# Power Decentralization, Good or Bad? Spin-off thread



## Windows on Wash (Aug 30, 2011)

Can't be anything but good if you ask me about the end result. The question is, how do we get there? Normal market forces and technology...or...massive spending by the entity that has gotten WAY more wrong than right.


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## lenaitch (Feb 10, 2014)

Not an electrical engineer but I have heard that one of the difficulties of distributed generation is the ability of the grid to safely and effectively manage it. The wires don't care but many of the components do. It may not be as big an issue when everything is going well but major imbalances can have serious consequences. 'Smart grid' technology has been addressing this but I understand there are technological a and financial impacts. In our jurisdiction, distribution and generation are separate entities. Who pays? Does the owner of a small grid-attached generator contribute to upgrade the grid? Dunno.


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## CaptTom (Dec 31, 2017)

Not much to add. You hit the nail right on the head: what we need are (1) cheaper PV (or other renewable sources) and, most importantly, (2) better storage options.

We're making good progress on (1).

(2) is the tough nut to crack. There's conflict over who pays when PV or other intermittent sources want to use the grid as their personal storage device. POCO's, at least the smart ones, are scrambling to try to figure out storage. There are really two pieces to that puzzle. 

Short-term storage limits perturbations on the grid when large plants go off line, or large loads start up. There is a lot of money there, and POCOs are building huge battery banks for these large, short-duration needs.

Longer-term storage is tougher. How do you store up solar energy gathered during the day, or wind power gathered when it's blowing, and release it at night or when it's calm?

So far about the best solution has been pumped water storage. There are some thermal storage solutions, but that won't get you through a few cloudy days in a row.

But once you can economically produce and store several days' worth of power in every home, the whole concept of the grid goes away.


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## ktownskier (Aug 22, 2018)

CaptTom said:


> Not much to add. You hit the nail right on the head: what we need are (1) cheaper PV (or other renewable sources) and, most importantly, (2) better storage options.
> 
> We're making good progress on (1).
> 
> ...



A company called StorEn Technologies seems to be working on the storage part. (www.storen.tech) They have 2 products they are working on. A 30 kWh for home use similar to the Tesla system. It can be installed inside the home or buried in the ground. 

They also have a 500 kWh container sized storage battery. 

The difference between the Tesla storage system and the StorEn system is the storage medium. Tesla is using Lithium Ion while StorEn uses Vanadium Flow. It is a bit beyond me technology wise, but it sounds promising. 

The battery is in the final stages of third party testing to validate the claims, stability and durability of it. It should be completed sometime this month or next.


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## NotYerUncleBob2 (Dec 29, 2017)

As much as I like the concept of the decentralized power generation the reality is that it is really, _really_ expensive to do it this way vs the large plant and distribution. There's too much economy of scale in the large power plant. A large hydro plant is always going to be cheaper per user than everyone with their own diesel generator for example.
That said, there are supplemental generation systems that do pencil out quite well like rooftop solar. The catch is that to make that a full time decentralized system is where the costs skyrocket with storage or having another less efficient/economical backup. Batteries ain't cheap and they're inefficient in practical use.
What we will wind up with, and kinda what we have now is a hybrid system where decentralized generation using economical means like solar will supplement the grid based large power generators.


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## ktownskier (Aug 22, 2018)

NotYerUncleBob2 said:


> As much as I like the concept of the decentralized power generation the reality is that it is really, _really_ expensive to do it this way vs the large plant and distribution. There's too much economy of scale in the large power plant. A large hydro plant is always going to be cheaper per user than everyone with their own diesel generator for example.
> That said, there are supplemental generation systems that do pencil out quite well like rooftop solar. The catch is that to make that a full time decentralized system is where the costs skyrocket with storage or having another less efficient/economical backup. Batteries ain't cheap and they're inefficient in practical use.
> What we will wind up with, and kinda what we have now is a hybrid system where decentralized generation using economical means like solar will supplement the grid based large power generators.


I agree with most of your points. 

I am not proposing, nor will I probably ever, propose that we replace our current system with a fully decentralized system. 

Not only is it impractical, horrifically expensive but is totally unnecessary because we need the Grid and the POCO's. They are good at what they do. 

The current batteries we have, for the most part, are ineffective as mass storage other than for home use. What could make solar much more practical for most homeowners is Tesla's powerwall or similar battery storage systems. That will allow homeowners to store their excess power during the day (or from another system they have) to use during the night or for when their needs exceeds the power their generating system can supply. Before falling back to the grid. 

We also need to reimburse micro-producers at a more equitable rate. One poster on this or the thread this was spun off from was paying up to $0.57 per kwh and was only being repaid $0.03 for excess power they generated. 

I am not negative utilities. I am rather tied to them (pun intended). Living in a semi-rural area, we do experience blackouts. Even though most everything is underground. So much so that I am either going to get a generator, a UPS that can supply electric power to my on-demand water heaters. (One for DHW and one for Under-floor radiant hear)

Or, if we can get the power wall or similar storage system, I would prefer solar. I may even go with Solar without the storage system. Living in CO, with no trees to shade my east, south and west roof structures. I could generate a lot of power. And then there is Tesla's roof shingle, which really makes sense as I may have to replace my roof soon.


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## DoomsDave (Dec 6, 2018)

The huge problem seems to be fragile grids, which appear to be set up more for expediency than safety, though I'm also mindful that it's hard to foresee everything. 

That northeastern blackout we had in the early Aughts (which began in good old, Northeastern Ohio) was a nasty, disruptive business. We had a smaller, but still bad one in San Diego in 2011. 

I doubt the power generators will go the way of the dodos or dinosaurs; they'll just use different fuels.


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## CaptTom (Dec 31, 2017)

ktownskier said:


> We also need to reimburse micro-producers at a more equitable rate. One poster on this or the thread this was spun off from was paying up to $0.57 per kwh and was only being repaid $0.03 for excess power they generated.


$0.03 per KWH is really a good price. I'll bet your local 1,200MW nuke plant gets something in the same ballpark. I'm amazed the utility can afford to pay that much for such an intermittent, extremely small-scale producer.

You pay for the capacity to make plenty of electricity available to all customers, virtually all the time. Around here, water is essentially free, but we still pay to have it piped to the house. I wouldn't expect the water company to buy it back from me if I plumbed my sump pump into the water main.


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## ktownskier (Aug 22, 2018)

That payback wasn't for me, it was for @Deja-vue in California. He said that he is on a tier system with a base rate of 0.17 to a max of 0.52 per kwh.

I have been trying to find out what my local energy company would pay as buy-back. No luck so far. 

Living in CO, the average rate for electric is 11.9 cents per kwh.

I pay a monthly connection fee of $29 and then .109 cents per kwh. According to my last bill, I used 1090 kWh, my bill was 161.54 which means I am paid 14 cents per kwh. 
Which also held true for the prior month.


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## NotYerUncleBob2 (Dec 29, 2017)

ktownskier said:


> The current batteries we have, for the most part, are ineffective as mass storage other than for home use. What could make solar much more practical for most homeowners is Tesla's powerwall or similar battery storage systems.


Have you priced a Tesla Powerwall? It's ridiculously expensive! I get that Tesla wants to push LiIon batteries since that's what they make, but it's a really expensive and quite unnecessary choice in battery material. If you're building an electric car or hand held power tools, then you have weight concerns that LiIon works very well to address. However, in a house you don't really have that weight concern so good old Lead Acid batteries actually provide a lot more bang for your buck. However again, in a practical application even those batteries will not provide enough electricity to get you through more than a few hours of a grid power failure (or a setting sun on solar). 
Don't get me wrong, I absolutely support putting up as much solar as we can get away with, but I also live in the real world where putting a few tons of lead acid (or one ton less of LiIon) batteries into every house isn't going to happen either. 
As we get more solar on the roof the PoCo's are going to adjust to being busier at night and cloudy days as opposed to browning out on the hot sunny days under air conditioning loads as they do now. With the world getting hotter, it's actually a normal response and will smooth the overload that they'd otherwise get without some decentralized solar taking the edge off the load.


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## Nealtw (Jun 22, 2017)

The biggest plus I see is as more and more houses want or need AC for the heat in summer, that use corresponds with the best time for solar power.
On a smaller scale, how much panel do you need to run a single window unit drawing 13 amps.


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## CaptTom (Dec 31, 2017)

A mildly interesting article about yet another avenue they're looking down for storage:

New fuel cell could help fix the renewable energy storage problem

After explaining how you can use an "electrolyzer" to extract hydrogen from water using surplus electricity, then feed the hydrogen into a fuel cell to get some of that electricity back, they summarized a possible new approach:



> But commercial electrolyzers and fuel cells use different catalysts to speed up the two reactions, meaning a single device can’t do both jobs. To get around this, researchers have been experimenting with a newer type of fuel cell, called a proton conducting fuel cell (PCFC), which can make fuel or convert it back into electricity using just one set of catalysts.


Like so many lab-based experiments, it's a long way from commercial use. But it's another example of people trying, anyway.


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## user_12345a (Nov 23, 2014)

In order to have more distributed generation, you have to have control.

Intermittent devices don't work very well on a grid.

For small scale solar and wind, you would have to have batteries with smart grid tech signalling when demand is rising in the local area and the grid needs more capacity online and when supply is too great. Would need to have the energy collected dispatched at the same time.

Would need to monitor the small scale systems to see when they're producing, how much energy is stored.

There are co-gen units that burn gas to generate electricity and produce heat rather than waste heat the heat. These too could be used but would need parallel systems for summer and milder days during heating system.

There's also work being done on self contained, fail safe, mass produced mini nuclear reactors to put in local areas for base load power. Could potentially bring the cost of nuclear power down and make it more acceptable to the public.

In in end most of this would just be applicable to electricity.

We know how to generate electricity from nuclear and hydro and also have tons of coal that could be burned and used cleanly/efficiently in state of the art new facilities.

Our biggest problems lie with transportation and heating fuel. 

Diesel and gasoline have amazing energy density and provide portable power without too much weight, charging time, heavy metals. Batteries aren't practical for running commercial vehicles and mining machines.

For heating, oil, nat gas, propane could only be replaced by electric heatpumps. 

The energy use for heating and transportation is so high no combo of wind/solar/nuclear/hydro could supply enough even using technologies like heatpumps.

Would need to fall back on fossil fuel generation stations, defeating the whole purpose. 

The only type of real power plant being built is natural gas and they're 30 to 50% efficient, so might as well just burn the fossil fuel directly. 

Rather than focusing on new technology the focus should be on walkable communities and making things closer to home. 

I still see automobile suburbs still being built on prime farmland.


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## CaptTom (Dec 31, 2017)

user_12345a said:


> Rather than focusing on new technology the focus should be on walkable communities and making things closer to home.


I was with you until I reached the line above.

I'm not ready to move to the city. I have faith that there are solutions which won't involve fossil fuels. Look at the progress in electric vehicles, solar voltaic, storage, ground-source heat pumps, etc. And of course, Nuclear (fission and maybe someday, fusion.)

I'm also not betting on gas or coal. They're still fossil fuels, and still release CO. Ideally, we shouldn't need them (some day) and they will run out eventually, albeit not as soon as some doomsayers have predicted.


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## lenaitch (Feb 10, 2014)

The urban-rural debate rages on another forum I go to. With their population density, urban areas are technically more "efficient"; transit, water, sewage and other infrastructure are most cost effective with a high number of user per area. The debate makes some sense when you compare urban versus suburban, which traditionally compare high versus low density versions of density. But, to me the argument that we should all just move to a highrise condo in the city fails when you compare urban (either version) versus rural. Cities are consumers; few if any produce their own food, raw material or energy in volumes necessary to sustain them. As well, most do not dispose of their own waste within their borders. Where does all of this come from (go to)? Either the rural parts of the country or offshore.
People also argue that cities generate wealth, which is generally true, but it is also true that cities report wealth that is actually created elsewhere. Resource, agri-food, energy and other corporations normally have their head offices in large cities, but where was the wealth actually created? Out in the rural areas.


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## user_12345a (Nov 23, 2014)

The suburbs are the most problematic and have all the disadvantages of urban and rural.

You have to import everything from outside city bounds yet have to commute long distances. It's a very energy intensive lifestyle.

We need rural. People in rural areas are more self sufficient as they can grow more of their own food, wood can be sustainably harvested locally for heat in high efficiency, low pollution stoves.

Urban is fine when scaled appropriately -> cities shouldn't be too large, they should be walkable and have 4 to 5 story buildings. I hate condos.

My point was that nothing is coming along there will enable us to live as we do now without fossil fuels. Fossil fuels are very energy dense and easy to transport and store. 

Our living arrangement is too energy intensive to be sustained without excessive fossil fuel consumption. The economic system we have now will have to change -> forget about importing cheap consumer from third world countries, continuous growth.



To reduce oil and natural gas use by even 50%, people would have to make huge sacrifices when it comes to comfort, convenience, jobs, and there would be a lot of losers. Many would starve.

I think the shift will have to happen due to the declining quality of new fossil fuel discoveries and cost of extraction; we're already down to energy intensive, environmentally destructive deep water drilling, tar sand mining, fracking.

When the price of oil gets high enough to make unconventional deposits viable to tap, you get demand destruction. Right now the price is below the cost of production for unconventional resources, need it closer to $100 /barrel than $50.


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## CaptTom (Dec 31, 2017)

user_12345a said:


> The suburbs are the most problematic and have all the disadvantages of urban and rural.
> 
> You have to import everything from outside city bounds yet have to commute long distances. It's a very energy intensive lifestyle.


Good points, and I think we're 90% in agreement.

One quibble would be the contention that we "have" to commute. I did, but I also turned down a number of jobs which would have required longer commutes. Before I retired, work-at-home options were already common. I think there _are_ solutions here.



user_12345a said:


> Urban is fine when scaled appropriately -> cities shouldn't be too large, they should be walkable and have 4 to 5 story buildings. I hate condos.


No disagreements here! I know lots of people who find condo living a great option. I'm not one of them.



user_12345a said:


> My point was that nothing is coming along there will enable us to live as we do now without fossil fuels. Fossil fuels are very energy dense and easy to transport and store.


For the short term, true. Too many people don't understand the energy density and, for lack of a better word, portability of fossil fuels compared to other options.

But I remain optimistic. I see solar going up everywhere, from cruising boats to suburban rooftops to utility-scale solar farms. Gains in storage technology are slow but steady. EVs are becoming mainstream. Nuclear is still an option.



user_12345a said:


> Our living arrangement is too energy intensive to be sustained without excessive fossil fuel consumption. The economic system we have now will have to change -> forget about importing cheap consumer from third world countries, continuous growth.
> 
> To reduce oil and natural gas use by even 50%, people would have to make huge sacrifices when it comes to comfort, convenience, jobs, and there would be a lot of losers. Many would starve.


Well, yes, if we had to do it all at once. But I see huge economic opportunities, and benefits, as progress is made on so many different energy fronts. One big problem will go away when old farts like my generation, who seem disproportionately represented among the naysayers and deniers, lose our grip on political power. With just a bit more political will, I believe these challenges can be overcome.


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## user_12345a (Nov 23, 2014)

It would take so many years to transition to a less energy intensive living arrangement and economy (necessary imo to cut dependency on fossil fuels), we would have had to start in the 1970s avoid creating "loosers" in the process. I don't think there's 50 years to make a smooth transition and it's super expensive these days to build new infrastructure.

The embedded energy, resources and capital in what we have make it so that there's a 15-30++ year lead time before things are replaced.

For example people are still buying gasoline cars today and each new car will be on the road for 12 to 15 years if not longer.

Same for heating appliances, air planes, trucks etc.

There are still new suburban houses being built without regard for passive solar design principles which need to be heated and cooled with mechanical life support systems, not to mention the need to commute 60 miles per day and they'll be around for 100 years.

No one is even trying - the resources needed to transition are being wasted trying to maintain the status quo.

Unsure of if any of you have heard of the "green new deal" with a promise to get away from fossil fuels in 10 years. Here's a good critique of it: https://www.peakprosperity.com/blog/114861/deconstructing-green-new-deal


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## Calson (Jan 23, 2019)

Industry studies by the companies in the energy industry have found that solar panel installations provide a constant feed to the grid which cannot be done by a central power station. The fluctuations of power output from the plant can trigger safety mechanisms that end up shutting off power to a section of the grid which can then cascade and take out a large part of the country. 

Only decentralized power inputs to the grid can provide this safety mechanism to help stabilize the grid. Not difficult to find industry studies that have been published in their own trade publications. The latest generation of commercial inverters have been designed to better sense fluctuations in the grid and balance their output to protect the grid. 

But the Koch brothers and their henchmen and women at Fox and CNN do not want people to switch from coal powered plants to solar. The utility companies also get left out as they get to buy power, add a transportation markup, and sell it to their customers at a handsome profit. 

We even have the idiot in the White House claiming that windmills cause cancer. They do not cause cancer, which cannot be said of coal and natural gas and oil from fracking or nuclear generated power. 

Actually the ROI on wind power is considerably higher than for solar. Unfortunately the most wind is in sparsely populated parts of the country and so an investment needs to be made in new transmission lines. Solar does not have this limitation.


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## Windows on Wash (Aug 30, 2011)

Politics are usually confined to the CBR as a general rule. 



Wind is great, but as you mentioned, not really applicable for much of the US. Bird strikes ARE as problem and that is a fact that is generally glazed over for the folks that are self promoted as environmentalists. 



As is usually the case, the private sector can find a solution much more rapidly and successfully than can government. All while vetting the technology and sorting through the crap. 



Onsite battery storage is the key to decentralization. At that point, your power generation needs can be rolled into a new home mortgage and amortized over the life of the home. This is something that will be more commonplace in the next 10-20 years. 



De-regulation of the power companies would also allow for more competition in the marketplace. There absolutely would be abuses in small marketplaces, however, on the whole, the additional competition would drive down cost and drive up the quality of service as it does in every other industry.


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## CaptTom (Dec 31, 2017)

I haven't read anything about the Green New Deal and I'm not going to debate it here.

That said, there could be a nugget of good policy in there somewhere, even if there are a lot of feel-good buzzwords and idealism. (Which I'm assuming, but again, I haven't read it.)

Governments have always been needed to spur research and development. From recent projects like SpaceX getting NASA funds and Tesla buyers getting tax breaks, all the way back to Queen Isabella financing Columbus, and the royal patrons of all the famous scientists throughout history.

Once a field is opened up by government-funded research, private enterprise can come in and bring it to market, driving up efficiency and driving down costs.

Power companies ARE already investing in, and competing in, the renewable and storage spaces today. A societal focus on developing green jobs (solar and wind manufacturing, EVs, etc.) can have benefits to both the economy and the ecology.

There is a win-win here. We just have to get politics out of it, marginalize the nay-sayers and entrenched special interests, and get on with it.

It's going to happen with our without us. Do we want to be on the leading edge, or lose our technological and economic advantages?


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## Windows on Wash (Aug 30, 2011)

CaptTom said:


> I haven't read anything about the Green New Deal and I'm not going to debate it here.
> 
> That said, there could be a nugget of good policy in there somewhere, even if there are a lot of feel-good buzzwords and idealism. (Which I'm assuming, but again, I haven't read it.)


I don't think anyone was debating it here. Its worth a read and I suspect you will recant on your opinion that there might be a nugget in there. It was almost worthless document that was so fraught with unattainability that it makes the entire endeavor feckless. 

It was written by a bunch of people that have ZERO fundamental understanding of science or industry. 



CaptTom said:


> Governments have always been needed to spur research and development. From recent projects like SpaceX getting NASA funds and Tesla buyers getting tax breaks, all the way back to Queen Isabella financing Columbus, and the royal patrons of all the famous scientists throughout history.
> 
> Once a field is opened up by government-funded research, private enterprise can come in and bring it to market, driving up efficiency and driving down costs.
> 
> ...


I would wholeheartedly disagree with your statement that governments have always been needed. That is a flat out incorrect statement. 

Governments have a crap ton of money that they have seized from the citizenry and can, in certain cases, incentivize innovation via tax revenue by propping up industries that should NOT operated at the pricing they care charging. The government, in that case, artificially drives prices up and merely transfers debt to the end consumer via the forced altruism of the tax payer. 

You cite Tesla and there is no more perfect example of this. Guess what is happening to the price of Tesla cars as we speak whilst the tax credits are methodically being reduced....Prices are plummeting. The cost of Tesla cars are being dropped considerably of late and so much so that they are having to fight back the PR pushback from purchasers that bought a car 6 months ago that is now 20K less than it was when they bought it. 

More EV manufacturers are entering the market than ever at this point and there will be more competition for Tesla on the horizon. I have a deposit on just such one of those new EV manufacturers. 

I would argue that Telecom is probably the most innovative sector of the US economy in the last 2 decades. Why...because they have been mostly free from government encumbrance, regulation, and investment. 

Nobody is subsidizing the handheld computer, that you can also talk on, that has more computing power than the entirety of NASA when it put a man on the moon. That was the private sector responding to a request from the consumers and make the products better, and in some cases, for less money. 

Find me a sector that is heavily regulated of co-oped by the government and I will find you an industry that is inefficient and overpriced. 

Can the government help spurn some innovation via grants and investments...sure. But when the government is picking industry winners and losers...we all lose.


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## lenaitch (Feb 10, 2014)

Not directly related to the thread topic but I actually agree that governments have a role in areas of pure science; areas that simply cannot be commercialized, are at too early a stage or have a large public policy aspect. This can be done either directly or via university research funding. Consider the advancements made by agencies such as NOAA and NASA in the understanding of terrestrial, atmospheric and astro sciences that likely would not have happened if it was dependent on for-profit funding.


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