Recently there have been quite a few debates on the subject of solar/alternative-energy users feeding power back onto the grid .. and the latest story seems to be that power companies are attempting to fight off the impending doom of self-powered individuals by stating that 'it costs too much to update the grid to allow everyone to push to it, so these alternative-energy users should pay a hefty fee to upgrade the grid'.
Well, this story seems to point to the solution: put batteries in all the things! If its going to cost more to feed power back to the grid, then why not just make everything in your home store its own local power supply ..
To some extent, I'm already doing this - pretty much every electronic device in my house uses rechargeable batteries. So maybe the campaign by the utilities against feeding power to the grid is going to have the effect of pushing everyone to localise their power needs even further, and instead of pushing excess to an ageing, antiquated monopoly, us alternative-energy freaks are instead going to foster the creation of a heftier market for battery-protected devices. (I'd be quite happy to run my TV on battery power, if it only had one in it, like my laptops and cell phones and toothbrushes do ..)
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Recently there have been quite a few debates on the subject of solar/alternative-energy users feeding power back onto the grid .. and the latest story seems to be that power companies are attempting to fight off the impending doom of self-powered individuals by stating that 'it costs too much to update the grid to allow everyone to push to it, so these alternative-energy users should pay a hefty fee to upgrade the grid'.
Well, this story seems to point to the solution: put batteries in all the things! If its going to cost more to feed power back to the grid, then why not just make everything in your home store its own local power supply ..
To some extent, I'm already doing this - pretty much every electronic device in my house uses rechargeable batteries. So maybe the campaign by the utilities against feeding power to the grid is going to have the effect of pushing everyone to localise their power needs even further, and instead of pushing excess to an ageing, antiquated monopoly, us alternative-energy freaks are instead going to foster the creation of a heftier market for battery-protected devices. (I'd be quite happy to run my TV on battery power, if it only had one in it, like my laptops and cell phones and toothbrushes do ..)