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Obvious choice
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this post was submitted on 21 Apr 2026
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It's probably a good idea to put solar panels on car parks where we're going to have car parks anyway, though. In addition to agrivoltaics and using, as you say, substandard land for large scale solar. Also put it on roofs. Basically anywhere it doesn't do any harm, I say.
Governments should encourage every home to have at least enough solar powered energy to run a small refrigerator, a space heater, a small cooking surface, and a radio as a matter of national security. That can be achieved with porch solar and significantly hardens a population against attacks on energy infrastructure.
Would also require an isolation switch to be effective. With a grid-tied solar install it's going to dump all of the energy into the grid, and during a power outage that energy will simply not be collected.
I could see that becoming a thing where during a power outage you flip a switch near the electrical panel and then every green-colored outlet will run entirely off the solar panels when the sunlight is available. Or if we really want to make it technical solution, create special outlets that are dual power (grid and direct from solar) and then appliances plugged into these special outlets will switch between power sources as they're available. Potentially some issues with two different AC circuits touching depending on how it's implemented on the appliance side, but it could be a good solution especially if the controller can still backfeed excess energy production back into the grid
We already have hybrid inverters that does that automatically, you don't even need a different circuit or special outlets. It can manage all the grid ties, off grid and battery parameters on the fly
Well shit that's awesome! Like I'm kinda curious how it handles the load exceeding capacity, but I suppose if you just turn everything off that should probably be fine
As in what happens if you plug too much stuff that it exceeds your solar production?
I'll use mine as an example, but it might be different with different models and configurations:
Inverter can handle up to 10kw
If solar production is at 5kw, and home is demanding 7kw, in my case, I have it set up as to draw the remaining 2kw from the battery, if battery is depleted, it will draw 2kw from the utility company
If home demands more than 10kw that the inverter can handle, it will trip the internal inverter protection or a circuit breaker leading to it