Comments by "Paul Aiello" (@paul1979uk2000) on "Why Don’t We Put Solar on ALL Rooftops?" video.

  1. I've been thinking about this for quite some time, we hear so much about getting the grid in shape to handle the power loads that we expect of it, but as renewable tech keeps improving, there's a fair chance that more of us could go gridless as the tech allows, from the average home to businesses and so on. The grid system could actually become redundant over the long run as renewable tech as well as energy storage tech keeps getting better and cheaper, having to support a grid network is mighty expensive and not as secure, and I'm sure most of us would rather generate our own energy at a local level as we have far more control over what we use and what we pay, which would eventually mean energy being almost free, which on the grid, it never will be because of the cost to maintain the network are massive. This doesn't mean large scale solar and wind farms don't have their use, but I think longer term, the tech is likely going to advance enough that we can generate most if not all our energy at a local level. There are a few things needed for this to happen, which solar and wind together could offer a more consistent flow of energy generating, solar already works well at a local level and it keeps getting better and cheaper, wind on the other hand has proven to not be so good in urban areas, but with a lot of experiments going on with vertical wind turbines and other ideas, that might change, and the last thing is battery tech, that will need to be a lot cheaper than it is, if going gridless, you're going to want a big buffer of energy storage in case not enough is being generated, so at least a few days worth of stored energy. There are other options like with solar being moulded into our buildings without looking out of place, we eventually could have our entire house from the roof to the walls to the concert floor around our house, which all these ideas are being worked on and would allow us to generate far more energy than we do today whiles not looking out of place. But for me, the real game changer could be solar and wind working together at a small scale, with that, you would have far more consistent energy generating from winter to summer and it could also mean you don't need as much energy storage, being that you are generating more energy on a consistent basis, once we start getting to that point, grid use could become redundant for most of us, apart from certain specialised use cases that need an excessive amount of energy, but a lot of those kinds of projects could be located in areas where there's still use for a grid network, it would work out a lot cheaper than having to maintain an entire grid network all over the world, which is really costly. Still, for now, it's mostly pie in the sky, but if the tech keeps advancing and getting cheaper, it's likely going to be more viable over the coming years and decades for a lot more of us, but in any case, don't think of solar as just rooftop solar, it's likely going to be used everywhere around our house from garden fences to the walls on our house, to our driveway and so on, the tech is already being built to allow this and not be out of place, in other words, your driveway will still look like a driveway but can also generate energy, this opens up a lot more energy generating potential for most of us, so on my house alone, I think I could generate around 5 to 6 times more energy than I could just using the roof and when you throw in that renewable tech is getting better and cheaper, it should be more than possible to generate all our energy needs, especially if we manage to figure out using wind turbines in urban areas that actually work. In the end, the main thing is the price point, the cheaper it becomes, the more you can plaster it pretty much everywhere.
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