Many who read my posts regularly would know that I'm not a huge beleiver in man made climate change, and have a very dim view of renewable energy as a resource to replace fossil fuels.
But in saying that, I am actually a big beleiver in renewable energy, and I do hope for a massive future for the technology.
The thing that people seem to fail to understand, is that renewable energy, unless in a perfect situation and mix, can't be utilized for mass market power supply. But what it can be used for, and SHOULD be used for is project based or community based decentralization.
One of my favourite examples of this, is the Sundrop Farm in Port Augusta, South Australia. They are tackling some of the major pain points of food production, namely limited water supply, lack of available farming land, and expensive power. They have created a hydroponic setup, on a very large scale that is growing vegetables, with seawater and powered by its own solar farm.
The preservation of drinking water, i believe is a much more important issue than climate change. Wars will be won and lost in the future for access to clean water. So utilizing seawater for crop production is a huge positive in the renewable sphere. But this also being combined with the crops being grown in the desert in a hydroponic setup powered by the sun is amazing and is exactly the kind of application that I feel renewable energy should be used for.
With all this being said, for renewables to work in the urban environment, the national energy grid would need to be disbanded and move to a more community driven system. Every house would be solar powered with battery storage. Every device that is capable of harvesting and storing its own energy requirements would need to be able to do so. Traffic and street lights would be self sustaining items of infrastructure that don't need grid reliance.
This is the work that the Australian blockchain company Powerledger are currently undertaking. Self sustaining autonomous communities that buy and sell energy from each other, all recorded on the blockchain.
So to end, while I still think climate change is a scam, if we have the ability to do things in a cleaner way we would be foolish if we didn't at least try. I'm still unsure as to the economic viability of these projects for the wider community, I'm sure if they were looked at on a much more community level basis, they may actually work out economically viable.
Yep that's pretty much what I think it should be used for as well, I don't think it will ever get to the stage of drop-in replacement and I don't think it should be.
I think things work that way in my animation world, though some buildings produce more than they use, and tis is redistributed to buildings that are using more than they produce, but I have exactly no idea how they do that, perhaps someone can figure it out practically so that kind of network can become a reality XD
You've 100% just described the Powerledger platform :)
Oh really, yay I'm glad someone made it! XD
(and I bet if I ever get this thing off the ground people will think I got the idea from them lol)