alt Hacker News> First, the batteries took the place of a generator,
The generator would have been yours, and only used for your needs. It wouldn't have involved any data collection, the uncompensated use of your bandwidth, or exposed you to so much liability.
> Part of the program is that in case of storm warnings or other risk it actually switches out from the VPP for the duration to protect you instead.
They may do this, but by their own terms they aren't obligated to. The good news is that in the event where a cable is cut/down and they lose the ability to siphon power from your battery you will be sure to get the benefit of whatever power it has stored. It's also nice that they compensate you for the power that they draw, but again, all of that energy is already theirs by right.
The state contracts them to provide the people with reliable power and you pay them for that service. They should be expected to reasonably deliver that in exchange. Installing their equipment inside people's homes can be part of how they manage that responsibility, but it's still their responsibility and they should compensate you for that and not expect you to pay them even more for the privilege of paying their costs and accepting liability.
> it was a genuine win/win even before getting into softer factors like reducing usage of fossil fuel peaker plants that a lot of us do really care about.
It's honestly not a bad idea conceptually. It seems like it can have real benefits, but the terms are exploitative. At a minimum they should be obligated to prioritize your power needs above others when it comes to energy stored in the battery on your premises, and they should be obligated to compensate you for power taken, as well as for providing them storage, access, security and bandwidth for their equipment, and they should also assume responsibility for any damage/harm their equipment causes to your property and anyone one on your property as long as it wasn't caused by tampering or improper use. Ideally, you'd also be able to opt out of all personal data collection (not related directly to the use/monitoring of their hardware), and any loss/theft/damage would be covered by their insurance (provided their equipment was reasonably secured), otherwise they'd have to pay you enough to get additional insurance coverage of your own.
I'm glad it worked out for you when you had it, but unless the terms were very different from what they are today you were absolutely cheated and being taken advantage of, even if you didn't feel that way.
Replies
> the generator would have been only used for your needs.
God forbid we live in a world where sharing and helping others is OK.
>The generator would have been yours, and only used for your needs.
It also would have required constant testing and cost whether I used it or not, with no ROI whatsoever beyond power backup, a lot more noise/local pollution/size, storage of significant amounts of extra fuel (be it propane or diesel) with the resulting challenges, etc. Maybe the best bet and the one I was most strongly considering would be a PTO generator I could hook my tractor up to, then I'd get all the engine testing and fuel refreshing/storage "for free" on some level, in that I run the tractor anyway. But that still would have been dead cost most of the time, and on a basic but real human physical level, having to go out to the barn to hook things up and unhook them in the heart of winter wasn't a delightful prospect either. Propane doesn't go bad and maybe I could have finagled that into my heating system for a unified tank instead of multiple but that's still its own complexity, and place to house it and so on. And in retrospect that would have reduced the value of the heat pumps I've done since.
Batteries are nice. And I'm glad it wasn't only used for my needs. I like helping my neighbors, my town, and my state.
>It wouldn't have involved any data collection, the uncompensated use of your bandwidth, or exposed you to so much liability.
I'm definitely sensitive to data collection, and full local control has always been something I've cared a lot about and is a significant consideration going forward. But I've got the PW isolated on its own VLAN going through my OPNsense router, and the granularity of its perspective is I think pretty course. Given what I'm running I just don't think there's a whole lot, if anything, it can glean the power company couldn't already, it's pretty out there on the master panel so it doesn't even see just the house, use from the barn and office and so on is all mixed into the signal. Taking into account what was on offer and far tighter finances at the time I think I did the best I could.
This is also a case where I think some level of regulated, low granularity population data may be pretty important in terms of infra planning our shift to only renewables and a smarter grid. I'll have to keep thinking about that though.
>They may do this, but by their own terms they aren't obligated to
I'd have to double check if my terms from back then are different then what they offer now, but ultimately the fact remains that across hundreds of outages and blips over 8-9 years with a couple of devastating floods and storms in the mix it has never been an issue even once. These aren't megacorps, utilities here are pretty tiny by national standards and pretty responsive (as well as regulated).
>The state contracts them to provide the people with reliable power and you pay them for that service. They should be expected to reasonably deliver that in exchange. Installing their equipment inside people's homes can be part of how they manage that responsibility, but it's still their responsibility and they should compensate you for that and not expect you to pay them even more for the privilege of paying their costs and accepting liability.
GMP has I believe something like 10,000 miles of pole distribution lines for 265000 customers, but of course those customers are not evenly distributed, there are towns around here with literally double digits of people. And it's the biggest one, there are tons of smaller outfits and coops etc. "Reliable" doesn't mean "perfect" and never has, that's just not possible at the prices people can afford here.
I mean really, on some level everyone needs to be ready to contribute in general for life here sometimes. State is responsible for roads and such too, but if it's bad I and others get out our chainsaws (now electric! electric chainsaws are AWESOME) and winches and so on and get to work. State police provide coverage and will respond eventually, but it might be 30-120 minutes (or more sometimes). I've taken first responder courses, folks volunteer for fire departments and other roles, folks have guns. Others who can't do any of that can still bring people out clearing trees hot food and drinks and general support and that's a serious contribution and appreciated too. Dunno, not saying utilities shouldn't keep pushing hard and being pushed, nobody wants to be a floor mat, but I feel like they've been pretty solid and they really have been trying hard over the last few decades.
>It's honestly not a bad idea conceptually. It seems like it can have real benefits, but the terms are exploitative.
Some of your list feels like reasonable avenues for improvement, others feel totally unrealistic to a degree that it'd really end of restricting who could benefit. I don't think the juice would be worth the squeeze there. But BYOB is an option with a self-consumption plan, where rather then supplying power back you instead basically get disconnected from the grid during peak events, see [0]. The terms and conditions aren't nothing, but power infrastructure is pretty serious business and I'm not sure it's reasonable to expect the utility not to want some pretty clear control and terms around it. And if you want out of it looks pretty reasonable, 30 days notice and you pay back a prorated portion of upfront incentives and that's that.
Also, "bandwidth", seriously? I'm looking at Netflow for the electric infra VLAN and it's like, 1.5-4 kbps, with occasional spikes to... 25 kbps for like a second. Yeah we're the boonies and progress is slow, but nice outfits like NEK Broadband [1] have been working hard and we've got fiber now, and of course Starlink is an option, sometimes even cellular. But even on crappy old 5/1 ADSL like I had to live with for 20 years it's not much. Come on. Rural America isn't that far back, we've gotten a ways beyond 14.4k modems.
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0: https://greenmountainpower.com/rebates-programs/home-energy-...
1: https://get.nekbroadband.org/