Wheres the correlation between shortage of electricity and living on Mars. Are we going to use cable grid - to supply them ? Shortage of electricity - indeed is one of those, insolvable problems. The real problem there will be - reproduction (In outer space it's even worse), since the lower gravity deforms the embryo. (Curious about the solution for that one, maybe someone already came up with it already, dunno tho) From the investors perspective , one day - gonna be an interesting day, when folks there decide to declare their independence & screw you earth.
Do you really want to be nagged to do the dishes on a trip that takes 6 months to complete? NASA won't send a lifecraft to save you. One long cable from earth to mars. 240V AC should be enough.
If those power companies just let all the households who have invested $10K upwards in solar energy solution to be self-sufficient, there would be none of these "energy crisis". Right now, a household invests in an adequate solar energy solution is more than capable of providing the entire household of their year-around electricity consumption needs providing they are located in the most optimum exposure and is frugal in their electricity consumption. Right now they are prevented from doing so. Instead they are forced to still have to buy electricity from the power company to displace their usage of the greener solar power source. "Over-reliance" on renewable energy is the whole idea of going green! Of course it eats up the profit of those power monopolies but that's the direction of where we are going, gradually weaning off the polluting energy source and getting replaced by renewable cleaner energy source. With any changes, there is always going to be pain in the adjustment process that's inevitable. But if you don't want to endure the pain, then there is no going forward, there is no progress and you are going to be left behind. One day United States is going to find that the whole world is using renewable energy and at lower cost because they have decided to bite the bullet and embrace the change while United States is still stuck on high cost obsolete polluting energy source simply because those dinosaur power company monopolies refuse to change all for the sake of making profit.
I don't think there is a California State Law that forbids setting up an independent solar power generator system, just like hooking up an emergency gas power generator. But there are several obstacles: 1. The solar company sold us the idea that we can "generate income" by selling the excess electricity back to the power company to entice us to install expensive solar generator. Same as selling options to "generating" income. The reality is most home solar wasn't generating enough electricity, the solar companies always over estimated the efficiency and the amount generated. 2. The power companies are forced by state law to "buy it" so they artificially depress the price they paid to get our excess, if any. 3. Battery storage is still prohibitively expensive and we, after paying through the nose for solar, can ill afford to buy enough lithium ion battery pack for storing our excess electricity, if any. The solution many used is what someone pointed out in the previous post, buy a cheap gas power generator for days like this, total cost is a few thousand max including installation. I ran through the numbers when investigated solar + battery as a separate system and decided it wasn't worth it.
RV's are most the reason for the parabolic move. (Note I had an RV years ago and we called them Genercrap which they were then, guess they improved? Onan was the one to have and I believe still the one) And hard hitting hurricanes such as Andrew, Katrina, Michael, Harvey and so-called Nor'Easter SuperStorm Sandy got many thinking hey there might be another one soon. And not hey power company might black us out.
You’d have a point if if all those households you mention had robust battery storage. If they did, they could sell stored power to the electric utility during peak demand hours and make $$$. You don’t appear to understand how peak power demand works. Loads at 10:00 am are quite manageable - it’s the peak loads between 5:00pm until 10:00pm that stresses a power grid, especially where air conditioning is prevalent. And household rooftop photovoltaics aren’t going to cut it during a heatwave at peak demand. Nope. There is no US law that “makes” someone buy power from a utility. Quite the opposite - million of Americans have “gone off the grid”.
I'm all for that as long as someone is standing by to push Chumpie into the first open grave available for all the lives he cost.
Gone off the grid is good. This is what we want. Selling back power is not a priority; being self-sufficient is.
I do agree the solar company has not been completely ethical in describing their products' capabilities and many times exaggerated and over-emphasized the "money-making" capability from their products which is not really true especially given the positions taken by the power companies. Considering the low-balling tactics that power companies take in terms of buying back excess power, battery storage should be bought just enough to store for a rainy day (pun intended) or peak demand and not really for selling back to the power companies. Gas is not really any better than solar in generating power. We had a choice between using gas or electricity to heat up our pool this summer and ultimately we still went with electricity over gas as gas is still expensive given the consumption needs.