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Comment by xbmcuser | Hacker News Reader

We are so close to the inflection point from where forget electric cars home batteries will make economic sense for the majority. Feed in tariffs received for solar installs home or commercial are falling and as more solar is installed will keep falling so installing batteries and using your own electricity at night instead of selling it for nothing will be the better option.

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Cordcutting could be a big deal for local distribution companies as it becomes viable.

Pipecutting (what I call cutting natgas entirely in favour of heatpumps) is already on the radar of our natgas utility: they want to charge new build connection fees up-front instead of recovering over decades.

Now, what if you could coordinate with a couple of neighbours and run a "merged" system that does some accounting to to cover imbalances? Or a shared backup generator?

Why should it? If you can sell or buy electricity or capacity in a large network then you should receive overall better prices.

My parents bought the house next door to their own. First thing I did was convince them to install panels and batteries and cut both gas connections and one electricity connection. Now theyre on heat pumps and saving tons because our gas utility keeps jacking up the fees.

> Now, what if you could coordinate with a couple of neighbours and run a "merged" system that does some accounting to to cover imbalances?

This is called electrical grid. What you are trying to ask is whether community-owned non-profit electrical utility operators that only minimally buy energy from the main grid will begin to appear in appreciable numbers.

It sounds more like a microgrid: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microgrid

A community microgrid could absolutely be a thing!

> our natgas utility: they want to charge new build connection fees up-front instead of recovering over decades.

That sounds like a part of a (welcome and positive) death spiral for natural gas.

I think the natgas will still go somewhere else (mainly power plants), just not be used for small-scale direct-combustion heating.

The distribution companies are going to be SOL.

I still don’t understand how the electricity infrastructure will be maintained if there is mass on premise battery adoption. Large scale infrastructure will still be required for commercial industry and things like ev charging, but loss of the consumer sector to batteries must have a fairly substantial financial effect on on grid maintenance?

Drastic increases in standing charges. It's still infeasible for most people to go off-grid with solar in the winter. (Depending on latitude.)

I believe Spain has a tax for solar even if you are off grid. I think that's a stupid approach though.

Most US city's will red flag your house for occupancy if your disconnect from the grid.

What does that mean?

Microgrids or micro-infrastructure will become a thing. The local need will cause infra to spider out to the nearest producers. Not the other way around.

Home batteries haven’t come down in price much for years.

It seems that most of the cost is in everything that’s not a cell, and that stuff is specific to home batteries and hasn’t had economies of scale really kick in yet.

Maybe? But the scarcity of manufacturers of integrated home battery systems is also a thing.

There are some Solar inverters that will just work with anything, but if you want a DC coupled system (for better efficiency, and to absorb inverter clipping) your choices are pretty damn limited right now.

> economic sense for the majority

The majority being home owners, which is the minority in Europe

65-70% depending on who and what you count, so not even close to a minority.

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