[jmyeet]

I believe solar is the future. And hydro where approppriate. China is doing massive things with hydro. The largest hydro power station in the world is the Three Gorges Dam and they've just announced building one three times as large in Tibet for $137 billion [1].

But there's an issue with solar most people don't talk about. Yes it can be variable due to weather and day/night cycles. That's obvious. But a real issue is power lines.

Power lines are built to deliver power to businesses and homes. The cost of that is amortized over the electricity purchased by consumers. If people end up purchasing only half as much power due to more energy-efficient building standards, the use of solar, etc then the cost of the power lines is still the same except now it needs to be amortized over less electricity sold.

This I think is why municipalities tend to limit how much solar power houses are allowed to have. How do you build and maintain a grid when houses are generally self-suficient? Should you? Is it acceptable to not have a grid?

[1]: https://newatlas.com/energy/yarlung-tsangpo-hydroelectric-pr...

[lifeoflejf]

Do you think that will just be moved to the flat connection fee? I had an apt with a gas stove, and nothing else gas. The $8/m connection fee was pretty much my entire gas bill. If it’s $50/m per building to be connected to the grid, plus demand charges, then charge that and pass along wholesale energy costs.

[jmyeet]

A connection fee helps but not as much as you think. You could turn that off but there are still pipes built into your house or apartment down to the street. There's still a pipe that runs down the street. There is distribution infrastructure. You might be paying for your connection separately on your bill but you're still amortizing all that downstream infrastructure. If overall usage drops, that connection fee still has to go up.

[vikramkr]

The real issue is politics - grids are absolutely going to be required for all the folks who can't generate enough solar on their own roofs, industry, cities, restauraunts, etc. Plus how else are you going to make use of wind, grid scale utility solar installations, etc. I have a feeling many countries in the world (especially china) will not have much trouble forcing the grid to do what's needed and subsidizing shared infrastructure with taxes as a shared societal good. If we insist on not doing that though, the grid system as is is not going to be able to financially and logistically figure out this transition, which is probably a competitive disadvantage for us long term if our own energy grid is stopping us from competing on energy because of the way it's structured.

[jmyeet]

China has specific needs that almost nobody else does. Most notably, all of China's power generation is in the west of the country (eg Three Gorges, the new Tibet dam) but all the people are in the east. You lose power with long-range transmission and on China's scale that's a real problem.

So China has largely invested in, deployed and perfected Ultra-High Voltage Direct Current ("UHVDC") transmission infrastructure. China has really shown they think 10, 20 and 50 years into the future with their planning.

As for grids, there are a lot of places that could be self-sufficient with solar plus batteries. A lot of remote towns and houses work this way already.