Look who's going off grid!
 

Have you guys seen this?

Walmart, Safeway, Others Unplugging From Unreliable Power Grid | Off The Grid News

Best,
Rob

I wonder if they're really doing it for PR reasons.

I think it is a good idea for all these big companies. Eliminate one of their monthly expenses(electricity) by generating their own. I wonder what this will do for the cost of electricity for everyone else. it will be like postage stamps.

Personally I think it's an historical transition. If you plot how the grid started you'll see that was a transition too.
The industrial revolution was limited by where it could get energy from. The steam engine took over from streams and water wheels but the steam engine had a nasty habit of blowing up.
When Nicola Tesla invented the AC motor the world changed and the fight between Edison's DC grid and Westinghouse's AC grid was over because, along with the AC motor, AC could also be induced and that enabled it to be stepped up or down. Edison was finished!

The grid has several major flaws. First it is vulnerable to large scale failures, like we saw when a relay in Canada failed and the East Coast of the US went dark and of course there's terrorism. When the grid goes down the ability to pump fuel goes down, so we have a snowball rolling down hill.

We have relinquished so much of our lives to corporate machines that they now control us. We buy our food from a market, oil energy from a gas pump, our health from the pharmaceutical industry and the power to run our homes from a monopoly. When that happens we become prey and are controlled completely. How many of you remember the gas shortage of the mid 70's?

The logical solution for individuals is to divest from that control as much as possible and the way to do that is with autonomy.
When you put in an intertie system, you make the power and you personally get the benefit. Even better, the grid is stronger and less susceptible to single event catastrophes.

I'm happy to see anyone producing their own power to whatever degree, we all benefit.

Rob

AND HOW!

I'm not a doomsdayer, a prepper, or a nihilist, but the current state of our planet in general has to change. Tell me: does the holy dollar rule your life? It shouldn't.

I think this is partially an economic decision. The long run cost of PV is something like $.03/kWh, which is generally way below what anyone pays for electricity. On the flip side, if they store it, then use it, that's on the expensive side, at ~$.13c/kWh assuming they use LFP cells at $400/kWh and those can do the equivalent of ~3000 cycles to 100% dod before reaching 80% capacity.

Here's the kicker, they don't need to store all the energy they use. Just enough to run their facilities after the sun sets, which requires maybe a quarter of their total power use, or less if they bias energy use during the day time (for instance lowering the temperature in freezers during the day, etc...) and switch to more efficient lighting.

What this implies is that they could get their long run electricity costs down to something like 7-8c/kWh, or less if they continue to use their batteries until they get to ~30-50% capacity.

They may stay grid connected, because that provides back-up power, but they'll try to generate as much as they can themselves if there's a cost savings.

Hi,
What I do is let my off grid/intertie run things and only rely on the batts when there's a grid failure. This way I'm not running them into the ground.

Rob

Can't say I blame the businesses, my local PoCo makes a tidy 11% profit, in a monopolized market. My PoCo obviously recognizes the benefit of renewables, they have built 110MW of renewable energy generation facilities of their own. That being said, their solar facilities only create 0.06% of the energy they produce.

I'm fortunate that my PV system generates >50% of what I need...