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California (specifically the CPUC, as servant of the for-profit utilities here) is choosing to make electricity extremely expensive, which is making it short-te
by zbrozek 5y ago
California (specifically the CPUC, as servant of the for-profit utilities here) is choosing to make electricity extremely expensive, which is making it short-term economically less favorable than it could be to switch.
I have an EV, which makes sense economically especially because I can charge somewhere that power isn't produced or delivered by PG&E. But I burn gas to keep warm because my own home electricity is too expensive.
Municipalities are removing residents' ability to choose by banning gas. I expect this will accelerate the failure of companies like PG&E (and the grid) by driving new construction to be off-grid. I've been inching my way there on my own home. Cars as storage batteries is inevitable and will be game changing.
In about two years I will have an egregious excess of solar capacity. And hopefully no grid connection. I'd love to have a way to use that excess to suck carbon out of the air and ideally make a product I can use out of it. Pyrolitic graphite sheets would be fantastic, or liquid hydrocarbons I can burn in my legacy vehicles or a backup generator. But I would settle for something I can throw away and have buried in a landfill.
- sokoloff 5y agoIf you’re going to have an excess of something valuable, why not sell it back to the grid?
- zbrozek 5y agoBecause it isn't valuable. Around here you get paid approximately nothing to put power into the grid. The asymmetry is comically large.
- sokoloff 5y agoSure, but you seem willing to instead get something high in carbon that’s economically valueless and pay to bury it in the ground. That seems unlikely to be more carbon-efficient than curtailing someone else’s use of the fuel of last resort.
- zbrozek 5y agoRight, but I'm not trying to optimize carbon efficiency. And neither are the regulators. If they were trying to reduce GHG emissions, they'd keep the nuclear plants operational, try to drive down the price of electricity relative to everything else, and have better pricing to feed in to the grid. As it is, the cheapest way for me to get electricity is to buy a turbine generator and burn natural gas myself. Which is completely insane.
- Workaccount2 5y agoYou can electrolyze water and get hydrogen to use.
- nradov 5y agoThat's a total fantasy. New construction in urban / suburban areas is never going to be off grid. The only homes that can even potentially be off grid are detached houses in rural areas with enough space for large solar panels and battery storage. Denser housing simply lacks the space. In most cities I don't think you could even get a building permit or certificate of occupancy without a grid connection. Since PG&E is a regulated monopoly it is too big to fail. The CPUC and other parts of the state government will simply change the rules to ensure that PG&E continues operating in some form.
- zbrozek 5y agoThe SFBA is, for better or for worse, largely zoned R-1 for single family home construction. At that density just about everyone gets enough sunlight to support their needs. In my previous place - a townhouse where I owned much less roof - I still got enough sunlight to fully cover my needs. PG&E is primarily a transmission company, and the demand for that is going to dwindle as the cost rises far faster than inflation. Distribution will fracture into smaller islands, potentially at the municipal level. We're already seeing the writing on the wall with new apartment complexes setting up "virtual power plants". It's just not going to make sense to put a plant dozens of miles away from where the power gets used. The infrastructure is too expensive compared to local generation. That pendulum could swing back if Western cost disease were somehow cured.