Gentoo made a lot of sense WAY back in a pre-docker world, where you had to run the whole world on the host OS. Being able to compile it all meant you could link it all together with whatever weird combination of optional libraries you wanted. Things like getting sendmail to auth over LDAP, that nobody packaged in the base distro, become possible. And with Gentoo's tooling, you could build a coherent distro to your own unique demands.
Now though? It's way easier to have a herd of unicorn docker containers running that each handle one weird thing in isolation.
The herd of docker containers would in practice share almost nothing apart from the kernel and waste a lot of RAM. Didn't matter when RAM was cheap, but nowadays...
A lot of the "labor" costs are just regulatory/permitting in disguise. An expedited approval regime with standards such that, permits-wise, installing solar panels was as easy as installing an EV charger would save a ton of money.
This is significantly more over-built than what you are describing, but there is a company building along this idea[0]. Trailer you can drag to location, unfurl the solar panels which then charge the batteries. Being marketed for disasters and military.
I've seen some promising results from solar fences. Because the panels are getting so cheap you can offset the efficiency loss by buying more. Plus, because they are vertical and double sided they get more sunlight earlier and later in the day.
That actually sounds like a viable regulatory hack. Technically an "EV" with "V2G capability", but actually it's a truck full of batteries with solar panels hanging off it.
Eh, it's not unique, it's just that the American ones seem to be so much more empowered, excessive, and capable of generating news and social media headlines.
The UK variant seems to have more traditional failure modes of "excessive charges for maintenance of communal areas": https://parliamentnews.co.uk/tales-of-intimidation-excessive... , but people are still capable of having the occasional fistfight or protracted legal dispute about the wrong kind of hedge in a more informal, adhoc way.
Following the great american "mobile home" tradition. Slap a couple wheels under any object and it is magically removed from countless regulatory rules.
2-wheel dollies with motorized stair climbers are a thing too. Not super common, but aren't cost prohibitive for a use case like this where they'd see daily use.
How often, though, are these not really "cost saving" measures so much as "nobody gets a free ride" measures?
Some schools spend a lot of staff effort managing bad behavior, to everyone's harm, that could be greatly reduced by just making sure every kid had breakfast and lunch. Feeding the kids is "communism", so it's bad, but needing to spend more on non-teaching staff to manage behavior, and getting less instruction out of teaching staff because they spend half their time dealing with behavior issues is worse.
Now though? It's way easier to have a herd of unicorn docker containers running that each handle one weird thing in isolation.
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