Transmission doesn’t really require any new technology that’s not already in use. Just need to build more of what we already use every day. More high tension power lines, over longer distances, more interconnects between grids, more capacity in those interconnects.

If you really want to go full power on this (and especially if you want your solar power to be continuous generation 24/7) you’ll need to develop a bit of new tech. Well, not so much new tech as just scaling existing tech to be massive. A truly gargantuan transmission line across the Bering Strait could link the two hemispheres into a single worldwide grid. (Though Australia and other more isolated islands might still have to have separate grids and couldn’t take advantage of this as ‘easily’.) If you build that, then you can have a global power grid that the sun is shining on 24 hours a day, so even if solar power was your only power source and even if you had no grid storage capacity, the power grid could still operate all day every day, with that big hemisphere interconnect transmitting power from the day side to the night side, switching direction of flow twice a day.

i read articles about improved battery technology monthly

For grid-level energy storage, we don’t really need any new battery technology. Yes, it might be nice to have cheaper, greener, higher-capacity, more durable batteries, but we don’t need that to make grid-scale storage work. Even our lunky old lead-acid batteries that have been around for over 100 years would do just fine. We just need to build MORE of them. Like, a lot more. (Plus chargers and inverters to change the AC grid power to storable DC and back again.)

But lead-acid batteries have limited life cycles!

They do. But you don’t throw them away when they reach the end of their life cycle – you recycle them. Even completely worn-out and absolutely useless lead-acid batteries can be recycled, recovering 99% of the materials in them. And you can use those materials to build fresh new batteries, likely on a massive scale, running continuously, always recycling the oldest batteries on the grid and shipping out fresh newly made batteries to replace them. Aside from the energy the recycling (and transportation) processes use, it’s pretty much a closed loop system. Recycling and replacing the batteries just becomes a regular maintenance task.

I don’t know if it will last as the fediverse scales, though…

“No ads” might last, with a little effort. Larger instances might start including ads in order to pay for the substantial server resources needed to run them, but you could always just use a smaller instance without ads – or even run your own, private instance without ads – and posts from the other ad-supported instances would still federate to you and vice versa, allowing you to participate without ads.

No ‘content creators’ trying to grab your attention for money, though… That can never last. The more popular the service gets, the more such people will come to it, looking to take advantage of the wider audience available here. And, honestly, the fediverse might be even weaker against that. While some instances might make rules against it, they’ll go to instances that don’t have rules against it, or poorly moderated instances, or they’ll make their own new ones. You can always block them, sure, but new ones will pop up faster than you can block them if it gets popular enough. At least as long as Capitalism lasts, whenever there’s a large group of people, others will come to try to sell things to those people or extract money from them in other ways.

figure out grid scale storage, fusion or build nuclear power

You don’t necessarily need that, actually. Another option is to invest in a larger, wider grid with more interconnects and more long-range transmission capacity.

Maybe the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing where you are … but the sun is shining somewhere, and the wind is blowing somewhere. If you can transmit the power from those places to where you are (and vice versa) then you really don’t need nearly as much storage capacity or continuous generation. If you can transmit power from farther away, that can really help even out the random variability in renewable power sources by averaging them out over a much wider area.

Another often-overlooked constant source of renewable energy is geothermal. Geothermal power plants can be extremely green and efficient, and their power capacity basically never changes at all. They’re only viable in certain places that have geothermal hot spots, of course … but once again, you can solve that by increasing long-range transmission capacity. Build massive geothermal plants in the few places where they’re viable, and then transmit that power to all the places where geothermal isn’t viable.

It can also be hazardous for electricians or DIY home repairs if they don’t know about it.

Oh, you think you’re safe because you turned the house’s power off at the main breaker? Forgot about the solar panels backfeeding into the panel – all the circuits are still live!

(Or, even more fun, only half the breakers in the panel are still live, since the solar panels are only feeding into one of the two phases. So maybe you test to make sure the power is off by turning on the lights, and the lights don’t turn on so you think you’re safe. But the power outlets you’re about to work on are on a different circuit, one that’s on the same phase as the solar, so they’re still live. Fun stuff!)

All that’s to say… You should definitely still do home solar if you can. But document it well, and establish ways to disconnect power to ensure safety!

Well, they could be cheaper.

Or the power company – the only one you’re allowed to do business with – could lower their production costs but leave your rates the same, pocketing the difference as profit.