In California specifically, IOUs like PG&E run off of a cost plus model on T&D and make no profit on generation (legacy of Enron) - surprise surprise T&D is growing by a CAGR of ~12% every year. Abhorrent set of incentives and the CPUC generally rubber stamps all of it.
> PG&E reports it made a $2.24 billion dollar profit last year — a 24% increase from the year before.
> In a call with investors, PG&E credits last year's rate increases with boosting its bottom line and said it expects to remain profitable through 2028.
> "Shareholders are pocketing money based on record rate increases," said Mark Toney, executive director of the non-profit TURN, the Utility Reform Network.
> Toney said PG&E is planning to ask state regulators to approve more rate hikes in the future.
> "PG&E has currently sitting on the desk of the California Public Utilities Commission, no less than 12 separate proposals for increases – twelve," he said.
Highly controversial for sure. “The Rickover Effect” also a good choice. Dry, long, but full of great anecdotes. All that said it’s tough to argue with his accomplishments. First to a productive/working nuclear reactor, in the hardest application possible (submarine), in government (not the private sector). And starting significantly behind… It’s hard not to be inspired by what he accomplished.
I haven’t seen any in depth analysis but I suspect that it would increase electrical usage and lower natural gas usage (at the home), which is what I suspect this rate reform partly may be targeting. CA’s astronomically high per kWh rates create an informative disincentive to electrify homes, even when the overall efficiency of the electric machines is much higher.
Optimism is basically the same as poor risk assessment. Risk assessment, aka spending time analyzing everything that could go wrong ahead of time. Show me an optimist who does that and I will show you a pessimist.
But the dominant trait at least for serial entrepreneurs might still be pessimism at the core, because it requires willingness to fail. You need to be pessimistic enough to expect to fail many times as a normal course of action until you luck out. If you don't expect to fail then the first large failure becomes the final blow.
This is the same kind of error people make when they assume an introvert must have poor social skills, even though that's often not the case.
There's a meme/comic that goes like this:
Panel 1, "Nothing really matters": a little creature in a void, sad. "What people think nihilism is."
Panel 2, "Nothing really matters": the same creature surrounded by rainbows and puppies, happy. "What nihilism really is."
In the same way that recognizing nothing really matters in our march toward entropy means we can get on with choosing our own path in life, recognizing the pitfalls of a potential path means we can walk it in confidence.
I know there be dragons, and I'm going to date them all.
In my experience people are inaccurately pessimistic, in part due to a lack of imagination. So risk assessment that's more accurate will present as more optimistic.
I would say it depends on where you live. The grid in CA has (in some parts) not been reliable for 5+ years. To Chris' point below though, it's not really relevant because gas furnaces need electricity to operate, too.
The issue isn't that an open standard for fully variable speed isn't possible, the issue is that nearly all of the manufacturers to date have considered this proprietary (as they want to own the entire ecosystem from controls > equipment) and a purposefully boxing Nest, Ecobee, etc, out of being able to control it in order to sell more thermostats and trying to capture more value.
Only problem, their thermostats and apps really suck.
I've used the PAC-US444CN-1 (at our house) and fully native Mitsubishi thermostat/controls (at our in-laws). The converter is better than a simple 2-stage set up but is still not as good, in my experience, as the fully native one.
It has to translate a 2-stage signal into a fully modulating output, and it still seems to do a lot more on & off with high fan speeds than I would like or would be most efficient (as an aside, yes I have verified that the dip switches are in the correct position on the converters).
On the other hand, the unit at my in-laws tends to blow gently but consistently which is both more comfortable and more efficient.
Ah, so close... the roofs in my area are all reddish-brown and a different color will clash with the local conservation area constraints. But maybe by the time I have to replace my roof (which is soon) they might have the right color.
Hum, thinking of it, there are solar panel exceptions to the constraints, as long as they are flat on the roof...
Big fan of your products :) Have bought a dozen of them personally.
From what I understand, excess solar is more common in markets that have asymmetric import/export prices, like Australia, that strongly incentivize self-consumption vs. exporting back to the grid. CA is likely to implement this with NEM 3.0 so we are likely to start seeing this shift in behavior in the US soon as well. Right now there isn't much of an economic incentive to do excess solar in markets with symmetric NEM compensation (I'm sure you know all of this).
Other problem we have in the US vs. AU is our cost of installation is so high that it makes oversizing systems somewhat cost prohibitive, which is what you'd need to do to get enough excess solar to charge an EV.
Third problem is where cars are parked during the day while the sun is shining, which may be tough for people who commute to work. Energy storage can obviously help here somewhat.
Nuclear reactors are expensive mostly because the regulatory requirements make them expensive. There is a lot of room for advanced nuclear (e.g. gen III reactors) that can address a lot of the problems and bring down the costs. Unfortunately, we don't have a clear regulatory pathway here yet, but there is some progress being made recently.
