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Under the current rules, yeah, but the rules and how we think about this need to change too. For example in my state the process for selling energy back to the

Under the current rules, yeah, but the rules and how we think about this need to change too. For example in my state the process for selling energy back to the grid from a residential account is extremely limited and had a capped number of users. Batteries aren’t resilient enough today but they have grown leaps and bounds over the last few years. New chemistries and ways of controlling them are making all kind of new possibilities. As much as I don’t like some of the rules in CA the requirement for solar on new builds is brilliant. The hardware has become so cheap and rolling the labor and design into the initial construction means a short pay back period.

glitchc 2y ago
Selling energy back isn't as efficient as it sounds. Transmission losses are a major factor for delivering power. In a star topology, any power you generate must go back to a local base station before being delivered to your neighbour, at minimum doubling the transit distance. So, of course, the next step is (to my point): Let's rely on a mesh network to deliver power locally and directly. Sure, until one of your batteries has an issue or its a rainy day and the batteries are depleted. Suddenly your neighbour needs to source power from somewhere else. That somewhere else could be other neighbours, who are, due to local weather conditions, experiencing the same issues. Okay, let's go back to the grid. Now this weather is affecting multiple locations at the same time, and the grid itself is under-provisioned since it was reliant on these local sources of power. If the grid has sufficient capacity to deal with this failure mode, then it has sufficient capacity to be the regular, default power source. Power generation and delivery are hard problems that require big thinking. Wishing it were simple (oh just do this!) doesn't make it so.

glitchc 2y ago

Selling energy back isn't as efficient as it sounds. Transmission losses are a major factor for delivering power. In a star topology, any power you generate must go back to a local base station before being delivered to your neighbour, at minimum doubling the transit distance. So, of course, the next step is (to my point): Let's rely on a mesh network to deliver power locally and directly. Sure, until one of your batteries has an issue or its a rainy day and the batteries are depleted. Suddenly your neighbour needs to source power from somewhere else. That somewhere else could be other neighbours, who are, due to local weather conditions, experiencing the same issues. Okay, let's go back to the grid. Now this weather is affecting multiple locations at the same time, and the grid itself is under-provisioned since it was reliant on these local sources of power. If the grid has sufficient capacity to deal with this failure mode, then it has sufficient capacity to be the regular, default power source. Power generation and delivery are hard problems that require big thinking. Wishing it were simple (oh just do this!) doesn't make it so.