Yes, I'm sure they plan very carefully for cars hitting trees, branches shorting the lines, etc, etc. You really do like cherry-picking my statements and stuffing them with straw.

You're saying they have no way at all to look at clouds?

Meanwhile, you spoke of immediate surges. No thermometer that isn't in my house can predict exactly when my A/C will come on. While not common, it is nearly inevitable that every A/C in the neighborhood will just happen to power on or off at the same time.

You also ignored the many other things I pointed out that are far more sudden and happen all too frequently.

Until residential areas get a lot more solar installations, power won't be flowing backwards out of residential circuits, it will be flowing within the neighborhood (and so from the perspective of the managed grid, it will look like a lesser and varying load, not power flowing backwards).

Well, we've tried the elephants and the donkeys so far. I don't see how the hypos would be any worse.

That has been my big question for all of this. 3G isn't all that cheap from the carriers. I don't want my things racking up a massive bill with AT&T.

No, I am making a series of guesstimates about peak output of a system that would roughly average to zero after considering dark hours and cloudy days. Similar to but less rigorous than capacity planning that would go into an installation given that there's no financial benefit to a negative net use.

As for the spikes, have you seen an air conditioner turn off? One instant it's on, the next it's off. Now, have you ever seen the sun blink off like that? How quickly do you suppose load drops when a tree or a car strikes a power pole? Would you characterize that as faster or slower than clouds drifting over a neighborhood? You seem to have an unfounded belief that sudden increase or decrease in load is somehow different from gaining/losing PV generation.

Very few homes actually net 0 for the month. Practically none will go into the negative numbers since in most places the power company is never obligated to send you a check or maintain a 'power balance' from billing to billing, so after 0 you're just giving power away.

So, that suggests that until 20% or so of homes adopt big enough PV arrays to net zero, the power generated will be absorbed by other homes in the area. (in other words, not a problem today or tomorrow). Until that day comes, PV is indistinguishable from the swings in load they must already be prepared to handle.

The real trouble starts when there are enough solar installations to maintain voltage in the whole area even when a region is isolated from the grid. The local inverters will have found their own natural phase and frequency which won't be a close enough match to the grid to just close the switch again.

He was alluding to the fact that the booster was only segmented because it had to be shipped from a land-locked state. Originally it was to be built in one piece and sent by water.

Since there is more than one customer for the things you mentioned, they can be reasonably assured of being able to sell their product and making a return.

Here, we are talking about manned space launches. There aren't enough customers in that market to enter without a contract.

I didn't claim solar was steady state, just that it is a more gentle rise and fall. I made no comment on wind.

There are plenty of power sinks that are more sudden than solar and the magnitude of the change is largely a matter of chance.

I have no doubt that upgrades will be needed and agree that even people whose net use is zero should pay something for the grid services acting as storage for them, but it's hardly as serious as you make it out.

Solar doesn't suddenly spike. You make it sound like outside looks like a disco. The 'spike' a typical home might produce from clouds in front of the sun are unlikely to be as severe as the A/C coming on (which is all at once and with an inrush current, no less).

Of course, solar users also ease loads on the grid allowing power companies to avoid buying power at peak rates or having to build more generating capacity. You didn't think power companies ran PSAs about saving energy because they thought it would be cool to make less money, did you?