with electric vehicles becoming the rage will there be electricity to run them?
Well, if you want to make it happen, you can make it happen.
On the personal level, my family needs 13,000 kWh/year for heating (gas), 3,500 kWh/year for appliances (electricity) and 400 gallons of gasoline (automobile) for some 25,000 km / 15,500 miles.
When I travel, I do so at 170 km/h, conditions permitting, so gasoline consumption could be lower.
If I put solar panels onto my roof for some 3.5 kWp (kilowatts peak), I'd generate some 2,500 kWh of electricity myself of which I could roughly consume half. Self consumption would increase if I had an electric car.
I have space for roughly 12 kWp on the roof of my house and of the garage.
Of course, the details of the percentage of self consumption of generated electricity and level of autonomy is a bit more complicated to figure out, but I have done the math for my personal situation.
Of course, general investments to infrastructure have to be made in the billions to prepare the grid and to come up with solutions for temporary electricity storage while the sun does not shine/shines too much, the wind blows not enough/too much. But then again, investments in the billions are continuously necessary to keep the supply of oil/gas running. It can be done.
The fact is that if I put some 7kWp on my roof for a roughly 12,000 USD investment, this will have been generated within roughly 9 years. Everything which is generated thereafter will be a financial surplus. And I am not living in sunny Texas.
For this very reason, I will have solar panels installed.
I cannot lose in this financially and still provide some extra power to the grid even if I install only half the amount of solar panels for which I have capacity. And I have not even mentioned anything about reducing the carbon-dioxide footprint.
von Marwitz
