[etherael]

How is this sustainable as the gap between self generated and stored energy and the grid price continues to diverge?

If present trends hold it won't be long before a few years worth of energy bills even in Europe finance a full off grid deployment. There doesn't seem to be much room to cut on the energy companies pricing which remains variable and pointlessly complicated vs "I bought this off grid system and now I never think about energy anymore".

Just people in high density housing, people in a lease, and those who can't afford the up front cost will constitute the majority of residential grid energy usage and purchasing?

[antonkochubey]

Other than southern Spain, France, Italy and Greece, you're not going to run off-grid anywhere in Europe. Too little sun in the winter for heating needs. Unless you're considering small-scale wind power installations, but I cannot imagine what costs those could incur in installation alone.

[stoneman24]

Up in Orkney on vacation, the pretty constant wind all year (according to relatives) with a little solar, battery storage and heat pumps, I reckon off-grid might be possible. Add in starlink for internet and I might just stay here.

Not sure of the cost (need to do the research) but all of the above are getting cheaper. A small wind turbine can’t be that costly, surely.

[infecto]

Wind turbines in my research are pretty terrible unless run at scale (massive). YMMV but when I last looked into it, small turbines tended to be 1) noise polluters, 2) not very large power generators and 3) poor build quality.

[eldaisfish]

small wind turbines have a terrible reliability and maintenance track record. They are not worth the investment.

[perlgeek]

The dilemma with wind turbines is that the small ones tend to be inefficient (and still much more expensive than solar), and large ones require huge up-front investments.

I'd love to be proven wrong about this though, if anybody has links to affordable wind turbines / generators, I'd be interested.

[ArchitectAnon]

When I’ve looked into this before for a client in Scotland, it seems the smallest size that made sense in terms of the factors other commenters have mentioned was about £50,000 to install. Also it requires planning permission which is much harder to get for a wind turbine than for solar PV which you can often install without getting explicit permission under ‘permitted development’ rules.

[mcsniff]

Off-grid does not mean renewable-only.

You can run a generator to charge batteries or provide additional capacity when needed.

It would be ideal to have full coverage with "renewables" (isn't oil and gas a renewable just on a longer timeline?) but don't let perfect be the enemy of good if you want to move off-grid.

[etherael]

I do lack familiarity with the European environment, but between geothermal, wind, hydro and natural gas backup, is it really feasible as it is in places where solar gives 0.01 USD kWh prices?

[saagarjha]

Is geothermal an option?

[travisb]

That vicious cycle is a problem ever more expensive electrical grids will need to contend with over the next couple of decades.

The variable per Kwh costs are historically generally pretty low relative to the fixed capex and opex (eg. maintenance, idle runtime) costs.

Mostly this has been made palatable for residential use by hiding these fixed costs in a higher per-Kwh rate. This works great as long as consumption is high and growing. If consumption trends reverse, then self-generation becomes a real possibility for the heavy consumers leaving fewer total Kwh to spread the fixed costs over.

Left unimpeded this leaves the poorest with very high energy bills when everybody else has shifted to a private, cheaper, micro-grid.

[Beretta_Vexee]

Self-consumption can be envisaged, particularly for buildings with air-conditioning systems. In this way, you pay for part of the air-conditioning consumption with solar energy when you use it most during summer.

But operating completely disconnected from the grid, especially in winter, is extremely difficult. Luminosity is much weaker, the sky more overcast and the number of hours of sunlight reduced.