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While rooftop solar does allow you to go completely off-grid, if you still want to have a grid around, it will have to be centralized. An underappreciated aspec
by sephamorr 7y ago
While rooftop solar does allow you to go completely off-grid, if you still want to have a grid around, it will have to be centralized. An underappreciated aspect of power grids is just how much advanced control is required to keep the entire thing stable and functioning, think armies-of-PhD's-difficult.
When grids get too small, or don't have sufficient control (either knobs, or software/people turning the knobs), the results are frequent blackouts.
Interestingly, the risk begins increasing again as your grid gets too large: you have too many knobs to reasonably control centrally, and it certainly won't work without synchronized control. As a case study, see how China is breaking up some of their huge electricity grids (in to still-large ~1000mile or so regions), as maintaining reliability and preventing faults from propagating across the country became too difficult.
- natch 7y agoYes I agree, and thought I said nothing to imply that being on the grid is not useful, but maybe I could have made this more clear.
- sephamorr 7y agoNa, you were fine, sorry if I came across adversarial. I just thought commenting here was an okay place to put my rant.
- petre 7y agoYou don't need armies of PhDs to operate a nuclear reactor, just very strict procedures, trained personnel and military discipline. I agree that a complex grid complicates things quite a lot. Just don't depend on the grid for anything, especially cooling a reactor after SCRAM.
- bobthepanda 7y ago> As a case study, see how China is breaking up some of their huge electricity grids (in to still-large ~1000mile or so regions), as maintaining reliability and preventing faults from propagating across the country became too difficult. Have a source on this? IEEE says they're planning to merge the regional grids into a megagrid: https://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/the-smarter-grid/chinas-ambitious-plan-to-build-the-worlds-biggest-supergrid https://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/the-smarter-grid/chinas-amb...
- grecy 7y ago> While rooftop solar does allow you to go completely off-grid, if you still want to have a grid around Why would you want to have a grid around? Friends have been entirely off-grid in the Yukon for over 7 years now. They have a large, modern house with every convenience. Last time they tried to switch house insurance the insurance company didn't want to give them a policy because they don't have "stable" power supply. My buddy replied by asking how many power outages the insurance person had been through in Whitehorse in 7 years (easily a few a year)... his off-grid setup has never had a single outage in 7 years. So who has the "unstable" power supply?
- ksec 7y ago>Why would you want to have a grid around? Because vast majority of the world are and will be living in Mega Cities.