https://www.utilitydive.com/news/sunrun-battery-attachment-rate-solar-earnings/757187/

Funny that I sit here right now running of solar and battery b/c our power is out again for the second day this week.

On the one hand, this is great. On the other hand this is horrible.

Great: it's increasing capacity across the grid and when it goes on the roof and attaches to your house, it bypasses most environmental review. Hopefully we'll see more laws making it illegal to zone against rooftop solar (I believe some HOAs still have prohibitions in covenants).

Horrible: it's the classic "private luxury, public squalor." People with big battery banks and private pools are not as invested in maintaining public power systems and public pools. It's also horrible since if we took all the money that's being poured into home solar+battery and put it into grid upgrades and grid-scale facilities, we would get a lot more for the same amount of money. I believe home-based systems cost something like 2-3X what centralized systems cost on a per watt basis.

Of course, right now I am producing 3X what I'm using, but there is no way for me to share the power off my roof during a power outage since that would electrocute our friends working to restore shore power. So the irony is that I can only share our excess power if the grid is functioning properly and people don't truly need my juice.