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by zaroth
3568 days ago
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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. |
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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.