Utilities Should Worry; Rooftop Solar Could Soon Cut Their Profit

Lucas123 writes A study by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory predicts that distributed rooftop solar panel installations will grow from 0.2% market penetration today to 10% by 2022, during which time they're likely to cut utility profits from 8% to 41%. Using those same metrics, electricity rates for utility customers will grow only by as much as 2.7% over the next eight years. By comparison, the cost of electricity on average rose 3.1% from 2013 to 2014. The study was performed for the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy under the U.S. Department of Energy. One of the main purposes of the study was to evaluate measures that could be pursued by utilities and regulators to reduce the financial impacts of distributed photovoltaics.

Comments

Here we go again

[dbIII]

In other words - when wind blows

This keeps on coming up, and I get the feeling that Luckyo is a repeat offender despite knowing better, however I ask him to correct me if I'm wrong and he doesn't actually know better.

The thing with wind, as any child who watches the TV weather knows, is that it is always blowing somewhere. It's never calm on the whole planet or even an entire country bigger than Monaco. Windmills are not just in one spot but spread around countries especially now that they've been adopted by electricity generators for a few years - thus there's always at least some wind power available when you want to bring a few more MW online. They may cost a shitload per MW but for when you just want a little bit more power that's a lot cheaper than warming up 500MW worth of coal, which comes in big packages or not at all.

I think what we are seeing here is pointless tilting at windmills by armchair knights who see the windmills as evil giants (or green commie democrat lesbians, pick your fantasy opponent) instead of just a tool of the modern world that even Republicans are making money from.


There may be some points of value in the rest of the post but such cretinism, either real or most likely feigned, makes the rest appear of no value due to proximity.