4 ms·

I've heard, but have no sources for it, that it's difficult to scale up production of large transformers. And as everyone's said, without government invention,

I've heard, but have no sources for it, that it's difficult to scale up production of large transformers. And as everyone's said, without government invention, there's no money in having a reserve. It's even worse if the _rate_ of consumption doesn't go up, then adding production to build up a reserve is folly, because the plant is guaranteed to go idle once the reserve is achieved. So, I don't have high hopes for that, at least not in a significant way. Going the other way, decentralizing the grid, putting solar and batteries on as many homes as possible, is already happening. There's already financial incentive. Utilities are adding _disincentives_ every chance they get, because they see it as reducing their customer base, rather than adding resiliency. But, customers and regulators are pushing back, and the situation in most places isn't terrible. And as a result, it's scaling up as fast as the market can scale it. Neither of these things will solve the problem completely, but I think we'll meet in the middle. Over the coming years, an interconnected grid will become decreasingly relevant for larger and larger fractions of the population. And outages, and even the very concept of outages, will approach quaint-memory status. Initially and particularly, this will benefit folks out in the boonies with lots of land for panels, who are usually on the losing end of the response time for outage restoration in the first place.

BLKNSLVR 4y ago
I was previously going to mention the decentralisation that could be provided by micro-grids as a mitigating factor, but don't know enough about how they work to know whether it's just replacing one vulnerability for another, but your mention of home batteries reminds me that, with micro-grids, it should be possible to narrow down to a single household "island" level of granularity if all households have solar and batteries (and the same argument for apartment blocks at equivalent scale). Ideally, this allows for each individual unit (household, apartment complex, commercial building) to bear the costs of the "reserve assets" at the same time as being able to take advantage of them down to that granular level - as long as their battery is able to hold out and their solar able to recharge it. And the reserve assets being smaller, fit better into a manufacturing scenario as there should be a more consistent, less surge-style, demand.
- fbdab103 4y ago
  One thing to note is that many stand-alone solar installations cannot operate without a live grid connection.

BLKNSLVR 4y ago

I was previously going to mention the decentralisation that could be provided by micro-grids as a mitigating factor, but don't know enough about how they work to know whether it's just replacing one vulnerability for another, but your mention of home batteries reminds me that, with micro-grids, it should be possible to narrow down to a single household "island" level of granularity if all households have solar and batteries (and the same argument for apartment blocks at equivalent scale). Ideally, this allows for each individual unit (household, apartment complex, commercial building) to bear the costs of the "reserve assets" at the same time as being able to take advantage of them down to that granular level - as long as their battery is able to hold out and their solar able to recharge it. And the reserve assets being smaller, fit better into a manufacturing scenario as there should be a more consistent, less surge-style, demand.

fbdab103 4y ago
One thing to note is that many stand-alone solar installations cannot operate without a live grid connection.