Land for solar installs isn't close to free. My condo HOA won't even consider solar for any homeowner and the HOA won't approve a giant $50k/unit special assessment (we can't even get 40% of homeowners to vote for HOA elections... which are free).
Older buildings not designed for a solar roof aren't too easy to retrofit. My office window overlooks 2 parking lot structures that were recently retrofitted with solar and it took about 6 weeks for a relatively simple install. I'm pretty sure building owners will only install if they get a cut of the solar generation revenue (so the land isn't free) or if they are able to use it to offset tax or utility costs (also not free).
EVs as batteries are neat but... (1) most owners will likely splurge only for the $500 charger station not the complex electronics which allow the EV to charge the house/grid and (2) cars are frequently driven / parked at work during the peak charging time, so they would be unavailable to absorb the majority of the peak solar generation time.
Until there is a solar EV + charging story for dense housing (apartments and condos), I think most users in my area aren't likely to be able to adopt like you seem to think. Community Solar projects seemed nearly non-existent when I searched in 2018-2020.
I liked laws like the fcc(?) law years ago that said you could have a satellite dish and an HOA couldn't prevent it. we need more laws like it in favor of common sense/good over HOA nonsense.
> Land for solar installs isn't close to free. Land for vertical solar is free. Think of all the walls and fences to start with.
> Older buildings not designed for a solar roof aren't too easy to retrofit. If there is a building code that requires it, every building will be built with that standard. Think of all the buildings with bathrooms. Bathrooms and indoor plumbing didn't exist 100 years back, no building is now built without bathrooms.
Also, most of the world has concrete construction. Ridiculously easy to add panels.
> parked at work work is also a building. You can charge at office. You have to demand these changes. If your employer makes you drive hours in traffic, the least they can do is provide free charging.
The world is not fixed and frozen. You can participate and make the changes needed.
The trips over a 100 miles are a much higher percentage of distance travelled. One 100 mile trips is the same distance as 33 three mile trips. if you look at distance travelled its dominated by longer trips on your numbers.
I assume your numbers are for the US where cars are more heavily used for commuting than anywhere else?
Persuade my city to install some sidewalks, please. I can't leave my neighborhood safely on foot.
I am more used to dealing with places that go too far the other way and think you should be cycling even if you have multiple suitcases to carry.
Expensive prime arable land in the UK is rentable for £200 per hectare per year. You can buy it for £20k a hectare (land value is far higher than usable value due to tax avoidance schemes -- nobody spends £20k on a field to rent it out for £200 a year)
But even if you buy 100 hectares of land for £2m, you then need to build your 60MW, which costs about £60m on top and generates 60GWh a year or £6m at 10p/unit
The land cost doesn't matter.
The point is the electric delivery problem is much cheaper if the power generation and the power delivery both happen within the same substation (eg in the same neighborhood). If the generation happens in rural Scotland but the consumption happens in London, then all of the transmission needs to be upgraded. The point of your parent's comment was to describe a trick to minimize additional transmission costs/development.
And London area land does cost, even if it is just borrowing a vacant building's rooftop.
I don't necessarily agree with your parent's comment, but I don't agree with your comment either.
You don't get a benefit of reducing peak demand from on-building solar, so you can't do with smaller substations.
I don't think local solar is a solution in foggy / cold UK. I'm not going to defend it.
The legacy grid of producing power far out makes no sense. Coal, nuclear, hydro were far away and needed transmission. New grid can produce energy in the cities. Think of all the surface area available on all the buildings. Just the walls/fences between buildings is sufficient to build massive amounts of vertical solar.
Next is EVs as energy storage. People buy cars anyways. An EV looks, works, functions and smells exact like a gas car. Some might even say it smells better. Its not like going from horses to cars, nothing that radical. With EVs, we add a TON of storage. 20% or more solar production is curtailed, all of this can go to EVs. EVs can supply power back to the grid. Or power home throughout the night.
Finally, add BESS if needed.
28% of trips are under a mile, 52% under three, 64% under five, 79% under ten, 93% under twenty-five, and 98% under 50 miles. Only 0.8% of the trips are over 100 miles! EVs have humongous batteries, you can control the level of charge/discharge from the grid
People should be paid for using their EVs. They are after all providing critical, highly resilient infrastructure at no cost to govts and utilities. I don't think there is any compelling reason to make the super-billionaires like Warren Buffet richer.