An article describing how the African continent now obtains 10% of its electric power from renewables, in a bottom-up movement of households and businesses away from utility-scale public power (coal-driven, unreliable,  scarce) to hyper local solar using Chinese tech.  As I’ve noted earlier, this end run around public utilities is the future.

In the same reading session, another article describing how the Bonneville Power Authority has successfully held up development of small- to large-scale power projects in Oregon and Washington because of grid limitations.  Washington, my home state, ranks 50 in the rate of change to renewables, while being one of the most progressive and climate-aware states in the country.  Plenty of noise, no action.

I remember talking to Douglas about the regulatory situation in NZ, and he said one of the most significant drivers was the division between power providers and power distributors (both private). This had enabled lots of competition in the power provider market; for example, his own household power came from rooftop solar, installed and managed by a business that used all such installations in Auckland to function as a virtual utility company.  The distribution companies were required to carry the power, regardless of how it was generated.

In New Zealand while I was growing up, the phone lines were administered by the state post office. Apart from the months-long delay to get a phone “installed”, there were numerous restrictions on non-phone equipment that was allowed to be plugged into a phone line. I built a 1200-baud modem for my boss’s minicomputer system that was illegal to connect; it might in some way damage the phone grid. Naturally, it wasn’t until the post office lost control of phone lines that we could move forward.

We were coming back to our apartment today and Shelley noticed the chap that’s been obsessively working on cleaning his car is gone.  He didn’t bother cleaning the sidewalk where his car had been parked, although he had a power washer out.

Is this a commons problem?  If it’s my resource, I’ll do what’s required to make it work.  If it’s a shared resource, it’s someone else’s problem. Is that why Africa is leapfrogging WA and OR, because they’ve converted a shared resource into lots of individual resources?  If it is, that suggests a way to fix the problem.