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Tuna-Fishyesterday at 9:07 PM1 replyview on HN

> relationship between users' reward/punishment and the grid's health seems wildly disproportionate.

It's still much closer to the real costs for the grid operator than $/kWh. The fundamental problem that rooftop solar has revealed is that people think they are paying for the electricity, but they are not. Electricity is dirt cheap. Most of what they are paying for is the maintenance of the grid, and simple usage based billing crushes the system because of freeloader problem once rooftop solar is added.

Long term, the likely thing you pay for will be the size of the main fuse that connects you to the grid. Because that's the thing that scales with the costs you impose on the operator.


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namibjyesterday at 10:16 PM

Actually the local cost is not the fuse size, but how much smaller the first transformer after you could be if you weren't there. Though it's often more fair to determine such for each user; then take those as a relative scale, then split the transformer's actual TCO by the determined share sizes between the users. Because the first user needs the transformer to it's peak size; the second only by the instantaneous-added peak size, which is lower as they won't use it peak at the same time.

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