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.

Comments

Stop using lithium!

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, try to find something a little less toxic. You're going to destroy the environment.

Competing with government-sanctioned monopolies

[mi]

SolarCity claims its GridLogic program can provide electricity to communities and businesses for less than they pay for utility power

For decades we were told over and over, how the utility power is a "natural monopoly" and how, therefor, it can not be subject to competition...

and the facilities can still be connected to their area's utility power grid as an added backup.

This nod does not seem like anything more than a fig-leaf. Because, if I my campus or block or town can connect to a utility's grid, it can also connect to another town's grid — or simply that of a different commercial power-generation provider (solar or otherwise).

Either way, the myth of natural monopoly is crumbling.

Re:Competing with government-sanctioned monopolies

[mi]

That picture shows, how unpleasant it is to have cable running on poles instead of burying them underground. It is not about the ugliness of competition.

To stop the over crowding, power companies were forced to merge and de-clutter the streets.

Nonsense. Where there is one cable (whether on a pole or underground), there may as well be four or five — from competing companies.

I'd go further and suggest, gas- and water-pipes can compete too. If Tokyo has competing subway lines certainly NYC (or LA or other large cities) can have competing utilities...