I saw this pop up in the YouTube post-play grid a couple of days ago and didn't bother clicking, because so often after watching a climate-impact video, it'll suggest eight-year-old videos in said grid.
After living off of solar for a year and a half, the idea of going back to paying an absurd amount monthly is unpalatable. Even two years ago, when I bought my panels, each 100W panel cost less than the base fees before usage over two months. With 1200W installed, that's some 20 months to break even, and fees and rates have now gone up five times since I went off grid, meaning I'm in the black by now.
But seriously: Five rate increases in less than two years? This from a city-owned utility that generates and purchases fossil-fuel electricity.
Now, solar alone only does so much if one cares to do anything at night, and 600Ah of LFP cost twice what the panels did, and once I got the rest of the pieces together, I was at about $4,000. But that amount of battery allows me to deal with three days of clouds and rain, and I specced the solar to be able to completely charge my battery in a single sunny day.
I think the main problem is inertia. I was paying usually $60 per month for 20kWh. That's three fucking dollars per kWh. When people post on r/Austin about electric rate hikes and I point out the usury, I get brigaded by people saying it's somehow disingenuous to look at the whole bill and instead can only count power and distribution.
Which is fine, but I couldn't just pay the $15 in usage and keep getting service. So people bend themselves into pretzels to defend absurd pricing structures (there's of course a fair amount of "stop being poor, and things look reasonable ... bootstraps!")
Of course, going off-grid introduces new concerns. I have to lug my two batteries to a friend's place twice a year to keep them in balance by individually charging from mains (this is not an issue with a single battery, but 300Ah is about as much as I can lug). It's a bitch to disconnect them from the full system, and of course there are breakers and switches that need to be thrown such that I don't return to a charred shell of a van.
But I always chuckle when I see people talking on Reddit about power or internet being out. The tipping point for me to want to get off grid was what we lovingly call 2021's Snowmaggedon, that time where everyone not on a critical circuit was down for days instead of the advertised "rolling blackouts" -- and by days, for some it was nine; I was at the top of the bell curve with six.
And meanwhile, the empty skyscrapers downtown stayed on like a beacon in the night.
Not only is the grid expensive, not only is it polluting ... it's also really fucking expensive for what it is. Oh, and unreliable. Just what I'm looking for when highs don't break 20F and I'm boiling snow on my gas stove (I taught a neighbour how to light her stove manually; she'd never considered it) just to stay alive by bundling up.
People being unwilling to consider alternatives and look at ROI timelines because "that's work" just confuses me. I was paying $75 per month just to have access to electric and natural gas, and again, there have been several increases since. Granted, I do use diesel for heat (the heater uses about a cup an hour) as needed, because I'm input bound -- 1200W of solar that will never perform to top spec so produces about 6kWh per day doesn't solve that a space heater will burn through that in four hours.
We don't expect anyone laying cables for phone service anymore, and I'm of the same mindset for power at this point. Sure, building your own microgrid is a large upfront cost, but a lot of places (at least two years ago) were offering 0% financing for six months to a year, so "upfront" is squishy.
We put up with the state of the power industry and grid because we've been conditioned to believe there are no alternatives. And even five years ago, that was true -- rolling your own was prohibitively expensive for most. But you don't buy a house expecting a return in three months, so why does it persist that burning dinosaurs should only be compared on that timeframe?