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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.)
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?
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
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.
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>
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'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.
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.
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?
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
> 2) The electricity companies are not under any obligation that I know of to take your electricity.
They are in locations where the utility regulators require "net metering". In a fair situation, the homeowner still pays a line charge, to cover line maintenance and provisions for current flowing backwards through transformers, and not overloading the lines in times of high output. Then they pay and earn fair per kWh rates (which may be different and vary by time of day) for power used and generated.
> 4) The cost of taking your crappy, varying pittance of power
Is nothing like the way you describe it. Unless surplus solar is a majority of the power on a distribution line (the line that goes from the substation to houses), it will simply go from your house to some other house on the line. The utility then pushes the difference through their substation to meet the remainder of the demand. They already have to handle varying demand on the distribution line, since demand varies all the time in normal use. Only if solar were more than what is needed to power the solar houses *and* everyone else on the distribution line, would the utility need to make provisions at the substation for running power to other substations.
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.
According to the link he provided that included 10 percent from the State and 30 percent from the Federal Govt plus no sales tax so that's at least a 40 percent discount.
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.
If you can not make a profit by simply buying solar panels of the shelf, without subsidies, and feeding the excess power into the grid, then there is something seriously wrong in your country. Perhaps missing regulations about feeding in? No idea. Perhaps absurd low energy prices? No idea either.
In Germany without feed in tariffs, subsidizes etc. pay back is roughly 7 years.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
I read it and hos point remains valid. Weather or ont you like him is irrelevant and being used to prop a biased opinion.
Stop it.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
2. Wrong.
4. Cleansing,as you say, is done at the home, by the home owner.
You do know this isn't about money and about reducing green houses gases, right?.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
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.
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
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.
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
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.
To (make sure they( don)'t match to mess ar{oun(d with O)C(D re]ade(rs)
Now that's just cruel.