SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
At least 1 million homes in the USA have solar systems on their rooftops and their use — together with local batteries — is increasing, enabling homeowners the ability to collect energy and store it for later usage on-site. This enables homeowners to cut their dependence on the electrical grid — and their bills. This could be economically painful for utilities. A new McKinsey study predicts two outcomes 1) electrical grid cut off completely 2) primarily local energy collection with the electrical grid as a backup.
The cost of collecting solar energy and storing it on-site makes the incentive too small even for residents of sunny Arizona to cut the electrical grid off. But partial defection from the grid with 80-90% of the demand supplied on-site makes economic sense in 2020 and total defection makes sense around 2028
The prediction by McKinsey is that the electrical grid will be repurposed as an enormous, sophisticated backup. One, where utilities only add energy at those times when the on-site systems aren't collecting enough energy.
My comment: So far good enough. But then why not simple connect to neighbors directly for electrical power transfer and cutting the utilities out of the loop even for electrical fallback needs? A electrical power mesh grid might need some interesting mathematical modeling though.
(As a side note, maybe this will soon make UPS for home use obsolete?)
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Sunday July 02 2017, @08:32PM (1 child)
Your thinking is flawed. You are thinking of Ted Kazinsky and his manifesto shack in the middle of Montana. While that is the usual image of the phrase "off grid", here we're talking about simply disconnecting from the electric power grid. That doesn't mean living in a failed state. If it did, all of those people off the water grid who thus use private wells (like me), would be living a life of anarchy. All of those people who living off the telephone line grid (like me -- I just use a cell phone) would experience life like it exists in a war torn third world country if your analogy worked. Or what about the people who have abandoned the cable TV grid as I have -- anarchists and malcontents all? How can people even socialize if they aren't on the sewer grid (have a septic tank like I do)?
Where you went wrong was in how you perceived the phrase "going off grid" -- here it doesn't mean moving to a remote island, growing and hunting all your own food, and shooting at helicopters. It just means generating your own electricity while living in your community.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 03 2017, @12:44AM
Anarchy does not imply a lack of order.