Are Corporate Interests Holding Back US Electrical Grid Expansion? (ieee.org) 133
Long-time Slashdot reader BishopBerkeley writes: Though it does not come as much of a surprise, a new study highlighted in IEEE Spectrum delves into how corporate profit motives are preventing the upgrading and the expansion of the U.S. electrical grid. The full report can be downloaded here from the source [the nonprofit economic research group NBER].
Besides opening up the market to competition, utilities don't want to lose control over regional infrastructure, writes IEEE Spectrum. "[I]nterregional lines threaten utility companies' dominance over the nation's power supply. In the power industry, asset ownership provides control over rules that govern energy markets and transmission service and expansion. When upstart entities build power plants and transmission lines, they may be able to dilute utility companies' control over power-industry rules and prevent utilities from dictating decisions about transmission expansion."
The article begins by noting that "The United States is not building enough transmission lines to connect regional power networks. The deficit is driving up electricity prices, reducing grid reliability, and hobbling renewable-energy deployment. " Utilities can stall transmission expansion because out-of-date laws sanction these companies' sweeping control over transmission development... One of the main values of connecting regional networks is that it enablesâ"and is in fact critical forâ"incorporating renewable energy... Plus, adding interregional transmission for renewables can significantly reduce costs for consumers. Such connections allow excess wind and solar power to flow to neighboring regions when weather conditions are favorable and allow the import of energy from elsewhere when renewables are less productive.
Even without renewables, better integrated networks generally lower costs for consumers because they reduce the amount of generation capacity needed overall and decrease energy market prices. Interregional transmission also enhances reliability,particularly during extreme weather...
Addressing the transmission shortage is on the agenda in Washington, but utility companies are lobbying against reforms.
The article points out that now investors and entrepreneurs "are developing long-distance direct-current lines, which are more efficient at moving large amounts of energy over long distances, compared with AC," and also "sidestep the utility-dominated transmission-expansion planning processes."
They're already in use in China, and are also becoming Europe's preferred choice...
Besides opening up the market to competition, utilities don't want to lose control over regional infrastructure, writes IEEE Spectrum. "[I]nterregional lines threaten utility companies' dominance over the nation's power supply. In the power industry, asset ownership provides control over rules that govern energy markets and transmission service and expansion. When upstart entities build power plants and transmission lines, they may be able to dilute utility companies' control over power-industry rules and prevent utilities from dictating decisions about transmission expansion."
The article begins by noting that "The United States is not building enough transmission lines to connect regional power networks. The deficit is driving up electricity prices, reducing grid reliability, and hobbling renewable-energy deployment. " Utilities can stall transmission expansion because out-of-date laws sanction these companies' sweeping control over transmission development... One of the main values of connecting regional networks is that it enablesâ"and is in fact critical forâ"incorporating renewable energy... Plus, adding interregional transmission for renewables can significantly reduce costs for consumers. Such connections allow excess wind and solar power to flow to neighboring regions when weather conditions are favorable and allow the import of energy from elsewhere when renewables are less productive.
Even without renewables, better integrated networks generally lower costs for consumers because they reduce the amount of generation capacity needed overall and decrease energy market prices. Interregional transmission also enhances reliability,particularly during extreme weather...
Addressing the transmission shortage is on the agenda in Washington, but utility companies are lobbying against reforms.
The article points out that now investors and entrepreneurs "are developing long-distance direct-current lines, which are more efficient at moving large amounts of energy over long distances, compared with AC," and also "sidestep the utility-dominated transmission-expansion planning processes."
They're already in use in China, and are also becoming Europe's preferred choice...
Yes. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Yes. (Score:5, Insightful)
Corporate interests hold back all human progress. Copyrights and patents are the weapon of choice, government is the hired gun. They want to restrict access to all technology that threatens their control. Fight back, and you will be exterminated.
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Corporate interests hold back all human progress.
It's kinda silly to blame the perverse incentives created by government-granted utility monopolies on "corporate interests".
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This is very much an undesirable consequence of Ameri
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Laws have to keep up with markets.
They do keep up with markets in the US, just not the way you think. The US has the best laws the people running the markets can buy.
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Electrical monoplies are granted by *state governments*, not the national one.
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And a lot of those monopolies are regulated by state utility commissions in order to curb the excesses that come with a granted monopoly.
Example: a publicly regulated utility must ask the public utility commission to raise their prices, and they have to justify it to that commission for them to approve.
Unfortunately, it seems that the "justification" for rate hikes is commonly an unspoken offer of employment as a VP or board member at the regulated entity after their time on the regulatory commission has co
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Those incentives weren't dreamt up by politicians in isolation. The utilities thought of them, lobbied for them, paid politicians who pushed for them, etc, and politicians were more than happy to go along with it. It's an unholy alliance, and the interests of utilities were and are pushed mainly by right-wing politicians, despite their professed lurv of the shite spouted by the Cato-ists. The damnable weakness of what passes for left-leaning politicians in the US is they're too fucking timid to dismantle an
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This the problem. The public wants to have it both ways. They want the public utilities commission to be able to tell the producers and grid operators alike what they can charge. So we set up a complex and binding regulatory framework. Naturally it is not all stick there is some carrot for the operators so the system isn't purely confiscatory.
Then a few decades later some latte-sipping clown figures out that he is "paying to much" to charge his EV because gee-wiz *Energy-Corp did not decide to build out a
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So you think the answer is to allow polluters to pollute, tie up any claims against them for decades in court with all the money they got from taking shortcuts and polluting, and then once the polluter that has been polluting profitably for years is found liable for all the pollution, whoops now they're bankrupt and now the tax paying public gets to foot the bill to clean it up under the Superfund act while the polluters run away with all the money they made polluting, previous to the final court dispositio
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Funny, seems to me in the 1920s before there was antitrust law, all we had was monopolies charging whatever the fuck they wanted, colluding to make sure there wasn't any meaningful competition, and if there was they would make sure it went away under any means necessary.
Government, and antitrust regulations, were the SOLUTION that lasted until the government stopped bothering with antitrust action. Now we have a problem again after 30 years of corporate consolidation.
Seems you don't know a god damn thing o
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Fight back, and you will be exterminated.
Don't fight back and be exterminated. Ask the Jews in WW2 or ask the Jews today in Gaza.
Israel is EXACTLY why we fear fully arming Ukraine. The oppressed turn into the oppressors.
Re: Yes. (Score:2)
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However, the electricity industry in the US is generally a highly regulated monopoly.
In 19 states, power generation isn't a monopoly.
Re:Yes. (Score:5, Interesting)
I find it interesting that people are working on long distance DC systems, since it was direct currents weakness in that area that caused it to be replaced by AC even though Edison backed it.
Back in Edison's time, Tesla's AC distribution system initially won the "current wars" for one reason: DC voltage couldn't be transformed efficiently. That meant there was a choice between minimizing I^2R transmission losses by delivering unmanageably high and dangerous voltages to end users, or accepting huge transmission losses. (DC was doomed to fail anyway, irrespective of transmission losses. Firstly, things like domestic radios, really needed multiple voltages. Secondly, DC motor speed varies with applied voltage, so accurate electric clocks would have been very complicated to say the least. The speed of AC synchronous motors is dependent only on the frequency).
But these days, converting from AC to DC and back can be done much more efficiently than even a few decades ago. It's still complicated and a pain in the ass, but for long distances DC is more efficient. AC introduces skin effect, along with higher peak voltages and currents for a given amount of power delivered. These factors necessitate larger conductors than would be expected by a simplistic Ohm's Law calculation. Also, even at 60Hz, both radiative and reactive losses become significant for high voltages and long lines. So for really long distance transmission, the efficiency gain and smaller wires associated with DC are worth the cost and hassle.
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But these days, converting from AC to DC and back can be done much more efficiently than even a few decades ago. It's still complicated and a pain in the ass, but for long distances DC is more efficient. AC introduces skin effect, along with higher peak voltages and currents for a given amount of power delivered.
Plus, you don't have to deal with propagating skewed power-factors taking up capacity in the grid.
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Plus, you don't have to deal with propagating skewed power-factors taking up capacity in the grid.
Great point! And it prompted another possibility: I'm guessing that the DC-to-AC converter at the end of the line makes overall phase-syncing easier.
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Also, if using a DC grid intertie, you don't have to sync the two grids to each other.
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>since it was direct currents weakness in that area that caused it to
>be replaced by AC even though Edison backed it.
the last I read (years ago) was that at the long distance transmission voltages used back then, AC had less loss, but when you get to even higher voltages, which we would use in a new system, DC has less loss.
The modern efficiency in converting DC is, afaik, just icing on the cake.
the question remains, though, whether the efficiency gain would be enough to pay back the conversion costs.
Market failure (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: Market failure (Score:5, Interesting)
The free market isn't always good at infrastructure. It is possible that the maximum profit for a residental utility is to serve only 80% of households. (Hypothetically, I don't know the actual number. But probably not 100%)
A business can be a roaring success while simultaneously contributing to an economic slow down and capping potential GDP due to poor infrastructure.
And when there are gaps in infrastructure it is the problem with the least money and least political power that take the brunt of it.
Re: Market failure (Score:2)
S/problem/people/
I swear not a Freudian slip.
Re: Market failure (Score:4, Interesting)
The free market isn't always good at infrastructure.
Stated a different way, the free market isn't good at infrastructure or actually indeed most things. A perfectly free market regulates prices and supply. Perfectly free market are rare, but even the ones that exist only inherently focus on prices and supply and nothing else, and they only do so with a greedy strategy that may not necessarily be optimal in the long run.
Free markets don't care about societal good, unless that societal good happens to align with prices and supply.
In this case of electricity transmission, the market is not a free market, as government mandated and protected monopolies are widespread. So, this market doesn't even try to optimize prices and supply. Rather, the current market focuses only on optimizing profit.
Re: Market failure (Score:5, Insightful)
The free market isn't always good at infrastructure.
Stated a different way, the free market isn't good at infrastructure or actually indeed most things.
I will argue the opposite. The free market, in fact, is actually good at many things. The difficulty is that too many people who see that the free market is good at many things go on to assert that therefore the free market is good at all things. This is unfortunately not true.
(and also, as you point out later, in the real world there are really very few markets that are totally free and unregulated).
Free markets don't care about societal good, unless that societal good happens to align with prices and supply.
That is a key point, and your "unless" clause is also important.
It is argued that providing goods and services to people who need them at competitive low cost is a societal good, and that a frictionless free market gives these people the ability to choose the goods and services they want from a panoply of providers, allowing them to make their own decision of price versus quality.
But it is also worth noting that "buy stuff cheap" is not the only societal good.
In this case of electricity transmission, the market is not a free market, as government mandated and protected monopolies are widespread. So, this market doesn't even try to optimize prices and supply. Rather, the current market focuses only on optimizing profit.
More complicated than that. Some businesses are natural monopolies, and for these the monopoly nature isn't "government mandated," it is government regulated to avoid the bad effects of monopoly (which are many, and well known.)
This does, as mentioned in other threads, give the possibility of regulatory capture, where the regulated industry uses the regulation to keep competitors out. But in an industry that tends toward natural monopoly, this can be the lesser evil.
Phrased another way: it's complicated.
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But in this case it is more than likely a government created and protected monopoly.
No, electrical distribution is an example of a natural monopoly. Government regulated or not, it devolves toward monopoly, https://study.com/academy/less... [study.com]
https://cs.stanford.edu/people... [stanford.edu]
(by the way, "natural" should not be considered a synonym for "good".)
No way anyone can call it a free market.
Monopolies, natural or otherwise, are flaws in free markets.
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US electrical transmission before 1917. Once AC power won the war of currents, if you connect different generators together without regulation that it's likely to take down the grid.
Are there actually government-created monopolies on cable? I've never had cable, but I thought that there were many companies. The way they advertise like mad seemed to make it sound like there's competition.
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Market failure rather than corporate greed.
A "false" market affecting economic decisions on when and where to build transmission. Back in the "good old days", utilities would do analyses to determine how best to get power from the power plants to the customer. It worked pretty well and, aside from some maintenance related failures, got power where it needed to go. Generally from the source closest to the customer (lower losses, better ROI).
But now we have "green" energy. Which needs to get from a solar array in Nevada to your Aunt Maybelle in Long
Enron all over again. (Score:4, Insightful)
Corporate greed always supersedes customer needs.
Just take a look at all US mobile networks.
The greatest country in the world also has the highest mobile subscription fees in the world.
Re:Enron all over again. (Score:5, Insightful)
Corporate greed always supersedes customer needs.
Just take a look at all US mobile networks.
The greatest country in the world also has the highest mobile subscription fees in the world.
Add healthcare to that list.
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The US isn't subsidising anyone's healthcare. They handing out paychecks to pharma companies is their own problem. Foreign pharma companies (yes they do exist too, you bought COVID vaccines from them remember?) charge a lot in the USA because they can, not because the USA is subsidising anyone.
Hint for you: If companies thought a price cap on products made the product non-viable for sale, they wouldn't sell it. Just because the rest of the world doesn't let predators prey on the weak doesn't mean the USA is
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> The greatest country in the world also has the highest mobile subscription fees in the world.
Thanks for the compliment, but Canada just isn't that great. And our mobile subscriptions are part of that. I'd kill to have plans as cheap as the US has.
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The Canadian government likes to tax everything out of existence, the sale tax you see of your bill is only a small part of what you effectively pay on taxes.
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The Canadian government likes to give tax payer's money to telecom's to build out the network, only reason I have cell service is the government paid for it. As there are basically only 3 telecom's in most of the country, there is no competition, when one raises its price, the others look and go, good idea.
I pay C$25 for one of the cheapest plans going, pay as you go, gives me 500MB's of data at 3G speed. I pay C$1.25 tax on that
Re:Enron all over again. (Score:5, Informative)
Bullshit. Finland is as sparsely populated as it gets and most of the country gets unlimited 5G at 300 Mbps for reasonable rates. Worst case, they get only 4G only along main roads in the deep of Lapland where nobody lives.
The Finns can achieve this and they're nowhere near as rich a country as the US.
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Have you heard of economies of scale?? when things get big they get expensive
Is this supposed to be a joke? Because that's exactly the opposite of what "economy of scale" means.
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Is this supposed to be a joke? Because that's exactly the opposite of what "economy of scale" means.
They absolutely used the wrong terminology, but I think what the OP was implying was like how if you go to Costco and buy a big ass pack of TP. While you're ultimately paying less per roll versus the smaller grocery store sized packages, you still have to lay out $30 for a pack of toilet paper.
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Is this supposed to be a joke? Because that's exactly the opposite of what "economy of scale" means.
They absolutely used the wrong terminology, but I think what the OP was implying was like how if you go to Costco and buy a big ass pack of TP. While you're ultimately paying less per roll versus the smaller grocery store sized packages, you still have to lay out $30 for a pack of toilet paper.
But that doesn't apply. To compare it to mobile phone markets. In the US, only certain companies sell TP, they only sell it in packs of 1, 5, and unlimited. You pay a higher amount for each but you're limited to that number of rolls per month and unlimited really means no more than 8 rolls. Other companies are kept from selling TP, which would lower the price.
In the UK, even though there are only 3 providers of TP, you can buy TP from a dozen different stores (BGVMs or Bog Roll Virtual Networks) that pro
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Have you heard of economies of scale?? when things get big they get expensive
Is this supposed to be a joke? Because that's exactly the opposite of what "economy of scale" means.
Pretty much. As you buy more, the unit cost goes down. You can argue that because you're buying more units your capital expenditure and operational expenditure increase, but also so does your income to offset that. Most of Finland is essentially Montana with more mountains, more snow, more land and even fewer people (or cows) but most of the land mass has at least 3G, a little less for 4G and most population centres have 5G. coverage map [www.dna.fi]
The fact is, very little of the what Americans pay for mobile phone
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Finland has 1.5% of the population of the USA of course its going to be cheaper. Have you heard of economies of scale?? when things get big they get expensive
I don't think it means what you think it does.
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Finland has 1.5% of the population of the USA of course its going to be cheaper. Have you heard of economies of scale?? when things get big they get expensive
Firstly, that's the exact opposite of "economies of scale" which would suggest the more of something you need the *cheaper* they get (and mobile phone infrastructure equipment is no exception). And secondly, yeah it'll be more expensive to roll out mobile infrastructure in the USA. Just as well there are 66x the number of people to pay for it. (Because that's how populations work).
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You exaggerate. It's 54,930 US$ in Finland, 76,770 US$ in the US, but for example rent is 50% *less* in Finland.
Cost of living:
https://livingcost.org/cost/fi... [livingcost.org]
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No, that was the median. Average US wages are higher, just over 105K.
From Google search:
"Key findings. National average income: The national average U.S. household income in 2022 was $105,555. The median U.S. household income in 2022 was $74,580, which is down 2.2% from 2021 when the median inflation-adjusted household income was $76,330.Sep 18, 2023"
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Bullshit. Finland is as sparsely populated as it gets and most of the country gets unlimited 5G at 300 Mbps for reasonable rates.
"Most of the country" if you count by population. Less so if you count by land area. 5G is pretty much the south and west, where the population density is high.
Worst case, they get only 4G only along main roads in the deep of Lapland where nobody lives.
Exactly as the OP said, crappy service in the low population density areas.
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I guess the interesting question is "does the US have a large % of its population living in sufficiently low density areas that providing good coverage would be difficult even for a country like Finland that's supposed to be more committed to coverage than the US?"
IDK the answer, it would need some data and analysis to work out
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The short answer is yes. Across most of the US people are very spaced out and you have shitloads of little towns in total bumfuck locations. This happened organically as settlements were placed near resources for the benefit of companies which needed workers. Some of those towns dried up (literally) and blew away (figuratively) while most were rescued by the arrival of a paved road which made it possible to bring in supplies cheaply. Now we have people living in all kinds of places which no longer make any
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I know the narrative answer is likely to be yes -- but I am curious if there is data and analysis to support
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The Finns can achieve this and they're nowhere near as rich a country as the US.
Of course they did. They didn't have to pay for the obscene amounts of servers and storage to process and analyze every bit of data flowing across those networks. It is amazing at how cheap providing basic telecom service is when you don't have to pay for the 'intelligence' monitoring.
Don't worry though, if Finland thought it could control the world, you too would be paying obscene prices for network access.
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You exaggerate. It's 54,930 US$ in Finland, 76,770 US$ in the US, but for example rent is 50% *less* in Finland.
Finland has lower cost of living, 1% less inflation rate, and a much lower Corruption Index (13 versus 31).
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On that we totally agree. The farther away from that dumpster fire the better.
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And yet I still cannot get signal inside my house or anywhere on my property outside, inside the city limits of a top-25 population area in the United States from ANY provider, for any price.
I know that anecdotes aren't necessarily statistically significant data, but I also don't think you're correct in your assertion.
Good luck (Score:3)
If these upstarts think they can just put in new transmission lines and compete, good luck to them. Have they noticed how difficult it is for the established utilities to add transmission, even with all of their ascribed evil powers?
Re:Good luck (Score:4)
Single line infrastructure can't be private owned - that's literally a monopoly even if heavily regulated. It's billed as 'cheaper' to outsource, but we're here now and they aren't expanding it because they can't make *enough* profits. Public infrastructure doesn't need to make a profit - it needs to serve the public at reasonable cost. Also see why every municipal cable system is wildly more popular than private corps.
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All the NIMBYs. And those precious trees that must be trimmed from time to time (if you can peel the hippies off of them). Or you end up with something like the Camp Fire [wikipedia.org].
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Are you familiar with reconductoring [pv-magazine.com]? While the cost of the conductors themselves [wikipedia.org] are more expensive, that cost is more than saved by being able to do the work as maintenance and not new lines. All the permitting, right-of-way issues, and associated work goes away.
The DoE has a loan guarantee program [energy.gov] to help encourage this. A more technical analysis can be found here [sciencedirect.com]. And this is more than just theoretical and has actively been rolled out [ctcglobal.com] worldwide.
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Simply changing the cables to something more efficient can more then double (I read somewhere quadruple) a transmission lines capacity and only needs to be covered by maintenance regulations rather then all the complexities of building new infrastructure. The return on investment happens fairly fast as well.
An article, https://www.volts.wtf/p/one-ea... [volts.wtf]. A study, https://acore.org/wp-content/u... [acore.org]
Residential Solar + Batteries (Score:5, Informative)
If you have the option, install residential solar with batteries and focus on self-consumption. WAY too many people are bitching about rates paid to them for selling back extra solar to the power company. Stop using the grid as storage and backup. Basing your entire calculation on "when's my ROI" leaves out the value of being able to tell the power company to fuck right off and not worry about their shenanigans.
If you're in the market for a new car in the next couple of years, focus on EVs that support bi-directional charging (V2H). This way you can get a smaller home battery and use your vehicle for the rest.
Looking at new appliances? Inductions stoves, hybrid heat-pump water heaters, mini-split heat pumps instead of A/C and heaters, condensing dryers -- lots of stuff runs off of electricity and uses WAY less power than the old stuff. Some of it may cost more up front, but ROI on these can be just a couple of years depending on how much you use them.
Add to that the ability to break the oil/gasoline addiction, not worry about major utilities screwing you over, grid stability, or any of that shit adds a whole lot of value that needs to be considered. Take a hard look at the government incentives and tax credits available and stop leaving yourself at the mercy of multi-national corporations who don't give two shits about you.
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maybe solar plus batteries works to mitigate against power outages in California but here in Midwest USA the power tends to go out in the dark. It's not night every time the power is out but with the cause of an outage being weather (as opposed to earthquakes I guess) there will be snow, clouds, or something that would tend to block sunlight from solar PV panels.
Battery storage might make some sense out here. That's power we could store up off the grid then use to keep lights, refrigerators, and such runn
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There's a nice IRA incentive [regency-fire.com] for upgrading a "biomass heating device", which is gov't speak for a high-efficiency wood stove, including inserts. I installed a Regency i2500 in an older fireplace and am quite happy with my emergency backup heat and ambiance.
You're right in that it makes little sense to replace an existing, functioning gas/oil furnace. I swapped mine for heat pumps when the oil tank rusted thru and everything was needing replaced anyway. The electricity is cheaper than the fuel oil and doesn'
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You're right in that it makes little sense to replace an existing, functioning gas/oil furnace. I swapped mine for heat pumps when the oil tank rusted thru and everything was needing replaced anyway. The electricity is cheaper than the fuel oil and doesn't stink.
If that's your reply then it appears you missed the point.
When it comes to keeping from freezing to death there's nothing like burning something. At least where I live. Running heat off a battery, or even a generator, isn't practical in the kind of weather we get here. Even outside of winter we can see a string of cool days that if there's no heat a power outage can be a threat to life and health. Were you ever shown a video in grade school, boy scouts, driver education, or something on how even moderat
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I currently live in West Virginia and have lived in Illinois and northern Idaho, and my wife is from northern Indiana. We've spent plenty of time, including winter, in Montana and South Dakota. I'm intimately familiar with the winters and the cold and how there's nothing in winter between you and the North Pole but pine trees.
If extended cold is your concern, your money is better spent -- and health preserved -- by properly insulating your house. It will by far give you the most bang for your buck in reduci
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Basing your entire calculation on "when's my ROI" leaves out the value of being able to tell the power company to fuck right off and not worry about their shenanigans.
ROI is important, because otherwise you're adding additional complexity and potentially costly maintenance needs to your home for no monetary benefit.
If you're in the market for a new car in the next couple of years, focus on EVs that support bi-directional charging (V2H). This way you can get a smaller home battery and use your vehicle for the rest.
I wouldn't want to put the extra cycles on my EV's battery just to disconnect from the grid. Additionally, it would potentially negate one of the main benefits of having an EV - I can hop in my car at any time and know the battery is full (well, realistically set to around 85%). A PV system with net metering so you can use the grid as your "battery" is a muc
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To clarify, I would recommend a smaller, stationary battery with the car being an emergency, long-outage backup. I certainly wouldn't want to have the power go out in the house if I needed to use the car during a grid outage!
And the extra cycles aren't really an issue if you're just fluctuating between like 60-80%, especially at lower L2 charge levels. You don't generate the heat and stress that way. Yes, I love the whole "topped off every morning".
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This is a rational response to the situation created by regulatory capture, but an even more rational response would be to repair the situation. Batteries are expensive and have to be replaced periodically, meaning more expense, so it's also rational to try to avoid having them.
Tesla? (Score:2)
I'm waiting for all the Nikola Tesla comments. Is the headline enough to disguise the real story here?
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The part about death rays, electric waves or the obsession with pyramids?
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The erotic appeal of pigeons?
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TMI! TMI!
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"You may live to see man-made horrors beyond your comprehension."
Can you say "regulatory capture"? (Score:5, Insightful)
I knew you could.
This is entirely unsurprising. Regulated industries love to use regulations to prevent competition. It's a strategy as old as time: get the government to grant you a monopoly and you've got a steady, predictable revenue and profit stream. Sure, you might have trouble raising rates as much as you'd like but you don't have any pesky upstarts trying to take your business.
This is a classic example of how we think government regulation is in the consumer's best interest but open market competition might regulate the players much more effectively.
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Has the government ever denied a utility a rate increase? I know some have limits to how much the increase is allowed but a flat out "no" would be an anomaly.
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Has the government ever denied a utility a rate increase? I know some have limits to how much the increase is allowed but a flat out "no" would be an anomaly.
Honestly, I have no idea. I'm quite confident approved rate increases have been less than what the utilities have asked for.
If anyone has any real data, please post references.
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I'm sure it has happened, but inflation alone would make it rare to have a zero approved rate hike.
I'm just sure though that you get incidents where they want, say, a 3 cent rate hike, so ask for six, and the committee cuts it in half and gives them their 3.
That way the committee can Crow about how useful they are, saving you from the unfair 6 cent increase, while the power company gets the 3 it really wanted.
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Uh,isn't PG&E the one with the constant blackouts and such because their systems are so old and creaky, with fires starting because 100 year old components weren't replaced and wore completely through?
Also, ", say," means it's just an example. Also, who says it has to apply to the lowest tier?
If you're going to critique without it looking like you're the one ranting, you might want to check for applicability. A single electric company doesn't mean that it can't happen somewhere in the nation.
Re: (Score:2)
No, corporations then openly practice vendor lock-in.
Because everything is connected today, it's less of an issue but that's because downstream technology is pushing service providers towards a standard, eg. Phone manufacturers pushing 5th gen. wi-fi, or EV manufacturers pushing the Tesla charging plug. Notice the separation of services: The company that builds phones does not own wi-fi networks. This is why government should own the HV towers or the fibre-optic trunk-cables or the highways. In the US
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No, corporations then openly practice vendor lock-in.
Then you don't have much of a free market, do you? That's the thing: IMHO one of the legitimate roles of governments is ensuring markets are open to newcomers. The cool thing is, there don't actually have to be any newcomers, the threat of them arising is enough to regulate corporate behavior. As soon as they attempt to raise prices because they have customers locked in, that's when competitors sprout like mushrooms.
Because everything is connected today, it's less of an issue but that's because downstream technology is pushing service providers towards a standard, eg. Phone manufacturers pushing 5th gen. wi-fi, or EV manufacturers pushing the Tesla charging plug. Notice the separation of services: The company that builds phones does not own wi-fi networks.
That's a pretty happy development of the 21st century. I think we're finding fewer and fewer
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This is a classic example of how we think government regulation is in the consumer's best interest but open market competition might regulate the players much more effectively.
I dunno man. This isn't like a network where you could route around providers who are not offering an honest deal. Letting Jimbob run a power plant of his own choosing seems like it would be more regulatory trouble than it would be worth considering the myriad of ways it could all go wrong.
We need public utilities (Score:2)
Yeah, I know they have problems, but they suck less than investor owned utilities
Always (Score:2)
Any question that is essentially "are corporations screwing over something", the answer is always yer.
Someone always asks about AC vs DC (Score:3)
The reason you may see AC described as better is that low current is more efficient, which means high voltage, and AC lets you step voltages up and down with only Victorian technology.
If you have the tech to step DC up and down, it's got a key advantage on the high voltage leg. If peak voltage is average voltage, as it is for DC, you have less problem with corona discharge.
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You have massively simplified power transmission. There are trade-offs everywhere for the use of both AC and DC. Efficiency for DC is king in HV transmission. But you trade off reliability (rectifiers are far less reliable than transformers) and safety (it's much easier to interrupt a high AC current than a high DC current (providing you don't have a huge reactive load). In terms of power engineering corona discharge is a far easier problem to deal with.
That said with today's tech DC transmission is going t
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Just for fun . . . how much current would have to be suddenly interrupted for a line, say, 100 feet from the freeway, to throw a magnetic field that would give the passing cars a noticeable tug?
Electric companies are jokes that we depend on (Score:2)
You all have it wrong (Score:2)
It's not that (Score:2)
Well (Score:2)
If we started building new infrastructure, someone might find a job and start a family. And we can't have that now, can we?
One grid to rule them all (Score:3)
Recalling the last major blackout... the fault induced by a tree in a poorly maintained power line right of way propagated from Ohio (I recall) across the Northeast, taking out the lights in Ontario and elsewhere. Only the DC-DC firewall between Ontario and the Peoples Republic of Quebec blocked it from propagating further. One massive interconnected grid is great for shuffling electrons from one place to another. But when things go wrong ensures that great swaths of the country get to suffer in sympathy. The old isolated local grids were great for restricting the damage. But not anymore. And the isolation needed to contain any damage is not cheap. So if we are in a big rush to electrify the country there will be a few corners cut. Save the planet... after all. Until some hostile hacker takes the grid down.. or the Sun barfs out another Carrington event. Sigh...
Of course they are (Score:2)
Yes we need more interconnected infrastructure. (Score:3)
does the pope shit in the woods? (Score:2)
damn corporations (Score:2)
Those damn corporations. They expect to make a profit. Who the hell do they think they are?
Re: (Score:2)
Ah, yes. Oh, our city is being besieged, and you want the food in my warehouse? No problem, you'll just pay 100 times what you would when there's no war. Can't afford that? Sorry you can starve to death.
From: https://www.cbsnews.com/minnes... [cbsnews.com]
Insulin was discovered a century ago, and the discoverers sold the patent for $1 (that's one dollar, US), so that it would be cheap. Lilly was sued - one person "aged off his insurance, and was looking at a $1300/month insulin bill".