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[–] 4 points 1 year ago (1 child)

Distributed rooftop solar is the worst way to use our grid. It's designed to pump a lot of power from a single place to a lot of little places. The opposite doesn't work very well.

The solution is to not focus on solar by itself. Solar/wind/water/storage/long distance transmission need to be balanced with each other. Each has strengths and weaknesses that cover for the strengths and weaknesses of the others.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    Distributed rooftop isn't supposed to be about feeding the larger grid so much as topping off local demand right when it's needed.

    I'm kind of eccentric so I got a humongous array; even then at peak production I was running the A/C for 3-4 houses in my cul-de-sac other than my own. Most installations around where I live are like 1/4 of the size I put up and rarely feed much back.

    And home-scale batteries are getting cheap enough that excess won't necessarily need to get fed into the grid anyway.

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