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Elon Musk's SolarCity Offering To Build Cities, Businesses Their Own Grids
Lucas123 writes Rooftop solar distributor SolarCity announced a new service where it will build a centrally-controllable power grid for cities, business campuses and even islands. Marketing its GridLogic service by calling attention to the recent uptick in natural disasters and the extended power outages that resulted from them, SolarCity said its "microgrids" are fully independent power infrastructures fed by solar panels with lithium-ion backup batteries (courtesy of Tesla). SolarCity claims its GridLogic program can provide electricity to communities and businesses for less than they pay for utility power and the facilities can still be connected to their area's utility power grid as an added backup.
There is more than just a "green" reason to build local microgrids.
Energy Security and Grid Reliability are two.
The American electrical grid, built decades ago and in need of major upgrades, is acknowledged to be a problem moving forward with renewable energy. Utilities complain that they can't handle the load. As utilities whine about what solar and wind will do to their grids(while simultaneously poopooing renewables and how much power they can generate) SolarCity will build microgrids that will allow localized power generation and distribution, so the tender and fragile utilities-of-old won't have to be bothered by pesky solar derived electricity.
The American megagrids serve a purpose, and they should be upgraded, however we should be simultaneously building infrastructure than is localized and more robust.
Someone should not lost power because a tree fell on a line hundreds of miles away.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
Why are they using lithium batteries?
Because EVs use them, but when the EVs are done with the packs, the packs are still good for something.
The plan for Leaf packs was to use them for this purpose from day one. Why not Tesla? Hell, they might be able to get their hands on the Leaf packs cheap.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
1973 called, they want their solar power cost benefit analysis back.
Obviously there are still situations where solar is not ideal but there is a reason its one of the fastest growing energy sources. Things everyone should know:
-Solar panels collect back the power used to manufacture them in 1-4 years.
-Their useful lifespan is over 30 (approaching 50).
-If your roof gets sun more than half the days of the year, a solar array will pay itself back in under 15 years WITHOUT SUBSIDIES (I'm looking at about 12 for my array not including subsidies).
-Storage is indeed an issue, but that is the very issue that this plan is addressing!