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by malchow 2135 days ago
The grid is slowly being decentralized using grid-agnostic solar and storage. (I.e., solar power that stays going even when the grid drops off.) A computer network -- not a large infrastructure project -- is likely to be the solution.
2 comments

The only solution is having enough generation and storage capacity for p999 or p9999 events. The grid ends up being beneficial because you can pool resources rather than balkanizing them.

Your Tesla Powerwall can probably keep your AC running for a couple of hours, but it costs $7,600. We're better off using economies of scale to our advantage.

Almost nobody has solar power that can serve through a grid outage, so emphasis on "slowly".
That's true. But grid-forming tech began shipping this summer:

https://www.solarpowerworldonline.com/2020/07/enphase-begins...