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by zaroth
3569 days ago
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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). [1] - http://www.raeng.org.uk/publications/reports/counting-the-co... |
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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...
[1] http://www.wholesalesolar.com/tesla-powerwall-for-solar
[2] http://www.nj.com/business/index.ssf/2010/07/peakers_plants_...
[3] http://www.energy.ca.gov/maps/powerplants/EmergencyPeakerPow...