Think power is expensive now? Just wait until we need security guards
energycentral.com
energycentral.com
Better, wait until energy generation is universal, interchangeable, and decarbonized. Then all physical energies become equal in price and value, but driven high because demand is soaring and oils and natural gasses are simply not on the table, and reserved exclusively for plastics and physically constructed petrochemical objects rather than energy generation.
Yes. Energy prices are going to skyrocket, but not for the reasons stated.
Physical security, saftey, redundancy, and system strength are significant drivers of the network costs (typically about 40% of the bill to consumers).
Please save your snark for relevant conversations. The discussion here has nothing to do with your culture war on decarbonisation.
There is barely money to rebuild the grid green, and half of the culture war people that you accuse me of being say there isn't even that. There isn't money to protect against non-conspiracy events like massive solar flares. There simply isn't money to protect against terrorism.
Spending money to protect against terror attacks that are rag tag Goonies and can be dealt with by life sentences and cameras is not going to happen. There are many many other SYSTEMIC dangers that take precedence, like solar flares and overcapacity. The only systemic issue that terrorists can influence is hack attacks. And those don't require guards or physical barriers. They require cyber warfare, minimal physical hardening, and already existing and paid for by government spy networks.
In other words, security costs are not going to be the driver of high energy prices. Investing in green infrastructure to burn clean natural gas to get 60% efficiency, degraded by about 10% for transmission and 10% for battery storage (60.9.9) in order to replace ICE engines is the driver of costs with government mandated new EV sales requirements.
With everyone switching to EVs, batteries will become a necessary part of the cost of electricity in the future as well, and even if the cost of manufacturing drops, the price of investing in the raw materials will increase until miracle battery tech comes out, or Elon mines an asteroid.
We are fast entering a world where generation costs are going to skyrocket, and batteries manufacture and recycle costs will drop to unimaginably low levels, whereby the end result is batteries are for the rich and middle class and considered an investment as the materials inside are precious, and useable forever with a recycling and rebuilding phase every X years.
I expect to be investing $50,000 to $100,000 in battery storage within a generation (25 years) as the only viable cost saving measure available to consumers is to treat energy like stocks and buy low, evening out demand and creating a win win.
But the era of cheap energy is over. If I consume 500kwh a month for $100, and 3000km of driving at a cost of $300 gas money, that's $5000 a year.
I'm expecting to pay $15000 a year for that same benefit in the near future, with an investment of $75000 in batteries being able to drop that cost to $10000 a year. More renewables = more savings because more price fluctuations.
What isn't going to make a blip on those calculations is infrastructure hardening against terrorists because its dirt cheap to just lock them up, throw away the key, and repair the damage.