It’s because they’d be more expensive if decentralized; all of the extra equipment required to transform the output, step down voltage and such would need to be replaced with thousands (millions?) of smaller units that do the same thing at an individual home/building level, requiring a larger trained labour force to install/maintain/replace them.
Personally, I think that would be rad, but most people don’t care to learn enough to safely be power engineers and if you’re in a 2 year backlog to get your home solar sorted out after a hurricane, you’d probably wonder why they didn’t do it this way instead.
You’d save all that transmission cost. No need for high voltage DC at all 12-48 v dc systems are pretty safe. They’ve been putting them on boats for years. Couple that with the EU regulations for USB C and you’d have basically all electrical needs met minus climate control.
Fridges might have to be replaced, or just get a bunch of cheap inverters.
It’s because they’d be more expensive if decentralized; all of the extra equipment required to transform the output, step down voltage and such would need to be replaced with thousands (millions?) of smaller units that do the same thing at an individual home/building level, requiring a larger trained labour force to install/maintain/replace them.
Personally, I think that would be rad, but most people don’t care to learn enough to safely be power engineers and if you’re in a 2 year backlog to get your home solar sorted out after a hurricane, you’d probably wonder why they didn’t do it this way instead.
You’d save all that transmission cost. No need for high voltage DC at all 12-48 v dc systems are pretty safe. They’ve been putting them on boats for years. Couple that with the EU regulations for USB C and you’d have basically all electrical needs met minus climate control.
Fridges might have to be replaced, or just get a bunch of cheap inverters.