[wyager]

> That way my exercise energy would at least be useful to someone, somewhere

What very few people (who haven't worked on grid modeling) realize is that injecting energy into the grid from random locations tends to make operating grids harder and more expensive, rather than making it easier by reducing load.

This applies to everything from bikes (which on balance won't really make any detectable difference, and certainly won't ever make an economically positive contribution vs the cost of hooking them up) to home solar panels. Getting paid grid rates to dump extra solar energy back into the grid is actually a (very inefficient) subsidy benefitting solar panel owners. If the grid charges you fixed 10c/kWh for power, and has to pay you 10c/kWh when you dump solar surplus onto them, they're almost certainly losing money on you, and it's probably making the grid less efficient.

Here's a good starting point if anyone is curious why grid-dumping isn't socially efficient. Once you understand how socially efficient power pricing works (e.g. LMP pricing), it's pretty straightforward. https://www.eba-net.org/assets/1/6/6._[Savitski][Final][165-...

[dml2135]

Is less efficiency okay though if selling back to the grid results in more clean energy overall?

[fluoridation]

Not if the added inefficiency totally consumes the added clean energy and needs further non-clean energy to sustain it. You could end up in a situation where taking energy from residential solar panels leads to burning more coal than if you hadn't done anything.

[mcronce]

Or natural gas...which has disastrous methane emissions all throughout the supply chain

[vkou]

Depends on what the trade-off is.

If that efficiency would have gone to shareholders, sure.

If that efficiency would have gone towards building utility-scale renewables, no.