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Comment by nlewycky | Hacker News Reader

> When they're all done they'll be providing power cheaper than your home solar setup, even with their additional requirements

Really? Could you cite a source with some numbers? On my PG&E bill, the cost of power generation is about 44%, the remaining extra requirements (transmission/distribution, billing, legal compliance, etc.) are the other 56%. Based on that I extrapolated to thinking that the long term future of electricity is to remove the grid because the cost of moving power around exceeds the cost of generating it, but that extrapolation makes for a big assumption. I'd love to see an analysis if you know of one?

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Utility-scale solar is two thirds cheaper than rooftop [1]. In 2021, transmission and distribution was 7% of American electric utilities' operating expenses, production 40% [2].

[1] https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy21osti/77324.pdf Figure ES-1

[2] https://www.eia.gov/electricity/annual/html/epa_08_03.html

That does still leave 53% in other overhead, and it must be awfully tempting to leave that behind and just cut yourself off from the grid entirely.

That's kinda dicey, since it leaves you without recourse if you get a few days of no sun, unless you've got truly ginormous battery packs. The grid overhead is unfortunate, but it's a great backup that has to be funded even if you rarely use it.

Perhaps some of that overhead can be reduced by more renewables. It does seem awfully high to have more than half of the costs be unrelated to power.

> does still leave 53% in other overhead

Which is less than two thirds. (PG&E's unique incompetence seems to make the bargain less clear in California.)

The article is specifically about California, so looking at PG&E, SDG&E and SCE is appropriate. They all have eye-watering prices for electricity. For example, PG&E's default residential plan rates range from $0.41 to $0.54 per KWh.

https://www.pge.com/tariffs/assets/pdf/tariffbook/ELEC_SCHED...

It's fairly easy to put together a solar system that pays itself off in single digit years but lasts 20-30.

Fossil fuel in a generator completely solves that problem. Looking at my usage for last year, I would've needed to burn about 20 gallons of gasoline to cover my solar shortfall. All of it was in two tranches during atmospheric river events. If my full solar array was up, it would have been zero gallons.

And I already have the generator and the fuel because PG&E uptime is bad and forces me to maintain parallel infrastructure anyway. Once income-based connection charges go live, there's no reason for me to stay connected to the grid at all.

Can you capture any federal, state, and local/utility incentives to get battery storage now so you’re ready to go off grid in the future?

I already did. I have plenty of battery capacity.

Tremendous, assumed you did not because you mentioned 20 gallons of gas consumption for solar shortfall.

For a whole year that seems pretty small, no? Once the other half of my solar array goes up, I won't have any shortfall.

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