Yes,
I did choose to flaunt having power this week, in part because the choice for me to go off grid was made by the city & the local power company, rather than it being my own choice. Of course, maybe I should have been looking at it for years, just "the grid" is so convenient.
And, I have thought about trying to "give" some excess power away to the neighbors. But, unfortunately I still barely have enough for my own usage, and don't have the resources here to convert their houses to run on high efficiency 12V systems. Nor, can I just go down to Home Depot and buy 3 Watt and 5 Watt - 12V light bulbs, or hardly anything else needed to make the conversion. Nor can I power up the neighbor's fridges.
Thinking about Renewable Energy (Solar, Wind, etc).
Personal generation systems are still very much in the realm of home tinkerers. And, the USA is moving away from that very rapidly. Just like I rarely see neighbors willing to pop the hoods on their cars when something goes wrong, people are willing to pay $100+ a month to not have to walk down to their basement to check their battery charge, or to turn their inverter off when not in use.
I am surprised though that I didn't hear about hundreds or thousands of people down in New Orleans giving the power company "the finger".
Unfortunately, to go to RE, one often has give something up.
Refrigerators and AC units are still almost impossible to run off of solar. While you can run your Fridge/AC off of Propane/LPG/NG, that is just changing one power source for another and really doing nothing for our environment.
Yet, we essentially had the technology to make solar fridges 100 years ago. And, if enough effort is made, it may be possible to build them again in the next decade or so. Hmmm, will people be willing to spend $5-$10K or so to buy solar fridges/AC units that could save them $500 - $1000 / year forever?
? Perhaps more if they then convert the entire house to solar. Maybe businesses will be willing to make the leap if it saves them $10K / month, unless they have to hire someone to babysit the systems.
And, Home Depot only sells hot items... If a dozen people want to make a one-time purchase of a set of 12V breakers, Home Depot will just ignore that those people even exist. And, they will continue to be ignored until someone can prove that there is big profit in catering to the users of RE.
Ever notice that Home Depot sells many more 25 year roofs than 500 year roofs? Yes, we've known how to make virtually maintenance free roofing for over two millennia (the original Pantheon's roof would still be intact today had it not been stolen by the Fascists and Nazis nearly two millennia after it was put on).
