Two from Volts: Hard Truth, Easier Truth

I haven't been listening to podcasts as much lately, but during and just before my recent trip I took in two from David Roberts' Volts.

I meant to write about the first one, The cure for misinformation is not more information or smarter news consumers. 

The guest is Samuel Bagg, University of South Carolina political scientist. Bagg argues that if you want to change minds, it's not about fact-checking and putting out better messaging: You have to change identities. “More than any particular institutional, technological, or educational reform, promoting a healthier democracy requires reshaping the social identity landscape that ultimately anchors other democratic pathologies.”

Now it's been too long since I listened to it, so I will just recommend it. I'm afraid he's correct.

I heard the other one yesterday on the train back from Chicago, and managed to take a few notes. It featured Saul Griffith, MacArthur fellow, engineer, and inventor. Founder and CEO of OtherLab. Part of Rewiring America. 

The podcast's title is not as provoking as the other one: What's the real story with Australian rooftop solar? 

But as with Bill McKibben's recent book Here Comes the Sun, it's full of good news about the future of solar, and in this case, specificaly roof-top solar. 

"In every single possible future of this planet, the cheapest electricity will always be your rooftop solar. I can't say it more clearly than that." Because there's not distribution involved. 

Despite the current partisanship associated with solar energy, "Eventually the economics will catch up with you people" [Americans]. He gave the example of just one family he knows saving $9,000 a year.

Solar as a primary source will just make sense, he said, for any country that's an importer of fossil fuels — which is 80% of countries. It already works at up to 36° latitude, and is getting more efficient and cheaper, the batteries are better, so 1 or 2° more are added to that efficiency line every year. (Sydney is at 36°). 45° south/north is likely the boundary. (Chicago and New York are 40–41°, Minneapolis is 45°.)

Maximize rooftop solar, he says, and back fill with other forms of noncarbon energy. That makes for the lowest cost system, with the highest use of wires.

At some point countries that export fossil fuels will have a problem because FFs are more expensive than solar. Exporters will have to force countries to take them.

Roberts asked about making initial solar installation cheaper for middle-income to poorer people. Isn't it a problem that as more (better-off) people move to rooftop solar, won't that make conventional electricity more expensive for the poorer people who remain to share the cost burden? Griffith's answer is an emphatic No:

The highest component of anyone's electricity bill is the cost of the distribution, which is the local poles and wires that move the electricity around. Those things don't have very high utilization, typically between 25 and 40%. Meaning, they're rated very high, as though every house has every light turned on at all times... If you do a whole lot more solar and a whole lot more batteries under the local substation, under the local distribution grid, you can probably double that utilization. If you double the utilization, the per-kilowatt-hour delivered cost of electricity will go DOWN. 

They ended by talking about what we need to do in our individual states within the U.S. to make this happen:

• Find your local AHJ (authority having jurisdiction). Changing state law to make permitting faster is the quickest method, but it may be a Public Utilities Commission, or something else. 
• Advocate for better permitting and interconnection. Making solar installation fast and connection automatic is the key. Rewiring America found that you only need 12 people at a Public Utilities Commission meeting to make a difference.
• Lower the cost of customer acquisition, so word of mouth takes over. In Australia that cost is $0 because people recommend it to their friends. In the U.S. it's a huge percent of the cost of solar installations.