Re:Everyone Despises SolarCity Deal, Except Tesla Shareholders
by erikpukinskis on Friday August 05, 2016 @02:59AM
(#12230527)
How is a centralized grid more likely to be functioning after a disaster than decentralized solar panels?
Re:Everyone Despises SolarCity Deal, Except Tesla Shareholders
by ProAm on Friday August 05, 2016 @02:27PM
(#12234695)
It's not but I put WAY more faith into people that work for power company's to know how to fix things on a large scale than most fly-by-night solar companies. If the wall battery gets flooded, solar panels damaged, etc... there won't be enough skilled people to fix every decentralized install. And they may need power from on the grid to help with repairs.
You will end up paying a larger grid connection fee. If you touch any part of the grid you are going to help pay for it's upkeep. The traditional model is changing but the grid itself still has extensive maintenance. Want to ensure that some power generation plant 2 states over doesn't accidentally dump a metric ton of electricity and fry every substation between your house and Kalamazoo? Or what happens when your town has an earthquake, tornado, hurricane, blizzard that disables your solar generation, you'll be forced to rely on the grid getting back online to help assist the people that eventually will assist your solar. People will stop paying for generation but I don't believe people realize what goes into keeping this kind of infrastructure up and running safely.