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@Charles obviously you're right, as "easy" as it is to be 97% independent from the grid, being 100% off the grid can be really expensive. Unless you have a cheap way to produce your missing 3% of electricity. There are possibilities, not all totally clean and renewable unfortunately but being 97% clean and renewable is already a very nice achievment.

OK, as an employee of an Australian grid company (not any of the ones involved in the news clip - also I'm not in the engineering area so some of my explanations might be simplified) I have to say a few things: First, the issues with too much solar on the grid are *real*. Frequency and voltage variations are a real issue, it's not just this guy making it up! Nothing has happened yet because solar PV penetration has not reached that level yet, but grid companies need to monitor and be aware of it. A lot of components on the distribution grid (transformers, substations etc) are not capable of feeding electricity back in the opposite direction - some of these have a lifespan of 30-50 years old and it was not a requirement back when they were installed! Second, I'm not sure who the guy was at the end saying that grid companies won't let you install a battery if you have solar. This is incorrect. As I'm sure most of your Patreon supporters know, generation and storage are totally different things. Network companies love homes with batteries - the ideal network to manage is one that is close to a flat load with minimal peaks and troughs, especially through peak time, and that is what homes with batteries do - they export less and they import less. All the VPP stories you run in Australia are projects run with the co-operation of the relevant grid companies. Here is one that is run near me: <a href="http://brunybatterytrial.org/" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">http://brunybatterytrial.org/</a> I don't think the "death spiral" is a thing to worry about either. Just say a home has one Tesla Powerwall and that makes it self-sufficient 90% of the time. A second Tesla Powerwall might make it self-sufficient 97% of the time. A third might make it 99.5%. It costs a *lot* to be 100% independent from the grid - you need to have enough solar/battery to be able to get through a week of constant rain or snow. It's cheaper to buy 1 or 2 Powerwalls and stay on the grid, than it is to buy 5 Powerwalls. (Conversely if you have enough solar/battery to get you through a bleak winter's week, then during summer they all fill up very early in the day and you can't export any of the excess). The grid will be useful, but as more of a backup, rather than a primary source as it is now. You might say I'm biased because I work at one, but we have a team of people who are dedicated to researching and testing the effects and benefits of things like EVs and battery storage, so that we can keep on top of these developments and plan for their integration into the grid as easily as possible.

Charles Gregory