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The Groups Behind Making Distributed Solar Power Harder To Adopt
Lucas123 writes: Distributed rooftop solar is a threat not only to fossil fuel power generation, but also to the profits of monopolistic model of utilities. While the overall amount of electrical capacity represented by distributed solar power remains miniscule for now, it's quickly becoming one of leading sources of new energy deployment. As adoption grows, fossil fuel interests and utilities are succeeding in pushing anti-net metering legislation, which places surcharges on customers who deploy rooftop solar power and sell unused power back to their utility through the power grid. Other state legislation is aimed at reducing tax credits for households or businesses installing solar or allows utilities to buy back unused power at a reduced rate, while reselling it at the full retail price.
There is a solution already in use round the world. It's called "pumped storage". Dinorwic and Ben Cruachan are just two out of the many examples worldwide.
Base load from generators that aren't easy to start and stop (say nuclear) is used during low usage times to pump water up to height. When peak power is required, a flick of a switch sends the water through turbines that spin up extremely rapidly. Dinorwic can go from 0 to 1320 MW in 12 seconds.
This setup is excellent for using/storing solar power.
"Cock Up Your Beaver" does not mean what you think. This sig is intended to clog filters and annoy do-gooders
Use some sort of market rate. If there's a lot of supply, but not a lot of demand at a given moment, the price drops.
That's pretty much what we have now in many areas of the US (not all). It is called Locational Marginal Pricing, or LMP. You can see various realtime pricing maps by searching Google for "LMP map". Here's one of them.
The problem is that the people advocating for "net metering", AKA "I want to sell my power at full retail rates", don't want to pay to keep the grid maintained. The LMP price is wholesale. Getting that power to where it is needed requires transmission lines, and transmission lines need maintenance and have a basically fixed capacity. Therefore, there are real costs involved in transporting electricity from where it is generated, to where it is needed. "Net metering" is a fancy way of saying that you don't want to pay those costs.
Generation costs (wholesale cost) + Grid transmission fees = retail price
You are more than welcome to run an extension cable to your neighbor, but if people want to sell to the grid, they need to accept that the grid costs money to maintain, and demanding that utilities pay retail rates for wholesale electricity isn't going to happen.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
The problem is that you wait for the general election when the choice for each party has already been selected. You need to take part in the process by which the candidates for your party of choice is selected.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison