[wronex]

I don’t understand why electrical grids are so problematic, but they seem plagued by corruption, incompetence, and poor planning everywhere.

Here in Sweden the grids was built by taxpayers and then sold off to a private company for maintenance and operation. That went as well as you can expect. Future development and growth is basically impossible as the private company has zero incentive or interest in laying new wire or upgrading old.

[stephen_g]

When you turn energy generation into a market, it opens up the possibility for huge amounts of money to be made by big players constraining supply at just the right times. Of course if properly competitive markets existed outside econ textbook models, it would solve itself, but unfortunately the barrier to entry is too high in the real world so competition is always limited to a few players who try to get as large as possible (gobbling up any smaller ones in the process).

This kind of profiteering by intentionally constraining supply when there was very high demand was literally something Enron became infamous for, but it still happens all around the world.

Of course, on the transmission and distribution side you can’t even try to have a market and there is always a natural monopoly, it’d just be impossible for anyone to overbuild a new grid in any service area. So turning a state-owned natural monopoly into a private one tends to turn out just as badly as anyone could expect…

[tonyedgecombe]

We have had years of efficiency improvements which led to falling demand. There wasn’t much point in increasing grid capacity in this scenario.

All of a sudden that has changed (thanks to demand from EV’s, heat pumps and AI).

It’s going to take a while to turn the ship around.

[athoneycutt]

Oof yea I believe it is similar in most US states and the idea of having more than One provider is wild to them yet we can have at least Two ISPs...

[stop50]

Don't forget that some states have their own grid that has no connection with outside grids

[toomuchtodo]

Only Texas [ERCOT], and they do it to avoid federal regulation.

https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=27152

[ashoeafoot]

"When the ideology destroys the bread factory , the witchhunts must begin"