National Grid Prices Are Going Up 🔌

That is what is in the news today, citing the rising cost transformers, equipment and maintence of the grid. After decades of fairly stagnent electricity growth, it seems like the past few years since the pandemic, electricity demand has surged as the demand for ever growing computer power, electric cars, heat pumps and other technologies have increased the amount of demand on both local and regional grids.

At some point, we all knew electricity demand would increase. Efficency gains, often unpredicted offset the increase demand from servers and other technologies in the 1990s through the 2010s. And none of us can know for sure what brilliant energy saving solutions inventors supported by government investment will come up with. But suddenly in a world of electrification of automobiles, buses, and heat pumps, it seems like demand is only going to go up.

It doesn’t help that Washington is putting all of it’s chips in on fossil fuels. While I always thought the goals of 100% renewable energy by 2035 was laughable, we shouldn’t be moving away from renewables when demand is surging, and we need to diversify. At some point the fracking revolution is going to peter out and the impacts on climate change are only increasing. Too many renewables, too quickly can push up the price of electricity – but not adding enough and investing in innovation also will push up the price of electricity.

Truth is future demand is quite unpredictable. Is the AI Boom going to bust? How much more data processing capacity does the world need? Seriously, I can’t figure out much of a use for AI beyond cute parlor tricks like shitty canned text writing and meme generation. AI is pretty bad at what it does. Electric cars and heat pumps require more electricity, but they also will become more efficent over time, as will buildings as their upgraded and insulated better. Nobody knows how much industry there will be in in ten years from now, how many jobs, or how much growth will be. With all the baby boomers retiring, it’s possible energy demand will actually fall when they’re not consuming nearly as many services or products. We don’t know.

Another possibility is that more and more people will start generating and storing electricity on site. People make fun of solar, describing it as woke technology. But those modern hybrid inverters and solar panels are remarkably inexpensive now and simple to install and set up. Battery capacity with lithium ion phosphate technology gets cheaper, safer and simpler to use every year. Off-grid is no longer just for remote cabins and homesteads, and it’s quite possible that within a few years residential grid usage – and even commercial usage may fall if more facilities create and store their own energy on site. We just don’t know.