Interconnection queues are overloaded. But most of all:
> There is a reason we spend a lot of money on transmission
This should be in the past tense. Transmission was the only option, because generation needed to be centralized to be anywhere near cost effective. And transmission is suuuuuper expensive, by far the biggest part of my solar bill.
Further, it's used ineffectively, often with capacity factors far below 30% because it's sized for peak, not for average use.
As the cost of generation gets lower and lower, the cost of transmission and distribution becomes an ever higher fraction of power costs, and the next thing to minimize.
Big transmission across the continent makes the most sense. But it's also the hardest to build. We are likely stuck repowering existing transmission to higher capactities.
Sure, we will need a lot more transmission capacity, but the less we can get away with will probably lower costs.
(And transmission is only geographic arbitrage, we will soon have time arbitrage with batteries that will rival nearly all transmission costs. Transition is not getting cheaper, but storage solar and wind are.)
> There is a reason we spend a lot of money on transmission
This should be in the past tense. Transmission was the only option, because generation needed to be centralized to be anywhere near cost effective. And transmission is suuuuuper expensive, by far the biggest part of my solar bill.
Further, it's used ineffectively, often with capacity factors far below 30% because it's sized for peak, not for average use.
As the cost of generation gets lower and lower, the cost of transmission and distribution becomes an ever higher fraction of power costs, and the next thing to minimize.
Big transmission across the continent makes the most sense. But it's also the hardest to build. We are likely stuck repowering existing transmission to higher capactities.
Sure, we will need a lot more transmission capacity, but the less we can get away with will probably lower costs.
(And transmission is only geographic arbitrage, we will soon have time arbitrage with batteries that will rival nearly all transmission costs. Transition is not getting cheaper, but storage solar and wind are.)