Centralized electric production and long distance xmission are over. Distributed power is practical now. Barriers to adoption are low; Costs are already at parity and will only get cheaper in the next few years as adoption grows and technology improves..
If I have a natural gas fuel cell providing my baseline 5kw's 24 hours a day and a solar array on my roof providing me 3k peak watts during the day when I need the air conditioning and a used battery from my Leaf with 25kwh to smooth out my demand and my new Leaf's battery as another battery backup and I'm hooked to the intelligent grid we're spending billions on so my excess kw's can be fed into the grid, why do I need giant batteries at giant power stations generating giant AC over thousands of miles of giant xmission lines?
Is this a pipe dream? 50,000 stationary residential SOFC fuel cells in Japan. In the EU they've started field trials for the ene-farm program. For PV, 36 states are at grid parity. If you don't need to tie in and you're only running DC so you don't need inverters and you're only supplementing your baseline wattage, then the PV is really cheap including installation when compared to your electric utility. And you get the added extra benefit of not losing power several days a year due to weather. Seems like a no-brainer to me.
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Centralized electric production and long distance xmission are over. Distributed power is practical now. Barriers to adoption are low; Costs are already at parity and will only get cheaper in the next few years as adoption grows and technology improves.. If I have a natural gas fuel cell providing my baseline 5kw's 24 hours a day and a solar array on my roof providing me 3k peak watts during the day when I need the air conditioning and a used battery from my Leaf with 25kwh to smooth out my demand and my new Leaf's battery as another battery backup and I'm hooked to the intelligent grid we're spending billions on so my excess kw's can be fed into the grid, why do I need giant batteries at giant power stations generating giant AC over thousands of miles of giant xmission lines? Is this a pipe dream? 50,000 stationary residential SOFC fuel cells in Japan. In the EU they've started field trials for the ene-farm program. For PV, 36 states are at grid parity. If you don't need to tie in and you're only running DC so you don't need inverters and you're only supplementing your baseline wattage, then the PV is really cheap including installation when compared to your electric utility. And you get the added extra benefit of not losing power several days a year due to weather. Seems like a no-brainer to me.