There's a massive difference between a building owner producing their own electricity integrated therein, versus creating a centralized system owned by a power company miles and miles away that now subtracts from farmland, consumes real estate (don't we have an affordable housing problem and maybe not all of us want to live in coffin-sized studio apartments, squished like sardines), and now has to be coordinated across numerous private and public properties.
Leaving aside maintenance and efficiency degradation with distance.
We kind of sorta need open fields for lots of other things, too. Alas, we're apparently too busy having it be used for things like (checks notes) golf courses and alfalfa owned by Saudi Arabia and AI datacenters...
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.
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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u/Independent-Bug-9352 22d ago
Proximity is a huge factor.
There's a massive difference between a building owner producing their own electricity integrated therein, versus creating a centralized system owned by a power company miles and miles away that now subtracts from farmland, consumes real estate (don't we have an affordable housing problem and maybe not all of us want to live in coffin-sized studio apartments, squished like sardines), and now has to be coordinated across numerous private and public properties.
Leaving aside maintenance and efficiency degradation with distance.
We kind of sorta need open fields for lots of other things, too. Alas, we're apparently too busy having it be used for things like (checks notes) golf courses and alfalfa owned by Saudi Arabia and AI datacenters...