It's surely less expensive per capita to have reliable electricity for everyone than to have everyone who wants reliable electricity to have to install a generator.
99% uptime means 7 hours of downtime every month. And it's not random downtime, it's downtime under peak demand.
If the choice was free electricity at 99% uptime and you have to take care of the rest yourself, or $0.13 / kWh for 99.999% uptime, I would go for the 0.13 / kWh.
Of course in AUS they probably charge more than 0.13 / kWh and make you deal with the brownouts anyway. Actually some quick searches reveal AUS pays about the highest rates in the world.
Reliably not being able to handle peak demand isn't a cost saving measure, it's an excuse for a major failure of the infrastructure.
To be clear, in Aus we don't have 99% reliability. It's about 45 min every 2 years (whatever that works out to). That number was to explain the cost savings.
In much of the world those cost saving are directly applicable. Most of the world's population doesn't have 99% reliable electricity, and so they build reliability at the edges with everything from batteries in phone towers, to batteries in lighting.
It isn't at all clear to me if this is more or less expensive for new infrastructure. Given the increasing popularity of roof-top solar, the pricing model for 24/7 reliable wiring doesn't work out now in places where it is already built out. Network operators are trying various legislative measures to get subsidies for the networks, because no one wants to pay the rates they cost to maintain.
If I had free (or very cheap) electricity 99% of the time, spending $5K to get 99.99% reliability via a battery system is very tempting (and we are getting close to that point now). $1K for 99.9% - maybe.
One interesting thing is that the distribution of the downtime matters.
Rooftop solar is on average a $25,000 - $35,000 investment, and that's not even counting energy storage required to actually be off-grid. I don't think that only the rich should have reliable energy, and the poor should suffer brownouts to theoretically save some infrastructure costs.
For countries who don't yet have a reliable electric grid, I think investing in providing quality / reliable electricity to their population is about the best ROI (after providing reliable drinking water) investment they can make.
The economic cost of blackouts and brownouts are extremely high [1] -- for example, the rolling backouts in California back in 2000 - 2001 were estimated to cause GDP loss of 0.7 - 1.5%! (GDP was ~1.2T, so we're talking economic losses on the order of $10 billion).
The Tesla powerwall is currently $3000[1]. There are installation costs etc on top of that of course though.
Solar is separate - I'm talking about charging the battery from the grid.
Brownouts are expensive, but so is the cost of making sure they don't happen. Peaker plants cost more than $10m/year without even turning them on[2]. There are over 40 in California[3] currently available. Hopefully they don't all cost $10M each to keep available, but it doesn't take many years to surpass that $10B cost...
Rooftop solar is on average a $25,000 - $35,000 investment, and that's not even counting energy storage required to actually be off-grid. I don't think that only the rich should have reliable energy, and the poor should suffer brownouts to theoretically save some infrastructure costs.
I'm assuming you are talking USD, if so? Are you sure you have your numbers correct? That seems ridiculously expensive compared to say Australia. First link on DuckDuckGo: https://www.solarquotes.com.au/panels/cost/
If you need your solar to generate your AC in California or another southern state of the US, sure.
Here in the Netherlands, our complete solar system with installation cost us EUR 4,500, and we do run some AC in the hottest summer months. We are currently generating more than we use, with a household of 2 adults and 4 kids.
99% uptime means 7 hours of downtime every month. And it's not random downtime, it's downtime under peak demand.
If the choice was free electricity at 99% uptime and you have to take care of the rest yourself, or $0.13 / kWh for 99.999% uptime, I would go for the 0.13 / kWh.
Of course in AUS they probably charge more than 0.13 / kWh and make you deal with the brownouts anyway. Actually some quick searches reveal AUS pays about the highest rates in the world.
Reliably not being able to handle peak demand isn't a cost saving measure, it's an excuse for a major failure of the infrastructure.