- cross-posted to:
- nyt_gift_articles@sopuli.xyz
- cross-posted to:
- nyt_gift_articles@sopuli.xyz
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Interesting, as a Vermonter this is the first I’ve heard of this proposal, and I’m pleasantly surprised with GMP’s plan. I live somewhat out in the boonies, and experience power outages at least a few times every year, sometimes lasting a couple days, with one particularly bad winter storm leaving us without power for over a week (the old wood stove really came in handy then). I’d absolutely love to have a battery installed, if they ever offer it to me.
This would be nice because during bad winter storms the power can go out for days. Not really in town, but if you live in more rural areas it can be an issue.
You probably won’t get power for days from one of these unless you pair it with rooftop solar and (maybe) a community wind turbine supported microgrid
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Its filing asks the Vermont Public Utility Commission to authorize it to initially spend $280 million to strengthen its grid and buy batteries, which will come from various manufacturers.
Under the proposal, the company would initially focus on delivering batteries to its most vulnerable customers, putting some power lines underground and installing stronger cables to prevent falling trees from causing outages.
Utilities are spending tens of billions of dollars on strengthening grids and switching to cleaner forms of energy, often with the help of federal and state incentives.
A May report by the Brattle Group, a research firm based in Boston, concluded that utilities could save up to $35 billion a year if they invested in smaller-scale energy projects like home batteries and rooftop solar panels that can be built more easily and quickly.
Electricity rates nationwide increased about 25 percent in the last five years and are expected to continue to rise sharply as utilities seek to strengthen the grid and build new renewable energy projects.
Emily Fisher, executive vice president for clean energy and general counsel at the Edison Electric Institute, a utility trade organization, said Green Mountain’s proposal aligns with discussions throughout the industry about ways to respond to climate change and the results of extreme weather.
The original article contains 1,119 words, the summary contains 210 words. Saved 81%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
This seems like it would remove one of the barriers for entry from installing solar panels
Lack of batteries hasn’t really been a barrier; people generally sell excess power generated back to their utility during the day and use electricity from their utility at night.
Terms are almost always that the rate you get paid for generation is less than what you pay to have electricity delivered though
Ah, I’d had this impression from other conversations that batteries were half the cost of getting into solar, but perhaps that was for going off grid altogether (in which case I’d imagine the power company would want their battery back)
Yeah, if you want to go fully off-grid, it’s a lot more expensive; you need enough batteries to store full overnight power, and you need enough solar panels to charge them on a cloudy day in winter. It’s cheaper to do an on-grid system where you generate as much electricity as you use over the course of a year, which is a lot more common.
