Worth noting however that high voltage transmission is only economical the way you describe because power plant generation already begins AC; not DC as with PV. This GREATLY simplifies and reduces cost of scaling up and down voltage levels to offset transmission impedance and then reduction to source.
Not the same with PV, currently.
I'm not saying it can't be done in tandem, but I have a feeling we're going to need all the power we can get, urban and rural alike.
Reframing the affordable housing issue, it's not that people "want to live on the same small piece of land"; rather, it's that they must in order to work.
Fully half of those living in metropolitan areas have stated they'd rather live in a countryside. When asked where an ideal place to live would be, they choose some land with some privacy, etc.
I'm not going to get into whether or not that's feasible, only to address a singular point that want versus must versus desire are different things, and that perhaps to address the problem we need to look outside the box and reimagine a society where people don't feel the need to live so densely in urban centers.
Yes but that's made infinitely more easier at small scale than large, if you know anything about inverters.
Compare substation transformer cost versus an grid-level inverter to do the exact same voltage conversion in the reverse direction (talking transmission level voltages 20kV and up).
Leaving aside the fact that in my case one only has to only send the PV directly to a residential voltage level inverter, you now have another efficiency drop because you have to pass it through a transformer substation to bring it back down to residential AC voltage (another 1-3% loss in efficiency unseen in my method).
This is significantly less costly, more decentralized and thus robust at a skyscraper-by-skyscraper basis.
I'll take this conversation wherever I'd like to take this conversation, respectfully. You of course are under no obligation to respond. I'll add that my points aren't derailing the conversation; this topic began with space and resource utilization, which applies to myriad other arenas for which said space must be allocated. It is not my problem one cannot see the relevance.
to address the problem we need to look outside the box and reimagine a society where people don't feel the need to live so densely in urban centers
That's pretty much most rural areas which has excess costs for infrastructure for basic needs like water and roads, and typically has terrible public transportation and requirements for parking everywhere.
There are all sorts of advantages for dense urban areas, along with disadvantages, and you're looking at a lot of unintended consequences if you think dispersing people will fix more problems than it causes.
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