Renewables require additional grid maintenance costs (storage + two-way distribution) while simultaneously prompting more consumers to buy less conventional energy from utilities. Historically, utilities made money from selling electricity. Now they have fewer customers and higher costs. They have to charge higher prices to the fewer customers. Then more people want to choose renewables. This keeps going until the utilities bankrupt.
The solution is to change the business model for utilities, which are regulated monopolies. So it's a policy question. Absent strong leadership, the utilities tend to claw back against renewables instead of innovating (saga of Nevada)...
fun fact: this is named after ants, where some species will literally march around in circles to starvation if the pheromone scent trails get tangled up.
Best article on it IMO (2014): https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/this-is-what-th...
tldr:
Renewables require additional grid maintenance costs (storage + two-way distribution) while simultaneously prompting more consumers to buy less conventional energy from utilities. Historically, utilities made money from selling electricity. Now they have fewer customers and higher costs. They have to charge higher prices to the fewer customers. Then more people want to choose renewables. This keeps going until the utilities bankrupt.
The solution is to change the business model for utilities, which are regulated monopolies. So it's a policy question. Absent strong leadership, the utilities tend to claw back against renewables instead of innovating (saga of Nevada)...
fun fact: this is named after ants, where some species will literally march around in circles to starvation if the pheromone scent trails get tangled up.