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This sounds like the "Utility Death Spiral" and also happened in Germany, Hawaii, and Nevada. Best article on it IMO (2014): https://www.greentechmedia.com/art
by mushufasa 7y ago
This sounds like the "Utility Death Spiral" and also happened in Germany, Hawaii, and Nevada.
Best article on it IMO (2014):
https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/this-is-what-the-utility-death-spiral-looks-like https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/this-is-what-th...
tldr:
Renewables require additional grid maintenance costs (storage + two-way distribution) while simultaneously prompting more consumers to buy less conventional energy from utilities. Historically, utilities made money from selling electricity. Now they have fewer customers and higher costs. They have to charge higher prices to the fewer customers. Then more people want to choose renewables. This keeps going until the utilities bankrupt.
The solution is to change the business model for utilities, which are regulated monopolies. So it's a policy question. Absent strong leadership, the utilities tend to claw back against renewables instead of innovating (saga of Nevada)...
fun fact: this is named after ants, where some species will literally march around in circles to starvation if the pheromone scent trails get tangled up.
- cannonedhamster 7y agoThis is exactly right. There's utility in being an as needed source of power as well as storage point. There's so many different types of storage options as well. There's batteries, liquid potential energy storage, potentially flywheel but this hasn't worked out too well, there's adding wind capacity. As a business model they get to charge for storage maintenance and generation when needed. Storage is a consistent amount of money with extra coming in from power generation as needed.