this post was submitted on 24 Jun 2024
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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.
If everyone has solar panels on their roof, you can still have the central grid and you can still share power from house-to-house, though.
Generally speaking, decentralized solar refers to a centralized grid that is heavily augmented with decentralized solar, not “truly decentralized” solar.
This isn't a nuclear reactor: one could have a bunch of PVCs on a solar farm or divided by 10 000s of homeowners.