Energy sharing — Uber style — is possible if we can break the monopoly
Just how dynamic is the marketplace? Consider this: My daughter told me a story that seems complete science fiction. One of her friend’s family is putting down a deposit to purchase the selfdriving package for their Telsa when it becomes available. Their goal is two-fold. First, the mom wants to get extra sleep while her car drives her to work in the morning.
Can we digest that one for a moment? People are already sleeping while their cars drive down the highway. Control freaks (i.e. people my age and older) shutter at this thought. But then again, control freaks in the past flipped out when human elevator operators, who controlled a lever, were replaced by strange push-button controls. Thus, many companies kept paying for elevator operators to push those new buttons, so control-freak passengers felt safe.
Go ahead and laugh. Let’s see what you do when airlines get rid of pilots.
And secondly, to make a little money on the side, the mom plans for her car to autonomously drive Uber passengers around during the day while she’s at work. And why not? Why have a useful capital asset sitting in a parking lot all day when it could drive itself around and make you money.
Thanks to technology and the sharing economy we comprehend excess capacity on a micro-level that can be employed to meet a need and turn a profit. Before many technological changes came around our little brains couldn’t even identify something as an unrealized asset. But, ebay turned Beanie Babies and other junk around your house into cash. And Airbnb turned your unused guestroom into income.
With all that in mind, remember our new governor wants Colorado to have 100 percent renewable energy. Utility companies like Xcel are salivating at this promise. Whatever new renewable mandate comes from on high is an opportunity to pass along those higher costs, plus a tasty profit, to us, its captive customers.
But there is one way to help get to Polis’ California dream of fluffy, feel-good energy that won’t enrich Xcel and jack up our power rates. My colleague at Independence Institute, Amy Cooke, sermonizes about “micro-grids.”
As more people and companies are creating their own power, via solar, wind, smallscale hydro or natural gas, and as battery storage technology improves, allowing them to store excess electricity, they can sell their excess power directly to their neighbors, not going through Xcel at all.
Think of it as Uber for energy.
Your neighbor’s solar panels are making more power than she needs, so why not run a wire to your house and you pay her a little for the extra juice. She can charge you less than what Xcel charges, saving you cash, plus she makes some canola to pay for her investment in solar panels. Everybody, except Xcel, gets what they want, including Jared Polis.
I know. I know. Building that kind of small-scale infrastructure is too complex for the average homeowner or business owner to handle. Just like turning a home into a small-scale hotel, or a car into a driverless taxi is too complex.
What does Polis need to do to promote this burgeoning micro-grid revolution? Something harder than it seems — keep Xcel and other protected players from using government to shut it down while it’s just starting.
Uber coming to Colorado is a good teacher on this. What saved Uber from the taxi cartel? The slow speed of government.
Colorado’s taxi cartel protects themselves from competition through their muscle at the Public Utilities Commission (PUC). If you wanted to start a competing taxi company you need to go to the PUC to ask mother-may-i, and then you had to prove to their satisfaction that there is a market need to compete with the cartel before you maybe, might, get permission to risk your own wealth and effort on the venture.
So, Uber just came in with “ride sharing” instead and didn’t ask anyone for permission. They grabbed so much market share, so fast, that by the time the taxi cartel could get the PUC to shut them down, Uber had such a foothold, there’d be riots if they were forced away.
Sadly, Xcel is much more proficient in protecting its turf and it runs the state Capitol.
We’ll learn soon if they also run Polis and his new government-is-the-answer progressives who are taking over the state legislature.