Question: What is a Federated Grid?
Answer: What happens to the solarpunk city when the energy grid is hit by an adverse weather event or another natural disaster? To make a long story very short: not a lot.
The solarpunk society has learned its lesson from the mistakes of the Late Stage (week-long blackouts, no service for months in some cases) and completely redesigned its approach to energy provisioning. As for communications, there is no longer a National Grid, but rather a Federated Grid. Inspired by Nature, the Federated Grid is fractal. Every neighbourhood, village or cluster of houses has its own grid, where everyone is both a producer and a consumer, and these networks are connected together within a region, and then again within a bioregion, and so on and so forth. And the best thing is that neighbouring networks can help each other, should something happen.
A freak hailstorm has damaged the solar panels? A winter storm has toppled a wind farm? An earthquake has taken down the high tension lines? Neighbouring networks take over until repairs are completed, and it takes a lot less than it used to. Most people have at least some training on the maintenance of solar implants or domestic wind turbines, and special Energy Sovereignty Groups are at hand to tackle more complex cases. There are no more b******s who laugh at the phone thinking about how much money they can profit off the reconstruction, nor decades-long odysseys of families stuck in prefabs, nor regions fighting against each other for resources. The solarpunk society learned that faced with the consequences of the foolishness of the Late Stage, or the imperatives of Nature, the only sensible responses are solidarity and collaboration.