[bokohut]

And the verbiage that many will glance over yet will have the greatest future impacts for all alive is: "...includes an energy storage system..."

Todays U.S. meeting "Roundtable on Ratepayer Protection Pledge" with the U.S. President himself leading that meeting garnished commitments from Big Tech as it relates to energy. In time Big Tech Energy divisions will be thing and some citizens will be paying their utilities bill to them.

[conradev]

In Texas and Massachusetts you can actually pick your power provider while paying the natural monopoly for the wires. In time I hope we all can do this.

[ploxiln]

This is how it works in NYC, but the wires are almost twice as expensive as the power. (If you add taxes and the numerous weird fees, the total bill is a solid 3x the cost of the power.) It's really all about the grid maintenance and management these days.

[myrmidon]

To be fair: grid buildout is quite expensive.

A comparison: the giant Dogger Bank offshore wind farm project (multi-GW) cost somewhere in the $10bn range. On the other hand, Germany calculates with >$100bn for grid buildout within the next decade (https://www.netzentwicklungsplan.de/sites/default/files/2023...).

Also, having customers that rely on your grid but buy very little of your power is simply unappealing for operators, so I would assume that their pricing tries to disincentivise as much as possible (=> "they gonna overcharge you for the grid connection").

[TheSpiceIsLife]

The not-so-hidden costs of collecting extremely diffuse wind / solar is the elephant in the room 10x bill for the supporting grid infrastructure.

Nuclear advocates, like myself, claim drop in replacement nuclear power reactors at existing coal / gas sites would largely obviate this.

Even adding new nuclear power reactors at greenfield sites would constitute a significantly reduced grid build cost, as the power is highly concentrated.

And nuclear is so say that nuclear power reactors employees are routine exposed to less radiation at work than they are at home in their kitchen with granite bench tops.

YIMBY.

[myrmidon]

I can see that argument applying to wind, but for solar its the opposite because that is really easy to get closer to consumers than a conventional plant ever could be (i.e. on the rooftop).

At this point, I don't believe in a nuclear renaissance, because it seems to me that nuclear power got left behind too far; catching up in cost metrics is already hard enough, but matching growth rates (in "installed TWh/a" of wind/solar) seems virtually impossible by now. The only remaining holdouts (China, US, France, ...) are basically doing it as a hedge and/or to keep/obtain related engineering capabilities (and at the very least an easy path toward weapon-grade material).

It is clear to me that no one "actually believes" in nuclear power (by stating clearly: we are solve gonna current and future energy problems by mainly relying on freshly built nuclear power), so I can only see its relevance dwindling (I'd argue that China comes closest, but even they are much more in the hedging/securing capabilities category than anything else).

[treis]

We do this for gas. IMHO you end up paying monopoly rates for the pipes and then stupid game prices for the gas. Maybe the savvy consumer comes out ahead but seems like a net negative to me.

[hvb2]

It's not monopoly rates, it's actual utility rates. The only problem here is if the utility is allowed to make a profit. Gas pipes, electric lines and internet connections are like roads in today's society. Can't really live without them.

So assuming the pipe maintenance is done at cost, with no money not being spent on the network. What would your better net positive solution even look like?

[ZeroGravitas]

People can live without gas pipes. One of the big tasks at the moment is planning to stop people building new gas pipes that won't be used enough to justify the price and how to phase out the existing gas pipes so the pricing doesn't enter a "death spiral" as people start leaving the network, leaving the government to bail it out.

[TheSpiceIsLife]

I’m all for burning less gas, it’s too important a resource to simply burn for heat.

But we need to build the nuclear reactors first.

In the mean time, no: people can’t just freeze in the dark.

[samarthr1]

Heh, wouldnt NYC be best case scenario for a grid? It has high density, large number consumer base etc?

If only they could sort the underground cabling...

[sgc]

We do that in Northern California as well. There are only a couple of options though.

[jeffbee]

There are large solar power stations on the grid in California owned by tech firms so you may indeed already be paying, indirectly, Apple for energy.