The Withering Dream of a Cheap American Electric Car

Re:The Withering Dream of a Cheap American Electric Car by jerkstate on Monday November 18, 2024 @06:01PM (#42178090)

I think you've still got too much of an "us vs them" mentality about the utilities, its not so much that they are refusing to shift to that model per se, these shifts are ongoing and happening today (which is why you're getting paid 10c per kwh for unreliable solar, IMO definitely more than it's worth), but I think a lot of people have unrealistic expectations with how far things can be shifted without addressing the implicit assumptions, such as the reliability of the power. Like, if we downsize the transformer between your subdivision and the grid by too much, that subdivision will have brownouts on cloudy days. In order to avoid that, we could deploy industrial scale battery packs, which also costs a ton of money and requires ongoing maintenance; at that point, it's probably cheaper to just use a bigger transformer to connect to the greater grid, where we have nuclear, hydro, wind, commercial solar, and hydrocarbon generation, which can all be used in different situations to match the grid demand with supply on a larger economy of scale.

In conclusion, the retail price of your electricity includes the engineering and infrastructure required to make your power delivery reliable most of the time, which is much more valuable than the raw kilowatts coming off of your solar panels.

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Re:The Withering Dream of a Cheap American Electric Car by epistasis on Monday November 18, 2024 @07:37PM (#42178942)

I think you are giving the utilities far too much credit. They were bemoaning solar being even 5% of the grid, complaining that it would bring down everything. Seriously!

And if you didn't know that, and think that I'm too "us vs. them," then you should go look at the arguments made in regulatory proceedings and IRPs etc.

The utilities invoke preposterous technical arguments all the time. Yes, the grid should be reliable, but making it more decentralized and adding storage all over will make it far more reliable.

Industrial scale battery packs are quite often cheaper than new transmission lines. And we're going to need a lot more transmission or transmission alternatives in the future as more of our energy needs are electrified.

I don't dispute that some distribution might need to be upgraded to fully take advantage of the cost savings that distributed solar and storage present.

But you'll never find the utilities making the case for engineering a more reliable cheaper system, if that system is cheaper, because they will make less money. It would be financially irresponsible for them to make that case, and in fact they must try their hardest to increase the amount of money that is spent on fixed grid assets, that they can directly rate base.

This is not being overly "us vs. them" this is simple economics and incentives of regulated monopolies. Utilities are great at responding to the financial incentives put before them. Sometimes those financial incentives are making the grid reliable. But I don't know of a single regulated monopoly that has been financially incentivized to lower grid costs.

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