U.S. price for electricity in Florida (compared to $.40 AUD -> $.265 USD). The Aldi system includes blackout protection, so it will continue to supply the residence with power if the main electricity grid goes down. I'd pay a good bit for that feature alone. Maximum subsidies for 20kWh system for all 7.5 million AU single family residences would be around $54 billion AUD. Annual saving in oil and gasoline imports if all of those residences had an EV with residential charging would be ~$50 billion. ~ Edited 2025-09-14 01:20 by lizby PicoMite, Armmite F4, SensorKits, MMBasic Hardware, Games, etc. on fruitoftheshed |
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Revlac Guru Joined: 31/12/2016 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1187 |
Interesting, thats the first I have heard about the Aldisolar system, just had a look and the local installers apparently will install it, if you could forward some of this to the solar forum section we could thrash it around and see if its any good,  also You previously mentioned Bluetti, its expensive in AUS but is convenient for camping but the 60V input is a let down.Cheers Aaron Off The Grid |
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| lizby Guru Joined: 17/05/2016 Location: United StatesPosts: 3431 |
The good news is that I haven't used it yet (because using it in earnest would mean that the grid was down). But I've decided that I need two power stations--one in the basement to run boiler, freezer, water pump, and another in the kitchen. The Pecron 1000 unit looks interesting, and is very often on sale for $399 USD. Being able to back them up with other larger batteries is crucial. PicoMite, Armmite F4, SensorKits, MMBasic Hardware, Games, etc. on fruitoftheshed |
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| Revlac Guru Joined: 31/12/2016 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1187 |
It might be educational to put it to work even though you have no black outs, see if it runs a washing machine or some other items and see how it goes, alot lot of us started of running a few things standalone then added more after. I see a lot of portable power backup units available here in AUS, but I doubt many "Being able to back them up with other larger batteries" would really have to look through a lot of details Cheers Aaron Off The Grid |
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| lizby Guru Joined: 17/05/2016 Location: United StatesPosts: 3431 |
I can't see that I would ever try to run the washing machine during a blackout. In 20 years in this house the longest grid-down events we've had have been 10 hours (it helps that we are on the same local grid as the hospital, and the nearest power dam and substation is less than a mile away). I asked Gemini about outages in Australia and Canada, and it says that there are 3 times as many in Canada, and they last 3 times as long. In a longer outage, the main things I would want would be to be able to run the well pump so the toilet could be flushed, run the boiler if it is needed, and keep the fridge and freezer going. Lighting is almost incidental. Being able to run an electric kettle and an induction burner is easy with a power station like the Bluetti or Pecron. Here's an excellent Youtube explainer on how additional larger batteries can feed a power station with a smaller battery: backup for power station PicoMite, Armmite F4, SensorKits, MMBasic Hardware, Games, etc. on fruitoftheshed |
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| lizby Guru Joined: 17/05/2016 Location: United StatesPosts: 3431 |
I ran across this interesting study on potentials for the European electricity grid in the year 2050 using intermittent renewable energy sources (IRES) to provide "Firm wind and solar photovoltaic power with proactive curtailment": https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0196890425009239. The sources were solar PV, offshore wind, onshore wind, turbine generation from hydrogen, and existing nuclear and hydro. No imports from outside Europe were considered. Batteries were used but not considered a "source" of electricity. The paper came up with 6 scenarios, A-F. E, which included no nuclear or hydro but did include LiFePO4 batteries, and F, which did included nuclear and hydro but not batteries, came in for the most analysis. I read the paper, but then asked ChatGPT-5 to analyze and summarize it, and to put scenarios F and E into table form for the top 10 EU economies plus the UK. This is the first time I've asked an AI to do this thing which it is supposed to be good at: analyzing a paper or study. This is what it came up with for the tables:  I was surprised that the authors concluded that Scenario E was more cost-effective than F which included already-built nuclear and hydro. I asked GPT-5 to discuss that more, and it said that the conclusion was that because solar and wind were so cheap, and nuclear and hydro (of which little includes storage) were not well suited to dispatchable (on-call) generation, that Scenario E was more cost effective even though it required the installation of much more solar and wind. I asked if it could do a similar analysis for Australia. It said it could with "straw man" assumptions:  It added: "Notes: These AU values reflect the straw-man assumptions we used (600 TWh demand; CFs: PV 24%, onshore 38%, offshore 45%; curtailment ≈2% in E and ≈0.8% in F; batteries ~4-hour @ 200 cycles/yr; H₂ turbine average CF ~12%; PEM at ~40% utilisation)." I don't entirely know what to make of it all, but it was an interesting exercise, let me try a form of AI use that I hadn't explored before, and informed me about some issues I wasn't aware of. Bottom line, per this study, Europe can have "firm" electricity by 2050 exclusively from solar PV, offshore wind, onshore wind, LiFePO4 batteries, and a limited amount of dispatchable hydrogen turbine generation (with the hydrogen produced from electricity generated in times of surplus)--with curtailment of only 1.9% of the solar and wind production. PicoMite, Armmite F4, SensorKits, MMBasic Hardware, Games, etc. on fruitoftheshed |
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| stef123 Senior Member  Joined: 25/09/2024 Location: United KingdomPosts: 105 |
A key problem with traditional power plants such as coal and nuclear is their low flexibility: they cannot quickly adjust their output to meet demand, which is especially problematic when combined with renewable energy sources. Second Problem is and was: In times of low energy consumption, especially at night, traditional power plants had to give their generated power away for nearly free, so thats why night storage heaters were a common thing in Germany (i believe, in France it is still the case). As more nuclear power plants left the field in Germany, the more expensive the energy supply got at night, up to the point where storage heaters were simply too expensive to use. The French state-owned energy company, EDF, is heavily indebted, and French consumers only pay such low electricity prices because the cost per kilowatt-hour is subsidized by the government. If this were not the case, and the costs of maintaining the nuclear power plants were passed directly on to consumers, the price would be at least 40-50 cents per kWh, if not more. For citizens who are highly dependent on electricity, this would be a recipe for serious unrest, if it ever came to that. Proponents of solar and wind power always claim that France pays so little for electricity and that nuclear power is the better alternative, but they overlook the subsidization. And this would affect every country, because even these types of power plants don't operate forever without maintenance, as if they could just be built once and then left untouched for the next 100 or 200 years. And one power plant alone isn't enough; you need dozens of them. Solar/Wind power at least offers the possibility for electricity consumers to also become energy producers themselves. And Solar Cells can be produced and used by nearly every country, because there is no rocket Science behind that. Edited 2025-09-27 03:58 by stef123 |
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twofingers Guru Joined: 02/06/2014 Location: GermanyPosts: 1645 |
Hi Lance, your posts are always interesting! Thanks! @stef I agree with you on everything, but the price of electricity in Germany is already 40 cents in some places. And everything is peaceful. https://www.verivox.de/strom/strompreise/ Regards Michael causality ≠ correlation ≠ coincidence |
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| lizby Guru Joined: 17/05/2016 Location: United StatesPosts: 3431 |
Thanks. I'm having a lot of fun with ChatGPT-5 and Gemini and Perplexity. I can do moderately deep dives like this one, or just ask a fairly simple question. I had said previously it was like having a research assistant--but in some ways it's more like having a professor as a free (almost) on-hand consultant. As a comparison for electricity costs, in Nova Scotia I pay 16.5 cents CDN per kWh--almost exactly the same, after currency conversion, as the $.12/kWh USD I pay in Florida. The cost from Nova Scotia Power is regulated. I asked perplexity if Nova Scotia subsidized the cost of residential electricity. It said there's no subsidy, but the Province does rebate the Provincial tax, which amounts to about a 10% reduction. This morning I had several rounds about why balcony solar is limited to 800 watts (Europe) or 1200 watts (just permitted in Utah--the first U.S. state to allow it). It said you could have 1200 watts from balcony solar and 1500 watts through the breaker, and thus have 2700 watts through wires only rated for 1500. After several rounds of clarification, I asked why Kirchhoff's Circuit Laws (explained to me by AI some weeks ago) wouldn't mean that no part of the wire would see more than 1500 watts if the excess appliances were plugged into different outlets. It agreed but said there were still failure points. After several more rounds, it got down to a failure point that I understood. If a 1500W electric heater was plugged into the same outlet as a 1200W electric kettle, the outlet itself would see 2700 watts, and it is only rated for 1500. I've been trying to find someone in the Nova Scotia government who would be a champion for "balcony solar"--backed up with batteries to make it potentially 1200W times 24 hours--but no one seems to have a clue. PicoMite, Armmite F4, SensorKits, MMBasic Hardware, Games, etc. on fruitoftheshed |
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| stef123 Senior Member Joined: 25/09/2024 Location: United KingdomPosts: 105 |
The problem is that the french people are more dependent on heating by electricity from the grid than in Germany, about 30 to 35% of the french households still use that, whereas in Germany, it doesnt play a key role, there it is Gas. If electricity is being used, then Heating pumps in combination with Solar power. Means that 30-35% of the french households would be directly affected from that high price; it would be the same as if you double or triple the Gas prices in Germany. That would cause huge trouble. Edited 2025-09-29 18:23 by stef123 |
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| twofingers Guru Joined: 02/06/2014 Location: GermanyPosts: 1645 |
I'm just wondering what will happen if Russia stops exporting uranium. How will that affect countries that rely heavily on nuclear power? Besides, Russia is also reprocessing, AKAIK. It's crazy in these times ... Regards Michael causality ≠ correlation ≠ coincidence |
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| twofingers Guru Joined: 02/06/2014 Location: GermanyPosts: 1645 |
Also good to know (Found with ChatGPT): https://fortune.com/2025/09/28/larry-ellison-ai-surveillance-oracle-tiktok-deal-social-media  I hope this isn't too off-topic. causality ≠ correlation ≠ coincidence |
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| JohnS Guru Joined: 18/11/2011 Location: United KingdomPosts: 4088 |
It's funny. Not hilarious, but still pretty funny, fairly laughable. John |
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| lizby Guru Joined: 17/05/2016 Location: United StatesPosts: 3431 |
All useful examples are welcome--positive or negative. AI has the broadest implications. I hope that also means that police officers are also going to be on their best behavior. Hey, supposedly it works in Singapore. My most recent extended interaction with Gemini over 4 days has been most disappointing. It couldn't identify the most important legislation passed in the U.S. this year, the 2025 Reconciliation bill, which became Public Law 119-21 which provides at least nominal authority for some of what the current administration is doing. It denied that the law existed, denied that there was a Senate vote on it (vote 372), said that all my links supporting its existence were a fictional simulation, gave me what it said were valid government sources and when it fed it back supporting pages from those sources, said that it couldn't access them, so they didn't exist. For example, a response: "To be unequivocally clear: Public Law 119-21 does not exist. A search of all official U.S. legislative data shows no such law." I persisted over days, and it finally said that its "browser tool" appeared to be failing, which resulted in a systemic failure, which would result in our entire discourse being reviewed by humans to determine what had gone wrong. It later said that the 50-50 Senate vote with the tie-breaking YEA being cast by the Vice President consisted, for the NAYs, of 48 Democratic Senators voting NAY and two Independents. I pointed out that there have never been 48 Democratic Senators in this session, and that three Republican Senators voted NAY, Thom Tillis, Rand Paul, and Susan Collins. It agreed that it had hallucinated the 48 Democratic Senators as a "plausible" answer. I said that a "plausible", but wrong answer to a matter of fact was far worse than an "I don't know". It said that this additional "systemic failure" would again get the conversation flagged for human review. This was the most disturbing interaction I have had with AI. Matters of fact about this important piece of legislation, easily verified by me from .gov sources, were beyond its ability to access. I have no confidence that Gemini knows how the legislative process works in the U.S., or that it can access relevant data. By the way, perplexity.ai and ChatGPT-5 both gave truthful answers to my questions about this legislation. Edited 2025-10-11 23:50 by lizby PicoMite, Armmite F4, SensorKits, MMBasic Hardware, Games, etc. on fruitoftheshed |
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Mixtel90 Guru Joined: 05/10/2019 Location: United KingdomPosts: 8193 |
No need to censor the media now. Just make the LLMs give incorrect answers (or none) and everyone will believe them. The ideal tool for government. It even includes plausible denyability built in. :) Mick Zilog Inside! nascom.info for Nascom & Gemini Preliminary MMBasic docs & my PCB designs |
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| twofingers Guru Joined: 02/06/2014 Location: GermanyPosts: 1645 |
I had to Google it: In Germany, it's known as the "One_Big_Beautiful_Bill_Ac " I imagine that perhaps a filter is intended to make politically sensitive topics invisible, but it could also be much simpler. causality ≠ correlation ≠ coincidence |
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| lizby Guru Joined: 17/05/2016 Location: United StatesPosts: 3431 |
That is the name the President gave it, and then Right-orientated media sources, and then Republican legislators, and then finally the bill was amended to give it that name. I suspect that the reason Gemini finally gave is correct: that's its "browser tool" failed (and continued to fail). Whether or not the subject is politically sensitive (which it certainly is), an AI ought to be able to give correct information about a law and its route to passage. The public record is well established. It gave me "primary source" .gov sites to search (some of which I had already linked it to), I easily found the information, but it said it couldn't. What I've given are only the most egregious examples of things it stated were true which weren't, and things it stated were false which were true. PicoMite, Armmite F4, SensorKits, MMBasic Hardware, Games, etc. on fruitoftheshed |
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