admiralteal, 1 year ago

Australia has a lot of distributed grid capacity. Some of the highest rooftop solar numbers (to the point where curtailment is an issue). And this stuff with vehicle-to-load/vehicle-to-grid capacity is a possible way to continue doubling down on that stuff.

Saul Griffith talked about some of it in this somewhat-recent interview.

It's a weird market. If they play their cards right, Australia -- particularly because of its mineral resources -- will become a huge part of a green energy transition. Though they'll have to commit quite seriously to make it happen.

Decentralizing the grid is a great way to build resilience. It saves lives. But it's tough when you have private capital natural monopolies, especially vertically-integrated ones (as is the norm in the US), in charge of operation. You have to align incentives towards lowering cost, improving resiliency, and meeting growth. Rather than incentivizing giant, absurd capital investment, discouraging maintenance and infrastructure, and pitting the utilities against consumers.

I can't help but smell an orphan crushing machine somewhere in this story. Or maybe just a regular old BEV ad. But this kind of stuff really does need to be the future if we want our species to survive.