3 ms·

To realise the benefits of local generation, near means on the order of 1,000m, not km.

• mapt 2y ago
  What benefits?
  • closewith 2y ago
    Decentralisation and low capital cost, the points made in the article.
    • mapt 2y ago
      Real estate cost (the opportunity cost of human occupancy) is capital cost. So is the material and labor for any of the more elaborate frame systems required to work on a non-flat surface. 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.
      • closewith 2y ago
        I think you should read the thread you are replying to again.
• dgacmu 2y ago
  This depends too much on the specific grid topology to be generally true. For example, there is an underground transmission line that is one of the bottlenecks for about 30,000 people in my part of Pittsburgh. It's not too uncommon to have summertime glitches or outages due to overload on that one circuit. Any generation installed on the consumer side of that line helps - and that's several km. 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.)