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Floridian (and Southern) Governmental Regulations Are Unfriendly To Solar Power
An anonymous reader writes with a link to a story in the LA Times: "Few places in the country are so warm and bright as Mary Wilkerson's property on the beach near St. Petersburg, Fla., a city once noted in the Guinness Book of World Records for a 768-day stretch of sunny days. But while Florida advertises itself as the Sunshine State, power company executives and regulators have worked successfully to keep most Floridians from using that sunshine to generate their own power. Wilkerson discovered the paradox when she set out to harness sunlight into electricity for the vintage cottages she rents out at Indian Rocks Beach. She would have had an easier time installing solar panels, she found, if she had put the homes on a flatbed and transported them to chilly Massachusetts. While the precise rules vary from state to state, one explanation is the same: opposition from utilities grown nervous by the rapid encroachment of solar firms on their business."
Not all states offer subsidies as generous as the solar industry thinks they deserve.
This isn't news, it's politics by other means.
Dog is my co-pilot.
In no place is crony capitalism so entrenched as in the former states of the Old Confederacy, and Florida is one of the worst. (And, note, I say that as a native of the South.)
You )know( what else is "cool" to do with )unnecessary parentheses(? To (make sure they( don)'t match to mess ar{oun(d with O)C(D re]ade(rs).
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
Not all states offer subsidies as generous as the solar industry thinks they deserve.
Its about long term thinking.
The fossil fuel industry has so many tax and environmental subsidies and costs that go ignored by most people. Duke power dumps a shit load of coal ash into a river and WE the taxpayer pays for it in more ways than money. And there''s the economic consequences - that cost Duke nothing.
Fossil fuels are old, polluting - MUCH more than the manufacture of solar cells and other green energy, and cause health problems that are paid down the line in increased healthcare costs and deaths.
When fossil fuels are drilled or mined is has environmental and health costs. When it transported and burned it has environmental and health costs.
When a solar cell is made, that's the end - all the environmental and health costs are over with. And nuclear? Pfft. The used fuel is nothing compared to the shit: mercury and other crop being spewed by fossil fuels.
Why we can't progress beyond 19th century energy sources?
Note: I live in Florida
I am not aware that there is a law (federal, state or city) that states, Power companies have to provide Net-metering to an installation.
Electric companies need to make money, they need to service the power lines...
Florida (southern Florida FPL) does welcome net-metering, they credit on a 12 month basis, any overage is a gift to the electric company.
With the above stated, Power companies need to modify the tariff showing that if you want to generate power in excess, you have to pay for line service.
The leasing deals that the writer was talking about is a nifty trick to take advantage of the system, and it's a good trick. But at the end of the day, it's a subsidy that the power companies pay out.
here is a good write up about this issue http://articles.sun-sentinel.c...
if you see me, smile and say hello.
If you think we have a free market in energy in the USA, you are horribly misinformed.
Every energy company, utility oil/gas company has their hands in the government cookie jar.
...as long as their corporate/special interests "freedoms" take priority from the public's interests, everything will be peachy.
Also see: Tesla vs. State auto dealership associations.
I am a huge proponent of solar, but the "back to the grid" issue is real. solar, stepped up to normal 120v(ish) within the household is only useful over fairly short distances. all the transformers and transmission infrastructure that can put it feasibly back into the grid during moments of surplus means there still needs to be some type of payment going to the power company. Storage is a huge issue at present (come on battery tech!) too
The source article talks about solar taxes. I wonder how much of that is just the regular taxes one would expect on home improvement such as increased property tax based on new assessed value or permitting and licencing for the modifications to the roof. A lot of this sounds like whining that they are not getting the special treatment that solar gets elsewhere. As for not allowing solar lease, by most accounts the solar lease is a complete rip-off. Those big companies like Sungevity and Solar-City don't push the solar lease/power purchase agreement so hard because it's good for the consumer. They push it because it's good for Solar-City.
While the precise rules vary from state to state, one explanation is the same: opposition from utilities grown nervous by the rapid encroachment of solar firms on their business.
What troubles me is the fact that even while all this is going on, the US government preaches to the world about capitalism and free enterprise. What hypocrisy!
One definition of free enterprise that the US government conveniently chooses to ignore:
Business governed by the laws of supply and demand, not restrained by government interference, regulation or subsidy, also called free market.
" While the precise rules vary from state to state, one explanation is the same: opposition from utilities grown nervous by the rapid encroachment of solar firms on their business."
Frankly, as someone that worked in the PV industry, I don't blame them for being nervous.
Commercial PV is now cheaper than nuclear and highly competitive with both coal and NG turbines. Rooftop systems are nowhere near as competitive, but as they are on the retail side of the meter, they don't have to be. So that's one thing that's scary.
And then there's the fact that PV, especially west and south-west mounted, provides power on-peak, precisely when the companies charge the most for their power. That's where they make almost all of their profit, so this is doubly super-scary.
Why aren't the power companies doing it? Profits also go up if they buy a little less coal.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
I live in St. Pete. I have looked into getting solar panels for my home, but it's just too darn expensive vs. what I pay for power, which is really something considering Duke is probably the most expensive electricity provider in the state. Some of my neighbors have them, usually to heat water/pools. The cost needs to be driven down by the market itself- subsidies will only keep the true cost higher longer. Personally, I don't see selling energy back as a big issue...especially if it impacts my bill. The focus should be on technologies that allow me to keep the power I generate.
Another aspect in this is that the beach communities here are full of NIMBYs and the local beach governments have passed a lot of laws restricting new construction and making the permit process a massive pain in the ass. There hasn't been any new construction by the beach in decades, and it shows.
Those "attractive rates" mean that the power companies pay retail for the power that you feed back to them, which automatically tells you that they are overpaying, since it doesn't include all of the expenses that power companies have. You know who pays for those "attractive rates"? Not the power companies, that's for sure; they pass the losses on to the rest of their customers. It's non-solar power users who subsidize solar power users.
Doesn't sound so bad: people who waste fossil fuels should pay for their sins, and we should reward people who use pristine power! Isn't that what we want? Until you realize that people who put in solar power systems into their homes are primarily affluent, and the money comes primarily from the poor and lower middle class.
Solar power incentives end up being a massive handout to the affluent, paid for by the less well off.
So you have this confluence of powerful, "environmentally conscious" affluent folks railing against carbon emissions, and lobbying for their expensive lifestyle gimmicks (electric cars, solar power, etc., you name it), combined with lobbying from the solar and electric car industry, and you get these junk laws pushed through. Then people pat themselves on their back about how great they are, while at the same time complaining about growing "inequality", which this policy (among many other "progressive" policies) actually contributes to.
How much of that $13.8K is subsidized in ways you don't see? Other question, is your paybackk by selling dirty power to the grid at retail prices? I'm all for solar, but that's because I'm making money installing battery banks to recover phase stability from the amazingly rapid fluctuations in solar production.
In my town, which has its own electric light department, the advisory board recently recommended ending net metering and its recommended rates for PV solar panel owners: sell to the town at 6 per kWh and buy for 21 per kWh.
FWIW, I don't have PV panels, and my net rate on my most recent bill, including a $10.60 for the privilege of being a customer, is about 21 per kWh and the previous month was 22 when I used about 25% less electricity. If I'm reading my bill correctly, the town is paying about 9 per kWh for the electricity itself and another 9 per kWh in transmission charges.
Aw C'mon, everybody's whining about the subsidies and 'net metering hardware' that needs to be installed and maintained at each point of presence -- aside from the purchase of the solar and wind units themselves... at the core of it are a few folks discovering that power utilities are not as eager as they like them to be.
For solar It's just a politics-entitlement issue because, frankly, the power these solar installations push back onto the grid is too tiny for the 'trouble' they cause. I am SO GLAD that my small midwest city has none of this DAMNED FOOLISHNESS going on. We can see what our electrical co-ops pay by the kilowatt for reliable grid power and we see the salaries of the fine people who maintain it, and it's pretty much in parity.
The power grid is a massive tuned circuit which uses frequency to regulate power flow. Several regions such as Oklahoma, Florida and the Northeast already contain enough intermittent energy sources to create real problems with distribution, today. Electrical Engineer Andrew Dodson lays out a few of these problems at this fascinating presentation at the recent Thorium Energy Conference in Chicago, showing plots of dissonant waves hundreds of miles across caused by the onset and outset of wind surges. He describes the "single machine infinite bus" model that grid engineers design for and how it is being compromised in this followup interview.
Here is someone who has devoted his career to grid stability, understands it completely -- and what is his own take?
A TRILLION DOLLARS to retrofit the grid to accommodate so-called renewables. That's without putting a single additional megawatt on the grid. He even advocates the build out of a parallel grid for variable sources to protect the essential 24/7 machinery of power generation, which can incur physical damage from these effects -- allowing us to concentrate new infrastructure for tuning reactive load to a few buffer points.
Sounds great down the road. We need reliable baseload power cheaper than coal first.
___
Please see Thorium Remix and my own letters on energy,
To The Honorable James M. Inhofe, United States Senate
To whom it may concern, Halliburton Corporate
Also of interest, Faulkner [2005]: Electric Pipelines for North American Power Grid Efficiency Security
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
Government elsewhere is even more corrupt, corporations have simply managed to make corruption cheaper by eliminating any kind of competition when buying off politicians. That's what all these laws intended to "get money out of politics" ultimately do: they simply concentrate corruption in the hands of fewer companies and therefore make it cheaper.
"We've already established what kind of woman you are, now we're just haggling over the price."
False equivalency followed by a strawman. Why not go for the hat trick?
Industry players with tremendous capital not investing in what is likely to be the future of their own sectors deserve to die. Regulators are harming the free market.
I've got 4 100 watt panels that send power to my desk. All my devices and this computer are powered by what is stored in the battery that is in a box nearby.
My next 1000 watts will go to run the pool and all my backyard lighting. The power company can cry all it wants, but eventually my entire house will be off the grid.
Panels don't last as long in Florida when a storm comes and rips them off your roof every 20 years. Also our electricity is pretty cheap here.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
Do many americans share this view?
You're a weird people. Perhaps some day the blinkers will drop away, and you'll realise a future in which humanity helps each other so that everyone can achieve happiness is preferable to the imbalanced lopsided winner-takes-all-fuck-the-rest-of-you dream so many of you think is a good thing.
Corporations have "captured" the government. They have discovered that by "investing" a relatively small amount of money in politicians, they can gain a high return in getting laws and regulations passed with protect their monopolies, enabling them to charge high rent.
This takes place in most (?all) governments but the dollar amount of this return on investment in the US is probably the highest or any country in the world.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
I should hope so, electricity already costs too much. Solar is the most expensive of the alternative energy sources. Go raise someone else's electric rates.
I've been shouting this from the mountaintops on /. for years. Few people understand the concept and benefit of limited government. If government didn't have the power to regulate this or that, corporations wouldn't be buying it off. People seem to assume that political motivations are somehow natively nobler than that of business, but fail to realize they are often one and the same. Sadly I fear, even this clear example would not cure liberals of their stubbornness.
Next Era Energy, the name of the holding company that FPL created when utilities started to deregulate -- loves solar and all of its subsidies -- read on at http://www.nexteraenergyresources.com/what/solar.shtml
They claim to be the largest Solar Energy Generation company in the country
The have not one solar panel in Florida, which is a state that they and Duke Progress, Teco and Southern Company completely control
Several posts, mostly by ACs, suggest that solar panels are putting "dirty" power back into the grid. Is there any truth to that?
They also suggest that net metering requires some extra infrastructure on the part of the utility, which I know to be completely false.
Test 1 2 3 4
The worst thing in America is that the "fucked" are the loudest proponents of the "fuck the rest" mentality. It's a triumph of social engineering.
Mostly random stuff.
1) If something requires a government subsidy (which is the selling point of every solar installation in my country), then it's haemorrhaging money but someone, somewhere "wants" it to do that. (In the EU, that's normally governments doing it to meet their "green" obligations at whatever cost is cheaper than the "fine" for not doing so).
2) The electricity companies are not under any obligation that I know of to take your electricity. In the same way that you can't just turn on a generator and demand they let you sell the excess electricity back to them, you can't just slap a solar installation on your house and demand they take your excess. Certainly not "for free". Hell, you can be charged £10,000 to run a broadband cable to a town that isn't wired already, so I'm sure the cost of a "one-off" solar installation to feed back to the grid from wherever you are is MUCH more expensive.
3) If they are paying (or, more accurately, being forced to pay) retail price for your spare electricity, it's a con. They should be paying you no more than it costs for them to buy an equivalent amount of electricity to send that same wattage back to your house. Which, en masse, is literally pence. If they're paying you more than that, you have to wonder why, especially when they are private companies run by shareholders. Hint: Green credentials, government subsidies.
4) The cost of taking your crappy, varying pittance of power, cleansing it, transmitting it back to somewhere they can distribute it (even back to the end of your road, and probably on a separate cable to normal), and sending it on to another customer safely basically means that it's probably not worth their effort to even LOOK at it, unless they are forced.
5) Yes, there are countries/states that pay for your solar "overspill". There are countries that will pay YOU to install solar to save YOU money on your bills (does that not just set off alarm bells in your head about their current marketability / profitability?). It doesn't mean that it's anywhere near a sensible thing to do. And even with those subsidies and cost reduction, sometimes the maths STILL doesn't work out - certified electrical installation costs alone can obliterate a year's operational "profit".
Personally, every setup that someone has tried to sell me or my workplaces (private schools with large roofing surface area, large attached land ownership, desire for green credentials, high electrical demands, lots of spare cash, etc.) has been one that WOULD NOT give them profit even with all the incentives in the world.
Entire finance departments have sat and pored over the numbers in every school I work in. And then the one install I've personally seen, when I ask the bursar about it, there's lots of shifty eyes and "Yeah, I know, don't ask" when profitability of it is mentioned. They just aren't ever going to pay back the installation costs, let alone profit from the energy, but they have a pretty meter ticking up a "KWh" number that impresses visitors.
Like the petroleum industry in the US... complaining about your gas prices starting to catch up to the rest of the world. We set them that high to discourage you from using it, because it's a limited resource. We set solar prices to be profitable because we want YOU to buy them so we meet EU and other pollution obligations. But when we have to PAY YOU to make them work profitably, they are just a waste of plastic.
You don't saaaaaaay.
I have lived in Florida for 59 years and can tell you that at times the state is pretty much like an insane, psychopath who is loaded up on meth. So yes there is always corruption in play here. But when it comes to what seems to be over regulation keep in mind that most of Florida will have violent storms rather frequently. We build against a very real wind hazard. Some serious design challenges exist if one needs to safely mount solar collectors. Windmills would really have to be special as winds that gust at 200 mph will rip most things right out of the ground and your windmill may well become a missile that hits other homes. Our roofs have very little pitch to avoid being crushed by wind. They also tend to have very little overhang for the same reasons and our rafters must be far stronger than in other states. People in most states would be shocked if they understood the design differences require in our homes. Despite all of this we do have people going solar. It is just a bit more difficult here.
A more correct interpretation is that some states have a strong Public Utilities Commission that narrowly interprets public utility laws in a way that negatively impacts *some* solar business models.
In particular the solar business model that installs panels for free or at some low lease cost, and then sells the electricity created to the homeowner (and excess to the grid). In this case, the PUC sees the situation that someone has chosen to build a small electric power plant and sell electricity to a other parties. The notion that the primary customer is a single homeowner or business is immaterial. A company that builds electric power plants for the purpose of selling electricity to other parties is to be regulated under the same laws as any other electric utility company.
If you want solar power for your house, you are free to buy panels and have them installed at your own expense and you can reap the benefits of your self-generated electricity. There may still be issues involving whether and how you can sell excess power back into the grid.
If they had purchased equipment, then that would be the case as you put it.
But these instances focus on a particular business model where "customers" do not buy or install the panels. Instead, they allow another party to install panels at their expense (the installing company remains the owner of the panels throughout) while agreeing to buy electricity generated from the panels.
In other words, they allow someone to build a solar electric plant on their property and further agree to purchase electricity from that plant. Kinda like Verizon and Sprint giving you "free" phones so long as you agree to a two year contract for cellular service. You might not buy the $800 phone otherwise.
This keeps the property-owners initial costs low while locking them into a long term electricity contract. And it makes the provider a public utility--they build plants and sell electricity to customers--and therefore are unhappy to find themselves categorized and regulated as such under the laws governing public utilities.
If government didn't have the power to regulate this or that, corporations wouldn't be buying it off.
Or as P. J. O'Rourke put it When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators.
What is biting the leasing installers in the ass is that they are often set up not to lease equipment to the homeowner, but to sell electricity produced by the installation to the homeowner. It is this sale of electricity model that bites leasing companies in Georgia. As I understand it, if they leased equipment like they leased cars and took payment for the leased equipment itself, they would not have so many problems.
The selling of electricity, though, drops them into the PUC's lap and the PUC's position is that "if you sell electricity, here's all the regulations you have to comply with" and the leasing companies cannot make profits if they have to comply with all the laws that bind large-scale public utilities so they blame the law as being "unfriendly to solar".
In point of fact, if you had a company that wanted to build a small coal-fired power plant and sell the electricity generated by it to the one house, people would demand that it be regulated out of existence and would use the PUC definitions as the basis under which to do so.
Solar PV for base load energy will not work
Solar Thermal, coupled with PV, Wind, Hydro, and energy storage will work. There is no requirement that only one kind of energy source be used to satisfy the demand curve. A current example is the Ivanpah solar thermal plant, just west of Las Vegas. They didn't bother putting in any storage because Boulder Dam, just east of Las Vegas, is on the same main power line. So whatever power Ivanpah puts out, just means more water behind the dam can be saved for other times.
Ivanpah also has natural gas backup. Once you already built the field of mirrors, boilers, and generators, adding natural gas burners is a small expense. The turbines don't care if it was the Sun or natural gas that generated the steam.
As far as storage, every electric car comes with a battery. If your car was fully charged up at work from a solar-panel covered parking lot and building roof, you can use part of that charge to feed your house at night. Buying a storage system by itself is expensive. But if you already bought a big battery for your car, not so much. There is a reason Elon Musk runs both Tesla and Solar City. They are complementary technology.
I read the article to try and find an example of the sorts of obstacles which "power company executives and regulators" had erected to keep home owners from using sunshine to generate their own electricity and found NONE. The article fails to mention a single one of the rules which prevented Mary Wilkerson (or anybody else) from installing solar panels. They do mention that the business models used by the businesses that sell solar panels are illegal in Florida, but they are less than clear what that business model is. The article says that the solar panel industry leases the panels to the homeowner rather than selling them. They than say that the homeowners sell excess power to the electric companies and pay the cost of the panels over time. What they do not tell us is what part of that business model is illegal.
The article actually seems to say that the low cost of electricity in Florida combined with a failure of the state to subsidize solar power through various incentives (including regulations requiring electric companies to generate some portion of their electric through more expensive "renewable" sources). All in all, it fails to support its thesis that it is harder to install solar panels in Florida than in Massachusetts. All the article does is make the case that it is more expensive.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
For a small up-front cost, the leasing company will install several teens of thousands of dollars worth of solar power plant equipment on you house or business. You further agree to a per-kWh price that you will pay for the generated electricity, plus a small monthly lease charge.
So for virtually nothing out-of-pocket you get solar power. But the leasing company owns the equipment and collects the various subsidies, but that's not the sticking point. The part about them selling you electricity--even from "your" equipment--makes the company a electric utility and subject to piles and piles of public utility regulation and law.
The answer is to remove the corruption. If the problem is that political and business motivations are the very same and ignoble, how is surrendering to it going to make it go away?
I've heard a lot of this being shouted from the mountaintops for years on /. and elsewhere. Few people understand the concept and purpose of corporations and other businesses. If government didn't have the power to regulate this or that, corporations would just be buying individuals of their own, and doing what they want anyway. People seem to assume that business motivations are somehow intrinsically nobler than that politics, but fail to realize they are not any more moral, and often less. Sadly I fear, even the clearest example, would not cure conservatives of their stubbornness.
Look, would it be great if we could all be self-autonomous and entire in our own right? Perhaps, but that's not the reality, and as long as that is the case, there will be inequalities of power and even opportunity. What can government do? Manage that, so that it doesn't get out of hand, to the point of exploitation. Can government fail in that regard? Absolutely. What is human that can't fail? We're not divine. Everything we do will be subject to failure, corruption and will need constant maintenance to be sure of it.
Absent your ability to make us all like Superman or even the Green Lantern, or to keep us all restricted to only our own native capacity, I don't see how less power for government is necessarily any better.
Voters. The elected official are put there by voters, every time.(Not it some rare, and temporary situations)
Educate the voters. Let them know what's going on.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
If you buy solar panels and install them on your house to provide your own electricity with no grid hookup, you are generally free to do so provided you otherwise comply with zoning and building codes.
If you do the same but have a grid hookup, you should expect to pay some fixed costs related to your share of the grid infrastructure. If you flow excess power back into the grid you may have other rules to comply with for safety if nothing else.
If you lease equipment, there's not much difference in the two cases above.
If you allow someone to build a solar plan on your property for the purpose of selling you the electricity, then that is a different picture altogether, given the public utility laws come into effect on any company that build power plants and sells electricity. This particular business model evolved as a way to use the various tax provisions (depreciation) and subsidies to maximize the profits and cash flow to installers, and locking "customers" into long term contracts for electricity.
The installers are crying foul in jurisdictions that say "you built and are operating a power plant for the purpose of selling electricity, therefore you are a public utility and shall be regulated as such in accordance with the pertaining laws."
No. Some politicians. not all. There are plenty of states that are citizen friendly regarding solar, and that's because the politician did what there voters, BaL, wanted.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
You have given your power to people that you don't know and they have sold it. The answer is not to give it away in the first place.
Yeah, you go on believing that...
Educate the voters. Let them know what's going on.
The problem would be separating education from propaganda. Who decides what the education content is? The current incumbents? The media? Unions? Corporations? You?
And then of course we have the subtle slant that can go into the education: ... ... ...
Sources said
The opposition claimed today
The opposition complained today
And of course for time -- just for time really -- we need to cut stories that are less relevant. You say it's censorship, I say good editing (or vice-versa, I don't care). We'll educate more on the possibility of impeachment (or more on Lois Lerner and the IRS scandal) depending on our point of view.
I suppose we could establish a bi-partisan commission -- one to designed to exclude third-parties from participation. After all, they aren't likely to win anyway.
No. Some politicians. not all. There are plenty of states that are citizen friendly regarding solar, and that's because the politician did what there voters, BaL, wanted.
Are you sure the friendliness is towards the voters and not the solar companies? Just curious?
Note: I'm just playing devil's advocate on perceptions. While normally I'm against government subsides, I personally think solar/alternative energy is a great thing for the governments to subsidize; especially when you consider that the "loser" (if there truly is one) is another government sponsored monopoly.
That's just load of horses#!t. Anybody can lease solar panels with 0 money down. Growing equality? Look at those that are so poor they have to live close to a coal power plant where housing prices are MUCH lower.
Utilities can only delay solar a little. PV solar, without subsidies, is just now becoming cheaper than fuel-powered electricity in sunny locations. Bloomberg reports the first non-subsidized solar plant to be built in Spain.
In the next decade, we'll see the end of subsidies and continued growth in PV solar. Anywhere the biggest daytime power load is from air conditioning, solar will win out.
As it has been noted recently, again, solar and wind power are the MOST EXPENSIVE alternatives to fossil fuels and poor choices.
Storage is only an issue for off grid applications. Otherwise solar PV systems mostly reduces peeking power requirements. If we had residential variable rate metering, residential solar would likely be more cost effective.
It is true that wind has issues with phase demand. Producing large amounts of power late at night when demand is low. On the other hand if solar or wind started creating excess power on a semi-regular basis, you'd quickly find industries that would tap into that 'free power' Think 100 MW electric furnaces. (Side note, my dad worked for NASA on wind tunnels for 30 years. Every so often he'd have to be there for a test run, which meant doing the swing shift because the power was cheaper. They had to call the power company to let them know how things were going, when they were going to start and when they were going to stop. Because the motors drew ~75 MW). So can can see similar things if ever wind and solar started producing more power than the grid requires at times. If you got 100 MW of excess power burning a hole in your pocket, someone somewhere wants it.
Can anyone cite the specific anti-solar Florida statutes that the article alludes to?
I'm sure if she wanted to she could go off grid and run everything on solar power and no one could say anything. The trouble starts when she wants to connect her house to the utility power grid, and use it essentially as a big battery, and then have the utility company pay her when the meter runs backwards. It's that process that the power companies and government regulations make difficult, and you can understand a little bit why. From their point of view she wants to have her cake and eat it too.
And where I live, it's the corrupt monopoly transmission line company that charge more for the connection itself than the actual power delivered. It make so much money (guaranteed 9.5% ROI a year by tax payers!) in fact that Warren Buffet is set to buy them out.
Between the regulation and the line charges, it's not economical to invest in solar or wind on a small scale around where I live either.
What makes you think it was a gift? It's not. It was an exchange, and I reserve the right to say the exchange isn't fair, and take steps to remedy that.
Why do you not understand the reality of the situation, why do you misrepresent it?
Do you not even know what is really happening?
That's different from other countries' corruption, where instead of buying legislators to change the laws, the rich just buy judges and prosecutors to make the laws irrelevant.
On the whole, I think the US system is better. At least there's a degree of openness about it.
Yeah. Utility companies don't want millions of ignorant homeowners, each putting out a few kilowatts, with cheaply installed inverters, onto their precisely controlled 60 hz AC grid. Those homeowners don't know enough about electricity, and screw up the grid.
In residential areas, the cost of distribution is comparable to the cost of electricity itself. The grid has to be paid for by someone.
While normally I'm against government subsides, I personally think solar/alternative energy is a great thing for the governments to subsidize; especially when you consider that the "loser" (if there truly is one) is another government sponsored monopoly.
Renewables are a good idea to subsidize for all the same reasons that every other energy source is subsidized, plus a bunch more (including the whole Middle East thing, the future, and the environment).
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
As a 25 year plus Florida resident who looked into solar power here is what i found. No sales tax on equipment or instlation. Florida laws bars HOA's from passing any ruling preventing the instlation of solar panels. Utilities are required to buy the power you generate at what it costs them to generate power not at the retail rate they sell it at. Some electric utilities offer subsidizes but some like my co-op do not. I would say they article is highly one sided.
You see story after story about how Americans are being fucked over by their government all the while calling it "land of the free", "we have so much more freedom than others" bullshit.
Some state governments don't like to waste taxpayer money. There is no story here.
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It strikes me a lot like the RIAA/MIAA games. Powerful lobbying groups attempt to get society and state governments to fund their business models. So why should Florida and these other states support this?
http://www.islandpacket.com/20...
We could save a lot of space an consolidate the stories on sites like Slashdot if we just wrote something like "People with big money stop people with good ideas." It happens every day, and for no good reason other than because money.
geek n performer who performs morbid or disgusting acts, as biting off the head of a live chicken
Mon 8/11/14 9:27 am. Whenever solar electricity actually costs *less* than utility power -- without ridiculous taxpayer subsidies -- *then* come back and complain.
So eliminate regulation and corporations will stop buying government officials?
And I suppose they will just continue to act as good corporate citizens too without those regulations keeping them in line?
I remind you that most regulations, such as Clean Air/Water, came into being precisely because the corporations proved themselves too untrustworthy to do it themselves, and thus needed to be forced by the hand of government reflecting the people's will (ie, we dont like lakes that catch on fire, and drinking water that causes cancer).
In short: you be trippin.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
Hear hear!
sigmon needs a dose of reality and basic civics.
Further support for reality can be found at ( http://www.governmentisgood.co... ).
Government and bureaucracy brings its own issues and problems to the table. But government being the reflection of hte people, the representation of hte people's collective will is the ONLY counter-weight to corporate power.
Time and again, throughout history, it is proven repeatedly that individuals on their own cannot stand against corporations. It requires large collective action to successfully oppose a corporation.
It's not that corporations are good or evil, its precisely that they are neither, they are amoral, that the problem comes from. In their pursuit of hte almighty dollar they do not care for the good or ill effects of what they do. All that matters is $$$. But in that pursuit they have great capacity to do harm. And that is why we require regulation, to prevent that harm.
If they want to do great good in the pursuit of $$$...let them knock themselves out.
But there is absolutely zero reason why we should allow them to cause harm in the pursuit of that $$$.
Hence: Government and Regulation.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
so we should as individuals all oppose the corporations instead?
that never works. corporations crush individuals.
it takes collective action, large groups of people to exert power of a corporation
you know what you call a large group of people acting in unison to enforce a collective will?
GOVERNMENT*
(*at least in terms of basic civics...the current status quo dedicated to supporting the opposite of whatever the black guy in the oval office wants not withstanding)
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
The southern states must be quite ideal for solar power. The US has several deserts in like Arizona and Nevada and Texas it should be able to use without any problems..?
Getting political on this issue gets to the point, ALEC, the group funded by the Koch brothers is behind a lot of these laws... http://www.democracynow.org/20...
"Where did this apple come from?"
--Alan Turing
Utility Industries in Florida and other Southern States have the Politicians of both parties in there hip pockets. Floridians have been paying a Nuclear power tax that adds up to a billion plus dollars! Citizens do not count against business. Florida government is for business citizens do not count!
But government being the reflection of hte people, the representation of hte people's collective will is the ONLY counter-weight to corporate power.
Except when government doesn't do that and isn't the reflection of the people. Which are some of the times being complained about right now.
Time and again, throughout history, it is proven repeatedly that individuals on their own cannot stand against corporations.
Yea, they get friends and allies to support them. Then it's one group against another. It's basic tactics. Also, there are examples of individuals who do stand against corporations and succeed. Keep in mind that corporations need rules in order to exist and one can with patience and diligence use those rules against the business that causes you grief.
In the US, whoever has the higher-paid lawyer generally wins. Law, evidence and testimony don't really enter into it much.
Exceptions include: when a media celebrity is involved, a newspaper or TV chain decides to cover the trial, or a politician is involved.
In Florida, the judges do what they are paid to do, and power companies have deep pockets.
Re: "My mom can't even have a digital satellite dish or even a small mast antenna"
Wrong, Fed law says HOA can NOT restrict antennas or dishes used to receive TV signals. Can not be preempted by locals.
To (make sure they( don)'t match to mess ar{oun(d with O)C(D re]ade(rs)
Now that's just cruel.