Putting solar panels and a battery in every house is ok if everyone owns an actual house, has enough space for a battery and gets enough sunlight but it wouldn’t be possible in most cities where hundreds of people share a single roof that doesn’t have the space for all the panels required.
In some countries the houses wouldn’t be big enough to install batteries without taking up valuable living space, most terraced houses in the uk couldn’t fit a power bank inside without filling an entire room’s usable space.
You also have to deal with the fact that many grids aren’t built to deal with the power fluctuation that comes from each house providing power, my university has a solar and wind farm that has to be shut down sometimes because the nearby city can’t handle all the power it produces in the summer and that’s from a centralised source.
Powergrids need to be upgraded anyway, simply because of EVs and heat pumps. All the energy that was formerly distributed via gas stations and pipes now has to be pushed through the grid.
Apart from that, local storage is actually pretty great for handling fluctuations, since it’s essentially a smoothing capacitor.
Cities are a problem, but that’s what large scale production like wind is for. Obviously, large storage facilities are also needed, but hydro power, hydrogen and a few local batteries could easily supplement the grid.
All true, but if you slap panels on every rooftop you can- every square foot of rooftop panel is one less square foot of dedicated land needed for solar farms.
Most current homes could easily accommodate something (including a storage shack tucked against the house.)
The grid is an issue that’s going to have to get fixed anyway; we’re going away from mega-plants that produce power for entire states no matter anyhow.
Also we need to be distributed for climate resilience.
Putting solar panels and a battery in every house is ok if everyone owns an actual house, has enough space for a battery and gets enough sunlight but it wouldn’t be possible in most cities where hundreds of people share a single roof that doesn’t have the space for all the panels required.
In some countries the houses wouldn’t be big enough to install batteries without taking up valuable living space, most terraced houses in the uk couldn’t fit a power bank inside without filling an entire room’s usable space.
You also have to deal with the fact that many grids aren’t built to deal with the power fluctuation that comes from each house providing power, my university has a solar and wind farm that has to be shut down sometimes because the nearby city can’t handle all the power it produces in the summer and that’s from a centralised source.
Powergrids need to be upgraded anyway, simply because of EVs and heat pumps. All the energy that was formerly distributed via gas stations and pipes now has to be pushed through the grid.
Apart from that, local storage is actually pretty great for handling fluctuations, since it’s essentially a smoothing capacitor.
Cities are a problem, but that’s what large scale production like wind is for. Obviously, large storage facilities are also needed, but hydro power, hydrogen and a few local batteries could easily supplement the grid.
All true, but if you slap panels on every rooftop you can- every square foot of rooftop panel is one less square foot of dedicated land needed for solar farms.
Most current homes could easily accommodate something (including a storage shack tucked against the house.)
The grid is an issue that’s going to have to get fixed anyway; we’re going away from mega-plants that produce power for entire states no matter anyhow.
Also we need to be distributed for climate resilience.
Well that is just silly instead of turning it off they should just mine some crypto.