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Comment by jMyles | Hacker News Reader

Every article on this topic has the same presumption: that we'll continue to have a power grid. But the grid kinda sucks.

Having lived for 2-years on a school bus with an off-grid solar system, I don't see the advantage of investment in the grid.

I question whether, in 2018 and beyond, the advantages of the grid (sending power where there is none, borrowing power from where there is some) are better than very small batches of battery storage.

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How does your gridless plan work for dense urban areas? That need more power than they have rooftops, and the wind blows best elsewhere.

I think it's already the case that not being on the grid is financially best in areas with very low population and reliable sunshine, like parts of the Australian outback.

Yeah, I mean dense urban areas will need to have some unification infrastructure and to be able to get power from areas just outside the city. But I don't think that this means that we need a single universal grid across a landmass as huge as North America.

Also, cities (and all people everywhere) need to dramatically reduce power consumption no matter what the source is.

Residential may very well work best off grid, or better still with highly localised combined heat and power. There's probably still bumps that are better smoothed at grid scale than everyone having peak battery coverage.

Industrial use changes things. Take the grid away and there'll be some unpleasant knock-on effects to prices for everything.

Large industrial users are already smoothing the grid, either with cheaper pricing for off peak use, and deals for intermittently taking surge from the grid. With no grid and no daily varying residential and office loads how do you smelt your aluminium or cook your canned foods other than at normal price? Does every plant need to be local to power generation now?

Electric car charging can smooth the grid, similar to industrial users. If big battery cars (that only need to be recharged every few days) become popular, and most people can plug them in both day and night, and you have a forecast of when the car user might need to actually be fully charged, then you can charge-or-not depending on the weather.

Which part of the country are you in? In the northern parts of the country the supply / demand imbalance between summer solar gen and winter heating requirements are huge, either you're producing 10x more solar than you need in summer or supplementing heat in the winter - or you have an extremely well insulated school bus!

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