I am happy to see that PV is being deployed at incredible speeds. But dismayed at the lack of large scale storage projects & international interconnects.
Is distributed scale storage projects not enough? The grid doesn't need huge storage projects if every house has a house-sized battery and an increasing number of cars can double as a storage buffer (V2G/V2X). Both of those things are statistically hand-in-hand with current PV rollouts, not always sold together, but they form a virtuous cycle for the average home owner if a home can manage PV, storage, and EV all together to (selfishly) reduce reliance on the grid and keep energy patterns much more localized (if not fully "off grid").
A PV-heavy grid potentially starts to look a lot more distributed in interesting ways like scale than the traditional grid which was always more centrally orchestrated than it sounded.
Not every house has enough space for battery storage. And management of millions of small batteries is harder than management of thousands of bigger batteries. Millions of small batteries are also vastly more expensive than thousands of bigger battery projects.
> Not every house has enough space for battery storage.
Then it becomes a building/complex/neighborhood community building problem in some cases. The shift to a properly distributed scale is that it can be bottom-up rather than top down. Also, some large scale projects may still be needed, it isn't an either/or, a mixture of provides flexibility in the long term. But you certainly need to worry about planning fewer large scale projects if you are expecting a market full of small ones.
> And management of millions of small batteries is harder than management of thousands of bigger batteries. Millions of small batteries are also vastly more expensive than thousands of bigger battery projects.
The cost is more distributed rather than being only one or two infrastructure companies in a region. The management is more distributed with more entities involved. Top-down control is harder, but in some ways that is as much a feature as a bug. Local batteries can prioritize local needs, that's a feature versus "just do what your central provider wishes". Grid-wise needs become a larger market with more players, which also means more competition and more interesting prices.
large scale for me is every house has water tank, which can drain tens of kwh every day. cars which sit on parking lots for 80+% of day... 11kw charger can supply 30 miles of range per 1 hour of shopping, bowling, movie watching... and you do not need V2X, just plug with relay/lock. (esp32+nfc reader for billing)