Reddit reviews The Grid: The Fraying Wires Between Americans and Our Energy Future

Boring books about the electric grid you say?

Sure. Read this first, it will explain more to you about the state of the US electrical grid and issues with powering the modern world in general. If that one is a bit too "pop science" for ya, despite being one of Bill Gates top 20 reads, here's a little older one from The Institution of Science and Engineering that is still a good read. Secondary storage through the use of LI is dangerous, poisonous, and downright horrible for the environment.

And in case this comment wasn't clear enough, not only are you wrong, but you are a condescending dick who likes to pretend he is better informed than everyone. The Grid mentions the Li shortage in the first 20 pages, so it won't take you long to actually bone up a bit.

I'd recommend the book The Grid as a primer on how stuff like this can happen. Energy is strange, in the sense that everything produced needs to be used more or less immediately. Maintaining the energy grid is a careful balancing act between preventing surges and blackouts.

There are a lot of grid-related engineering problems that come from increasing decentralization (e.g. wind, solar, hydro) because it increases unpredictability in supply.

https://www.amazon.com/Grid-Fraying-Between-Americans-Energy/dp/1608196100

May not answer this particular question, but a fascinating read on your grid system is "The Grid" by Gretchen Bakke: https://www.amazon.com/Grid-Fraying-Between-Americans-Energy/dp/1608196100

I understand what youre saying but it doesn't work that way. Current industry standard inverters need to see voltage and frequency from the grid to work. If they functioned the way you are suggesting without grid connectivity they could create an issue called islanding. This is when a generator (aka inverter) exports power to a grid when there is no active power on the line. If there is a grid event happening, and power is exported into that event then it can exasperate the event and cause catastrophic damage. Which would take even longer to fix. This is because the grid is a dynamically balanced system. If there is a power sink (outage) the power wants to flow to that area as it will take the easiest and all paths to get to that point. That inverter could easily be overloaded by a power surge if it were to remain on.

What you are calling for and describing is an ATC or automatic transfer switch. You're right, these are pretty common but mostly on large commercial and industrial structures. They can be somewhat complicated, require connection to utility grid information system, and access by the utility operation center to view status. Due to these requirements they are quite expensive and would put residential solar systems out of reach of most consumers.

Now, battery back-back-up systems are really what you're describing. However, the technology is still a bit old, expensive to maintain, and are expensive to install on small scales. I believe Outback Solar still has the best battery system design for residential and off grid applications butbit comes with a price tag. System designs and battery/energy storage are designed a bit differently and do allow for some off grid applications during normal or emergency operations. The technology is coming a long but not as quickly as we would like.

The other issue is that the utilities have not been modernizing over the last 20 years as they should be to keep pace with modern technology. If the utilities had been using the money they were collecting appropriately and spending it on modernization of their grid instead of emergency only projects and then pocketing the rest (contrivirtual claim I know) then we wouldn't be as behind as we are now.

Honestly, the biggest benefits of the push for renewable energy isn't the saving of resources or of our environment but it is forcing the utilities to modernize in a way they haven't had to for 100 years.

If you're really interested in more I highly recommend you read the book/paper "The Grid" by Dr. Gretchen Bakke. It's a history of the US grid in an accessible and easy to read form.
https://www.amazon.com/Grid-Fraying-Between-Americans-Energy/dp/1608196100

Source: 8 years in renewable energy project development.

You misunderstand what peak demand means. Peak demand is simply the time of greatest electricity usage. So it is when the usage reaches a maximum. For a source I will simply reference logic. If demand is not always constant then there will be times of lesser and greater usage. The time of greatest usage is the peak. If you want to learn more about what peak demand is and why it is important go read this book -> https://www.amazon.com/Grid-Fraying-Between-Americans-Energy/dp/1608196100