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At the consumer scale the biggest thing we could do is follow the german model of panels that can be plugged into an outlet and installed in an hour by any homeowner (with the same capacity limits and requirements on the panels electronics to protect the grid/line workers during power outages).

That said I'm pretty sure that grid-scale solar is the future of most solar energy, not home solar. It's just cheaper to do things in bigger batches.

by balderdash5 hours ago|

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This statement is 100% correct, but I think is wrong - utility scale solar is 100% more efficient and cheaper to build at scale, the problem is finding large parcels of land to put it on that are close to where the power consumption is, as well as the complexity and cost associated with grid interconnection (and transition if it not close to demand)

Edit: though if we ever get to self driving cars there should be a whole lot of parking lots in metro areas that aren’t needed.

by hamdingers5 hours ago|

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There's been a wave of legislation[1] introduced in the US to legalize so-called "balcony solar," small grid-tied solar systems that plug into a regular household outlet with zero permitting or interconnect requirements. This is already common in Europe, it's mildly complicated by our split-phase system but not much.

The reason for the high burden today is people have developed an inflated sense of how much the kWh they generate is worth. They install massive systems on their roofs to try to "cancel out" their power bill by exporting their entire daily power consumption over the course of a few sunny hours, which (when all their neighbors do the same) ends up being a costly burden for grid operators who then pass the costs on to users without panels. Smaller systems focused on immediate, local consumption rather than export are much better for the grid which is why they have support.

1. https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/solar/balcony-solar-tak...

by turtlebits5 hours ago|

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100% this. If it was DIYable, its an order of magnitude cheaper.

I have leftover panels from an off grid install, and its extremely hard to get an approved permit for a small roof solar array + off the shelf AIO (Ecoflow/Anker)