[1] https://emp.lbl.gov/news/grid-connection-backlog-grows-30-20...
Delaying a renewable facility from earning money for years when it has to borrow everything up front to start is extra deadly. I want proper environmental review though, to the extent it's possible to have that without it being weaponized by NIMBYs to simply run out the clock on a project's viability.
It’s not clear to me how much the power grid will matter in ten years. I can imagine cities using substations to route N solar installations to M bidirectional EV chargers, I guess. For places as or less dense than suburbs, it’s not obvious that it makes sense to bother.
If we had it fill the south half of our roof, that’d jump to 99-100%. For the remaining one percent, we could just drive to a fast charger to pick up enough electricity to run the house for 2-3 days in complete darkness.
The power grid keeps burning cities down, and then they pass the cost on to consumers.
Off grid is already more reliable than the grid, and the price of it keeps halving. At the same time, extreme weather events keep increasing the cost of the grid and lowering its reliability.
If the power company would bury their lines, then all of these issues would go away, but that will never happen with our current political system.