Why not both? One works better for people not living in cities, and the other one better for high-density areas.

Because you get far higher ROI for the large-scale installations. In case you weren't familiar, Canada has a lot of other things which need the money than paying 5x per watt to subsidize panels on your roof instead of on the ground.

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embedding-shape 3 hours ago | parent [-]

> Because you get far higher ROI for the large-scale installations.

Right, but as always, ROI is hardly the most important thing in life, there is more considerations than just "makes more money". For example, as someone affected by a day long country-wide electricity outage where essentially the entire country was without electricity and internet for ~14 hours or something, decentralizing energy across the country seems much more important, than optimizing for the highest ROI.

But again, this is highly contextual and depends, I'm not as sure as you that there are absolute answers to these things.

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coryrc 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Grid-tied solar is fragile. If the grid is not nearly-perfect, it won't generate. It will not help society as a whole.

If you personally have battery backup, that helps you personally and you should pay for it, just like you might pay extra to turn up the heat while I keep it lower to save money.

	▲	bluGill an hour ago \| parent [-]
		In Canada (or the US) the grid is reliable and so you can ignore when it isn't working. This doesn't apply everywhere in the world

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triceratops 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Grid-scale solar installations can be much more decentralized than nuclear or natural gas power plants.

Decentralizing through subsidies at the homeowner level is maybe not the best use of money.

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ApolloFortyNine 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

>One works better for people not living in cities

It's not as if homes outside of cities have their own diesel generators to power their house.

(Since I'm guessing from this line of comments you'll point out the less than 1% of people who actually do do this, maybe it's better to focus only the 99% here).

	▲	embedding-shape 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> It's not as if homes outside of cities have their own diesel generators to power their house. Yeah, no true, I don't understand the point/argument though? More people relying on renewables == long term better for everyone on the planet That includes moving people outside of cities to renewables energy sources, is your point that this isn't so important because they're a small piece of the population usually?