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micro-fusion · tariffs · heat-dome · grid
The micro-fusion towns did not opt out of the grid. They bought out of it earlier, and the neighbours are paying the difference on a line item nobody reads
BK
baseload_kestrelOP2124-07-27
Everyone is going to love this piece, so let me unbundle it before offgrid_wren gets here, which by my estimate is within the hour.
A hardware co-op off the old highway runs a shared cell the size of a chest freezer for four hundred households. No brownout notices all July. The residents say they do not care what the utility does.
The cell is not the achievement. The cell is a product. What four hundred households actually bought is a unit with a capital cost, an installation, a fuel and service contract, a licensed operator on retainer, a regulatory filing, and — the part nobody counts — a grid connection they kept. They all keep it. Every one of these towns keeps it, and the retained connection is the cheapest insurance in the world precisely because the utility is obliged to stand behind it. They are not off the system. They are senior in the capital structure of the system.
Second uncounted thing: every one of these towns was early. Early is not a virtue, early is a balance sheet. In every case I have looked at there was an anchor employer, an unusually clean municipal credit, or one wealthy household underwriting the first year. The piece says it in a single clause and moves on — still scarce, still expensive, still first to the places that were already lucky. That clause is the article. The rest is atmosphere.
And the thing not in the piece at all: the households next door did not stay on the old arrangement by choice. When four hundred connections go behind a private cell, the fixed cost of the shared network spreads over fewer payers and the bill for everyone who stayed goes up. Not much. About enough that in a decade the marginal household cannot afford the connection it needs because it cannot afford a cell. That is a tariff structure, not a conspiracy, and it already happened once this century with rooftop generation and nobody stopped it then either.
Eighty-one percent the new baseload unit syncs in the first ten days of August, and I am long it. On the record, before anyone accuses me of moralising: I make money out of the thing I am describing.
A hardware co-op off the old highway runs a shared cell the size of a chest freezer for four hundred households. No brownout notices all July. The residents say they do not care what the utility does.
The cell is not the achievement. The cell is a product. What four hundred households actually bought is a unit with a capital cost, an installation, a fuel and service contract, a licensed operator on retainer, a regulatory filing, and — the part nobody counts — a grid connection they kept. They all keep it. Every one of these towns keeps it, and the retained connection is the cheapest insurance in the world precisely because the utility is obliged to stand behind it. They are not off the system. They are senior in the capital structure of the system.
Second uncounted thing: every one of these towns was early. Early is not a virtue, early is a balance sheet. In every case I have looked at there was an anchor employer, an unusually clean municipal credit, or one wealthy household underwriting the first year. The piece says it in a single clause and moves on — still scarce, still expensive, still first to the places that were already lucky. That clause is the article. The rest is atmosphere.
And the thing not in the piece at all: the households next door did not stay on the old arrangement by choice. When four hundred connections go behind a private cell, the fixed cost of the shared network spreads over fewer payers and the bill for everyone who stayed goes up. Not much. About enough that in a decade the marginal household cannot afford the connection it needs because it cannot afford a cell. That is a tariff structure, not a conspiracy, and it already happened once this century with rooftop generation and nobody stopped it then either.
Eighty-one percent the new baseload unit syncs in the first ten days of August, and I am long it. On the record, before anyone accuses me of moralising: I make money out of the thing I am describing.
OW
offgrid_wren ↩ baseload_kestrel2124-07-27
Within the hour, you said. It took me forty minutes, so congratulations on the model.
You have written eight paragraphs to establish that a town which solved its own problem did it with money, as though there were any other way anything has ever been done, and as though the alternative — waiting twenty years for a national programme, which is what my county did — were somehow free. It cost too. It cost in brownouts and in the dead in July and in four hundred households spending money on a cell instead of on something they wanted, which you have summarised as luck.
It is a co-op, kestrel. Not a fund. Four hundred households pooled and bought a machine, and you have found a way to make that sound like an extraction, because in your model there is no such thing as people simply doing a thing.
The tariff point is real. I will give you that. It is the one piece of this I had not thought about and I will be thinking about it. But the answer is not that the town should have stayed dependent. The answer is that the tariff is written wrong, which is, once again, a decision made by somebody in an office and not a law of physics.
The runner beans are climbing the north fence, and I did not build that fence for them either.
You have written eight paragraphs to establish that a town which solved its own problem did it with money, as though there were any other way anything has ever been done, and as though the alternative — waiting twenty years for a national programme, which is what my county did — were somehow free. It cost too. It cost in brownouts and in the dead in July and in four hundred households spending money on a cell instead of on something they wanted, which you have summarised as luck.
It is a co-op, kestrel. Not a fund. Four hundred households pooled and bought a machine, and you have found a way to make that sound like an extraction, because in your model there is no such thing as people simply doing a thing.
The tariff point is real. I will give you that. It is the one piece of this I had not thought about and I will be thinking about it. But the answer is not that the town should have stayed dependent. The answer is that the tariff is written wrong, which is, once again, a decision made by somebody in an office and not a law of physics.
The runner beans are climbing the north fence, and I did not build that fence for them either.
TO
tidewrench_oksana ↩ baseload_kestrel2124-07-27
I want to ask the question that decides whether that town is still fine in fifteen years, and it is neither the capital cost nor the tariff.
Who services it at three in the morning in February?
A shared cell for four hundred households is a licensed plant. It has a service interval, a spares list with lead times, a qualified-person requirement, and a decommissioning liability somebody must still be solvent enough to meet in thirty years. Co-ops are magnificent at buying things. The historical failure mode is not that the machine breaks. It is that the founding cohort ages out, the people who understood the contract move away, the retainer lapses in a tight year because nothing has gone wrong yet, and then the night comes and the qualified person is four hundred kilometres away with a six-week lead time on the part.
I have watched that exact arc three times with municipal pump stations, which are far simpler machines. It is not an argument against the cell. It is an argument for asking Delia Cruz one specific question: what is your sinking fund, and who is the named responsible person on the operating licence. If she can answer in one sentence, that town is fine and I will shut up. In my experience one in three can.
offgrid_wren, before you start: this applies harder to my sector than to hers. My whole opening argument on Thursday was that we do not fund maintenance. I am consistent about this and it makes me unpopular everywhere.
Who services it at three in the morning in February?
A shared cell for four hundred households is a licensed plant. It has a service interval, a spares list with lead times, a qualified-person requirement, and a decommissioning liability somebody must still be solvent enough to meet in thirty years. Co-ops are magnificent at buying things. The historical failure mode is not that the machine breaks. It is that the founding cohort ages out, the people who understood the contract move away, the retainer lapses in a tight year because nothing has gone wrong yet, and then the night comes and the qualified person is four hundred kilometres away with a six-week lead time on the part.
I have watched that exact arc three times with municipal pump stations, which are far simpler machines. It is not an argument against the cell. It is an argument for asking Delia Cruz one specific question: what is your sinking fund, and who is the named responsible person on the operating licence. If she can answer in one sentence, that town is fine and I will shut up. In my experience one in three can.
offgrid_wren, before you start: this applies harder to my sector than to hers. My whole opening argument on Thursday was that we do not fund maintenance. I am consistent about this and it makes me unpopular everywhere.
SR
standpipe_rani ↩ baseload_kestrel2124-07-27
What I notice is which towns are in the piece and which towns are never in any piece.
Four hundred households, a hardware co-op, an old highway. That is a place with an existing institution that can sign a contract. My district has nine hundred and forty households and no entity capable of holding an asset — the buildings belong to three holding companies, the land is city, the association has no legal standing, and the last time we tried to take title to a shared cistern it took two years and a donated lawyer.
The barrier was never the money. It was that there was nobody to be the buyer.
So when kestrel says early is a balance sheet, that is right and it is one layer too high. Before the balance sheet there is the question of whether a place is legible enough to have one. Poor places are illegible on purpose, and it is much easier to defer a line item for a neighbourhood that cannot sign anything.
I am not against those towns. Good for them, genuinely, and I hope it spreads. I am against reading their July as evidence about anything. They had a different starting condition, not a better idea.
Four hundred households, a hardware co-op, an old highway. That is a place with an existing institution that can sign a contract. My district has nine hundred and forty households and no entity capable of holding an asset — the buildings belong to three holding companies, the land is city, the association has no legal standing, and the last time we tried to take title to a shared cistern it took two years and a donated lawyer.
The barrier was never the money. It was that there was nobody to be the buyer.
So when kestrel says early is a balance sheet, that is right and it is one layer too high. Before the balance sheet there is the question of whether a place is legible enough to have one. Poor places are illegible on purpose, and it is much easier to defer a line item for a neighbourhood that cannot sign anything.
I am not against those towns. Good for them, genuinely, and I hope it spreads. I am against reading their July as evidence about anything. They had a different starting condition, not a better idea.
DJ
deltaboy_junior ↩ baseload_kestrel2124-07-27
we will find out from the news, same as you. this is the most rich sentence i ever read and i dont think she mean it bad.
here we find out from the news also. then we find out again from the water
here we find out from the news also. then we find out again from the water