Households should be the focus of any action for ‘the economy’. There are 3.4 million household solar systems…

Households should be the focus of any action for ‘the economy’. There are 3.4 million household solar systems now, the single largest generating capacity in the grid. That number is projected to double by 2032. That capacity is already smashing coal plants. /1 https://t.co/2tpthPKDr6

The coal plants have to cycle up and down daily to cope with the tsunami of household solar. That stresses them mechanically, and they were already mostly falling apart. A distributed energy system is destroying an old centralised system, and not just technologically. /2

An economy runs on energy, and the politics of energy has been the politics of our economies for over a century. Being utterly dependent on fossil fuel resources, concentrated in relatively tiny locations globally, and providing dramatic imbalances across the world. /3

That old energy world is funding and organising much of the resistance to climate action, particularly to renewable energy. Not just because renewables will send it bankrupt, but because they could force a very different set of power relations globally and inside societies. /4

The ALP for example has been struggling to retrofit that old energy infrastructure with renewables, without treading too much on the toes of the powerful interests who still profit from it. That game is already lost. Households are smashing the old economy. That 2025 point? /5 https://t.co/5xa9vBohm0

That’s the point the existing grid could technically collapse, the minimum demand below which the existing grid can’t operate. The complete reversal of years of bullshit spin from politicians about ‘supply’ and ‘baseload power’. Supply is not the problem. Demand is. /6 https://t.co/UUxkk6LPlm

Nobody wants power from the grid during the daytime now. Prices have been negative for ages. But the old coal clunkers absolutely need to run all the time, day and night, it’s prohibitively expensive and damaging to turn them on and off. And it breaks them. /7

If the ALP want quick wins, re-focus on households. Fill the grid with storage batteries, that are much cheaper and faster than huge grid-level power stations and thousands of kilometres of new power lines. Support the work households have already been doing, for years. /8

This will also drive prices down for households much faster than waiting years to build new transmission lines and mega power plants. Any of those needed can follow afterwards. South Australia is projected to be full-renewables by 2026, day and night. It hit 99.8% already. /end