battery storage for peak management;
grid electricity when required;
perhaps EV charging;
perhaps flexible industrial loads;
and eventually some form of demand response.
That consumer actually needs a more sophisticated grid, not no grid.
The grid stops being merely the place from which electricity is purchased.
It becomes a platform across which electricity is exchanged.
That is a much more interesting future.
Solar Is Already Forcing This Conversation
This connects to one of my central arguments in the podcast.
For a long time, solar sales were largely about generation.
“How many panels?”
“How many kilowatts?”
“How much will I export?”
Those questions made sense in an environment where exported solar electricity could be economically valuable enough to compensate for consumption at other times.
The economics are changing.
So the engineering question becomes:
What should this customer’s energy system actually accomplish?
Perhaps the objective is maximum self-consumption.
Perhaps it is backup.
Perhaps it is peak shaving.
Perhaps it is protection against load shedding.
Perhaps it is lowering industrial energy cost.
Perhaps, eventually, it includes purchasing renewable electricity from a third-party generator through a competitive market.
The answer determines the architecture.
This Is Why I Keep Coming Back to Right-Sizing
One line from the podcast summarizes much of my thinking:
Best components do not automatically make the best system. Good engineering does.
The same principle applies at national scale.
Pakistan does not necessarily need the maximum conceivable number of power plants.
Nor does it need the minimum.
It needs the right combination of:
generation,
transmission,
distribution,
storage,
distributed energy,
demand flexibility,
market competition,
