Comments by "Paul Aiello" (@paul1979uk2000) on "Scientists say solar panel advances will see millions go off grid" video.

  1. I was thinking that, to maintain the grid, it's quite expensive, if more go gridless, there are fewer consumers for them whiles at the same time, they still have to cover a wide network, so the cost to maintain will still be high but the money coming in from consumers could drop a lot, which they could very well pass those cost onto the existing consumers, which will push more of them to go gridless. To really go gridless, solar alone isn't enough unless you massively oversize it to cover the winter months, but ideally, what's really needed is much cheaper and bigger energy storage that can cover days or even weeks, but even better is if we can have solar and wind at a local level as they would complement each other and would reduce how much energy storage that's needed because a more consistent flow of energy will be generated throughout the year. Unfortunately, wind at small scale don't seem to perform that well in urban areas, if that can change with a lot of experiments that are going on with vertical wind turbines, a mix of solar and wind would allow most of us to go gridless and you wouldn't need much energy storage to do it.
    1
  2. It stands to reason that as renewable tech advances more, it's going to allow a lot more of us to go gridless, and I suspect a lot of us will want to do that because it would be a simpler setup, and the savings will be direct to you, after all, for all the renewable energy going onto the grid, we as consumers don't seem to be seeing the savings in lower energy bills, so generating your own energy is a sure fire way for you to save over the long run. To go gridless, renewable tech is already good enough, what is really needed is a buffer when it comes to storing that energy for when it's needed, and for now, it's too expensive and not enough energy storage, but thanks to EV car boom, that's very likely going to change. Also, as the video points out, Europe isn't really a sunny region, well Northern Europe isn't, if they can do it, then the majority of the world can. With that said, I do think a mix of solar and wind at a local level is a better option as they both complement each other by having more consistent energy generating throughout the year, which would actually reduce how much energy storage you need. If it's solar alone, you're going to need a lot of energy storage to cover good and bad days when it comes to the weather, but if we can have a mix of solar and wind, that would be more constant and would reduce the amount of energy storage needed. Problem is, there are too many scams when it comes to wind turbines for your home and they don't seem to produce that much energy, whiles also being expensive, but with that said, a lot of experiments are being made on vertical wind turbines for urban areas, if they can crack that and produce meaningful energy in urban areas, that's going to allow a lot of us to be able to go gridless, but even without that, solar is getting so cheap that it's making a lot of sense to oversize your setup, that yes in summer, you'll produce way more energy than you need, but who cares, just as long as you can produce enough for your needs in winter.
    1