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There was a paper I read about a decade back about the existential crisis of power companies. After everyone has the ability to generate and store power locally

There was a paper I read about a decade back about the existential crisis of power companies. After everyone has the ability to generate and store power locally in their home why do you need power companies anymore? Or will they even be able to charge as much. How will they keep up with the maintenance of the grid? Some interesting questions but I guess we will see the answers in the coming years.

kevinsundar 4y ago
Power companies will just switch to charging a high monthly grid interconnect fee. And people will pay because no one wants to "run out of power". This is already proposed to happen in California: https://www.solarreviews.com/blog/california-net-metering-changes https://www.solarreviews.com/blog/california-net-metering-ch... "It also adds a monthly Grid Participation Charge of $8 per kilowatt (kW) of solar to the bills of all people who go solar after implementation of the new rules, costing the average homeowner almost $600 per year, or $15,000 over 25 years."
- hedora 4y ago
  If they increase the interconnect fee enough, homeowners will simply stop paying the bill and disconnect from the grid. The PG&E proposal would cost the homeowner approximately 100% the price of their solar panels over 25 years. If it were not for net metering, that would already be enough to make a rational consumer oversize solar and batteries by another 50% and close their PG&E account. The price of solar and batteries is dropping so fast that the threshold for a "too high" bill will soon be below the cost of line maintenance. Unless something changes, at that point, the power grid will collapse in the same way the landline phone grid is collapsing. That will drive up bills for remaining subscribers, driving more loss of business, creating a death spiral. I think they should jack up the cost of electricity to cover grid maintenance, and allow community net metering, so that people without a roof can buy into solar collectives that count toward net metering. This would rapidly phase out nonrenewable generation by severely penalizing people that rely on power plants. Once that became untenable, the aging zoomers can sit outside on their non-ruined planet and fret about supporting their carbon neutral power grid with taxpayer dollars.
  - beeboop 4y ago
    >and disconnect from the grid. Pretty simple for the awful, awful power companies to do some lobbying to not allow this - just make it so that if you have solar, you're required to have active electric service to your house, even if you're not an active account holder to any power company. I have heard there's parts of Mexico that do this - you're not allowed to run your house on only solar, you're required to be hooked up to the grid and you can only sell your solar back to the grid, it can't be used directly to power your home. So you're forced to sell at a certain rate and then buy it back at a certain rate.
flgb 4y ago
VPPs are actually a treatment for this issue. By recognizing the value of these new customer-owned systems can provide back to the electricity system, we can give people a reason to stay connected and to contribute back to the common resource.
- zbrozek 4y ago
  PG&E makes it so onerous to be connected to the grid that it'll absolutely take something like this for me to stay connected. But I don't belong to the Tesla ecosystem, so this is clearly not the answer for me.
  - jeffbee 4y ago
    Literally every building north of Ventura is connected to pg&e’s grid. It can’t be all that onerous if it’s universal.
    - zbrozek 4y ago
      Try replacing a panel. They make what ought to be routine work, hard. Only in the last couple years has it become cheaper to say screw it and not take their BS and go off grid instead. One of my neighbors already did that instead of spending hundreds of thousands of dollars with PG&E.
      - jeffbee 4y ago
        You mean upgrading your service, not upgrading your panel. Anyway I don't see how being charged for capacity becomes "onerous". Taking a home that needed a main service upgrade off-grid instead would also cost a huge amount of money.
        zbrozek 4y ago
        Nope. I mean replacing a panel. It's precisely what I said, after all.
fnordpiglet 4y ago
It’s a non trivial capital investment to outfit your home like this. I also wonder if the aggregate cost of decentralizing production far exceeds centralized production and distribution. Regardless I struggle to imagine a world where a family living paycheck to paycheck as is lays out tens of thousands of dollars to produce their own off grid power. Now, once Mr Fusion is available it’s a different ball game.
fomine3 4y ago
Off grid for everyone looks inefficient. We don't need huge battery on each house/office/factory thanks to big grid.

kevinsundar 4y ago

Power companies will just switch to charging a high monthly grid interconnect fee. And people will pay because no one wants to "run out of power". This is already proposed to happen in California: https://www.solarreviews.com/blog/california-net-metering-changes https://www.solarreviews.com/blog/california-net-metering-ch... "It also adds a monthly Grid Participation Charge of $8 per kilowatt (kW) of solar to the bills of all people who go solar after implementation of the new rules, costing the average homeowner almost $600 per year, or $15,000 over 25 years."

hedora 4y ago
If they increase the interconnect fee enough, homeowners will simply stop paying the bill and disconnect from the grid. The PG&E proposal would cost the homeowner approximately 100% the price of their solar panels over 25 years. If it were not for net metering, that would already be enough to make a rational consumer oversize solar and batteries by another 50% and close their PG&E account. The price of solar and batteries is dropping so fast that the threshold for a "too high" bill will soon be below the cost of line maintenance. Unless something changes, at that point, the power grid will collapse in the same way the landline phone grid is collapsing. That will drive up bills for remaining subscribers, driving more loss of business, creating a death spiral. I think they should jack up the cost of electricity to cover grid maintenance, and allow community net metering, so that people without a roof can buy into solar collectives that count toward net metering. This would rapidly phase out nonrenewable generation by severely penalizing people that rely on power plants. Once that became untenable, the aging zoomers can sit outside on their non-ruined planet and fret about supporting their carbon neutral power grid with taxpayer dollars.
- beeboop 4y ago
  >and disconnect from the grid. Pretty simple for the awful, awful power companies to do some lobbying to not allow this - just make it so that if you have solar, you're required to have active electric service to your house, even if you're not an active account holder to any power company. I have heard there's parts of Mexico that do this - you're not allowed to run your house on only solar, you're required to be hooked up to the grid and you can only sell your solar back to the grid, it can't be used directly to power your home. So you're forced to sell at a certain rate and then buy it back at a certain rate.

flgb 4y ago

VPPs are actually a treatment for this issue. By recognizing the value of these new customer-owned systems can provide back to the electricity system, we can give people a reason to stay connected and to contribute back to the common resource.

zbrozek 4y ago
PG&E makes it so onerous to be connected to the grid that it'll absolutely take something like this for me to stay connected. But I don't belong to the Tesla ecosystem, so this is clearly not the answer for me.
- jeffbee 4y ago
  Literally every building north of Ventura is connected to pg&e’s grid. It can’t be all that onerous if it’s universal.
  - zbrozek 4y ago
    Try replacing a panel. They make what ought to be routine work, hard. Only in the last couple years has it become cheaper to say screw it and not take their BS and go off grid instead. One of my neighbors already did that instead of spending hundreds of thousands of dollars with PG&E.
    - jeffbee 4y ago
      You mean upgrading your service, not upgrading your panel. Anyway I don't see how being charged for capacity becomes "onerous". Taking a home that needed a main service upgrade off-grid instead would also cost a huge amount of money.
      - zbrozek 4y ago
        Nope. I mean replacing a panel. It's precisely what I said, after all.

fnordpiglet 4y ago

It’s a non trivial capital investment to outfit your home like this. I also wonder if the aggregate cost of decentralizing production far exceeds centralized production and distribution. Regardless I struggle to imagine a world where a family living paycheck to paycheck as is lays out tens of thousands of dollars to produce their own off grid power. Now, once Mr Fusion is available it’s a different ball game.

fomine3 4y ago

Off grid for everyone looks inefficient. We don't need huge battery on each house/office/factory thanks to big grid.