> could decentralised water/power/sewer distribution scale?
Not with conventional implementations and funding, but yes, scaling is technologically feasible at this time. However in the US, getting people to learn the necessary skills and discipline to maintain such systems to the needed baseline operating standards will remain a significant challenge.
Water collection and sanitation could be automated into a closed-loop system, but I've yet to see a COTS solution. Even if you commercialized it, you just move problems around: there would be a significant waste stream of filtration cartridges to handle when scaled up, for example. Cradle-to-cradle design and implementation of such systems is neither easy nor cheap.
You don't need the portability of lithium chemistry batteries, so I recommend redox flow chemistries, with some kind of solid state magnetohydrodynamic pump if possible.
While there are more active septic designs for smaller properties, they're much more expensive, and require more maintenance to keep running. From speaking with septic engineers and techs over the years, Americans have awful habits in general around sewer systems, and a lot of that keeps the septic industry thriving. A sustainable on-site treatment of human black water into safe compost compliant as EPA Class A biosolids would require people be much more diligent about ensuring pharmaceuticals for example, don't make it into the composting stream and instead go to incineration. Even if people do that, it gets expensive on a small scale. Or we come up with ways to automatically sample and test each individual deposit for pharmaceuticals. Which again, adds expense and more maintenance.
I have no doubt we can engineer the shit out the technical problems. I don't have good solutions for the assholes who are The Reason We Can't Have Nice Things, other than isolate myself into a Dunbar Number of like-minded and build our own systems.
Grids arose for a number of good reasons, and the systems design issues surrounding decoupling from them at scale are pretty thorny.
Not with conventional implementations and funding, but yes, scaling is technologically feasible at this time. However in the US, getting people to learn the necessary skills and discipline to maintain such systems to the needed baseline operating standards will remain a significant challenge.
Water collection and sanitation could be automated into a closed-loop system, but I've yet to see a COTS solution. Even if you commercialized it, you just move problems around: there would be a significant waste stream of filtration cartridges to handle when scaled up, for example. Cradle-to-cradle design and implementation of such systems is neither easy nor cheap.
You don't need the portability of lithium chemistry batteries, so I recommend redox flow chemistries, with some kind of solid state magnetohydrodynamic pump if possible.
While there are more active septic designs for smaller properties, they're much more expensive, and require more maintenance to keep running. From speaking with septic engineers and techs over the years, Americans have awful habits in general around sewer systems, and a lot of that keeps the septic industry thriving. A sustainable on-site treatment of human black water into safe compost compliant as EPA Class A biosolids would require people be much more diligent about ensuring pharmaceuticals for example, don't make it into the composting stream and instead go to incineration. Even if people do that, it gets expensive on a small scale. Or we come up with ways to automatically sample and test each individual deposit for pharmaceuticals. Which again, adds expense and more maintenance.
I have no doubt we can engineer the shit out the technical problems. I don't have good solutions for the assholes who are The Reason We Can't Have Nice Things, other than isolate myself into a Dunbar Number of like-minded and build our own systems.
Grids arose for a number of good reasons, and the systems design issues surrounding decoupling from them at scale are pretty thorny.