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Comment by adrianmonk | Hacker News Reader

> as the costs of local generation and storage continue to plummet, the relative inefficiency of long distance transmission will drive its use out of favor. This will mean the proliferation of rooftop solar and consumer batteries, as well as solar+batteries at utility scale

Rooftop solar and consumer batteries does require consumers to have access to capital, though.

It's easy to forget (especially if you make $$$$$ in tech) that many people just aren't in great shape financially. Even if rooftop solar pays off in the end, they may not have the cash sitting around, may not be able to qualify for a loan, or may have other more urgent needs (car loan, etc.).

Plenty of people will understand the payoff and will be able to push themselves over the hump to reach a more optimized state. But there will probably always be lots of people who can't and will buy electricity instead.

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> Plenty of people will understand the payoff and will be able to push themselves over the hump to reach a more optimized state. But there will probably always be lots of people who can't and will buy electricity instead.

A consequence of this is that as people with the capital (and accountants advising them) opt out of the grid, the burden of grid maintenance will fall increasingly on people who can't get access to the capital (or are short-term in their housing).

So poor people will end up paying far more for their electricity than affluent people.

Renewables won't buy an industrial power user out of the grid, they need reliability. Also, location is more important than what the power bill is for most industry and commercial. You need a large plot of land for the power to run your average large power user.

Renewables won’t make house owners independent of the grid either.

Have a look at Calfifornia where a lot of gas plants have to provide electricity when the sun is down.

It’s sometimes really bizarre how proponents of renewables completely ignore the low capacity factor of their proposed technology or claim that large-capacity storage is a trivial problem to solve.

There is a reason why Germany has the second-highest electricity prices worldwide and why California had rolling blackouts not so long ago.

Germany's electricity prices are almost completely irrelevant for the discussion about the cost of newly installed renewables today. In Germany consumer prices are high because the consumer subsidizes twenty year old systems while large scale industrial users get to consume the cheap, subsidized electricity.

California had rolling blackouts because of criminal fraud. The governor was recalled to kill prosecution of the fraud, and to get the state to pay the fraudulent billing. Arnold came through with the $80B.

For an average household that may be spending $125/mo for electricity, even a fully paid-for solar installation is low impact. Most people would be better off investing elsewhere first.

Granted, I'm an outlier in that I did my own install, but I'm earning around 10% on the installed cost of my 6.6kW ground mount arrays, which is high impact given that I can't get that from any non-stock-market investment or savings at present.

It's already become securitized. Some solar co will pay you up-front for 25y access to your roof, because they'll find an investor happy enough for a 5% return on a project with an >10% yield.

Exactly. And even in places like South Africa where solar should play well it's still a significant investment for middle class relative to their earning power.

Worse government sitting on a pile of old coal plants has a financial incentive to not lose their well off customers. It's the only part of their customer base that _can_ pay.

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