Google and Tesla think we're managing the electrical grid all wrong (opens in new tab)

And the electrical grid surely has a lot to learn from well-managed, not-at-all-patently-evil behemoths run by something other than BS-sputtering SLMs who hadn't already forgotten (assuming they had ever even had something to forget to begin with) what it is like to be a normal person, let alone live like one and face anything resembling the day-to-day challenges one faces, before some of us old enough to drive trucks across state lines were even born.

As an electrical engineer with more experience than the average age of the readers here, this is a problem that is way, way more complicated than 99.9% of the population have any concept of, to be generous. This is in terms of grid dispatch and stability.

But we can short circuit that and consider in terms of distributed generation (mostly solar) and storage (batteries), see further down.

But the group website has no real information about real people involved, it's best information is some links to some papers that are not even clear if any members of the group were involved in. There is a photo, but I couldn't see that anyone was named.

Maybe in my 3 minute look I missed something, but it rapidly became fairly obvious that is about all the idea and website seemed to warrant.

It is possible that one person created the website as it totally comes across as "havea big idea and try and cast a big shadow and see if someone will bring some more sunlight".

If I am wrong, then they really need to do a better job of their website, otherwise it looks like an attempt bootstrap on a thought bubble, at best.

Some background:

I live where we have the most isolated grid interconnect system in the world (and it is not Texas) and in this system generation is about 50% of the cost and transmission is the other 50%, so the incentive to optimise the transmission network is probably higher than anywhere else in the world.

The idea proposed sounds attractive, but would have been even more so when there was a far greater abundance of base load generation that could only cycle at relatively slow rates compared to the change in demand rates, but now, as generation becomes increasingly more distributedthe nature of the problems change a little (the duck curve, for example).

Analogs to this concept exist, eg water infrastructure where in order to not have to build expensive fatter pipes for water to serve increasing populations, local water towers are built that pump up at night during low demand and draw down during peaks. There are distinct available economies there, but the round trip energy efficiency is also potentially very high.

I am not sure that economically any similar equivelent for electricity could be implmenented, especially when compared to the cost of solar generation and the recent plunge in battery costs, it now is far more likely that at a household level it would be cheaper to get some solar panels and a decent sized battery and be done with it, at city block level probably even more economic as there is effectively no transmission, it is all distribution, so near 50% could be saved already on end use costs.

I just don't see it.