This is awesome. The real loser in all of this is Lebanon. 30 years after the end of the civil war there, and 24-hour electricity is a pipe dream. People still rely on neighborhood generators that contribute to the already bad pollution.
The first time I ever went to Beirut over 10 years ago, I asked a partner of a large Civil Engineering firm
Me : "Why does the power go out all the time?"
The response: "There is no political will to fix this."
I didn't understand the reply. Surely there was immense value in economic development in doing this ?
I drew parallels to being in South America, particularly Ecuador, who had the same issue back in the 90's. That caused so much economic loss. I understood the issue was rainfall swings drove hydro power outages. They finally built extra capacity, and now brownouts are a thing of the past. Everyone benefitted.
But lebanon had no such luck. Why?
I didn't understand the undertones of what was being told to me. But the answer was there. It is a political issue, but not a question of will. Its a question of money.
The neighborhood generators now have cartel power over the generation of electricity. They have a vested interest in the government NOT producing cheap electricity for the masses. Anything that disrupts the status quo means their business is effectively over.
Full 360: The market response to electricity production during civil war, gave lebanon electric resilience (via power generators)...but now with regulatory capture, the incentives are only to sustain the broken model.
I can't help but imagine how different this state would be if the governor of California came from a rental apartment, or from living in their car, and not the latest approved candidate from the old California political machine (Governor Gavin Newsom is a respected SF judge's son, Mayor Eric Garcetti's father was the LA DA for 20 years). Maybe political priorities would actually shift to the working poor rather than the landowning elite for the first time ever in California.
"Lack of will" as a phrase suggests nobody feels like doing anything about it, when in fact, lots of people want to do different things and those with more power are winning out over those with less, regardless of which thing would be maximally beneficial.
This isn't a slight against you or the GP for using the phrase - it's just something that sticks in my craw when I hear it. Don't even ask me how I feel about the word "unprecedented."
The icing on the cake is that water tanker cartels steal from the municipal water supply in the first place.
Allow me to contribute a bit and please don't take this the wrong way. I understand why you are using tariff. You are using the spanish tarifa.
The word commonly used to represent bus payments is "fare" (train fare, etc). Hope this helps!.
Tariff in english is commonly used instead to refer to the word "arancel" i.e. the cost to export / import food, etc.
I'm not arguing pro or against Bitcoin, just stating reality is nuanced.
Interesting insights. You get most of it right about Lebanon: Yes, you're right its all about money and maintaining the status quo. But its not so much about the neighborhood generators. To be honest, thats a bit low brow for Leb politicians. When we're talking about corruption its usually to the tune of $10s of millions. Case in point, look at the longtime central banker who funneled the nation's bonds through his brother's trading company and pocketed $300 million in commissions. [1] Now were talking real money.
With electricity, yes, its about vested interests - but its also about future interests. Who will control new power plants? New Power grids? New billing systems? Can we make sure that for each Sunni hired in this position we have 1 Christian and 1 Shia as well?
Thats why nothing ever gets done in Lebanon.
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-04/u-s-said-...
The rule of law needs to put its thumb on the scale if you want to get rid of the predatory elements.
I often wonder if places like this are where real green energy revolution will start. Perhaps the greatest motivation for off-grid solar is not having access to a grid in the first place. The first targets in many wars are the power plants, plants fed by fossil fuel deliveries. A country powered by widespread small "gridless" solar power solutions would be very resilient in a crisis, much more difficult a target in a war. Maybe Lebanon can move forward without a reliable national grid.
If this becomes a thing without charging non-users a flat fee for the electricity grid, then the grid will fall into a death spiral as renewables+storage become cheaper - namely, fewer people using the grid will increase the relative cost for each remaining user, encouraging them to go off-grid which further increases the relative cost of grid-attachment.
The ex-Texas US grid is reliable because of economic reasons (especially industrial) and the Texas grid is not that reliable for economic reasons!
If you leave the interstate system and drive the state and national highways, especially east of the Mississippi River, you'll see industrial facilities all over the place in small towns and cities, etc. They consume a lot of electricity, so it is in the national interest to have a good grid. West of the Mississippi: go read the Bershire Hathaway annual report from a few weeks ago. Warren Buffett spends quite a bit of space writing about how and why they are spending billions on the future of the grid.
This is why regulation is needed and competition on the lowest level of infrastructure a bad idea.
In Germany, we have a legal mandate (per §36 EnWG, https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/enwg_2005/__36.html) for the dominant local utility to provide the core gas and electricity network upon which the customer can choose any utility to provide gas and electricity (with this utility then paying a set rate for using the network to the local utility). Additionally, §11 EnWG (https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/enwg_2005/__11.html) forces all network-operating utilities to keep their network operation "safe, reliable and free of discrimination" - and the authority BNetzA has the legal power to actually enforce this.
Events like the shoddy maintenance that led to a number of wild fires in California or the lack of winterization that led to the Texas debacles in 2011 and 2021 simply would not happen here.
And I also believe Germans would not produce or tolerate the California or Texas debacles.
Probably because I'm advocating for government owned or at least heavily regulated infrastructure.
> The risk is that the monopoly gets fat and lazy, but there are many examples of failures from both approaches.
Agreed (and California is a perfect example)... with a monopoly situation (and in "captive market" situations such as housing where people can't go without the services of the market) regulation agencys need teeth. Basically you want pitbulls, not poodles.
Here in ZA the economy got screwed because nobody was prepared for the centralized provider (Eskom) to go down, which it did because of corruption and race-based quotas (BEE) firing senior white staff. Centralized orgs centralize risk and corruption.
With hookup cost to a new property often measuring in the tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars, the non-connection fee/penalty would have to be very high.
In pacific northwest, estimate 10-15k per electrical pole. Plus any necessary upgrades to the system. Plus easements. Plus maintenance costs. Plus cutting the trees. Plus then paying for power. ... A kickass solar rig and backup generator is very cheap by comparison.
[1] https://www.avrupa.info.tr/en/plugging-turkey-eu-electricity...
[2] https://www.dw.com/en/nord-stream-2-pipeline-row-highlights-...
The issue is that unlike other cases they were never left to their own devices and let sort their own shit out.
"We should improve society somewhat." "Yet you participate in society. Curious!"