The centralized grid is going to stay regardless of how many homeowners buy powerwalls; only so much can be buffered on the consumption side. Because another thing this article doesn't address is the fact residential power use occupies a mere 18% [1] of power consumption. Commercial is only 12%.[1]
Maybe you could store enough energy to run your datacenter overnight. I'm speculating, but powering a chip fab or even a machine shop on batteries seems infeasible.
But, I agree that there is a major imbalance and generation/storage on the consumption side would help correct that. Reduced need for peak generation --> greater net efficiency.
Comments
The centralized grid is going to stay regardless of how many homeowners buy powerwalls; only so much can be buffered on the consumption side. Because another thing this article doesn't address is the fact residential power use occupies a mere 18% [1] of power consumption. Commercial is only 12%.[1]
Maybe you could store enough energy to run your datacenter overnight. I'm speculating, but powering a chip fab or even a machine shop on batteries seems infeasible.
But, I agree that there is a major imbalance and generation/storage on the consumption side would help correct that. Reduced need for peak generation --> greater net efficiency.
[1]: http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=447&t=1