Which I guess is a way of saying yes, and…

IMHO there should be an overriding right to earn fair and proportional value for providing services to the grid (whether its demand reduction or distributed generation). It never felt right that my thermostat manufacturer gets a cut of the value I provide by participating in demand response events.

@pierlafarge.bsky.social I’d be curious if you agree? I recognize it might be an academic point since expanding public ownership of power infrastructure would be logistically and politically difficult, but is there anything inherently better about privately owned, regulated utilities?

Yes, it seems to me that every aspect of this argument in favor of vertically integrated, privately owned, regulated utilities applies equally well and better to publicly owned utilities.

Depends on where you are. In California’s current net metering scheme, solar plus storage pays back in something like eight years.