With #renewables, even just domestic solar panels and privately installed batteries we can get domestic electricity mostly for free in a few years in many developed regions of the world. The electricity companies will do everything to make that impossible. But their claims of a grid that can't cope only shows their centralised approach that favours big consumers is failing ;)
I for one would love to go there. Decentralised power grids for domestic use. Communities banding together to make private homes have electricity for free and even "donate" back to the grid at times and have the industry and big (AI) datacenters fight over sufficient electricity n the grid that must be clean and thus expensive.
The German language (as so often) has a wonderful word for that. #Verursacherprinzip. Which loosely translates to "If you cause it, you pay" So if domestic users can generate enough electricity for their home use, they go free. If you run a datacenter or big industry plant that uses more electricity than it can produce, you pay. For clean energy. It'll be expensive. Tit for Tat, you know :)
But it can be done. Communities can buy back or create themselves the power lines needed for domestic use. They can build communal power storage units that decouple (hyper)local grids from the Big Grid. It needs an #OpenStandard to control input and output to that local grid. Which is being worked on. Clean electricity can power private homes very soon. For free.
@jwildeboer my neighbor and I both have about 8kWp of rooftop solar - I have a SE facing roof, his faces SW, if we combined our systems, we would get > 6kW from sunrise to sunset at this point.
As it stands, we have to sell cheap electricity to the grid rather than helping out each other.
In summer, we produce enough electricity for eight to ten houses, but can't share.
@jwildeboer I don't think there has to be an element of physical ownership.
It would be great if we had clearly regulated grid usage fees and could then sell our electricity directly.
Grid capacity and ownership only becomes a thing when you hop to the next voltage level.
@jwildeboer the biggest challenge is, as far as I know, load control of decentralized networks. AC networks regulate generation to meet consumption by frequency and I have heard people explain that the very fast reaction of local inverters can be an issue as the grid is built around the idea of rotational mass as a primary capacity reserve. So more consumption, some turbine spins slower, frequency drops, somewhere more power is added to the grid. AFAIK, inverters have simulated rotational mass.
@jwildeboer hmm... I would not paint it a malicious thing, it is a simple (and rather ingenious) way to control the grid without having to build additional communication devices.
But of course it's by no means an unsolvable problem. We would only have to replace the medium to low voltage transformers with a double set of rectifiers / inverters (for bidirectionality) and a high voltage DC coupling. We have the technology. But for this to work, we will also need a global (well, grid global)
@jwildeboer hmmm, Alternatively, those couplers could behave like rotational masses towards their two AC ends. That would make an interesting experiment
@jwildeboer technically, that's pretty much what every rooftop solar system is today, but larger. My system has a 900V DC level and can feed 400V three phase AC into the grid.
@jwildeboer things are looking pretty good here in Ireland. The govt gave a €2400 grant last year for domestic PV installs (it's reduced to €2100 this year). A single company owns the grid, while other providers use it, and they've been rolling out smart meters to accomodate microgeneration.
@jwildeboer on a sunny day I produce and sell back 3x what my house uses. This includes an energy diverter that heats my hot water supply with the excess power before sending power back to the grid.
@jwildeboer Our largest electricity company is now a very renewable oriented business. Since not everyone can have an off shore wind farm in the garden, or hydro or whatever deep drilled thermal comes out they will be fine even with major home battery advances.
@jwildeboer Much the same. Grid is operated by one body, multiple energy suppliers and sellers. Self generation isn't going to beat grid tie for a long time IMHO
The far sooner version of the problem is the gas grid. As everything moves off gas the gas grid cost gets divided by fewer people so the prices soar so people leave so.. kaboom...
Same for the petrol supply game (and some nasty knock ons to oil refining which is set up to produce the wrong mix of outputs for the future).
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