alt Hacker NewsYou can decentralize residential power without doing the same for industrial loads. Doing so is a mixed bag. It's somewhat more expensive however it's less prone to failures during natural disasters, failures aren't outside of your ability to fix, and it isn't subject to politics to nearly the same degree.
When you consider the logistics of strengthening the last mile of residential to accommodate EVs in a sparsely populated place like the US (or rather the apparent lack of political will to do so) it starts to look extremely attractive.
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> You can decentralize residential power without doing the same for industrial loads. Doing so is a mixed bag
There is a middle ground: decentralize enough to run essential services. Run the rest through the grid. The big downside to decentralising residential power is that's variable demand–precisely the sort of demand you can net out against other parts of the grid. The sort of variance that makes grids more economic than everyone powering themselves.
(Again, in rural settings, yes–decentralise.)
A good friend of mine is a solar installer in rural California, and he is booked solid building battery and solar systems sized to charge cars, because depending on PG&E is worse than spending the money to go off-grid.