
Solar panels could destroy U.S. utilities, according to U.S. utilities - colinismyname
http://grist.org/article/solar-panels-could-destroy-u-s-utilities-according-to-u-s-utilities/
======
dmckeon
More like: business model of utilities disrupted by distributed energy
resources.

Also, peak demand in CA is at 9 pm, not noon:
<https://www.caiso.com/outlook/outlook.html>

The underlying problem is the mismatch between the old business model:

    
    
        Generate, distribute, and deliver electricity;
        charge for connection to grid and for
        electricity delivered and consumed.
    

and the new situation:

    
    
        Generate *or* purchase electricity from various providers,
        including households with solar panels,
        distribute and deliver electricity,
        charge for distribution, delivery, availability,
        and for electricity consumed.
    

Consider the migration of television from broadcast to CATV to cable to the
current YouTube / TiVo / Hulu / whatever model - basically, a shift from a
hierarchical top-down head-end driven model to a widely distributed model.

Utilities are facing a similar disruption, and their challenges include
restructuring their generation / collection / distribution system; the costing
and billing to support that; the regulatory and funding environment to cope
with all of that; and to do it with generating plant equipment that will have
very long term costs. I wish them luck.

~~~
SoftwareMaven
While I agree with you 100%, I think the real challenge is going to be people
not wanting to pay for the invisible "availability and distribution" when
they've spent their entire life being trained they were paying for the
electrons themselves.

If I were in that business, I would be putting a lot of marketing dollars into
retraining people that the value of availability and distribution is a good
percentage of the costs that they incur today, so when a customer starts
generating their own electrons, they already know there is value in being
attached to the network, value that corresponds with continued revenue for the
company.

~~~
Zigurd
These are touchy subjects with vertically integrated monopolies. The
equivalent to separating the value, and price, of transport from other
services in telecom is called "structural separation." Telcos don't like it
one bit. They prefer pricing and costs to be opaque. It may be that
obfuscating costs and margins in consumer electric service is just as
advantageous to the utilities.

------
ollysb
The culture of protecting existing businesses is becoming infuriating to read
about. Businesses are there because they're the most efficient way to solve
the needs of a group of people. If circumstances change and a better solution
presents itself then both new and _existing_ businesses have an opportunity to
take advantage of it. There's absolutely nothing to stop the existing utility
companies being the companies that lead the charge with solar power.

~~~
njharman
You frustration is from your false assumption. Businesses are there to make
their owners as much money as possible. This frequently does not involve
efficiency.

~~~
jjjeffrey
Taking a look at things from society's perspective, society decided that
individuals should privately own for-profit businesses because, for a large
subset of society's needs, that is the most efficient way to produce these
needs. In that sense, capitalism as it exists is meant to serve society. It
merely works out that the incentive to maximize profit in this system
_approximately_ aligns with society's interest in acquiring goods at minimum
cost---that is, if certain conditions, such as adequate competition, are met.

Of course this isn't the only reasonable perspective, but it certainly isn't
false.

~~~
ollysb
Yeah, poor choice of words on my part, I should have said: Businesses
_survive_ because they're the most efficient way to solve the needs of a group
of people.

------
startupfounder
Original report here:
[http://www.eei.org/ourissues/finance/Documents/disruptivecha...](http://www.eei.org/ourissues/finance/Documents/disruptivechallenges.pdf)

I believe that distributed energy is the future, plugging your house into your
car, charging your car with solar and selling power to the grid when your
forecasted household demand is lower then your forecasted supply.

Because of the internet we now have distributed information and it is changing
the world in every way. Anyone can share anything in real-time with the world.
Everyone is a producer and consumer of information now.

The impact of everyone being both a producer and consumer of energy will also
be profound.

~~~
luxpir
As a small part of this information revolution, may I suggest a (free as PDF)
book on the energy problem and the varying efficacy of its potential
solutions, available from here: <http://www.withouthotair.com/>.

It's an eye-opening read for the most part and uses real-world figures for its
estimates to show just what might and might not work in replacing fossil fuels
around the world.

I wouldn't have been as interested in reading it myself if the Economist/Bill
Gates hadn't given it their approval.

~~~
lifeisstillgood
Cannot recommend this book enough - brilliant as it just looks at the figures
- how much of Britain (Author is a Cambridge mathematics prof.) would have to
be covered in solar panels or wind farms to replace coal etc.

Entertaining, memorable and instructive.

Go read.

~~~
reitzensteinm
I too absolutely recommend Without Hot Air; if you're interested enough to
read this far into the comments, you'll enjoy the book.

It's a refreshing physicist's take in a field normally consumed with politics
and hand waving.

------
sophacles
I work in this space. I think it is worth noting that, yes this is true for
some players, particularly at middle management and executive levels. However
it is equally work noting that some of the resistance is just conservative
engineering.

Would you just grab the latest 0.1 release of the hot new database and throw
it up on your production systems because everyone keeps talking about the
promise of it? This is a real concern at the engineering levels.

One of the problems with distributed generation is not that it eats away at
grid profits - there is still profit from maintaining the grid that allows you
to have power even if your solar panels break. There are price structures that
allow this to be profitable for utilities (however everyone involved needs to
look at it with fresh eyes -- homeowners need to stop thinking about it in
just profit from unused kwh and utilities need to stop looking at it in terms
of kwh pushed). The problem is that huge and expensive amounts of
infrastructure are designed an manufactured with a one-way power flow in mind.
Protection schemes are predicated on a star(ish) topology of distribution
lines, where the assumption that power flows from the "hub" out.[1] Things
like transformers are highly tuned for this type of flow, to the point where
even small changes or running out of spec can seriously degrade the expected
lifetime (usually thought out and planned on the time-frame of 30 years.)
Power flowing the other way is a "break the line" event, period, to protect
that equipment. A lot of substations don't have the type of capacity or
equipment to handle power swings too far out of spec, because they designed
that way for maximum efficience of the push model.

Something this article misses in it's analysis, is that power companies
building infrastructure is absurdly expensive - getting right aways for power
lines is a decade long, legally perilous, and highly prone to regulatory whim,
endeavor (the NIMBY crowd is strong here). As such, once one is put in, the
cost is amortized over 30+ year timelines, and efficient operation is actually
strongly considered. Demand response and efficient appliances are actually in
the interest of utilities, and they do recognize this. If they can't build new
infrastructure to increase supply, they want demand to remain within their
capability to deliver (and when done right, the base "connected" fee to the
customers can be as or more profitable than more power to fewer customers).

Finally, all the understanding and models of how electricity works in an
interconnected grid is based on models assuming "roughly" steady state capable
generators. Things like solar and wind have some problems in this, as they can
contribute instability to the overall system - if the wind dies, you have to
have hot standby power to keep voltage levels up. If everyone in a region has
PV, and clouds move in, they will be demanding more power from the grid. On a
"partly sunny" day, this result in weird spikes, again placing strange wear
patterns on transformers and generators that are ramping up and down in
response.

Even the engineers I know who are all about this stuff are hesitant to just
deploying it, because of all this technical challenge. Just like I would be
hesitant to throw an unknown datastore into a stable working system without
staging, testing, and otherwise slowly integrating it. It's even worse for the
utilities, because they are in a "damned if you do, damned if you don't"
position. What is worse - rolling slowly with the new technology and being
blasted as obstructionists, or going head first, and being blasted when the
unexpected happens and breaks a bunch of things, or finding a middle ground
and making everyone unhappy?

[1] at transmission levels, this isn't true, and in dense urban centers the
topology is meshier, but this statement is still true for a (geographically
anyway) majority of power distribution.

~~~
criley
Excuse my ignorance (I am a layperson and simply interested in this subject),
but are you suggesting that the utility themselves would rollout distributed
solar to their customers, and thus the utilities engineers are skeptical of
the technology and how it would be rolled out?

It seems to me that the whole point is that consumers will begin the rollout
themselves, generating and storing power on their own and the only visible
effect to the utility would be a dramatic decrease in power use by that
customer.

While having a grid where you could sell your unused energy is a great idea, I
didn't see that as the focus of this article. I thought this article was
simply about the distributed generation and storage.

In the context of distributed generation and storage on an individual level --
why do utility engineers matter? They don't get a say in the rollout, they
don't manage it, and they certainly don't get to prevent it. All they can do
is maintain their infrastructure in the face of a change they cannot stop.

~~~
akiselev
I think the article is talking about customers who buy their own solar
installations. The thing is, no system is available (afaik) that is 24/7 solar
power (batteries add a massive cost to user solar installations) so the only
way for you to have power at all times is to sell the surplus generated solar
back to the utility (which is where the engineering problems come in) during
peak solar hours and using the gird off peak.

~~~
criley
Yes! But in that paradigm, where you generate 80%+ of your needed energy and
rely on the grid for the rest, how does that affect the utility?

The only difference to them is that you draw less power than you used to.
Sure, it would benefit them to learn your habits so they can manage steady
power delivery at scale, but they don't get a say in your solar rollout. They
don't get to prevent it. They don't get to be skeptical (or if they are, they
can't act on it).

The person I'm replying to seemed to say that the engineers at utilities are
skeptical of this technology and honestly I don't understand how they're
relevant, since utilities aren't rolling out the technology, maintaining the
technology, etc.

~~~
snowwrestler
> The only difference to them is that you draw less power than you used to.

That is not the only difference; the pattern of your load changes too.

With 100% grid-supplied power, changes in load are driven by slow-moving,
predictable systems like sunrise/sunset, weather, and seasons.

If you are running your own solar array, though, you will vary your grid load
on much shorter time scales unless you invest in a big battery pack to smooth
out the variations in insolation from clouds and storms. And even the normal
daily variation will be stronger, since when it gets dark you'll not only be
increasing your load (turning on lights, TV, cooking, etc), you'll also be
losing your local generation.

The current electric grid is not built to handle such large changes in load on
such short timeframes.

~~~
gngeal
_With 100% grid-supplied power, changes in load are driven by slow-moving,
predictable systems like sunrise/sunset, weather, and seasons._

 _If you are running your own solar array, though, you will vary your grid
load on much shorter time scales_

I'm not so sure that these latter variations are significantly less
predictable than what you mention in the former paragraph. Isn't the output of
a solar array dependent on the insolation? Isn't the insolation dependent on
the cloud cover? Can't you predict the cloud cover in any single place simply
by taking advantage of real-time meteo satellite data? A similar feedback
could be established for wind power. Given enough data, I'm reasonably certain
that models could be established that would allow you to predict how the solar
and wind power generation distribution is going to change in the next hour(s)
so that you could prepare for it.

~~~
akiselev
The problem isn't the prediction, full solar is probably only slightly more
volatile than full grid on a large scale. Maybe not hourly but the companies
would still be able to work out the supply side.

The issue is that the supply side and supporting infrastructure is built for
an entirely different system where power leaves the power plants and goes
through the grid to consumers. Now people are adding solar panels which
generate a ton of electricity during the day (when everyone is largely at
work/school) that must then be fed back into the grid, opposite the direction
of normal flow.

------
revelation
Two of Musks companies have partnered to build just that very system described
in this article:

<http://www.solarcity.com/residential/energy-storage.aspx>

Of course its marketed as backup power right now, but once battery costs come
down this will be very viable.

------
_delirium
Something that would be interesting: a map estimating the areas in which a
typical suburban home roof covered with PV panels would produce enough energy
to power a typical suburban home's worth of electrical usage, assuming some
level of battery technology.

I'm not actually sure what it'd look like. Seems like there might be a
tradeoff between hotter areas, which have both higher PV output _and_ higher
peak electricity usage (due to A/C running flat out on hot days), and cooler
areas which are lower on both. I guess the ideal situation would be something
like SoCal within a mile of the coast: tons of sun yet ocean-moderated mild
temperatures. But not sure about the rest of the country.

~~~
asynchronous13
I'm an electrical engineer and I've done these calculations for my own home.

The roof area of a 1200 sq ft ranch home is much larger than the surface area
of solar panels needed to power the home. (in other words, your map would show
pretty much all of north America). But covering all of a roof with solar
panels is very expensive.

The biggest problem is that the "typical suburban home" is ridiculously
inefficient.

In terms of bang for your buck, investing in efficiency improvements is a much
better choice for the average home owner. Don't even consider solar panels
until you've reduced energy needs first.

After efficiency upgrades, modern solar panels make a lot of sense financially
speaking.

~~~
EEGuy
> Don't even consider solar panels until you've reduced energy needs first.

Absolutely, asynch13! That's what I did. It took over two years, starting with
a home energy monitor.

Using a home energy monitor such as [1] or [2], one can get frequent
measurements, every six seconds for [1], then identify individual loads by
switching them on and off during a period of otherwise steady demand. Other
loads silently switch on and off of course;

Then one can start making evaluations and upgrades. Some can be surprising; I
was able to reduce my demand by well over 20 KWh / day; details here [3].

After that, a 5KW / 8000+ KWh-per-year grid-tie no-storage solar PV system
went in. My utility charges $11 for a month when the PV system produces more
than the home consumes during a billig period.

The utility did change out their transformer (to a smaller 25 KW unit feeding
3 other homes) on the power pole in my back yard. But home and location is 40
years old, so I can imagine the old transformer was fully amortized long ago.

\---

[1] <http://currentcost.net> [2] <http://www.theenergydetective.com/> [3]
[https://discussions.zoho.com/powersave/topic/how-much-i-
ve-b...](https://discussions.zoho.com/powersave/topic/how-much-i-ve-been-
saving)

~~~
revelation
They charge you for feeding excess power back into the grid?

~~~
EEGuy
Not exactly. Since it was a subsidized system, with 'Net Metering', my utility
sets the billing rules. Excluding the finer points, here's the gist of how the
billing works:

* My utility (Los Angeles DWP) accumulates a 'dollar banking' credit for the present value of net energy [signed power flow integrated over the two-month interval of my utility's billing period] fed back to the grid when a billing statement period is net-energy-productive (i.e. the PV system made more energy than my home consumed over the statement-period of two months). I pay a $22 'minimum charge' (normalized: $11/mo) for, as I see it, my share of utility equipment amortization and operations I'd otherwise be paying as a consumer. Fair enough: I do draw energy when the sun goes down. It's co-operative.

* In the summer, my 5-ton A/C use exceeds my PV system's production capacity; I become an energy consumer during one or two billing periods. My utility calculates the price for the _net_ energy I use per period, then debits the 'dollar banking' account. If that gets exhausted, then I pay the residual, otherwise my 'dollar banking' balance just goes down.

------
marze
Not to mention lumen per dollar increase rate of LED lighting, tablets that
consume 4 watts, refrigerators that use half the power of the average
installed fridge, etc.

The falling prices of solar PV panels has been incredible. Most expected the
price of $0.72 per peak watt to be reached in 2028, not 2013.

~~~
ars
> Not to mention lumen per dollar increase rate of LED lighting

The energy efficiency of LEDs still doesn't beat CFL, except for really really
expensive LEDs.

~~~
parametrek
> The energy efficiency of LEDs still doesn't beat CFL, except for really
> really expensive LEDs.

Not at all!

CFLs cost $1.74 per bulb with an efficacy of 64 lumens/watt [1]. LEDs cost
$12.47 per bulb with an efficacy of 84 lumens/watt [2].

As far as LED bulbs go, $10-$15 per bulb is a pretty typical price. A more
correct phase is "The average LED is 30% more efficient than a CFL, but costs
7x more." Anyway, both halves of your statement are wrong.

The big savings comes in flexability. LED bulbs are easily dimmable. Dimmable
CFL bulbs are expensive and don't work well. LEDs can be turned off and on
quickly without wearing them out. I go through a lot of CFLs in my basement,
because the lights are turned on for three minutes at a time, several times a
day. They actually burn out faster than the incandscents! Though in most cases
it does not make sense to replace CFLs with LEDs yet.

Eventually it will, see Haizt's Law [3]. CFL tech has been improving too but
not as fast. In 1980 florescent tech was at 34 lum/watt. Doubling every 30
years is a dead end.

[1] <http://www.homedepot.com/p/t/100687000>

[2] <http://www.homedepot.com/p/t/204084366>

[3] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haitz%27s_law>

~~~
ars
First, a arithmetic error: it's $0.74 per CFL, not $1.74. So so the LED costs
17x as much as the CFL.

Congratulations: You found an example of a really really expensive LED - which
is exactly what I said.

And I've seen this LED before - it's the very first one I've ever seen that
beats a CFL for efficiency, and it does it by having a CRI of 80 (the legal
minimum). So the color advantage LEDs have over CFL? Not for this bulb - this
bulb looks terrible, so bad that it's going to turn people off from LEDs, the
same way the early bad CFLs made people think they are all bad.

How exactly are you saving anything from flexibility? Who cares if they are
dimmable, the majority of the time you don't, and the tiny savings in
electricity when you do hardly matter.

I turn my CFLs on and off quite often and I go years between having to replace
them. And they cost 74 cents - replacing them is hardly an expensive
proposition even when they fail (which they usually don't).

Check the efficiency of LEDs that cost no more than $5 (still 6x the price of
a CFL, but reasonable) for around 800 lumens, if you find one that beats - or
even matches - a CFL let me know. And make sure the CRI is comparable too. A
low CRI CFL is also much more efficient.

Haizt's Law has nothing to do with efficiency. Also, the theoretical max for
efficiency is 250 lm/w. It's going to get much much harder to improve things
as we get closer.

I agree that eventually LEDs will beat other technology. It's just not there
yet.

~~~
parametrek
> First, a arithmetic error: it's $0.74 per CFL, not $1.74. So so the LED
> costs 17x as much as the CFL.

Sorry, what? The linked four pack of CFLs costs $6.97. You must have been
doing some very interesting taxes this week if you think 6.97 / 4 = 0.74.
(Apologies if you are not American.)

> Check the efficiency of [800 lumen] LEDs that cost no more than $5

They don't exist. Even cheap direct-from-China LED bulbs* are more expensive
than that. $10-$15 per bulb is the typical cost and you'll be hard pressed to
find 800 lumen (60 watt equivalents) for any less. I'll gladly check their
efficiency if you can show me where to get that many lumens for that price.

* Actual lumens. Many Chinese reseller sites will outright lie and you need to check the manufacture's website. Eg, <http://dx.com/p/193927> says 1008 lumens while [http://www.sencart.net/e27-24smd-5060-led-pure-white-lights-...](http://www.sencart.net/e27-24smd-5060-led-pure-white-lights-700lm-bulb-lamp-85v265v_p888.html) says 700 lumens.

~~~
ars
> The linked four pack of CFLs costs $6.97.

That is very very interesting, for me the price is listed as $2.97. I can post
a screenshot if you like.

I'm wondering if it might be because there are utility rebates in my area, and
my local store has a lower price.

> They don't exist.

I figured. I don't think the time for LED replacement bulbs has come yet, but
we're getting there.

Although I am considering this fixture <http://www.ebay.com/itm/170922117326>
for a new installation because once I include the costs of the hardware the
price is a wash, and LEDs are much better for outdoor use.

I do hope they are not lying about the lumens though.

I think LED specific fixtures are going to be a much better choice for now,
rather than edison base bulbs.

------
ck2
I doubt most people can afford enough solar and battery storage to power all
the air conditioning needed for the longer, hotter summers we are having.

We'll just use less coal which is a great thing, until the coal industry
starts getting subsidies to stay alive in a few decades (which is certainly
going to happen considering their political power).

Grid-tie is a much better answer for people and utilities though. Solves the
daytime demand problem.

~~~
marshray
Cooling in the summer requires much less energy compared to heating in the
winter. It's also a lot more of an optional comfort than a critical survival
need.

~~~
yxhuvud
That obviously depends on where you live.

If you claim more energy is spent on heating overall I'd want a reference on
that, since that goes against what I've heard. Especially since houses in cold
climates tend to be a lot better insulated than houses in southern climates.

~~~
marshray
Obviously I'm talking about places that have both a real winter and a real
summer. How well insulated your house is is primarily a function of the
available technology and the cost of energy when it was built.

Probably the simplest reference I could give would be to point out that a lot
of heavily populated places like Seattle, Chicago, the US Northeast, and much
of Europe don't even install central air conditioning in homes at all. If
we're talking about human survival standards of comfort, then obviously people
have been living closer to the equator than you and I for a long time before
AC was invented.

In the winter, often a furnace is used to burn gas or electricity in a pure
"burning" of utility energy to heat. Some people have heat pumps which are
more efficient, but when they hit their limits the backup furnace kicks in.
Often additional water must be added to the inside air, and that must be
heated as well. The temperature differential which must be maintained by the
burning fuel is easily 40 deg F (say 28 to 68 on a mild day).

In the summertime, reasonable cooling involves using a refrigeration process
to move heat out of the building. The refrigeration cycle isn't perfect, but
it's surprisingly efficient since it's more moving the heat from one place to
another. As a side effect, the inside air gets dehumidified which helps too.
The summer cooling temperature difference is only 25 degrees F (say 98 to 75)
on a hot day.

------
stesch
Hello from the wasteland Germany. Everything is in ruins.

------
leashless
The chapter and verse of the grid utility economics as they are impacted by
solar and wind is in <http://smallisprofitable.org> which was The Economist's
Book of the Year 2003. (disclaimer: I helped edit this)

------
fnordsensei
Decentralized power generation makes society as a whole far more resilient
against sabotage and natural disasters.

As for the business model, Heinlein has a comment: "There has grown up in the
minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or
corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the
government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such
profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary
to public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute or
common law. Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into
court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back."

------
teeja
Of course they might "destroy US utilities", which is why some of us
appreciate them so much. Of course they won't destroy hydro or wind plants.

There was a time when power generation "had" to be centralized, just as AT&T
"needed" to have a telecom monopoly and we "need" to have ISPs. Technology is
sweeping us past that necessity; those days are ending.

Now that the utilities have stripped and burned most of the easily-stripped
fossil fuel resources (leaving no such easy plundering for future generations)
and kept the profits for themselves, we are all starting to enjoy getting a
slice of the pie. Dear Utes: don't let the door hit you in the ass.

------
jrh555
One thing that may save utilities for a while is the rise of the electric car.
There will be a need for charging stations to charge these cars when away from
home and solar may not be practical in all locations. This could be especially
true in cities where there may not be enough room for all the solar panels
needed. Electrified roads that charge up cars as they drive on them would be
even better and would be a natural extension of existing utility services. If
utilities were smart they would focus on helping to accelerate the transition
to electric vehicles.

------
graycat
It's simple: A utility's costs for a customer are basically a fixed cost for a
connection plus a variable cost for the power a customer uses. The fixed cost
pays for the astoundingly expensive equipment needed for a connection, and the
variable cost pays just for the actual power. In the US, the wholesale cost of
power on the grid has long been about 0.5 cents per kWh, that is, relatively
low. I have some figures from 2007 saying that the cost of power at the plant
from coal is less than 3 cents per kWh and, nuclear fission, 2 cents.

Now, if a lot of consumers put solar panels on their roofs but remain
connected to the grid, then they will pay less to the utility which stands to
fail to get back its fixed costs.

So, eventually the customer will get an electric bill that itemizes a much
larger fixed cost for the connection and a lower variable cost for the actual
power.

In the meanwhile, there will be a lot of 'politics' where people with solar
panels want to pay not enough for the fixed cost of the grid which will mean
that people without solar panels will pay too much.

And the people with solar panels will want to be able to sell power back to
the utilities which; such power will cause engineering problems on the grid,
and the solution of these problems will raise the fixed costs.

For the batteries, so far they are too expensive. Same for home electric
generators. Generally a big problem with electric power is that storage is
very expensive.

Net, for generating electric power, super tough to improve on the results of
the last 100 years in electric power engineering where the power comes from
falling water, burning coal, or nuclear fission.

In simple terms, for the grid, really no one wants power from unreliable
sources such as wind and solar because (1) still need the fixed cost of the
present system for when the wind is not blowing and the sun is not shining,
(2) wind/solar variability can cause stability issues on the grid (to be
solved by a 'smart grid', that is, more fixed cost for the grid), (3) the good
wind/solar sources are generally too far from the major grid demands meaning
long distance transmission lines (more cost). My guess is that if take the
subsidies away from wind and solar, then for the grid wind/solar will fall
like a lead balloon.

Broadly, wind/solar for the grid asks us to pay for fixed cost twice, once for
wind/solar and again for our current system for when wind/solar are not
providing enough power. Heck, except for dress up, I have just one pair of
shoes and wear them rain or shine -- I don't have separate shoes for rain and
then shine. I have one computer for night and day and not separate computers
for each. I want to pay for just one source of fixed cost of electric power,
not one source on days with wind or sun and another source otherwise.

Power from wind/solar may be useful, say, for smelting aluminum, generating
hydrogen from water, providing energy to make gasoline for water and coal.
Note something these three candidate uses have in common: The output is easily
stored, that is, buffered. Then notice the problem of electric power for the
grid: The means of storage are far to inefficient.

For the grid, as far as I can see, wind and solar are just nonsense pushed by
a 'wind/solar subsidy industry' that wants to talk people into measuring
temperature not with thermometers but pictures of polar bears.

There is another candidate, small nukes. So, from Japan can buy a 'box'. In a
neighborhood, dig a hole in the ground, install the box, and cover it over.
Connect the box to the grid of the neighborhood. Then the box, just buried in
its hole in the ground, provides all the electric power for the neighborhood
for, say, 20 years. The savings are maintaining the long distance power
transmission from the power station to the neighborhood. Of course the
interior of the box is a nuclear fission reactor.

Now if my startup works and I get rich and build a nice place in the rural
hills of, say, New Hampshire, then maybe I will be able to get such a box!
Also for my 4 wheel drive truck to get around in the winters, use that power
to make gasoline from water and coal! Maybe!

------
BenoitEssiambre
This is nice if it leads to a switch to cheaper localized non monopolistic
electricity. However, I wonder if the chain reaction could lead to widespread
utilities bankruptcies and maybe even cascate to another debt crisis affecting
the already fragile financial and government sectors.

~~~
artificialidiot
To be honest, that would be an awesome thing to watch it unfold.

~~~
msandford
More likely that you'd see an informal/distributed 48VDC grid spring up. Less
than 50V isn't considered "real" wiring by the NEC and goes largely
unregulated. Think low voltage path lighting, doorbell wiring, thermostat
wiring, etc.

So if you and your neighbors can share power via 48VDC with no approval then
you can run your own inverters to power your household stuff. There are plenty
of grid-following micro-inverters that can be purchased fairly inexpensively.

Forklift batteries cost a few grand but give you many kilowatt-hours worth of
energy storage. Considering that the average US house seems to use about 1kW
of power on average a 40kWh battery pack would allow huge amounts of
flexibility to decide when to run a generator, use solar cells, wind turbines,
etc. <http://www.midwestlifttrucks.com/offgrid.html>

~~~
XorNot
The problem is cost per delivered kWh over the life of the battery, sans
charging inefficiencies.

No Lead-Acid I know of actually beats out grid power in this application yet
(you can about break-even, but what's the point?).

Some of the new, cheap Lithium-Ion batteries may do it, but a game-changer
would be a low-cost fuel cell of some kind (rechargeable Iron-Air for example
would be incredibly cheap).

------
ahi
At least here in Michigan, DTE Energy is pushing efficiency and solar. Part of
this is a legislated requirement, but I think the big motivator is how the
regulator calculates their profit margin. AFAIK, they don't make their margin
on selling electrons, but on capital investment. Higher utilization of their
generating capacity just means slimmer profit margins. Most of their plants
are 40-50 years old so they have plenty of capital investment and profits
headed their way even if solar cuts into demand. I could be wrong about any or
all of this, since I'm working off memory and I'm not going to read 100 page
regulator reports.

------
dghughes
Utility companies are in the power business I don't see why that means a giant
plat full of machinery.

Say a little old lady wants solar panels but is in no way capable of
installing them anymore than she can install plumbing.

Power utilities should offer solar panels, wind turbines, battery storage
systems. Even electrical to hydrogen foe storage.

The power company should be like an ISP only instead of modems they service
power generating devices.

------
jusben1369
I think this is a fascinating argument and makes sense. However, Is the EEI
really someone we trust with a report like this? It seems - given their
position - they have a lot to gain and little downside in trying to scare what
are essentially politicians into helping protect them. Perhaps that's why the
media ignored this report to begin with?

~~~
spenrose
The report is interesting BECAUSE the EEI represents the institutions with the
most incentives to resist change.

------
jmspring
One of the best tales regarding an entrenched utility, costs, and an
individual wanting to hook into the grid. Ken Adelman has made his name known
for a number of things, but his fight w/ PG&E was one of the more memorable
ones --

<http://www.solarwarrior.com/pgebattle.html>

------
JulianMorrison
A similar cycle will trash the gasoline car industry when electric meets the
combination of [cheap, useable] that is sufficient to trigger a demand
reduction / supply contraction cycle in the less fungible parts for gasoline
cars.

------
skybrian
Actually, it looks like it's according to one consultant that one of the
utilities hired. But it's about long-term trends that are interesting enough.
A summary by a more careful writer would be appreciated.

------
robbrown451
If they are regulated monopolies, it seems like any issue they complain about
is directly addressable by adjusting the rates they are allowed to charge, so
as to keep their profits reasonable.

------
yessql
This piece overlooks the fact that utilities can install solar power cheaper
than a residence can. This will always be the chase. Electricity will drop in
price accordingly.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Generation and transmission are two different utility businesses. This article
is about how people are not going to want to pay to be hooked to the utility
"just in case".

~~~
snowwindwaves
I believe people will. E willing to pay quite a bit, just in case, because
that power is extremely valuable to someone when they are otherwise facing the
prospect of having none.

------
MikeCapone
Solar doesn't have to be expensive up-front thanks to companies that lease
solar systems like SolarCity (who's chairman is Elon Musk, ran by his
cousins).

------
InclinedPlane
Ironically widespread availability of solar power could lead to increased
pollution. Purely hypothetically, if somehow it became popular for people to
generate some, but not all, of the power they need from solar panels then
perhaps people would pay less money to the power companies. Power production
becomes less profitable and there's less demand for expanding supply. Meaning
that the cheapest power production that requires the lowest capital investment
will win out. And that's coal.

~~~
dangrossman
That used to be coal. Now it's natural gas. The gap has grown large enough in
some places that coal plants get converted to run on natural gas.

[http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Coal_plant_conversion_p...](http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Coal_plant_conversion_projects)

~~~
toomuchtodo
This is actually a huge deal. Coal advocates disparage environmentalists about
the coal industry going down the tubes, when its really US fracking efforts
that are driving down the cost of natural gas.

------
cinquemb
I wonder when CSP tech is going to be talked about in the mainstream. It seems
like when it comes to solar, people just think of PV.

------
afterburner
Excellent news then! I would certainly prefer more solar power, and it looks
like the utilities agree it's possible.

------
madaxe
How long before the utilities (likely successfully) lobby to make PV/DER
illegal, I wonder.

Soon, I'd wager. As I see it, the purpose of this report is FUD, which is
usually the opening move of any protectionist initiative.

Edit: alternately, they'll push to tax it to high hell, or at least argue that
they own sunshine (like water utilities do over rainwater collection) and
should therefore be paid by PV users.

~~~
tedsanders
I think that's an unfair and cynical view of the goals of utility companies.
Some utilities may lobby to make distributed PV illegal, but I believe only to
protect people and the integrity of the grid.

-A former utility engineer

~~~
madaxe
The goal is to enhance shareholder value. End of story.

~~~
tedsanders
That's not the end of story. The reality is that utilities are filled with
thousands of employees. Not every employee has the sole goal of enhancing
shareholder value.

Anyway, enhancing shareholder value isn't necessarily at odds with allowing
people to generate electricity with distributed solar. You can defer quite a
bit of capital expense (e.g. power lines) if the load gets reduced by
generation.

Finally, for some regulated utilities, maximizing revenue doesn't mean
maximizing profits. Sometimes regulations set the profit, and there are ways
to game it that don't involve running the utility as a private-profit-
maximizing firm.

