My moms an electrical engineer. There is a dispute going around her office, and you guys have addressed it on one of your science videos already. I was hoping to get a little more in depth, and specific to solar. A lot of other engineers at her company are against the spread of solar power because its hurting the large power companies who have to maintain infrastructure. Who is actually paying for the infrastructure? It almost turns into a political argument where the power companies need their profits to provide jobs, infrastructure,/ or we need renewable energy to save the environment and help the middle class keep power costs down by producing their own power (via solar power). There also including wind turbines in the argument, but I think that less relevant than solar, especially moving into the future with better solar cells. I know with ISPs, the tax dollars pay for most of the infrastructure, I'm not exactly sure how it works with power. It seems like a very similar problem where large companies have it locked down so that more providers cant overcome the barriers of entry to compete. I've sent some of your previous videos to most of her office, and their starting to spread to many engineering/ architecture companies in Las Vegas, but they are so long and go over so many topics many people just don't want to go through them. Thank you and if you would like any of the engineers to contact you to answer questions or bring up their arguments I can arrange that.
In the US you can have either a corporate power company or a public utility district, and in both cases the cost for infrastructure usually comes from the customers but they can also get money from state and local legislatures to fund bigger projects. What irks me about this sort of thing is that it seems its the corporately held utilities that are fighting the most but companies like my local Pg&e let gas pipes get so bad they leaked and exploded killing people in San Bruno CA and then wanted customers and the state to pay for fixing their dangerously old infrastructure while they have been making huge profits.
I know I haven't really answered any of your questions but the simple fact is none of these companies are going to go bankrupt because a few people put some panels on their roof and even in San Jose Ca (where I live) the supposed "capital of silicon valley" I just don't see that much solar anywhere.
In Las Vegas solar is pretty popular and is growing very fast. New homebuilders are starting to make it a standard feature on new homes, and its catching on so fast more builders will probably do the same. Like Wendell said, the power companies will raise prices which will only make more people turn to solar. I wonder what will happen when they push so many people to solar that they don't make a profit anymore. Will everyone have to pay a big fine for using solar? Will the government take over the failing power companies and maintain the infrastructure? My moms company is lead certified and does lead certifications for a lot of buildings in Vegas including casinos. They've always been all for going green, so I'm surprised by the owners and many of the engineers taking the side of the power companies on this issue. The next 10 years or so are going to get interesting for power and ISPs.
I don't live in the US so I imagine there are some differences in the way the whole thing is managed but if what you're saying is true and the majority of the cost of grid maintenance comes from the customer, then what is the big deal with spreading solar power. The companies get less money, but why should a customer pay to maintain a grid that they aren't even using? You don't pay road tax if you don't own a car so I don't see why people should help pay for something they don't use. Instead the money they save from generating their own electricity could be better spent on other things and in an indirect way, surely that would be more beneficial for everybody? That's just my take on the whole thing.
I believe Oklahoma or some state has put a tax on using solar.
Yeah I like this. The US government should do what they do in the UK and split the energy companies up to increase competition. If you look at facebook and their push for mobile revenue, it's similar in a way to the power companies being forced to do something as their customers move towards renewables. As far as I'm concerned that's the power companies problem just as it was facebook's. The customers should be the protected ones in my opinion and yeah with power companies and ISPs, at least in the US, that doesn't seem to be the case unfortunately.
this debate about needing to save or even expand the power-grid is annoying me beyond reason:
WHY ? do you want to transmit power across a continent, it's massively expensive, outrageously inefficient & a major vulnerability against terrorism or natural disasters.
If you deploy solar (or other fluctuating power-sources) you use:
- a tiny local grid for minimal load-balancing
- energy-buffers (molten salt, electric car batteries,...)
- smart consumption devices that try to schedule power use when ever allot of power is available.
- increase energy efficiency
- concentrate power intensive industry in areas that produce allot of power.
The idea that we could actually load-balance solar-power over an entire continent is ridicules. I reckon that one would need a 20x over-capacity super-grid. That's going to be much more expensive & inefficient than energy-buffers.
Besides Solar and other renewables are just a gap-filler until fusion comes along. By then we'll probably have better conductors anyway, and have to rethink everything regardless of what we do now.
On the political side of things: We have learned that huge companies in the possession of critical infrastructure will use it to blackmail society. We don't want that, so it'll be better to decentralize everything as much as possible. Why bother to regulate against abuse, when you can take away the opportunity for abuse.
Surely though that isn't how it's done in the States? I know for the most part electricity is generated as close as it can be to the end user. Having the energy companies (coal/nuclear mostly in the US, I imagine?) generate power close to major cities and precincts isn't that expensive in terms of energy loss. By the time they step it up to 200,000V+, the current is tiny anyway and the heat loss is negligible. So yeah I agree in the long term, rebuilding the grid to make it much more local, adding smart devices and reducing inefficiencies where possible is a great idea because it just makes plain sense. While I agree with that, it'd probably just be far too expensive anyway and any cost savings take an age to regain.
I think the best option is for individual people to fund their own switch to solar (with grants where available of course) for their own home so they can run their entire home from solar (I know in Australia you'd probably need a 5kW system for that to be possibl) but I think people should do that and then if enough people do that, all of the spare electricity that they generate collectively adds a fair amount of free energy to the grid. Yes the energy companies have to pay the consumers for that electricity but they have zero maintenance to do other than the cables that it comes along, they've no power plant to be looking after.