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by hermenaut 3101 days ago
Over the next 50 years if solar roofs take off ( https://www.tesla.com/solarroof ) I don't see it being that much of a problem on the country side. We probably won't need to rebuild the entire grid, may be able to leave some part of the grid behind. May even be cheaper to do so with savings compared to the alternative options
1 comments

Solar roofs are just fancy solar panels. And they wont help it there is no sun.

There are two ways of making sure you still get power when there is no sun for your panels: storing power locally and using the grid. For storage, you can have enough batteries to deal with the day-night cycle, but a week of overcast weather in the winter is likely to be prohibitively expensive. It means that the grid is necessary, and it has to be able to cope with peak load.

There's also wind when these winter storms roll through :). I've found out personally that people can also adapt to new situations such as less availability of electricity.