Land near energy demand is scarce almost everywhere. This kind of local generation is ideal and both reduces transmission losses and makes the grid/society more resilient.
Moving electricity is among the cheapest, most efficient industrial processes that exist.
*With all due respect to the Maldives, Gaza, Hong Kong, et cetera
It isn't a theoretical, it's something China is 30+ completed projects deep on. The technology existed decades ago. We just treat infrastructure like it's an impossibility here.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra-high-voltage_electricity...
Got to say the shiny and non-rusted transmission pylons in Hebei got me more excited than was probably warranted. I don't think I've seen a shiny pylon before, I guess we mostly just stopped building them decades ago.
On the topic of agriculture I was very impressed by all the polytunnels we spotted from the high speed rail heading north out of Beijing. Every valley, and nook and cranny was full of them.
Took a couple photos of a small town in inner Mongolia that we passed, was amazing seeing green crops in the middle of a Siberian winter.
I believe this was a farm using recycled water to grow cut flowers https://imgur.com/a/kw1IDZ3
Here's an article on them:
Chinese-style Solar Greenhouses
https://ag.purdue.edu/department/btny/ppdl/potw-dept-folder/...
By pursuing artificially inexpensive energy we are doubling down on a great number of wasteful practices that are largely avoidable.
There's a planned solar project on an old partially reclaimed slag heap that will add generation proximal to that line, for example. (It's land that is too polluted for just about any other use, which is a fantastic place to stick some utility scale solar while still staying within the boundary of the city.)
Only about half of Africa has any home access to electricity, and very few have access to the sort of high current associated with HVAC or EVs. Much of the population are going to leapfrog over the phase of full expansive grid construction, access & maintenance, and go directly to a somewhat more decentralized mode of operation.
But that experience isn't all that relevant to the developed world, whose countries have invested tens of thousands of dollars per person in establishing almost universal electrical grids.
I am lazy, I like to start with the low hanging fruit first.
Then you should be looking at agrivoltaics before rooftop, as they are much cheaper in developed countries where the cost of rooftop solar is dominated by installation cost.
This is electricity use in the US from 1975 to 2023. Between 2010 to 2023 it has not changed a lot.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/201794/us-electricity-co...
This of course doesn't include things like gasoline or natural gas.
My personal energy use has decreased over the last 25 years. Increased insulation and new more efficient HVAC equipment has dropped by summer electric bill by 40%. My old car used to get 26 mpg on the highway and now I get 36. Work from home has dropped my gasoline usage even more. My computer would run 24 hours a day and idle at 180W and now it is 90W.
All of the above.
> This is electricity use in the US from 1975 to 2023. Between 2010 to 2023 it has not changed a lot.
Due to the cost of energy ballooning, largely due to taxation. However, the pent up demand is higher than ever.
Well, that's just harvesting more solar energy, not reducing your energy needs.
I guess I'm trying to point out that on an individual level power usage may have a maximum. This might not hold true for commercial ambitions.
I expect a bump in our usage in the short term due to EV usage but from a household perspective I believe our electric usage will flat line. Heating and cooling are currently the highest usage of power in the domestic setting and large efficiency gains and alternative sources are available.
I look at the power usage as a distributed problem and increasing local generation of power will create efficiencies. I also believe that there is finite amount of power that a USA based family of 4 needs. I think the alternate opinions assumes that the power needs are infinite.
People with residential solar do it all the time with payoff in less than 10 years.
I posted the best image I could of the original 1931 schematic which has 9 circuits for 5,000 sqft school.
It's the first image in this slide show.
I purposely had all those outlets installed as joke to the 150 amps out.