Huge isolated fields of solar end up with the same problem as nuclear: they introduce multiple single-points of failure.

The source can be attacked, the transmission infra can be attacked, the delivery point can be censored.

I think most people want highly distributed, reliable, affordable power. That's why off-grid tech is experiencing such a boom.

I live in a 36' skoolie, so I'm nomad-indexed, but I can confirm that over the past 10 years or so, most RV-lifers have transitioned their focus from recreation / comfort to off-grid experimentation. Essentially everywhere I go in the US, if I'm camped near others, they are going to have minimum viability for boondocking. That was not the case when I started.

Especially amidst the current political instability and apparent looming collapse of the US state, one of the simplest things that most of us can do is stabilize off-grid power in our neighborhoods, and that is quietly happening all over the place.

So, the role of vertically integrated solar (both literally and metaphorically) has more to do with the grid shape that serves our stability needs, and less to do with large-scale differences in efficiency.

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labcomputer 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> The source can be attacked, the transmission infra can be attacked, the delivery point can be censored.

Who cares? One isolated field of solar represents a negligible amount of power at grid scale. Nobody is going to bother to go around attacking each individual field because the "ROI" of attacking a high-voltage transmission line (the kind that brings power from multiple thermal plants to a city) is so much higher.

	▲	roughly 2 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Attacks scale in the drone age, infrastructure left where nobody’s looking at it is a vulnerability. Solar stacked on an active farm has the benefit of having eyes on it constantly - detection, repair and recovery cycles are dramatically shortened.
	▲	hnlmorg an hour ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		You’re assuming such attacks cannot be automated. Which unfortunately they so often can. Just take a look at the multiple fridge freezer attacks in the EU this year.

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broken-kebab 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

>everywhere I go in the US, if I'm camped near others, they are going to have minimum viability for boondocking

Can you elaborate, please? What exactly has changed, and over what time period?

	▲	jMyles an hour ago \| parent [-]
		I bought my bus in 2015, so my personal picture is of the past 11 years. The big changes seem to have been: * Better / more varied solar panels * Lithium batteries (which I don't use for a house bank, but still benefit from by dint of them having driven the price deep-cycle lead batteries down) * USB-C everything When I first started this lifestyle, almost everyone had lead-acid batteries powering an inverter, and a zillion wall warts converting power back to DC. Some people had solar for sure, but a solid majority only camped where they were able to plug in. At festivals, powered sites sold out quickly and at a premium. Dispersed camping in national forests was the purview of tent campers, truck campers, and people who don't use much power (ie, not a ton of remote workers). New campgrounds always focused on power pedestals and seemed to regard that as the MVP. Now, festivals are a sea of solar and/or off-grid-cooled beers. Campgrounds are often a de-facto swap meet of usb-c oddities (I have a USB-C coffee grinder - what a world!). Dispersed camping in national forests are often transient standing desk communities. Nary an inverter in sight - everything is direct-to-USB-C. The difference between most people needing to plug in within a few hours in order to have their basic comforts vs. being able to live indefinitely without the grid has significantly changed what it feels like to be on the road.

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idiotsecant an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

This is silly. Solar fields are cheap and easily replaced. The grid already has enormous single points of failure that are actually hard to replace - they are called substations.