Jan Wildeboer 😷
Energy companies really hate small renewables. They love nuclear and fossil fuels. Why? Renewables can be deployed in decentralised ways. That hurts their bottom line as they get reduced to taking care of distribution through their grids. But they want to control the input, not the distribution. They have focused on centralising electricity generation. That way they can simply make more money. That's why they oppose or actively try to fight microgrid solutions. Decentralisation is bad for them.
And that's why I really hope for a movement of connected microgrids. Of local energy cooperatives. Communities that understand that with local cooperation and, most importantly, full ownership of the local grid combined with solar, wind and local storage capacities, they can get the local cost for electricity down to levels that seem impossibly low, in some cases, with good design, even to zero. But only if this approach is based on Open Standards, Open Hardware. No vendor lock-in.
Everyone who has tried something in that field knows that it is riddled with expensive certifications and demands that are hard to meet for small series production runs. This is by design. The energy companies want to be in control of the full value chain. In most European countries energy generation and distribution is an oligopoly. It's a system that has been developed over many decennia. Breaking into that market is hard, and I mean really hard work that needs cooperation on many levels.
Captcha@jwildeboer I'm really interested in how decentralized electricity would work in practice? I've realized for a while that electricity is really a monopoly with one utility being the only operator in an area. The incentives are really broken with no market competition. However someone has to pay for the power lines between houses, so what's the solution? State owned grid with a buyer and seller market of electricity?
A_MinionI'm in Alaska, many of the villages have begun building their own solar/wind/water systems simply because the cost of fossil fuels is so high. We also have many who live off the grid, Even this far north it is feasible to use renewable energy. We fortunately don't have all the regulations of the civilized world 8*). The big corps own the world, can control most any part as the providers of energy, very expensive energy.
Juffo-WupIn Germany, electricity supplier and grid provider are separate companies.
Anyway, in my opinion, infrastructure should always be state owned...