IS GOING OFF-GRID REALLY BETTER FOR THE ENVIRONMENT?

If rising global
temperatures worry
you, you’re not alone. Frustrated that fossil fuels still account for around 80% of the
world’s energy consumption, thousands of homes have invested in
combined solar-battery storage systems. And that figure is expected to grow to 1 million in
Australia alone by 2020. But is going off-grid really the most sustainable choice a
consumer can make? 

As renewables become affordable, more and more
people are cutting their wires and adopting a minimalist lifestyle –
particularly in rural areas where the cost to connect to the grid is high. For
city dwellers, however, powering our lives in this manner isn’t cost-effective
given the home-ground (i.e. ‘sunk cost’) advantage the existing grid has over
emerging technology. Living off the grid and expecting the same reliability
(99.999%) requires a huge amount of equipment, even for one household. A
reliance on the sun and limited battery storage makes it difficult to meet
typical evening peak energy needs unless you’re happy to go without a
television, a fridge and washing machine. Today’s batteries last 10 years
before needing to be replaced… and then discarded. With the carbon impact of
manufacturing, supplying and disposing of these batteries – how
environmentally friendly is this, really?

All the while, the rest of us who are still connected to the
grid are reducing our energy
consumption by
changing wasteful behaviour and using energy-efficient appliances. For energy
utilities, this means an oversupply of capacity and lower revenues. Big
spending on distribution system upgrades in the last decade has compounded
their woes.

It’s time to accept the fact that the energy
industry has been disrupted. If the trend towards going off-grid
continues, are we dangerously close to setting off a chain of events whereby
existing assets become white elephants – stranded and worthless? Or is there
another way? What do smart
businesses do when they’ve been disrupted? They go back to the drawing board and find a way to disrupt the disruptors! 

Have we reached a tipping point for
utilities to start repurposing the grid and changing their business model?People
are likely to continue installing solar cells, even as government
subsidies reduce,
until such time as the grid decarbonises. If the grid doesn’t use fossil fuels,
then there is limited incentive for people to move to household level
renewables. Founder of Global Sharing Week,Benita Matofska
says: “Traditional businesses can either fly-the-flag for the
status quo and go down with it, or they can be smart about it and enable a new
way of thinking, living and doing sustainable business. Those who do will survive
and thrive.”

Just one of the opportunities for energy utilities derives from
the notion that household renewable assets needn’t always be consumer-owned.
Companies like SolarCity are emerging, which provide solar
panels that you can lease rather than buy. Should energy utilities focus on
looking for ways to work with start-ups to facilitate the roll-out of solar and
storage at scale?

And
who said that the renewable energy generated by each household can’t be shared?
Imagine subscribing to energy via a sharing platform and using an app to trade
energy with other people and businesses. To make this
future smart city scenario possible, we need to continue to
invest in emerging technologies, to commercialise the ones that show promise,
and to optimise the ones we already know work well. Tesla’s PowerWall is today’s high profile home battery
storage product, but there’s no shortage of players lining up to compete,
ultimately putting downward pressure on costs, which will drive further mass
market appeal and adoption of these smart solutions.

And let’s not forget the power of community… we need only look at today’s smartest cities for
inspiration .
The successful citizen solar
power plants initiative –
a partnership of Vienna, Austria and Wien Energy – offered locals the
opportunity to invest in the
city’s solar plants to
help achieve its renewable energy objectives.

The switch to renewable energy has already been flicked. Smart utilities that are willing to drive change toward a
cleaner future will prosper  – but it’s going to take the turning
off of a lot of old paradigms to do so.