The beauty of solar is it scales up/down without much fuss whereas you can’t just run a coal fire plant for your home. We can build what makes sense for each community/home.
Sure, but it’s more efficient to have the number of panels necessary for the community (neighborhood, city, etc) than having everyone get what they need for their individual peak…
Having centralized solar doesn’t preclude a homeowner from also installing solar, and decentralized green energy has other advantages over centralized green energy.
less wasteful
Where’s the waste? If you collect more than you use, you can store it or send it back to the grid. If this is an efficiency concern (“you’re collecting less energy than the same amount of paneling would”), then it’s not really relevant as by that same logic, not having solar is “more wasteful” than having it.
The waste is if it’s truly decentralized then everyone needs to be able to provide enough for their individual peak while a centralized system can be made to handle the highest peak of the day for many households while also providing enough for people whose peak is at different hours.
From a material requirement perspective being able to provide just what we need and not more is the most efficient. Batteries are great, the material required to make them still has a huge environmental impact and isn’t unlimited.
100 sq meters of solar cells per house (with batteries and inverters) should do a lot of good.
Centralization is more efficient and less wasteful.
The beauty of solar is it scales up/down without much fuss whereas you can’t just run a coal fire plant for your home. We can build what makes sense for each community/home.
Sure, but it’s more efficient to have the number of panels necessary for the community (neighborhood, city, etc) than having everyone get what they need for their individual peak…
Having centralized solar doesn’t preclude a homeowner from also installing solar, and decentralized green energy has other advantages over centralized green energy.
Where’s the waste? If you collect more than you use, you can store it or send it back to the grid. If this is an efficiency concern (“you’re collecting less energy than the same amount of paneling would”), then it’s not really relevant as by that same logic, not having solar is “more wasteful” than having it.
The waste is if it’s truly decentralized then everyone needs to be able to provide enough for their individual peak while a centralized system can be made to handle the highest peak of the day for many households while also providing enough for people whose peak is at different hours.
From a material requirement perspective being able to provide just what we need and not more is the most efficient. Batteries are great, the material required to make them still has a huge environmental impact and isn’t unlimited.