Yep. Here in Colorado I installed two powerwalls moderately subsidized by the electricity company. It’s not going to save me meaningful amounts of money even in the long term and I would much rather see energy issues solved at a societal level. But our electricity provider is just unable to reliably keep the lights on through winter and wildfire season, I.e. most of the year. Since installing the batteries a couple years ago our home has stayed warm and lit through two multi-day outages when neighbors have had to go stay in a hotel.

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ceejayoz 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Isn't "subsidized by the electricity company" partially fulfilling "at a societal level"?

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jebarker an hour ago | parent [-]

It is, yeah. The condition of the subsidy is that up to 60 times a year the electricity company can pull the power from our batteries to cover higher demand. When I said "at a societal level" I was more imagining solar farms and grid level storage though.

	▲	ericmay an hour ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I find this seeming opposition (not from you or on this thread train) to installation of backup systems to be a bit befuddling. Battery backup systems, solar roofs/panels, &c. all effectively add excess capacity and resilience to our existing infrastructure. Aside from something like worrying about China's continued dominance in the space I don't really understand the hang up folks seem to have. Plus in some sense the utilities are regulated by the government but they are private companies. If they're getting out-competed in the market by battery backup systems or other alternatives because of poor performance and high cost, fuck em' they can go out of business. We'll (free market democracies) figure it out.
	▲	ceejayoz an hour ago \| parent \| prev [-]
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