Independence is a pipe-dream. You always depend on others and physical resources. If you install a solar panel to "become independent from centralized energy systems", you're moving from a dependence to established energy networks to another type of dependence. You now depend on people making, delivering, maintaining panels for you. As well as the batteries to store the energy.

No-one can make or repair this take themselves. You just moved the dependence from one system to another. The current system is also battle-tested and mutualized. Outage see lots of people on deck to fix things. If your solar installation panel breaks it's your individual problem and it will quickly reveal just how dependent you actually are.

The only way to be independent of other humans would be to live a lifestyle which requires only rudimentary knowledge, and the muscles of your body. Probably only hunter-gatherer. Anything beyond that means you rely on knowledge, skills, and muscles of other, and dependent on them for your life.

Maybe you knew all this, but it may still be useful for other readers to realize since these days we hear a lot of prophets telling us how we should increase our independence by installing solar panels or wind turbines. And people don't think twice about where these come from, and who will maintain them.

> If you install a solar panel to "become independent from centralized energy systems", you're moving from a dependence to established energy networks to another type of dependence. You now depend on people making, delivering, maintaining panels for you. As well as the batteries to store the energy.

Thank you. People claim they are independent because they are off-grid and using solar panels. But are they really? Solar panels last about 10 years and then what? Of course they are dependent on the grid that provides them the solar panels and batteries.