Hi,
Not trying to get political but, with the current administration's hostility towards fossil fuels and promotion of going green with more EVs etc, I'm concerned about putting greater Demand on our grid without increasing Production.
But we are increasing production in the form of distributed solar installations. Time and time again, distributed systems have proven to be far more reliable then centralized systems.
I don't see actions that are increasing reliable production in any measure. A good example is California already having issues with winds, fires, power down while adding more EVs to the system.
I have read that they are requiring solar on new homes.
California's power issues are due to global warming and climate change as well as people occupying geographic areas they should not be occupying.
Also, the amount of available production and the reliability of the grid have almost nothing to do with each other. Grid reliability is a function of age and technology, and most of our grid is old.
The cost of upgrading the grid has skyrocketed.. higher materials cost, higher labor cost, more litigation for land use, etc. People moan and complain already about the cost of their electricity, they certainly aren't going to want a 50% increase in their bill to upgrade the grid.
I'm thinking if there's any significant outage there'll be a run on solar equipment quickly leading to shortages (remember shoppers camped out in stores hoping a truck was unloading toilet paper).
Do you foresee increased power outages coming? How are you preparing?
Define "significant outage" ?? If the entire country went dark, we'd be fine for about 3 days.. By the end of the second week, we'd be in a full Mad Max SHTF situation and the chaos would most likely prevent workers from fixing anything. As trucks rolled down the street, they'd be ambushed for their food and supplies.. Within 2 months, 10% of the country would be dead.. within 6 months, 30% would be dead, and within a year, 90% would have died. (read the congressional EMP Report). Without power, there is no water for city folks, no food, no refrigeration, no air conditioning, no medical care, no drugs, no emergency services..
I do foresee more power outages coming. As the planet warms up, more extreme weather events will happen and cause more frequent localized disruptions.
I live in the rural countryside and when big storms roll though and knock out Detroit and other large cities, the areas with the highest population density are fixed first.. this means us country folks with 10, 20 or 100 acres, are waiting for up to a week or more. We're kind of used to it. In 2020, we lost power 9 times in one year for an average of 3 to 4 days each time.
When it happens, we have lots of options for power generation. First, we have a large 11kW grid tied solar system that is capable of generating 4kW @120 volts all on its own.. (we don't even use that feature).. When the grid goes down, we flip two switches and start up our off grid system. 25kWh of lithium battery feeding two Sunny Island inverters creates our own private 120/240 grid system.. From there, the grid tied solar thinks the grid is active again and starts generating power. If it makes too much power, the extra juice charges the batteries, if it doesn't make enough, the batteries make up for the deficit to power the home. In short, when the grid goes down and we switch to the off grid system, our lives continue as normal.
For those dark cloudy days, we can use a generator to charge the batteries if needed. Our generator can run on gasoline, propane, or be hooked up to our natural gas line.. It can run for two or three hours at full power and charge our batteries so we don't have to charge them again for a couple days if the sun doesn't shine. If we run out of the common fuels, I can hook up a wood-gassifier to provide the needed energy to run the generator.
City folks would be so screwed its a bit horrifying to think of it.. Most country folks would be fine for quite a while, some of us would do better than others, but most would be fine..
