Comments by "Geoffrey Lyons" (@granatmof) on "4 Year Update - Are Solar Panels for Home Still Worth It?" video.

  1. So I've talked to an engineer about this and the way he explained is the grid is essentially like balancing dozens of spinning plates on sticks with every new generation site another spinning plate. Distributed grid production can dramatically add to the number of plates and increase instability of the entire grid. If the grid gett too far out of whack you can have a cascading failure that can take out the entire region, often during the worst time. The greater issue is the great age of the US power grid. There are elements that are nearly a century old, and the requirement for continuous service makes upgrades extremely expensive and intrusive when something goes wrong. An added caveat is cost and profit for the grid provider. Customers have minimal fees for upkeep, but you also have to look that the grid provider pays a lower price to acquire the energy then they sell to the end customer. If grid provider have to purchase consumer production power at the same price they sell to other consumers then they will start to lose money to continue expanding and supporting the grid. Granted I believe power grids like all infrastructure should be operated by non profit organisations, and the societal benefit of reliable and useful infrastructure can have dramatically greater economic benefits within the society than the fridge profits achievable by a for profit group. A great example is the Texas freeze. For profit power plants undermined the stability of the Texas grid and "saved" millions of dollars of winter preparation that cost the state billions of dollars of lost revenue due to massive shutdown due to just power, not to mention the price gouging allowed by the for profit regulatory agency in Texas. It's a clear example of misapplying capitalism to non capitalistic market spaces.
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