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I'm no longer convinced of the transportability of electrical power. At least here in America, NIMBY politics makes it nigh impossible to build new transmission

I'm no longer convinced of the transportability of electrical power. At least here in America, NIMBY politics makes it nigh impossible to build new transmission. And here in California our regulators have created an environment where we pay excessively high energy prices, have poor uptime, and regularly set ourselves alight. For any kilowatt hour I pull off the grid I pay at least thrice the national average, and in this month I'll have uninterrupted power 87% of days with 28 hours of total downtime. The future is distributed microgrids even if it isn't the theoretically optimal future.

KptMarchewa 4y ago
As always in recent past, USA can't even think of going outside of it's local maximum.
ethagknight 4y ago
California is not a good example to use as an example of American energy capability, just Californian energy
goodpoint 4y ago
That's an US problem: some grid operator are also owners of power plants. Of course they don't want to make the grid friendly towards distributed solar power generation and microgrids because it would eat away from profits from their power plants. And they are allowed to lobby politicians yadda yadda... This is a political problem, not technological. And should be solved at a political level. > The future is distributed microgrids even if it isn't the theoretically optimal future. Distributed microgrids does not imply that they are not connected to each other, but you are right: democratizing energy production is much more important than nitpicking at efficiency.
- zbrozek 4y ago
  I didn't claim those microgrids wouldn't interconnect to the larger grid. ;) Low reliability and high per-unit-energy costs are driving me to be self-sufficient but to maintain my grid connection to reduce likelihood of correlated failure. I suspect the regulators will dramatically drive up grid connection fees at some point in the future. When we get there, I'll simply disconnect entirely and get my backup from gasoline.

KptMarchewa 4y ago

As always in recent past, USA can't even think of going outside of it's local maximum.

ethagknight 4y ago

California is not a good example to use as an example of American energy capability, just Californian energy

goodpoint 4y ago

That's an US problem: some grid operator are also owners of power plants. Of course they don't want to make the grid friendly towards distributed solar power generation and microgrids because it would eat away from profits from their power plants. And they are allowed to lobby politicians yadda yadda... This is a political problem, not technological. And should be solved at a political level. > The future is distributed microgrids even if it isn't the theoretically optimal future. Distributed microgrids does not imply that they are not connected to each other, but you are right: democratizing energy production is much more important than nitpicking at efficiency.

zbrozek 4y ago
I didn't claim those microgrids wouldn't interconnect to the larger grid. ;) Low reliability and high per-unit-energy costs are driving me to be self-sufficient but to maintain my grid connection to reduce likelihood of correlated failure. I suspect the regulators will dramatically drive up grid connection fees at some point in the future. When we get there, I'll simply disconnect entirely and get my backup from gasoline.