Asking Santa for a few improvements.
Dear Santa:
For Christmas I’d like world peace, democracy, love, opportunity and happiness for all people. And continued scientific progress.
But if that’s too big an ask, how about a better, more market-driven grid?
Dave
Stocking stuffers
Please make cheap, permissionless plug-in solar happen in the U.S. And let it be a no-brainer (buy at Home Depot, plug it in) so millions of Americans can cut their electric bills 30% or more overnight. You may need to let some state legislators sit on your lap and tell them to support this.
Please make vehicle-to-home bidirectional charging happen, so we can ditch gas generators for home backup. The standards are in place and the hardware is ready (and cheap). But the major car companies are acting Grinch-ey about this, so you’ll have to let them sit on your lap, too.
Please help make the Australian free-midday-electricity experiment a success. I know it’s a long way from the North Pole, but try to encourage Australians to charge their cars during those mid-day hours when electricity is now free (11am-2pm). This will soak up that excess solar power… and can scale worldwide if it works!
Please help the Pakistanis build microgrids with all their new rooftop solar. Help them network all that off-grid capacity (30+ gigawatts) together so they can share it locally and have reliable power (which their legacy grid isn’t). This also could scale worldwide.
Please help the Brits stop wasting so much Scottish wind power. Go before Parliament (as the Duke of Sleighdon or Lord Gridley) and convince them to approve regional pricing so more big loads like data centers will get built in Scotland and soak up the excess.
Please share these two excellent bedtime stories with the kids of politicians everywhere. Then their kids can tell them what’s really happening: The Electric Slide and The Electro-Tech Revolution.
Bigger gift requests
Please consider launching your own distributed power plant. You could enroll ‘well-behaved’ home batteries everywhere, and then sell that virtual capacity into the grid during peaks, sharing the revenue with the host families as extra gifts. You just need an app, and a name for the network… Dasher? Blitzen?
Please make sure the AI grid build-out doesn’t break the bank. Help utilities boost network utilization (currently only 50-60% in the U.S.), rather than spend big on even more peak capacity just for data centers. Give out a lot of battery storage this year (even if the utilities have been bad… which they have) to increase supply and demand-side flexibility.
Please fix the utility business model where they only profit from capital spending. You’re good with operating efficiency, Santa; figure out a new model that incents utilities to invest in that rather than overbuilding capital assets (like new fossil-fueled power) we don’t even need.
Actually, just figure out how to break up those utility monopolies. Same as you broke up the Bell System in the 1980s when that kid asked you to. Distributed competition (solar and batteries, smart appliances) has finally arrived at the grid’s doorstep… it’s time for utilities to stop fighting it.
Please make power markets everywhere less political. You’re great with ‘hearts and minds,’ Santa. Make power markets everywhere more open like Texas, where clean energy is winning because it’s cheaper, better and way more efficient. Electrons are electrons.
Please make permitting easier. Transmission permitting. Grid interconnection permitting. Rooftop solar permitting. You see it all as you fly over, Santa. Help us cut through the red tape and just do what makes sense more quickly! You may need to let some senators sit on your lap for this.
Please help recruit the next generation of electricians. When you’re whispering in all those kids’ ears at the mall, tell them how good they are and then softly add ‘AI will never replace electricians.’
Please help the U.S. and Europe re-industrialize and bolster our supply chains. What lessons can we learn from you and the elves? Can you help us catch up with all the stuff happening in China?
And finally… I know the elves are busy, but maybe in January they could work on solid state transformers and batteries? The cost curves on batteries and power electronics are already amazing, but further breakthroughs will drive energy abundance we can only imagine right now.
Thanks again for anything you can do, Santa. I promise to be good better next year.
