Depends where you live, some places have more consistent sun across the year. Regarding personal autonomy, I wouldn't treat it as this binary thing. If you're survivalist minded, solar is your only hope at any level of independence, even if it's not 24/7 autonomy.
> Depends where you live, some places have more consistent sun across the year.
Everything depends on where you live. But for any country more than a few degrees off the equator that's the reality.
> Regarding personal autonomy, I wouldn't treat it as this binary thing.
That's fair, but 'personal autonomy' for 70% of the year and utterly dependent on existing infrastructure and fossil fuels for the remainder is still bad. But better than 100% dependency, sure.
> If you're survivalist minded, solar is your only hope at any level of independence, even if it's not 24/7 autonomy.
Depends on where you live ;)
Seriously: I engage in engineering, not in satisfying paranoia and 'any level of independence' starts with ruthlessly curbing your energy budget below that which most Western countries' inhabitants would consider acceptable living standards. And even if I personally would be ok with that I don't see how I would make that decision for myself while at the same time not make that decision for those around me who depend on me for their needs. In a vacuum you can make that argument, but IRL people don't live in a vacuum.
How many people have their own oil pump in the back yard? And are self sufficient with food?
No man is an island.
In an extreme situation when you have no grid for a week then yes, having to slum it by only heating one room.
Every house having 50kwh would allow massive grid smoothing when wind and solar are fluctuating. Just one day of storage would allow a lot of arbitrage, but when power is cheap overnight and run solely off battery when it’s expensive.
I'd love to switch to a situation like that, tomorrow, please. But the reality is that unless such lack of comfort is shared people will simply not agree to it. It would be symbolic at best.