[enslavedrobot]

I have some experience with distributed energy generation and have met with senior utility executives many times while trying to implement some grant supported projects through my work.

It turns out that a big problem is that whenever we install local generation it costs utilities a ton of money. They bundle the cost of grid maintenance into their per kWh charges. These costs, which include debt service, maintenance, upgrades etc amount to 5-7 cents/kWh. Whenever you generate your own energy you cost the utility 5-7cents/kWh that they have to pay regardless of your usage.

This business model, which has bundled grid maintenance into usage costs means that utilities put up huge roadblocks for distributed generation. They say they love it, but they actually hate it. Utility executives have looked me in the eye and said as much.

It gets worse though, because energy infrastructure is backed by trillions in utility bonds. These "low risk" debt instruments are owned by national and private pension funds of mind boggling size. In order to bring about a distributed energy future the grid (and low pressure nat gas infrastructure) must be reorganized in a manner that is likely to make those bonds worthless. These background factors are definitely in play when you see these bait and switch enthusiastic green energy programs that turn out to be a regulatory quagmire when you dig into them. Public utilities and pension funds hate green energy, they are a major factor in west's pathetic performance when it comes to solar adoption vs China.

[subhobroto]

> It turns out that a big problem is that whenever we install local generation it costs utilities a ton of money

So a question:

- Lets hypothesize that distributed, decentralized systems cost way more than centralized systems

- If you agree with that hypothesis, can we next hypothesize that building a distributed, decentralized system that can support power on one block and can allow it to continue to stay on while the "central feeder line" (please tell me the proper word for this made up word is) to all the blocks is down, because that one block has a local distributed, decentralized power source, is of value to the community?

In the past, commercial factories were the only places that could afford this kind of redundancy but it feels to me, thanks to crashing prices of solar and batteries (I could never have imagined 12kWh brand new LFP could be purchased for $2k), this level of redundancy is now very much realistic at the consumer, residential level. It just doesn't work locally today because the utility poles lack the smarts to do the isolated switching and safe islanding. For example: one unsettled question today is if a lot of customers on one such island are on solar and the grid is down, how do we safely supply power within nominal specs to the whole of the island - but this isn't a physical unknown, we know how to solve it. It just is lacking implementation.

> These costs, which include debt service, maintenance, upgrades etc amount to 5-7 cents/kWh. Whenever you generate your own energy you cost the utility 5-7cents/kWh that they have to pay regardless of your usage

Capitalism has repeatedly proven its ability to cut costs down while improving QoS. I realize you really believe in the numbers you have been provided - that it costs a utility 5-7cents/kWh that they have to pay regardless of my usage, but before SpaceX, it used to cost multiple millions of dollars and years of planning and design to launch one rocket.

[enslavedrobot]

In this case the utility executives work for public utilities. So capitalism isn't to blame. It's about the incentives of the incumbent energy providers.

It is already cheaper to build the distributed energy solution you describe but making that change would require a massive restructuring of electricity and natural gas utilities. Such a restructuring would revalue the debt that backs the existing infrastructure. This would be a great thing for the average person but not for the people currently in charge of regulating what types of systems are allowed.

Costs of distributed energy may drop so low in the next 5-10 years that it will no longer be possible to keep things from moving to a micro grid network.

[subhobroto]

> but making that change would require a massive restructuring of electricity and natural gas utilities. Such a restructuring would revalue the debt that backs the existing infrastructure. This would be a great thing for the average person but not for the people currently in charge of regulating what types of systems are allowed

fair. I appreciated the insight in your original message - datapoints from industry insiders like yourself do help people like I gain some understanding of why we have to go in alone on this and not wait

[subhobroto]

> Public utilities and pension funds hate green energy, they are a major factor in west's pathetic performance when it comes to solar adoption vs China

No this statement is absolutely wrong. Here's why:

> west's pathetic performance when it comes to solar adoption vs China

China is dominating energy because the CCP doesn't care what their citizens think. They need energy and they are doing everything they can do to get it. They will put you behind bars at best or kill your family and demolish your house if it gets in the middle of a power line trench. For China, energy isn't a "nice to have" - they realize it's essential and they won't stop until they get there.

China is the person out in the mountains being chased by a hungry bear while we in the west is the person sitting in their air conditioned room debating whether to drive or take an Uber to have a drink with buddies.

News came out last week that you can buy a Chinese hypersonic missle for $100k - you can't even build a little two car garage where I am for double that price.

> Public utilities and pension funds hate green energy

Pension funds don't care whether energy is green or orange. What they hate are the horrible returns affected by all the stealing and grifting that happens in the name of "green energy".

Public utilities (atleast in the jurisdictions that I am aware of) love any infrastructure work - they are guaranteed a 10% ROI by the government on any approved infrastructure work they do. If you could work with them to build infrastructure to cremate just newborn kids and get it approved by the CPUC, they will happily start work on it tomorrow. The reason why they hate green energy is because after they've made their 10% ROI, they are now stuck with a power source that costs them more than their non-green sources and that hurts their razor thin margins.

However, as the customer - I don't care either about what public utilities and pension funds hate or don't.

What I do care about is having affordable and reliable power and I absolutely can get that with my own solar panels and batteries. The fact that it's green is a happy sideffect for most.

The reason why every home in the U.S. isn't overflowing with solar panels and batteries is because of regulation and government shenanigans making retail costs really high. Average people in Pakistan, South Africa and Lebanon certainly power their whole homes with solar panels and batteries but their governments don't have nonsense taffifs and fees on Chinese solar equipment.

[enslavedrobot]

Totally agree that regulations and government interference are the reasons we don't have cheap solar panels.

Those regulations and that interference result from the fact that in a distributed world the current utility bond value drops to zero. Utilities will not build infrastructure that makes their existing infrastructure lose value.

I recently negotiated with a government owned utility on a large solar project. They were 100% against it until I demonstrated that the project would never feed back to the grid and wouldn't reduce the amount of power we currently buy from them. Zero interest in distributed solutions on their side. They are focused on giant transmission line projects and hydro.

[subhobroto]

> They are focused on giant transmission line projects and hydro

Is that because of the scale they need to achieve to support the investment?

> until I demonstrated that the project would never feed back to the grid

Financial greed aside, and I mentioned this previously, feedback at a large scale isn't free especially if the impedance of the grid cannot be predicted - the frequency or voltage or both would spike. Monitoring for these conditions are expensive and addressing them is even more expensive - the cheapest solution is you do a shutdown until things stabilize but this is kinda catch-22 because that itself might have its own cascading effects.

Let me ask you this - if you were to update a local neighborhood (like a block or two of 1000 homes) distribution station, that all have their own solar and battery, where the homes could independently power themselves for a day - what changes or upgrades would you make to ensure they can share load for that one day when the larger grid is suffering an outage?

Now would that cost and complexity be lower or higher if instead, nothing was changed at grid scale at all but each of the individual 1000 homes doubled their own capacity (let's say 30kWh a day if you're OK with that)?