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Comment by jartelt | Hacker News Reader

Why didn't I make the investment? Because I am a private citizen and not a public utility... Utilities are able to rate base their investment and get a guaranteed rate of return on the investments they make. This rate base system is part of the reason why they often make costly and unnecessary investments in >$1B nuclear plants or expensive substations rather than in cheap energy efficiency measures or distributed solar. We have the technology to help mitigate renewable variability and could deploy it if we wanted to. Utilities just chose to drag their feet and not invest heavily in deploying those solutions because the wanted to keep building the same stuff they always build and get the ROI.

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> guaranteed rate of return

> We have the technology to help mitigate renewable variability and could deploy it if we wanted to.

Then build a company if you think its so easy. From my view: its clear that there are risks entailed and that the technology is far too expensive for widescale deployment.

But its a free country. If you really think that building a Lithium Ion energy-storage plant is free money, then build a Lithium Ion energy-storage center. There's no reason to blame other people for not seeing the world the same way as you.

EDIT: If building such companies isn't in your interest, then buy stocks in those companies that are working on energy storage. Like buy stock in ABB or something. Or maybe TSLA if you really think their Lithium Ion technology really is taking over the electric grid.

You can invest in renewable quite easily by purchasing your power from a company that supplies it. It doesn't even require capital or much risk. Often they also provide cheaper power than the big players. The one I use is cheaper, and they also donate money to planting trees, and protecting old growth forests.

Secondly you can invest your pension in ethical, and eco companies. Again, they often outperform others (mine has anyway).

Thirdly, you can live in a place which does not waste power. Or you can at least do quite a bit to reduce energy usage yourself.

Get a bike. You'll live longer, look better, and you'll not kill people with your pollution. Ya! for not being a murderer. Share a cargo bike so you can carry heavy things.

All things which normal people not wanting to take on utility scale investments and risks. Look at your outgoing expenses and see how you can select the providers. When millions of people do it, it has a very powerful effect.

Convince your city to also purchase renewable power. As an example, in Melbourne they used the purchasing power of their electric trams. They tendered out for a new renewable power plant to provide the power. With many urban people often voting 'Green', this is not a really hard thing to do or get support for.

Good luck!

> You can invest in renewable quite easily by purchasing your power from a company that supplies it. It doesn't even require capital or much risk. Often they also provide cheaper power than the big players. The one I use is cheaper, and they also donate money to planting trees, and protecting old growth forests.

Not an option in all states. But yes, this is an option for me that I've been considering. This strategy relies on the local municipal (or state) government on "deregulating" the utility companies. And also on the government to force the utility companies to buy energy from a variety of sources.

There's a lot of "political infrastructure", laws, deals, and agreements, that are needed to make such options a possibility. And it will do good to remember that the "option to buy renewable" isn't an option in many states.

>Then build a company if you think its so easy.

If I had a dollar for every time I saw a legitimate complaint about a complex system met with, "Well just reinvent it yourself from the ground up if you're so fucking smart," I'd be a rich man. It is not a constructive suggestion.

The problem is that there are plenty of energy-storage companies available for you to invest into on the Stock Market.

AES Energy Storage for example, is building tons of energy storage across America. And you can support them by providing investment dollars.

So yeah, building companies (or at least, helping companies that match your worldview) is quite easy in this Democracy. Instead of complaining about it, you should be elevating AES Energy Storage and other similar companies.

>Instead of complaining about it, you should be elevating AES Energy Storage and other similar companies.

No. I refuse to accept a standard of discourse where one cannot even point out a problem without having already solved it. There are many, many hard problems with complex systems in the world, and no person, much less a complete outsider, can hope even to begin to address more than a very, very small number of them even if they dedicate their life to the task. Saying "fix it or shut up" is asinine.

Well, if stopping people from demanding you solve a problem before pointing it out is so simple, why don't you go do it then?

...

I'm sorry.

In all seriousness though, it's a no-expertise-needed response that's meant to shout down people who are particularly clueless and disconnected. Perhaps we need a substitute response, like calling for an expert on the relevant field to decide whether the person is clueless or not?

You can't actually start a power company and compete with say Dominion etc, as they are legal monopolies. You can't even buy one without regulatory approval.

Yeah, but you can start a solar plant to provide energy to Dominion / etc. etc.

https://www.dominionresources.com/library/domcom/pdfs/electr...

Or you can invest into companies that compete against Dominion / etc. etc. that focus more on renewables.

I don't think Li-ion plants are free... My point is that there are situations when problems can be solved with efficiency/renewables/new technology or with building more traditional power plants and infrastructure. Utilities have tended to go the traditional power plant/infrastructure route because they know it and because they get a set rate of return on things they build and rate base. With the traditional utility model, they do not make much money if they make it easier for people to install solar on their house or if they incentivize people to switch to LEDs.

Those solutions didn't exist 10 years ago, and it takes ~10 years to get a lot of these projects started.

Because they did not invest in it. Becuase they fight it. LED was not invented in 2017.

LEDs were expensive.

From my experience, its "grassroot" old guys who just don't like the new "color" of LEDs. True, LEDs were invented decades ago, but the "proper color" ("Warm White") wasn't really available until recently.

Now that LEDs are the proper color for internal homes, people are beginning to use them. They're still far more expensive than incandescent bulbs, so a lot of people (who don't run the calcs on their electricity bill) still prefer the older bulbs.

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