“From highly centralized to highly decentralized societies” describes the dramatic changes that will likely occur when photovoltaics (solar electricity from solar panels) reaches the key price point that many call “grid parity.” In short, Adam Smith’s famous “invisible hand” will take over and make electricity production highly localized. People will tend to generate their own power on their roofs. Burning coal far away to make electricity will dwindle, and that will be good: less CO2 and less reliance on centralized electricity generation with expensive, vulnerable distribution infrastructure. Highly centralized essentials of life are risky: if distribution breaks down for whatever reason, society is at risk. How can we live without electricity nowadays? Or food trucked in on highways? So I believe the future prospects for localized production of essentials like electricity are both bright, and highly desirable.
Essential to our ability to use electricity is its reliability and quality. In the U.S., electricity non-availability is rare and usually the result of unavoidable extreme weather. The quality of the electricity is also important in terms of the accuracy of the cycles per second of the alternating current and the voltage. These qualities are the result of a combination of a well-engineered distribution network combined with multiple generation plants capable of matching output with demand regardless of the time of day, day of the year, or outside weather conditions. For solar photovoltaic to replace this high-quality electricity provided through our electric utilities, it must also provide comparable reliability and quality any time in any weather. Ground-based solar photovoltaic has difficulty in this regard and will likely require some form of energy storage such as hydrogen to enable this to “replace” conventional power generation. This is not something likely to be done locally due to the seasonal and daily variation of ground solar insolation and the normal variation in power demand. The photovoltaic alternative is to place the solar arrays in space. See the video on this at spacesolarpower.us.
Yes, I agree that power quality is an issue. However I also maintain that it is not an *existential* issue. Space based PV would solve the intermittency problems but would be substantially more expensive that ground-based generation, hence will lag ground-based in adoption even if it can avoid failing to compete with ground-based entirely.
Any form of localized eco-electrical source is desirable — not just this sales pitch for domestic solar panels, but for example domestic wind turbines (which an acquaintance of mine is attempting to start up a business in). In all cases, however, this is not to replace the grid, but to supplement a reliable hazard tolerant grid.
On the larger scale, diversification of power plants that contribute to the grid, and reliability of the grid is key. One look at Tokyo last year after the Fukushima accident is enough to see how a major city can be so easily disrupted. This means a balance between nuclear, wind, solar, hydroelectric, geothermal and other energy sources that contribute to the grid. Large scale plants in remote unutilised regions.
I do not see how decentralization is as a rational on existential risk. However, diversification to eco-friendly sources of electricity is of course an existential topic — those measures which avoid eco-disasters and environmental tipping points.
I agree — sorry if it sounded like a sales pitch. In fact, I see it as an economic future fact, and make no judgments about particular companies (other than that the future is bright for PV even though the present is proving to be pretty lousy). Mr. Kerwick is correct that the grid will not become completely irrelevant, as distribution is still needed for times when the sun is not shining, wind not blowing, and so on. But certainly the existential risk of the grid going down will be mitigated even by intermittent solar or wind electricity.
Centralization is an existential risk because if the centralized resource stops working, there is no backup. If the resource is decentralized, it is fail soft.
I’m a bit lost here. How is centralized power an Existential risk. To me the existential risks we’re talking about only exists if they is collective and not individual — i.e. 100.0% of humanity dying rather than X% dying because food distribution didn’t reach them in time.
If the existential risk comes from a Seed AI spreading through the power system to acquire more resources to evolve faster, then, even if we were decentralized in terms of power, I think it will be unlikely that we’ll be disconnected from each other in terms of information (e.g. the Internet). So the AI entity will spread though our information connections and acquire our localized power sources.
The existential risk is in what happens if the centralized electricity goes off, for whatever reason? Or the centralized food distribution network stops, for whatever reason? The answer, currently, is the end of civilization as we know it, with drastic population decline. Not a good scenario.