This new push towards off-grid, battery-powered solar power just doesn't sound right. Batteries might have improved, but they are high maintenance and polluting. Moreover this requires the addition of a lot of new electrical circuitry at the point of installation - a waste of space, time and money.
It's the responsibility of the world's governments to work out ways to keep the grid-connected solar solutions working. Maybe change the 'Net metering' rules to buy the solar power from customers at a lower price, and let the supply-demand work itself out.
It'll be very stupid if we let go a well-functioning grid based solar power solution just because some power distribution companies don't find it profitable.
Maybe change the 'Net metering' rules to buy the solar power from customers at a lower price, and let the supply-demand work itself out.
It won't be that simple, since even this (allowing customers to contribute power back to the grid at scale) requires expensive infrastructure upgrades.
I'd argue that one implication of a smarter grid would be that there'd have to batteries all over the place, exactly because batteries can adapt quickly and 'smartly' (with a .05$ microchip) to energy supply and demand.
Whereas there is a limit to the maximum intelligence of refrigerators, airconditioning devices, heat pumps, and washing machines.
> Batteries might have improved, but they are high maintenance and polluting.
My brother came home from elementary school one day telling us how modern electricity production causes pollution (sure, that's true) and if we'd go back to powering our society by burning wood, the way people did it in ancient times, we wouldn't have the pollution.
Burning wood, of course, causes plenty of pollution; a major way to see the decline in civilization after the fall of Rome is to notice how the level of particulate pollution from fires cratered. If we were to produce the same amount of power we produce now, but from wood instead of coal and oil, our pollution situation would be much worse. Also, we'd quickly run out of wood.
I think people today have imprinted on the message "coal and oil production of electricity is bad". Making your own batteries from a non-fossil-fuel source isn't a way of powering your home more efficiently, or of reducing pollution, it's a way of refusing to partake in coal consumption -- the hijab of the environmentalist movement.
Net positive below a certain scale (especially for the whales), negative above it. The contentious bit is where the tipping point is. For coal, the first time it was restricted in London due to pollution killing the populace, was 1306.
It's the responsibility of the world's governments to work out ways to keep the grid-connected solar solutions working. Maybe change the 'Net metering' rules to buy the solar power from customers at a lower price, and let the supply-demand work itself out.
It'll be very stupid if we let go a well-functioning grid based solar power solution just because some power distribution companies don't find it profitable.