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This is becoming true in South Africa due to the unreliable power supply from state-owned Eskom.

by pgt 6y ago

sandworm101 6y ago
I'm seeing it on the other side of the economic spectrum: rich people building vacation houses on green fields. Other than Texas, North America has a very dependable grid. But if your new house is more than a couple hundred meters from that grid an overkill solar solution will probably be cheaper than connection cost. So new vacation homes in the woods/mountains/coastline are installing solar for purely economic reasons.
- Qwertious 6y ago
  > But if your new house is more than a couple hundred meters from that grid an overkill solar solution will probably be cheaper than connection cost. If this becomes a thing without charging non-users a flat fee for the electricity grid, then the grid will fall into a death spiral as renewables+storage become cheaper - namely, fewer people using the grid will increase the relative cost for each remaining user, encouraging them to go off-grid which further increases the relative cost of grid-attachment.
  - OldHand2018 6y ago
    The grid is already in trouble in places where it makes little economic sense to keep it reliable (rural regions, especially California/West Coast). The ex-Texas US grid is reliable because of economic reasons (especially industrial) and the Texas grid is not that reliable for economic reasons! If you leave the interstate system and drive the state and national highways, especially east of the Mississippi River, you'll see industrial facilities all over the place in small towns and cities, etc. They consume a lot of electricity, so it is in the national interest to have a good grid. West of the Mississippi: go read the Bershire Hathaway annual report from a few weeks ago. Warren Buffett spends quite a bit of space writing about how and why they are spending billions on the future of the grid.
    - mschuster91 6y ago
      > The grid is already in trouble in places where it makes little economic sense to keep it reliable This is why regulation is needed and competition on the lowest level of infrastructure a bad idea. In Germany, we have a legal mandate (per §36 EnWG, https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/enwg_2005/__36.html https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/enwg_2005/__36.html) for the dominant local utility to provide the core gas and electricity network upon which the customer can choose any utility to provide gas and electricity (with this utility then paying a set rate for using the network to the local utility). Additionally, §11 EnWG (https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/enwg_2005/__11.html https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/enwg_2005/__11.html) forces all network-operating utilities to keep their network operation "safe, reliable and free of discrimination" - and the authority BNetzA has the legal power to actually enforce this. Events like the shoddy maintenance that led to a number of wild fires in California or the lack of winterization that led to the Texas debacles in 2011 and 2021 simply would not happen here.
      - rhodozelia 6y ago
        Not sure why you are downvoted. Utilities are natural monopolies. It makes sense for one entity to provide the network. The risk is that the monopoly gets fat and lazy, but there are many examples of failures from both approaches. And I also believe Germans would not produce or tolerate the California or Texas debacles.
        mschuster91 6y ago
        > Not sure why you are downvoted Probably because I'm advocating for government owned or at least heavily regulated infrastructure. > The risk is that the monopoly gets fat and lazy, but there are many examples of failures from both approaches. Agreed (and California is a perfect example)... with a monopoly situation (and in "captive market" situations such as housing where people can't go without the services of the market) regulation agencys need teeth. Basically you want pitbulls, not poodles.
  - NullPrefix 6y ago
    You say it like it's a bad thing.
  - sandworm101 6y ago
    >> without charging non-users a flat fee for the electricity grid With hookup cost to a new property often measuring in the tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars, the non-connection fee/penalty would have to be very high. In pacific northwest, estimate 10-15k per electrical pole. Plus any necessary upgrades to the system. Plus easements. Plus maintenance costs. Plus cutting the trees. Plus then paying for power. ... A kickass solar rig and backup generator is very cheap by comparison.
  - pgt 6y ago
    You are probably being downvoted because your argument is based on cost, but the connection cost is higher than going off-grid in the aforementioned example and centralized grids are vulnerable to tail risks that are decentralized systems are not vulnerable to, i.e. it’s cheaper till it ain’t. Here in ZA the economy got screwed because nobody was prepared for the centralized provider (Eskom) to go down, which it did because of corruption and race-based quotas (BEE) firing senior white staff. Centralized orgs centralize risk and corruption.
- burlesona 6y ago
  Wow, check your decency bias. Having lived in California with rolling blackouts becoming normal in the last five years, it’s hardly fair to say that Texas has a uniquely bad electrical grid. Texas got hit by a freak weather event that people weren’t prepared for. We can have an interesting discussion about why they weren’t prepared and what could be done about it, but to imply that Texas grid is unreliable in general is just silly.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- richjdsmith 6y ago
  That's what my parents did. When they built their lake cottage it was cheaper to tie in sewer and water, but the cost to tie in to the power grid was going to be over $30k at which point, they were cheaper to install a full solar system. So they did.

This is becoming true in South Africa due to the unreliable power supply from state-owned Eskom.

by pgt 6y ago

This is becoming true in South Africa due to the unreliable power supply from state-owned Eskom.

I'm seeing it on the other side of the economic spectrum: rich people building vacation houses on green fields. Other than Texas, North America has a very dependable grid. But if your new house is more than a couple hundred meters from that grid an overkill solar solution will probably be cheaper than connection cost. So new vacation homes in the woods/mountains/coastline are installing solar for purely economic reasons.

Qwertious 6y ago
> But if your new house is more than a couple hundred meters from that grid an overkill solar solution will probably be cheaper than connection cost. If this becomes a thing without charging non-users a flat fee for the electricity grid, then the grid will fall into a death spiral as renewables+storage become cheaper - namely, fewer people using the grid will increase the relative cost for each remaining user, encouraging them to go off-grid which further increases the relative cost of grid-attachment.
- OldHand2018 6y ago
  The grid is already in trouble in places where it makes little economic sense to keep it reliable (rural regions, especially California/West Coast). The ex-Texas US grid is reliable because of economic reasons (especially industrial) and the Texas grid is not that reliable for economic reasons! If you leave the interstate system and drive the state and national highways, especially east of the Mississippi River, you'll see industrial facilities all over the place in small towns and cities, etc. They consume a lot of electricity, so it is in the national interest to have a good grid. West of the Mississippi: go read the Bershire Hathaway annual report from a few weeks ago. Warren Buffett spends quite a bit of space writing about how and why they are spending billions on the future of the grid.
  - mschuster91 6y ago
    > The grid is already in trouble in places where it makes little economic sense to keep it reliable This is why regulation is needed and competition on the lowest level of infrastructure a bad idea. In Germany, we have a legal mandate (per §36 EnWG, https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/enwg_2005/__36.html https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/enwg_2005/__36.html) for the dominant local utility to provide the core gas and electricity network upon which the customer can choose any utility to provide gas and electricity (with this utility then paying a set rate for using the network to the local utility). Additionally, §11 EnWG (https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/enwg_2005/__11.html https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/enwg_2005/__11.html) forces all network-operating utilities to keep their network operation "safe, reliable and free of discrimination" - and the authority BNetzA has the legal power to actually enforce this. Events like the shoddy maintenance that led to a number of wild fires in California or the lack of winterization that led to the Texas debacles in 2011 and 2021 simply would not happen here.
    - rhodozelia 6y ago
      Not sure why you are downvoted. Utilities are natural monopolies. It makes sense for one entity to provide the network. The risk is that the monopoly gets fat and lazy, but there are many examples of failures from both approaches. And I also believe Germans would not produce or tolerate the California or Texas debacles.
      - mschuster91 6y ago
        > Not sure why you are downvoted Probably because I'm advocating for government owned or at least heavily regulated infrastructure. > The risk is that the monopoly gets fat and lazy, but there are many examples of failures from both approaches. Agreed (and California is a perfect example)... with a monopoly situation (and in "captive market" situations such as housing where people can't go without the services of the market) regulation agencys need teeth. Basically you want pitbulls, not poodles.
- NullPrefix 6y ago
  You say it like it's a bad thing.
- sandworm101 6y ago
  >> without charging non-users a flat fee for the electricity grid With hookup cost to a new property often measuring in the tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars, the non-connection fee/penalty would have to be very high. In pacific northwest, estimate 10-15k per electrical pole. Plus any necessary upgrades to the system. Plus easements. Plus maintenance costs. Plus cutting the trees. Plus then paying for power. ... A kickass solar rig and backup generator is very cheap by comparison.
- pgt 6y ago
  You are probably being downvoted because your argument is based on cost, but the connection cost is higher than going off-grid in the aforementioned example and centralized grids are vulnerable to tail risks that are decentralized systems are not vulnerable to, i.e. it’s cheaper till it ain’t. Here in ZA the economy got screwed because nobody was prepared for the centralized provider (Eskom) to go down, which it did because of corruption and race-based quotas (BEE) firing senior white staff. Centralized orgs centralize risk and corruption.
burlesona 6y ago
Wow, check your decency bias. Having lived in California with rolling blackouts becoming normal in the last five years, it’s hardly fair to say that Texas has a uniquely bad electrical grid. Texas got hit by a freak weather event that people weren’t prepared for. We can have an interesting discussion about why they weren’t prepared and what could be done about it, but to imply that Texas grid is unreliable in general is just silly.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
richjdsmith 6y ago
That's what my parents did. When they built their lake cottage it was cheaper to tie in sewer and water, but the cost to tie in to the power grid was going to be over $30k at which point, they were cheaper to install a full solar system. So they did.