this post was submitted on 24 Jun 2024
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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.