if every household had solar panels and batteries
High density housing is unlikely to be compatible with that.
Also rental dwelling owners and people with limited economic resources tend to be less likely to make those kinds of capital investment.
if every household had solar panels and batteries
High density housing is unlikely to be compatible with that.
Also rental dwelling owners and people with limited economic resources tend to be less likely to make those kinds of capital investment.
> High density housing is unlikely to be compatible with that.
To the level of total energy independence? Indeed. But even an apartment can get some PV.
There's even PV specifically designed for renters in apartments.
> Also rental dwelling owners and people with limited economic resources tend to be less likely to make those kinds of capital investment.
Not so: https://www.lidl.de/p/tronic-balkonkraftwerk-860-wp-800-w-to...
As per my first line, 800 W is not going to be total energy independence.
But it's €249, cheaper than all but the cheapest phones.
In the best case, it can pay for itself in the first year; though obviously a north-facing apartment gets almost nothing from it.
They are not forced to make those kinds of capital investments if they're unable - they'd be no worse off than today. Those who do get cheaper electricity (in lieu of whatever they could've otherwise spent that capital on).
However, it's the onus of the gov't (regional or federal) to create the investment needed for large, industrial scale solar and battery storage. That's what taxpayer money should be spent on.
> they'd be no worse off than today.
They will, assuming the people that went off grid stop paying for it. As fewer people pay for it the costs per capita grow
The cost of the grid has already been paid for. Upgrades to the grid has a higher per-capita cost, if there's fewer people paying for those upgrades today.
But they're not worse off, because the upgrades are better. For them to be worse off, the upgrades they pay for has to be worse than what they got today.
> The cost of the grid has already been paid for.
You should really talk to some California utilities and their wildfire exposure.
And anywhere else, anything you put up you need to maintain. And aren't most grids built with loans anyway? That interest would be born by fewer people.
Not sure if you own a house, if you do, here's a thought experiment.
It's all paid for, right? Doesn't cost a thing to own a home?
Maintenance costs money as well.
yah, this is more for low density/mid density housing, I am sure the roots of 2-3 floor apts should be more than enough to sustain it as energy needs of apartments are lower to begin with. They can also bleed them into parking lots and have cover from the sun.
Even at 2-3 stories, I'm skeptical that there's enough roof surface area to provide enough solar panels to individually cover the electrical use of all the inhabitants. Many 2-3 story apartment buildings don't have parking lots at all - and it's a common pro-density urbanist political project to remove the requirements to build one, because it discourages car use and also makes projects cheaper - but even if they did, a small apartment also means less surface area for solar panels over the parking lot. And once you're in a building with multiple households, that means that the solar panels - and the amount of energy every individual household draws from them - has to be managed communally. I'm glad I don't have to justify the power use of my home server to a group of my neighbors concerned about managing a common resource, and just pay my power bill to the de-facto-monopoly state-regulated electric utility company.
You would be surprised how little power european households consume, but we do have central/gas heating so the math doesn't always work out perfectly. 100-200W for lights/tv/fridge, oven/induction/kettle for 2h ~2000W a day. That's something the solar panels can most definitely handle, of course this is on case by case basis. I consume 300W at idle as I have a home server :)
Apartments have walls too, but we're getting into a territory where it might start becoming ugly.
If you care about getting the population to switch en masse from gas heating to electric-powered heat pump heating - which is an explicit social/political goal of a number of people I know, and one that I'm simultaneously sympathetic to and have serious qualms about - then everyone's gas consumption needs to go down and everyone's electricity consumption needs to go up. Also once you have a heat pump, you have an air conditioner - it's the same technology - and that means that people will want to use it to cool their dwellings in the hot months of the year, even if they weren't previously able to do this with just a gas-powered furnace, resulting in even more electricity consumption.
Honestly, I think it's fine to just keep the electric grid as it is, and not attempt to power every building only from the amount of solar electricity that it can generate from its roof area. The electric grid lets us take advantage of economies of scale, build gigantic solar arrays or nuclear power plants on cheap land outside of town, and crucially leave the management of that grid up to one well-known organization rather than a consortium of several households in an apartment.
Well yah of course, the grid is useful. But new developments should just include solar and storage and simply become the grid I think that's a no-brainer, off-grid or micro-grid would obviously better, but I'd settle for a mix.
Can put panels on walls too.