> Any energy source can provide power.

Not all prime movers are the same with regard to grid dynamics and their impact.

Solar, wind, etc., almost universally rely on some form of inverter. This implies the need for solid state synthetic inertia to provide frequency response service to the grid.

Nuclear, coal, gas, hydropower, geothermal, etc., rely on synchronous machines to talk to the grid. The frequency response capability is built in and physically ideal.

Both can work, but one is more complicated. There are also factors like fault current handling that HN might think is trivial or to be glossed over, but without the ability to eat 10x+ rated load for a brief duration, faults on the grid cannot be addressed and the entire system would collapse into pointlessness. A tree crashing into a power line should result in the power line and tree being fully vaporized if nothing upstream were present to stop the flow of current. A gigantic mass of spinning metal in a turbine hall can eat this up like it's nothing. Semiconductors on a PCB in someone's shed are a different story.

Also, power companies did not necessarily kill energy export incentives. Here in Massachusetts my meter “runs backward” when I export to the grid. This does not earn me money but it does earn me kWh credits, which means that if I am net negative for energy import in the summer and net positive for import in the winter, I can be net zero (or close to it) for the year.

In MA and a few other states, polluters are also required to buy “renewable energy credits.” Since I have a solar array I can sell my RECs whether I export energy or not. It’s my first year with a solar array, so I’m not sure how much to expect, but neighbors tell me that they earn between $500-$1000 a year.

Well there are real challenges here. Generators which rely on massive spinning things naturally provide the grid with inertia; they resist changes to grid frequency. Power sources which rely on inverters or otherwise dynamically adapt to grid frequency don't naturally provide the same inertia.

This is a solvable problem, but it requires a solution nonetheless.

It's hard for people to really understand this because utilities and grid operators are using this is a headline justification for electric capital projects. In New York, they've deferred capital projects for decades and we're absorbing a massive distribution charge increase. I think my electric delivery portion of the bill is up 40%.

> their centralised options become redundant

This is not the problem. The problem is that everyone moves to solar for most of the year not using or paying for the infrastructure, then in cold winter nights everyone expects the grid to be able to supply as normal.

> I'd expect most tech people will value the distributed nature of solar over equivilents, that by design require centralisation and commerical/state ownership and control.

I do, but I do not find value in rich folks who can afford solar wanting their cake and eating it too.

If you get a solar setup, get batteries. Then disconnect from the grid entirely. You should not be able to use the grid as a free backup energy source for the last 5% of the time you'll need it. Those last digits of reliability are the expensive hard problem to solve. That, or be charged appropriately for adding your potential usage to the capacity market. I understand that this is not legal in many places, and that folks disconnecting from the grid also cause the grid to collapse at some point as well. But at least there would be less of an individual perverse incentive involved.

Home solar folks seem to love their free battery though. Or even worse - getting paid to dump power to the grid when it's value is the smallest. Net metering is not the way to go - home solar should be being paid something around instantaneous wholesale pricing at best, plus fees to manage the more complex management of the grid they cause via being thousands of kilowatt-scale install vs. a single 50MW solar farm.

So far in the US at least, many solar programs have simply been a handout to relatively rich folks subsidized by poorer grid consumers. It's really put a sour taste on something that should be for the greater good. I don't mind that those subsidies were used to jump-start the industry, but that time has long since passed.

tldr; if your total system cost to be fully off-grid and never have to worry about a power outage is not substantially more expensive than being grid-connected, you are likely being highly subsidized by other electricity consumers.

Cost. Useful life. I thought about an off grid system. Batteries are expensive. Also, unless you live in a dry place in the equator, You'll need to account for things like winter, long rainy spells, so either you add more batteries to account for multiple days (weeks? months?) of low generation, or you'll need a diesel/gas generator, or have a hybrid system instead, which basically means you're using the utilities gas generator instead.

Then, subsides are drying up. Systems have a useful life, your panels can be damaged by storms, for maximizing battery life you need to ensure you don't discharge it below 20%, and neither charge it over 100%.

So, in the end, the grid needs to be there anyway, but as most grid costs are fixed, whenever you use it now, it is going to be more expensive.

Weirdly in the UK it seems to be best to charge battery overnight from the grid and sell back during the day alongside any solar generated.

Australia is lucky, we get hot summers and mild winters, which means our electricity demand is highest precisely when we get the most solar.

That's why something like 30% of Australian houses have solar.

That said, grid prices spiked recently. Both a combination of subsidies expiring, and fewer people buying grid power (because of solar) causing fixed costs to be shouldered by fewer people.

It should be pointed out that while electricity prices went up on paper, a lot of people aren't paying those higher prices because they are on solar!

When you say 'Australian grid prices are coming down a lot' I don't think you're talking consumer prices.

I don't have the exact 'before' numbers on me, but our peak electricity costs went up from around 42c/kWh to 56c/kWh around 18 months ago.

At the same time that feed-in was halved from 4c/kWh to 2c. Having said that, I'm pretty sure 'Shoulder' and 'Off-Peak' went down slightly.

(I'll update this when I can access my spreadsheet with the actual numbers and dates)

I should also say that I'm fairly insulated from this price rise having recently gotten a battery installed, plus moving to a special EV plan, so I charge the car and the house battery at the very cheap off peak rate (special for EV owners) and run the house entirely off battery, topped up with solar.

It's a privileged setup, but one that I planned and worked towards for a fair while, having seen ever increasing electricity prices always on the horizon (even before AI started eating all the resources).

My goal is to do wholly owned solar and batteries at home, only using the grid as backup, if I move out of the city. But I think the big problem with this new demand is that it’s for data centers. I can’t see that working for them.

Mine bitcoin, run LLM inference, smelt aluminum, make synthetic fossil fuels from atmospheric CO2.

That is definitely not the bigger issue. If we had faster grid tie completions the problem would be even worse. If you don't believe me look at the very nearly daily negative power pricing inany areas of California.

We simply don't have the transmission and storage for significantly more grid tied solar. It's pointless to build more for purposes of grid supply, we need to build transmission and storage first.

This is already a reality with smart chargers in the UK. Your electric car can be charged when the electricity rates are lower (night usually)

We have a solar electric plan - the price per kWh is much higher during the duck curve in return for cheap rates during sunshine hours. The rates are something like 1x during night, 0.5x during sunshine, 4x during the morning and afternoon peaks.

We have our heat pump water heater running during the cheap hours, and also change our use of air conditioning/heating to accommodate.

It would probably not work in our favor if we didn't work from home and were out of the home all day.

> idk like turning the heat way up during the day

That is something you can reasonably do, but it's only useful in winter.

> or using high power appliances more during the day

Well, given that people have to work during the day, I doubt that that will work out on a large enough scale. And even if you'd pre-program a laundry machine to run at noon, the laundry would sit and get smelly during summer until you'd get home.

The only change in patterns we will see is more base load during the night from EVs trickle-charging as more and more enter the market.

Wind and solar are not in ur control. I can turn on a generator and get power. Some plants might need weeks to start up - but this is in my control. I have no idea how windy it will be in five days.

It's easier to coordinate N electricity suppliers when N is small.