As we have note many previous times the power generation and distribution system in the US is frozen in the late 19th century. Edison and Tesla would feel at home there. No first rate university has any focus on power systems. Power companies employ mediocre at best employees. Con Ed for example is no more than an ersatz Government entity. The "grid" lacks any realistic elements of a reliable network. They all have single points of failure. More than twenty years ago I move one of my companies from New Jersey to Prague to get a more reliable electrical source. NJ failed monthly!
The NY Times reports:
Seven months after workers finished installing solar panels atop the Garcia family home near Stanford University, the system is little more than a roof ornament. The problem: The local utility’s equipment is so overloaded that there is no place for the electricity produced by the panels to go. “We wasted 30,000-something dollars on a system we can’t use,” Theresa Garcia said. “It’s just been really frustrating.”
This problem is universal. The system is not a distributed fault tolerant system. It is run by a collection of generally mediocre people who have no idea what has changed in over a century. In contrast just look at the phone companies. Competition. There is no way we are going to be able to rely on electricity with this group of folks. The environmentalists are grossly clueless about what they propose.
Well we can always hope.
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