
As Economics Improve, Solar Shines in Rural America - rbanffy
https://spectrum.ieee.org/energywise/energy/renewables/solar-expands-in-rural-areas
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nateberkopec
My local co-op has committed to providing 100% of sunny daytime electricity
with solar by 2022 (35 megawatts): [http://kitcarson.com/electric/100-daytime-
solar-energy-by-20...](http://kitcarson.com/electric/100-daytime-solar-energy-
by-2022)

It's really interesting that the push is coming from co-ops. Many people in my
town don't seem to understand how important and incredible our local co-op is.
They mostly complain about the quality of service (there's more downtime than
you would get from a traditional utility, for sure) but don't think about the
alternative is a utility that belches coal smoke and outsources customer
service to Bangladesh.

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opportune
Co-ops are amazing. If only every business could be a coop

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microcolonel
We'd most likely be stuck in the '40s, and the world would have about 40-80x
as many people living in abject poverty. Co-ops work when everyone involved is
a true stakeholder, I am not so much a stakeholder in my bank, nor in Intel,
nor ASUS, but I still benefit from my transactions with them.

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opportune
I do not understand your comment. A coop is simply an employee-owned company
(usually with more even distribution of ownership than many nominally
employee-owned companies). You do not need to work for a coop to do business
with them

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rbanffy
> I do not understand your comment.

A world of co-ops is close enough to anarcho-syndicalism that many Americans
get an allergic reaction.

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cryoshon
a defect of the american mind doesn't speak to the validity of the concept as
a whole.

besides, we're talking about the society which is just fine with anarcho-
corporatism...

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ianai
Where did the anarcho- terms come from? I don’t remember seeing them in my
academic Econ days.

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ebikelaw
Will it be possible with solar and on-site storage to largely roll back rural
electrification grid? In California PG&E can't afford[1] to maintain the rural
system and it just starts fires constantly.

1: Can't afford it, net of the billion in profits they shovel into their
holding company.

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p1mrx
We'll need a lot of storage to make local solar as reliable as the grid. We
may be headed for an uncanny valley, as solar makes the grid less profitable,
yet still necessary.

The utility companies should probably be investing in EV charging (like the
ability to buy electricity from a shared charger, and bill it directly to your
home account instead of appearing on the charger operator's meter), in order
to maintain/increase demand for their product as solar takes it away.

~~~
lovich
I imagine at a certain point it'd be cheaper for a utility to have truck
mounted battery banks that they can drive to affected areas and supply power
to, while they repair their broken onsite power generation

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ebikelaw
A truck stuffed to the gills with batteries would hold maybe 4 MW-hours of
energy. You'd need a lot of trucks, except most of the time you wouldn't need
any of them and they'd just sit around. Sounds expensive?

~~~
lovich
It is more expensive, but would it be mor expensive than maintaining a grid
for an entire region? The power density is low, but presumably you're not
running every electricity using device while you're hooked up to emergency
power.

This idea may be worse than just keeping a grid around, but my point was more
along the lines that we are not tied to needing a grid itself anymore if we
get power generation at every home/business. We still need some sort of backup
power system, but it is possible that it takes a different form

