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Gambling State Says the Solar Gamble Is Over
New submitter mdnuclear writes: In a strange echo of the depressed oil economy SolarCity recently announced a layoff of a quarter of its workforce as the apparent result of the Nevada PUC's decision to phase solar net-metering customers down from retail to wholesale per kWh. A scathing editorial in the WSJ last December took both solar leasing companies and their financial underwriters to task, calling net metering a "regressive political income redistribution in support of a putatively progressive cause."
Wednesday the PUC fronted a possible compromise, 'grandfathering' existing net metering customers to their current rates to create a third caste of energy consumers, those who had been in the right place at the right time — for awhile. One who had paid $22k into solar lamented, "I'm not happy; my wife isn't happy, we could have done something else with that money." Like many who leave Vegas, perhaps they should have. But this begs the real question... are net-metering schemes ultimately 'right' or 'wrong' for the grid?
Wednesday the PUC fronted a possible compromise, 'grandfathering' existing net metering customers to their current rates to create a third caste of energy consumers, those who had been in the right place at the right time — for awhile. One who had paid $22k into solar lamented, "I'm not happy; my wife isn't happy, we could have done something else with that money." Like many who leave Vegas, perhaps they should have. But this begs the real question... are net-metering schemes ultimately 'right' or 'wrong' for the grid?
Why should you be paid retail for generation? That totally ignores the part the grid takes in handling your energy...
If the generated solar gets used within the local residential area, then they should get a bit under retail rates. If if has to be backfed through transformers, etc (a suburbian area with only some houses on solar can turn into net generators due to the low power draw while no one was home), then retail rates.
That would likely be too complex though. I agree that retail rates should be good, or donated into a kitty for people in poverty or something. The power company makes bank at buying at retail rates right at the point of consumption (and forcing that rate by law seems non-beneficial), but I never thought that solar panels as be an income generating source for a house really made sense either...
Ha ha, suck it mdsolar.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
That's absurd. This is a regulated monopoly. If the government wasn't regulating them, they would dramatically raise rates and prohibit solar altogether. When you have a monopoly, you have to regulate.
here in Arizona when I started seeing these ads on youtube with a bunch of old people talking about something scary, ending with a passionate plea to vote for such and such law, which turned out to be a law that let the power companies stop paying for the electricity folks with solar panels put back into the grid.
The whole "net metering" debate is just the power companies fighting solar. As time goes on it'll make electricity _too_ cheap. The reason we have public utilities is that businesses are in the business of making money; so for anything more important than a twinkie you're going to get price gouged sooner or later...
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Sure, drop the rate back to wholesale for the buy-back of net metering, but then price it based on the spot market at that time, not the overall rate. The prices are highest during the day, so net metering for solar would likely pay more than the retail rate if the utilities had to pay for it based on the time.
Overall, utilities are saving money from solar--they're reducing what they have to pay to support peak demand, and now they're coming back and trying to suck more money out of their customers.
This is a money grab by the utilities, plain and simple. This has nothing to do with fairness.
If utilities don't do retail metering, consumers can get similar results by pooling their loads. Solar cogeneration is short-term steady while most domestic loads are intermittent, which means that over an hour a consumer might be a net provider to the grid but get charged amost as much as without cogeneration.
On the other hand, a buyers' co-op smooths out the load variations and approaches the effects of net retail metering. Which is appropriate, because (unlike wholesale rates) cogeneration does not put extra load on the grid.
If utilities don't adapt to these realities in a more realistic way than offering wholesale (i.e. solar plant) rates to cogeneration providers, they're likely to see a lot of pressure for cities and especially smaller towns taking over last-mile electrical distribution to get the same effect.
This last is not completely hypothetical; at least one Sunbelt town (mine) is moving in that direction.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
The more the utilities push towards charging decentralized solar, the more it becomes attractive to get battery banks and to completely go off the grid. Technology isn't quite there yet. Batteries are still too expensive, capacities are too low, and they need replacement too frequently. But the trend is definitely in the right direction. In a few years, it'll make sense for many current home owners to install batteries and disconnect from the grid altogether.
Why would you want to pay a monthly interconnection-fee, if you don't really need the grid and if you can't sell excess energy.
And I continue to refuse to turn it off.
I guess we could have icons to show what articles links to adblock unfriendly sites.. would be a time saver as we could just move on to the next article.
The "real question" is not whether net metering is good or bad. Of course it's good, and it will continue to become more common as solar (and even wind) micro-generation technology improves. It will get an even bigger boost if EV technology with bidirectional charging and large storage batteries become more popular, as Tesla would like them to. The dispute here isn't over net metering itself. The issue is all about the MONEY of net metering. Who pays what, and how? Before net metering, utility rates were set based on a fixed connection fee to pay for certain fixed infrastructure costs, plus an energy charge per kWh to gover generation costs. For large commercial users, the fixed fee was set as a "demand charge" based on peak consumption (since that determines how hefty the grid needs to be to serve the customer). For residential users, the demand charge is usually just a flat fee per month for the connection. In practice the demand/connection fee is not enough to actually cover the fixed costs of the system, and a lot of that expense is rolled into the energy rates. That doesn't matter in a world without net metering - it makes no difference to the utility whether they get their money per kWh or per month, as long as they get the money. Net metering screws this all up. A net-metered user may have zero net consumption in a month, while still requiring the same infrastructure as a user without net metering. As a result, the demand or connection charge needs to be greatly increased to make up for the lost kWh revenue.
The problem is that the adjustment of rates to accommodate net metering has been a hugely political process with every party trying to screw everyone else to the max. Solar companies want their customers to see huge financial benefits to justify their prices, so they lobby for net metering rates that strongly favor their customers: low monthly charges (ideally the same as for non-net-metered customers), with reimbursement for net metered power at the full retail rate (i.e. 1kWh sold back to the power company nets you the same money you would pay to buy the 1kWh from the power company). This makes solar look like a great investment. The problem is that is really does screw the power company. Since utilities are typically government-controlled monopolies, that means it actually screws the non-solar customers who will all be forced to pay for the net-meter-users' share of infrastructure. Not quite fair. On the other hand, though, we have utility companies trying to get the solar power as cheaply as possible while still collecting full reimbursement for infrastructure costs. They want to treat net-metered customers like power plants: charge them for all the infrastructure costs, and only buy their power at "wholesale" rates that are far less than what the consumer pays for power going the other direction on the same wires. This is also not fair, and screws the people who want to invest in solar by artificially depressing the value of their power. The solution must lie somewhere in-between. Utility rates and their basic method of allocating them will need to change, and it will take honest politicians not bought off by solar companies or utilities to reach a compromise that is fair for everyone. Fat chance of that happening any time soon.
I am a geek attorney, but not your geek attorney unless you've already retained me. This is not legal advice.
> This should be settled by the market.
wat
Ok, so the issue here is that, by government fiat, there's only ONE supplier- a utility. This means that there's no "market" at this level. You get power from one guy.
It's in the interest of that one guy for you NOT have solar panels. That reduces the money that they can make off of you. So as you'd expect, they've pushed back at every level- utilities have claimed that there's no safe way to have a hookup, that they can't possibly use the energy you can put back on the grid, etc. Whatever they can to make solar not profitable.
"Retail net metering" generally means that if you pay X for a kilowatt hour, then if you make a kilowatt hour you don't use at noon (say because you are at work), and are putting the power back on the network, then when you need a kilowatt later that day, that you were credited X, and now you spend X. You were credited the RETAIL cost of it, and then when you used the kilowatt hour later, you spend the RETAIL cost of it- and ended up even.
With lesser standards- such as wholesale- the power you don't use is only fractionally credited to you. So
Take away their monopoly. I live in a city that used to have two electric companies. A few years ago, the local government forced a buyout of one by the other and made it a government-owned monopoly. Since that time, costs have soared. Now citizens of the city are paying about 4 times as much as those in the county, which is supplied by a co-op.
All regulation does is get corrupted and captured. Get rid of it and let the market decide.
I, for one, would be willing to pay a little more for locally generated green energy.
There is no market solution to this problem, right now. Pehaps smart grids will be able to address that someday, but right now, it's just who lobbies the regulator better. Given the reality that a monopoly grid currently in place, and is necessary, and given a monopoly, it must be regulated, and that regulation will perforce shape the market, the choice before people is what shape of market do you want? Distributed generation, as it reduces the amount of electricity that must be moved over long distances, is more efficient, and therefore cheaper, and so if we are going to fail in any direction it should be in favour of reducing costs for everyone. On that basis, a feed-in tarriff that encourages distributed generation is better for everyone except the incumbent electric generation and distribution organizations, as it reduces the amount of electricity they sell and ship.
I see net metering as a purposefully over-complicated scheme with a few minor selling points but an all-too-familiar drawback: the added complication allows for all kinds of back-and-forth fenagling, kow-towing, and piles upon piles of legalese to build up. After awhile it will get just as bad as financial securities, savings and loans, and the real estate market in terms of the various ways sneaky language is slipped into the rule set of various regulatory systems interconnected in the network of information that comprises the entire scheme, allowing sudden and surprising financial dambreaks that leave entire regions drained dry -- and all along it will be sold in the form of various political movements "for the common good". In light of how things are already going this way all because of the introduction of the net metering scheme, I say scrap the growing chimera before it emerges from the womb as a defense budget addendum.
"Stratigraphically the origin of agriculture and thermonuclear destruction will appear essentially simultaneous" -- Lee
If it was a simple supply and demand issue, then they wouldn't have been getting demand pricing for supply.
Now they will be getting the same kind of pricing as other suppliers instead of purchasers.
No company will ever stay in business if they pay the same for product as they sell it for.
Government should pick winners and losers when the market produces sub optimal outcomes.
Unless you replace reason with religion. In that case it could be like you said.
Someone reading the WSJ editorial might get the impression that fossil fuel subsidies don't exist. Sure, get rid of the subsidies. ALL of them.
Well your 'little more' is x4.23 as much. Instead of selling at the market price for supplying power at 2.6, they were selling it at the customer purchasing price of 11.
Now they are being dropped back down to normal supply pricing.
It was inevitable. Those kinds of premiums are only temporary to jump start an industry. Once they get large enough, the premium is removed and they then have to compete with everybody else in the market. After all, a market that makes nothing can't afford maintenance and other costs and collapses.
Take away their monopoly.
How? What are you planning on doing?
I live in a city that used to have two electric companies. A few years ago, the local government forced a buyout of one by the other and made it a government-owned monopoly. Since that time, costs have soared. Now citizens of the city are paying about 4 times as much as those in the county, which is supplied by a co-op.
So let's see, the city's power rates are high, but the co-op's are low.
How does this prove your contention about a market?
Maybe your city just needs better regulation. Or maybe it has higher expenses for some reason, though what they could be, I don't know.
All regulation does is get corrupted and captured. Get rid of it and let the market decide.
I, for one, would be willing to pay a little more for locally generated green energy.
That seems so simple, but it turns out not to be.
I'll give you a clue why.
Electrical lines are very cheap.
There's a simple solution, just use all the power you generate.
There absolutely is a market, just because you don't see it doesn't mean it isn't there.
Here's an easy way for you to get to see it and find out more about what's going on.
Go to your local power company and talk to them. Those guys have meetings, and most of them are happy to let people observe or even participate.
Sit in on a few of them, you'll learn a lot.
You'll probably learn a lot of things you never suspected. The power company is kind of like a swan. It looks calm and placid on the surface, but below the water those feet are paddling like mad to keep that comfortable illusion going for the customers.
regressive political income redistribution in support of a putatively progressive cause.
In Americans politics, "progressive" and "regressive" are usually taken as antonyms, hence the quote would suggest that the supposed income redistribution was going to the wealthy. However, progressive taxation is understood to mean a (purely hypothetical state in this country) taxation system where the effective rate on the wealthiest people is highest and the rate on the poorest is lowest. These seem to be opposing ideas - so which was is the article claiming the income redistribution was going? There are endless examples of the government sponsoring redistribution of money towards the wealthy in the form of various government tax cuts and subsidies, so it would seem that is the most likely case here.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
The most basic characteristic of a market is that there are multiple buyers and sellers who negotiate prices by going elsewhere if they don't like what they're offered. And this applies to the situation you describe ... how?
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
If you mean "minimum load" then, yes, they're ahead because they never send any to the grid in the first place. If you men "their average load," not so -- they're paying for the extra KW when the air conditioning kicks on and getting back a fraction when the AC is off.So in the course of an hour, they're behind by quite a bit.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
Tell that to the folks who generate electricity by burning fossil fuels. They are using the government to fight changes to the market brought about by new technology. And if you want a completely market driven solution then we should stop subsidizing the companies that burn fossil fuels by paying for the damages caused by the pollution generated by them. Burning coal spews out Mercury, Sulfur Dioxide, and many other pollutants yet society pays to clean them up and for any health problems caused by them. We can estimate fairly well how much those costs are so that amount should be paid by those companies back to society. Yes, the price of electricity would go up but then as you said the government shouldn't be picking winners and losers.
top comment
"Stratigraphically the origin of agriculture and thermonuclear destruction will appear essentially simultaneous" -- Lee
Oil, coal, natural gas, hydroelectric and nuclear ALL benefit from government subsidies and regulations. It's the only reason our power grid covers the majority of our nation, as it would never have been "economically" feasible otherwise. If you don't believe that, just look at high speed internet and how many areas are under served not because they can't be profitable, but because they're not profitable enough, if you have to build the infrastructure too.
This is where the government beats industry, determining social benefits that override economic ones, and championing them.
Energy subsidies (discusses both fossil and renewable)
The two sets of changes are a gradual drop in per-KwH from 11 cents to 2.6 cents along with an increase in the charge for connecting to the grid, going from $12.75/month to $38.51/month.
If either one of those wasn't changing or was changing less then it might be feasible to at least break even; I suspect that the combination is actually designed to ensure that it costs more to feed power to the grid than you can possibly get back financially unless you have a huge (and thus expensive) solar array.
The biggest question now for me would be whether that $38.51/month charge applies even if you're set up to never feed energy back to the grid - if so, then this was absolutely set up to screw anyone with solar. If you can have solar for your own use (e.g. to cover your own AC/heating during the day) and just use the grid as backup, then it may still be feasible - particularly if cost-effective energy storage options become available. Depending on how things were set up, those options might not even need to be very efficient - heating or cooling of thermal masses for overnight temperature control for example.
Or, if you have electricity that you'll have to pay to send to the grid then it's effectively free to use it on other things. How much do Bitcoin mining rigs cost? Or incandescent-lit signs that say "F*ck The PUC"?
fencepost
just a little off
In far too many municipalities that "government fiat" is the only reason there's a developed power grid in the first place. Energy infrastructure is not a quick return on investment type of business, it can take decades before a profit is returned. If it weren't for "government fiat" pushing the infrastructure, energy companies would still be serving only the very richest areas. Much like how the high speed internet industry functions, covering only the parts of a city or county that guarantees fat profits, ignoring the rest.
Simple answer:
Greed destroys common sense (along with respect and fairness.)
The best idea is to cut the cord and make all of your won power. Solar, wind, as well as the occasional generator feeding a decent battery bank can provide power for cautious users. What we expect from power companies is total commitment to getting away from burning fossil fuels.
Why, the current scheme is to sell you excess solar to the electric company on sunny days and buy it back when the sun doesn't shine. Yes some make a profit in doing that but the real profit is making electricity yourself, not paying 13+ cents a Kw/h. With a really good low loss battery you could be off the grid completely.
Star Trek, there maybe hope.
If there's one thing the "free" economy system has shown time and time again - it's that capitalism creates monopolies. The industries that are not dominated by monopolies or monopolistic competition are very, very few, far in-between, and generally without advancement.
PS: I don't reply to ACs.
"They effectively have prohibited solar. If I understand what they've done correctly, they've set a ridiculously high grid-tie charge with a ridiculously-low kWh payout, such that it is impossible to even break-even. "
No one owes you a break-even on a harebrained scheme. You are free to power your own house with solar. No one will prohibit it or care. But your insistence on a break-even means you're wanting someone else to subsidize your hobby.
OTOH, a deal is a deal.
Oil, coal, natural gas, hydroelectric and nuclear ALL benefit from government subsidies and regulations. It's the only reason our power grid covers the majority of our nation, as it would never have been "economically" feasible otherwise. If you don't believe that, just look at high speed internet and how many areas are under served not because they can't be profitable, but because they're not profitable enough, if you have to build the infrastructure too.
This is where the government beats industry, determining social benefits that override economic ones, and championing them.
And another reason that ALL forms of generation get subsidized is that the government knows the lower cost, reliable and available power is key to a thriving economy. Renewables get much greater subsidies that any other source has gotten or is getting if you calculate in on a MWH generated and to be generated basis. Of course, renewables subsidies are more based on carbon reduction than cost reduction and availability/reliability.
Thank you for having a username that trolls "mdsolar" and his arrogant and obviously bought & paid for trolling.
Yes, the name pairs well with the link to Rupert Murdoch's WSJ editorial page. That's like using Fox News as a reference on a solar story.
Even if you have solar, and even if you use zero net KWH of energy, your bill is still full of a bunch of different charges that you cannot avoid. These various fixed and distribution-based charges are what pay for the grid infrastructure. Solar only lets you avoid (some of) the supply charges, I.e. the charges for the actual KWH. I have several neighbors with efficient homes and solar arrays who generate all their net energy and even send extra energy back to the grid, but they still have to pay nearly $17 per month in these unavoidable fees. That's fair--they pay for the benefits of having the grid to buy from and sell to as needed. But please can you shills for the power company lobby stop pretending that solar folks are not paying their share of grid expenses.
Government should pick winners and losers when the market produces sub optimal outcomes.
Unless you replace reason with religion. In that case it could be like you said.
To elaborate, in an ideal world the government would tax appropriately so that externalities were accounted for. You run a polluting coal plant, well we are going to charge you what we think the medical bills will be and then use that money to offset those costs. Factor in the lost work and income over a shortened lifespan, and their bill would be non trivial. In the case of Shina, well in the process of producing stuff you are poisoning the world and treating people like crap, well we have to account for that as well.
So, you can say, "Government should not pick winners and losers, provided you first level the playing field to account for externalities forced on the population.''
It doesn't have that soundbyte feel, but it is accurate..
The market is not a natural entity, it exists because government creates and enforces the conditions to enable it to exist.
Picking a market is *still* the government picking winners and losers. It is picking whomever does well when the market does well under the market conditions that the government preserves.
Governments pick. That's what they do. What's why they were created in the first place. The only question is who gets picked.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
This is done on purpose. It's nothing new. They give a steep subsidy to get the players all excited and people buying in and then they crash the subsidies all at once. It tanks the market and turns people off for decades to come.
:T:R:A:N:S:
There ARE multiple buyers and sellers of wholesale electricity: https://www.eia.gov/electricit...
On a hot summer day my power company has to make a decision. Fire up their diesel generators to supply peak power at some cost to them, or buy from someone else who has either surplus power or cheaper sources of extra power that can be turned on. They track the spot prices for electricity constantly. Maybe they even sell power sometimes to other utilities because the price is sweet enough.
I am not an expert on the technical details involved, but a solution seems plain enough. Allow those of us who generate enough electricity for our own needs to get off the grid completely. Fine, you don't want to pay me for my "free power" you didn't have to build power plants to provide, so let me opt out. I'll install a bank of Tesla backup batteries in my garage and take my chances.
they were selling ( buying ) at the same rate customers were paying .
They do owe you for an ARTIFICIAL grid tie charge. THAT isn't part of the free market.
Remember, the coal power station doesn't pay a grid tie.
>Distributed generation, as it reduces the amount of electricity that must be moved over long distances, is more efficient, and therefore cheaper
Only if generation + losses is more expensive than each small generation plant, or have you forgot what economy of scale means.
Also distributed generation is expensive because the entire grid has to be redesigned from a from the centralized generation where a few big units determine the clock of the network to a smart network that will require millions if not billions in upgrades to stabilize millions of input sources.
And the electricity provider has no more rights to the public property on which they deploy their electricity related equipment, and Mr. John Doe (and friends) could easily make the providers pay high prices to get a cable between A and B or build around... if that is even possible.
Instead the government forces Mr. John Doe and friends to allow that infrastructure to be built, and in exchange the electricity provider gives up something. That something is supposed to be something that benefits society in general.
Actually if you live in an area where the utilities have been vertically dis-integrated you get a bill that lists both an energy charge and a distribution charge. In that mode your utility retailer pays for electricity at the substation, and the distribution company gets paid for moving the power from the substation to your premises. In that model, then the rate given back should be the energy charge, as it is the same as reducing the power drawn at the substation. Where I live (in Tx) that would be about $.05 per kwh or so. (the distribution charge is $.02). Of course that means that the payout period gets longer I figured it out to be 20+ years where I live. As the president of a nearby electric coop stated rooftop solar does not make sense where I live with 15 to 30 year payouts, and likley having to replace the cells at least once in that time due to a hailstorm.
So if the utilities want wholesale price they should pay spot market price. Electronics is cheap, we can create a complete log of when and how much the solar panels fed the grid.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
If they raise rates enough, switching to solar becomes attractive, though. Even with the time-of-day problem.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Uh... You might want to explain what you're talking about more, because it is a power circuit, and I'm not sure what you mean by an 'out and back again' distribution network.
Transformers work both ways, but there's other regulatory equipment that needs to be designed with two-way flow in mind in order to work correctly, and previously that wasn't a design requirement. It required solar reaching 30% to start having that problem show up though, and from what I've read, the upgrades to enable bidirectional flow aren't actually that expensive - the engineering to make sure you got everything was more work than what actually needed changing.
Saying they brought that down upon themselves, considering the age of such systems, would be like saying home builders back in the '60s were negligent in not running conduit for data lines.
I don't read AC A human right
And yet I'm required to subsidize health care for smokers, alcoholics, drug users and the obese.
Why should they be given a break, let alone a subsidy, for their harebrained lifestyle choices?
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Now they'll be selling at the same rate everyone else sells and paying at the same rate everyone else pays.
This will make batteries more important. Now it's no longer profitable to use the grid for storage.
the Republican governor of Nevada doesn't want his citizens to have good paying jobs. Keep 'em down with menial jobs at the casinos.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
"And yet I'm required to subsidize health care for smokers,
alcoholics, drug users and the obese"
One solution to that conundrum is to change the laws so you're no longer required to subsidize others' health care.
Subsidy Comparison
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/3/21/1372244/-New-data-on-energy-subsidies-from-EIA
It's funny when people mention subsidies.
This tells a BIG story. If everyone here who whines about fossil fuel and nuclear subsidies followed that link, they'd have to start whining about something else. The real money column is the last one, Subsidies per MWh. From it we learn that rate/taxpayers in 2010 contributed $935.64 for each solar MWh produced while coal received only $0.74. Any time you see two things equivalent in any way with a 'cost' ratio of 1,264:1, you need to ask, what the hell is going on.
Have a gander at Electricity generation map of the US as of October 15 [XLS]. If you're practical like me you'll have to imagine those green wind blobs are a fifth the size shown, and the yellow solar blobs a third to better judge their intermittent and actual contribution to the human race. For solar (and we are mostly talking utility scale solar I know) this triples the cost ratio to coal to ~3,792:1. And posing that solar produces at 100% for a third of the day is generous.
So in terms of subsidies, is solar worth almost four thousand times as much as coal? Would you be willing to pay 4k as much for it? In certain sense... in 2010 you were. Good thing it was someone else's money. Or was it.
Fuck subsidizing each solar or wind MWh for thousands, or even hundreds, of that same hour's subsidy of coal.
The real clear winner in 2010 was nuclear, at $3.10/MWh produced. Imagine saving the planet from CO2 and coal or weaning us off of natural gas so it can do more chemically productive things for merely 4 times the subsidy than is presently granted coal. If I quoted that same figure for solar you'd be drooling. Someone somewhere is torturing numbers to make the same claim for solar and wind, I can hear their screams.
But never mind my arbitrary 'value' estimates. I consider any energy source that is not running at 100% 24/7 to be a grievous waste of human potential, a financial ruin and (to scale) most likely an environmental disaster waiting to happen.
Proponents of micro-gridding claim that if the grid evolves into a cornucopia of local energy sources, the win will be that utility companies will need to contribute less and spend less. But what is truly less? Does that mean that if current generated capacity is roughly equal to Summer or Winter peak, they could ever really shut down a plant? Not really.
Does it mean that the economics of building plants and stringing transmission lines in the first place, which are amortized over many years based on predictable factors NOT wishful flim-flam such as some guess of consumer uptake of solar toys... will improve in any way? Nope, things will get worse.
I seem to go further than anyone else around here, honestly considering this initiative to push tiny intermittent bits of energy into the grid as a threat to our country's stability and survival because it is a distracting and ultimately useless crap-solution to serious problems. One such problem is, what will happen when a series of massive Winter storms fragments the grid, shuts rail and renders every wind turbine and solar panel it touches, useless?
Could those subsidies and money real people spent on some 'pays for itself in 10 years' go-green plan have been better spent? If you went with the grid-sucking/spitting plans that the solar leasing companies push, absolutely. If you put in some extra money to actually power your home from what you produce you might win the battle if the grid goes down for any reason. But you'll be surrounded on all sides by poor people in th
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
Or soon it will be. Electricity is now too easy to produce. There is no longer a need to meter it. A flat infrastructure fee will work as well as anything, or something based on the ratio of consumption to production.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
government should pick winners and losers when its in the public interest.
its in the public interest to eventually abandon coal and oil and use many renewables as possible.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
not all subsidies are cash in kind.
most renewable subsidies are still in the upfront costs area because they dont have anywhere near the existing buildout that the fossil fuels industry has.
most oil/gas/goal subsidies at this point are in the form of tax credits and breaks.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
And some commentary on the quality of Forbes' science reporting... http://blogs.agu.org/wildwilds...
"One who had paid $22k into solar lamented, "I'm not happy; my wife isn't happy, we could have done something else with that money."
...paid 22k, but how much did s/he recieve in tax credits, grants, and rebates?
Sadly, I am not an island. Your decision to smoke, drive a car, or buy power from a coal-fired plant impacts me.
"Your decision to smoke, drive a car, or buy power from a coal-fired plant impacts me."
We're not going to get anywhere if such minuscule degrees of impact connectivity get you all atwitter.
This should be settled by the market. It's a simple supply and demand issue. People who sunk a bunch a money into it knowing that things could change should consider it an important, if expensive, lesson on economics.
Yes, just like nuclear power.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Wow. Perhaps someone could invent special flaps of metal that cover the solar panels and could automatically come down when there is heavy rain or hail. Maybe we could call them "shutters" or "grills".
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
Well your 'little more' is x4.23 as much. Instead of selling at the market price for supplying power at 2.6, they were selling it at the customer purchasing price of 11. Now they are being dropped back down to normal supply pricing. It was inevitable. Those kinds of premiums are only temporary to jump start an industry. Once they get large enough, the premium is removed and they then have to compete with everybody else in the market. After all, a market that makes nothing can't afford maintenance and other costs and collapses.
You mean like nuclear power? http://www.ucsusa.org/sites/de...
Or petroleum? Or NatGas? Or Hydroelectric?
From another article:
http://www.misi-net.com/publications/NEI-1011.pdf
On energy incentives, and an tl;dr version from Wikipedia:
A 2011 study by the consulting firm Management Information Services, Inc. (MISI) estimated the total historical federal subsidies for various energy sources over the years 1950–2010. The study found that oil, natural gas, and coal received $369 billion, $121 billion, and $104 billion (2010 dollars), respectively, or 70% of total energy subsidies over that period.
The percentage is higher for renewables, which given the much smaller percentage of use, and of course the fact that renewables wasn't even on the map during that time. cite https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Corn based Ethanol production and the Alcohol credit for the FET is subsidized to the tune of almost 17 billion a year, renewable is 5 billion.
My point is that it's all subsidized. That the government subsidizes new power production isn't anathema to me in principle, but it would seem that the well established technologies shouldn't be getting subsidies. If you need to be subsidizing oil, natural gas, or coal for 60 plus years, they should be abandoned, right?. Or perhaps something else at play? Regardless, calling this "regressive political income redistribution in support of a putatively progressive cause." while apparently finding all of th others is hypocricy at t's finest.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
No one owes you a break-even on a harebrained scheme. You are free to power your own house with solar. No one will prohibit it or care. But your insistence on a break-even means you're wanting someone else to subsidize your hobby.
OTOH, a deal is a deal.
Now write the same thing about Nuclear, Oil, Gas, and hydroelectric. You have no issue with the massive subsidies they get?
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
And yet I'm required to subsidize health care for smokers, alcoholics, drug users and the obese.
Why should they be given a break, let alone a subsidy, for their harebrained lifestyle choices?
That's okay, We have to subsidize people with Anal-Cranial impactions.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
The review, from the Environment America Research and Policy Center, looked at 11 previous studies of net metering’s effects on both the grid and on society as a whole, all of which found that owners of grid-connected solar arrays offered net benefits to the electricity system, including reduced environmental compliance costs, reduced costs in capital investments, and in avoided energy costs. In particular, the studies determined the median value of solar power as being “nearly 17 cents per unit,” which contrasts with the US average retail electricity rate of about 12 cents per kWh, which means that not only has solar net metering not been harmful to markets, but that utilities have actually been underpaying for the use of this solar electricity. “The solar studies reviewed in this report confirm that huge amounts of solar have already been developed without paying the full value that solar brings. Not only does that mean that solar customers have likely been subsidizing non-solar customers and the utility, but that over the long term, continued development of solar promises downward pressure on electric rates for all.” – Karl Rábago, Executive Director of the Pace Energy and Climate Center In addition to the more obvious solar benefits, such as avoided energy costs and reduced capital investment costs, the review also pointed to distributed solar as being important in grid resiliency and in helping to stabilize electricity prices by mitigating some of the fluctuation in fossil fuel prices, thereby reducing financial risks and saving money for all grid users. The review also makes a great case for the increased and widened adoption of net metering policies in order to keep up the momentum of solar growth in the US. “Net metering is a critical tool to ensure fair compensation for owners of solar energy systems and to continue to fuel the growth of solar energy. Public officials should support and strengthen net metering as sound public policy to stimulate private investment and job growth, and to encourage utilities to diversify and strengthen the grid.” – Shining Rewards The document suggests that states should “lift arbitrary caps” on net metering in fast-growing solar markets, should include environmental and societal benefits when evaluating the benefits and costs of net metering programs, “consider the simplicity of net metering” when looking at programs that will compensate customers for their solar production, and “ensure that all people can take advantage of net metering policies” with virtual net metering programs for homes that aren’t able to install solar. “While some utilities claim they’re subsidizing solar panel owners, our report shows the opposite is probably true. If anything, utilities should be paying people who go solar more, not less.” – Rob Sargent, co-author of the report, and senior program director at Environment America
This will make batteries more important. Now it's no longer profitable to use the grid for storage.
Yup - and that's actually a good thing.
While I take great issue with the hypocrisy of people who think that renewables are the work of godless commies commies, yet have no issue at all with the direct from the government to the stockholders transfer of my tax dollars for every other type of energy production, (see my other research on the issue in another post) and that the folks are pleased to have done this for political reasons as they note "regressive political income redistribution in support of a putatively progressive cause.", it is apparent that all of th eother energy subsidies are somehow a conservative principle.
I'll be happy to take advantage of new battery technology. I'll be happy to get myself off the grid.
I'm certain that good conservative principles will give me a tax break because why should I have to pay for energy subsidies I'm not using.
Oh.... wait...
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
But it's in ALL of their self interest to pretend that they can't use solar power generated, so as to make more money. It's interesting that a few places have the ability for companies to compete, but whether power you generate midday can credit you at night is absolutely something that the government needs to make happen, or it will never.
I'm not totally convinced of that, but I am mostly convinced of it.
There was a time when there were multiple competing power grids. Naturally, they ran everything that they could differently. Would a standards winner have emerged, given time? I think it's unfair to say no, but it's possible.
The point I'm making is that when you are dealing with utility style monopolies, it's reasonable to expect the government to address their grievances in much greater detail than in other industries. Utilities are mostly shielded from market forces, and absolutely shielded from startups with disruptive tech. When you have a problem with the way they are doing something, you MUST go to the government, as they are the ones setting all the rules that are played by.
The amount of subsidies, on kWh produced basis, is tiny compared to solar. The coal subsidies, assuming they even exist, look huge because they produce 30% or more of our electricity. Same for nuclear and natural gas as they also each produce roughly 30% of our electricity. That last 10% that is not produced by oil, coal, and nuclear is largely from wind. The fraction of a percent of the electricity that solar power produces gets them HUGE subsidies.
Several comments on this thread pointed out that solar energy gets 1000x the amount of subsidies that coal gets based on kWh produced.
I have no issue with the subsidies that nuclear, oil, gas, and hydroelectric get because those subsidies are miniscule compared to solar. I will agree that all energy subsidies must end, but solar subsidies are on a whole different level than the others.
Stop complaining about how much oil get subsidized, IMHO, it makes you look like a fool.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
We can estimate fairly well how much those costs are so that amount should be paid by those companies back to society.
The coal companies pay that back to society by keeping prices low. Think of how many people would die from starvation, freezing, or what not if they did not have cheap and reliable electricity. Conceivably we could compute for that too. If we did so I suspect we'd find out we are not paying the coal burners enough.
Shut up already about the "cost to society" that coal power produces. If it weren't for coal power you'd be cooking a rat on a spit over a charcoal fire instead of being cozy in front of your computer while sipping on overpriced coffee.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Unfortunately, the above poster wants personal responsibility.
That means they have to microscopically identify all of their personal actions that impact me.
Each and every one of them.
The amount of subsidies, on kWh produced basis, is tiny compared to solar. The coal subsidies, assuming they even exist, look huge because they produce 30% or more of our electricity. Same for nuclear and natural gas as they also each produce roughly 30% of our electricity. That last 10% that is not produced by oil, coal, and nuclear is largely from wind. The fraction of a percent of the electricity that solar power produces gets them HUGE subsidies.
Several comments on this thread pointed out that solar energy gets 1000x the amount of subsidies that coal gets based on kWh produced.
I have no issue with the subsidies that nuclear, oil, gas, and hydroelectric get because those subsidies are miniscule compared to solar. I will agree that all energy subsidies must end, but solar subsidies are on a whole different level than the others.
Stop complaining about how much oil get subsidized, IMHO, it makes you look like a fool.
Here you go spunky. My research from another post. Some of it is based on a reply to another person, so hte beginning will be a little redundant.
You mean like nuclear power? http://www.ucsusa.org/sites/de... [ucsusa.org]
Or petroleum? Or NatGas? Or Hydroelectric?
From another article:
http://www.misi-net.com/public...
On energy incentives, and an tl;dr version from Wikipedia:
A 2011 study by the consulting firm Management Information Services, Inc. (MISI) estimated the total historical federal subsidies for various energy sources over the years 1950–2010. The study found that oil, natural gas, and coal received $369 billion, $121 billion, and $104 billion (2010 dollars), respectively, or 70% of total energy subsidies over that period.
The percentage is higher for renewables, which given the much smaller percentage of use, and of course the fact that renewables wasn't even on the map during that time. cite https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Corn based Ethanol production and the Alcohol credit for the FET is subsidized to the tune of almost 17 billion a year, renewable is 5 billion.
My point is that it's all subsidized. That the government subsidizes new power production isn't anathema to me in principle, but it would seem that the well established technologies shouldn't be getting subsidies. If you need to be subsidizing oil, natural gas, or coal for 60 plus years, they should be abandoned, right?. Or perhaps something else at play? Regardless, calling this "regressive political income redistribution in support of a putatively progressive cause." while apparently finding all of the others just fine is hypocricy at t's finest.
Back to the present:
I don't really care if you find subsidies for all of the other energy sources just fine, while the 5 billion per year for all of renewables a thing to difficult to suffer. It merely shows your politics, It's like the free market Republicans working to ban Tesla dealerships in their states.
But the numbers speak for themselves.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
That is not 'begging the question'
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
(Stupid Lenovo touchpad just hit "submit" before I was done. Fortunately, it did it when the first part of the post was pretty clean. Reposing with the rest - unless it does it again B-b )
Why should you be paid retail for generation? That totally ignores the part the grid takes in handling your energy...
You also pay a monthly "be connected to the grid" fee, which pays your share of the ongoing expenses of maintaining the grid, along with a one-shot "get connected to the grid" fee, often amounting to thousands of dollars, which literally pays for installing the infrastructure - poles, drop transformer, etc - to bring the grid to you.
(When the contractor building my rural retirement house connected it to the grid, without my orders, I paid many thousands - money I'd intended for a solar system. Part of that was half the price of the existing transformer that I now shared with my next-door neighbor, who had paid the whole price and was now rebated half of it.)
Utilities are very good at dividing the service into appropriate chunks and billing you reasonably fairly for what you actually use. The bulk of the background costs are already covered (with the standard profit margin), so sellers to the grid are not so much the parasites you might think.
Net metering was a cheap hack - based on the common, low-end, pre-"smart" mechanical meters, which ran equally well forward and backward. It doesn't account for the losses in transmission - but (as was mentioned elsewhere) in the case of distributed generation the power doesn't travel very far, so the losses are far lower than those for power shipped from major power plants to widely distributed residences (and since much of those losses are proportional to the square of the currents, local generation reduces them more than in proportion). Billing a rate that doesn't vary by time of day is ALSO a hack based on those meters: Solar and wind tend to produce surplus power when it's expensive and have a shortage when it's cheap, so net metering (when few enough are using it to not substantially affect grid management) is actually a good deal for the power companies.
Having said that: With arbitrarily capable smart meters available a truly fair pricing scheme would involve some offset between the "buy" and "sell" prices - but the "buy at wholesale" level is far too low.
Utilities, though sometimes privately owned, are generally regulated monopolies with pricing schemes imposed by governments in the interests of their citizens. Attempting to apply free market arguments to them is disingenuous. We're dealing with Fascism, not Capitalism, here.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Same situation down under.
Our feed in has dropped to 6c/kWh, doesn't even cover GST.
But the rouges are on selling our clean energy at 24c/kWh.
Makes the decision to install batteries a no brainer.
Go well
See what you just did there?
"a PROPER marketplace with a PROPER government is NOT..."
No, no, I have it all wrong, you say.
"government...is involved in the marketplace to assure the soundness of the transactions...enforce contract law, stamp-out fraud, squash involuntary transactions...make sure the marketplace is essentially 'safe' and fair..."
Gosh, then you restate exactly what I said. Markets exist because governments create the conditions for their existence. You list a few conditions that you believe are essentially right for markets, but these are not natural laws, they are your value statements about what makes a "good" market, presumably one likely to benefit you. Even the values have to be defined and are culturally bound. Sound transactions. Enforcement of laws. Fraud. Involuntary transactions. Safe. Fair.
These, too, are social quantities, socially defined. What do you think governing bodies do all day as they debate? They argue about what these things mean and how they ought to be encoded as policy. And however they're encoded, someone is getting their way and someone else is not.
By the time you have a market, governments (read: societies) have already picked winners.
"Safe" is not a natural quantity that can be measured. Neither is "fair." All are matters of social deliberation and social construction. All are arguments won (or lost) by someone. All are winners already picked.
Claiming that your own preferences are somehow objective and right doesn't make it so. Nature doesn't make markets. People do.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
So long term, those other sources are likely going to have to go away or their costs will increase substantially, so redesigning the grid to deal with truly sustainable generation methods, like wind and solar, is going to need to be done sooner or later. If you are running a public utility, for the public good, you do not want to be prolonging environmental degradation by subsidizing incumbents at the expense of those who are doing the right thing for everyone's future.
In a Smart Grid world, Hoover Dam would sell at the price Hoover Dam wants to charge, and the price from Solar City at the price they want to charge... When you run out of cheap power, you buy the expensive stuff. When nuclear plants start paying for rent for 50,000 years of storage of their waste, and gas plants include carbon sequestration in their operations, perhaps their properly priced production cost will end up as 20 cents/KWh. Add in grid storage, and perhaps people will buy hoover dam power cheap at night, and use it during the day, when they need it. A lot of improvement becomes plausible (perhaps not easy, but at least plausible) with a smart grid.
Are you also going to invent perfect weather forecasting and free maintenance on these automatic shutters?
Actually, it seems that most of Nevada's electricity comes from burning natural gas, with only ~4% from hydroelectric. "Other renewables", which presumably means solar, already provide three times as much power as hydroelectric.
Hopefully you aren't having children so you don't have skin in the game. Or better yet, so we don't make Idiocracy a futurist documentary....
That decision ends up with sick and dying people on the street.
Are you so cheap that you wouldn't help a dying child who is laying on the street? After all it was the kids choice.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
Of course Nuclear power does not pay for its own catastrophe insurance. That is provided as a hidden subsidy from the state. I live in Japan, and I'm paying the cost of Fukushima in taxes. It bankrupted the power company and the government is now picking up the entire bill, hundreds of billions of dollars, and they dont even know the final cost.
Japan has made mistakes along with any other developed country, but choosing to build out nuclear power was not a mistake. From 1973 onwards these nuclear plants grew to produce ~30% of Japan's electricity overall, and nuclear power made its rapid growth of industry possible. Japan is resource-poor and must import all of its oil and most of its coal. If it were not for nuclear energy you would not see the thriving metropolis today where Japanese-owned businesses manufacture and export. Japan would have been more a people-resource country and foreign corporations would have set up there, owning everything, compensating for the expense of powering those factories in part by granting low wages. Energy IS wealth, and every bit of nuclear energy Japan has produced, along with the energy that did not have to be expended to purchase and import fuel, has made every nuclear plant more precious even than those in the United States. We in the states have always had enough coal whether we use it or not, and coal is what has built our country. Japan has been built (in major part) by nuclear energy. I salute you!
But Japan made a few mistakes with Fukushima. Tragically silly mistakes like putting generators in the basement without water-tight doors, and failing to open the louvers to vent the hydrogen from the buildings which was barely radioactive and would not have harmed anyone.
But the biggest mistake Japan made was giving in to fear and hysteria, and shutting down all nuclear plants in 2012, as if decades of 'free' energy, accident-free operation and prosperity suddenly meant absolutely nothing, and as if Japan's entire nuclear fleet was being and had always been operated by idiots. I think you (collectively) misjudged their character and professional ability and owe them all an apology. In the United States we investigated the causes of Three Mile Island and took steps to ensure scenarios like that would not happen again, but we did not hysterically shut them all down in the following months, though some people wanted to do that. We did not listen to those people, though the US did enter a 'dark age' of madness as nuclear technology has been sidelined,and the delusion that wind and solar could power the world has taken hold. Meanwhile our nuclear plants have been running. Time (and an incredible amount of safe, clean energy) has shown that it was the correct decision. It wasn't even much of a gamble, nuclear energy had already shown itself to be beneficial and well managed.
Japan continues to pay for that mistake, importing around ¥3.8-4 trillion ($40 billion) in fuel to make up for the idle nuclear plants in addition to the amount being spent to clean up and the not so small amounts being directly paid to evacuees of Fukushima Prefecture. Time alone and a great deal of post-accident analysis will tell whether those evacuations were really necessary, and whether compensating 'radiation refugees' to an incredibly greater extent than 'tsunami refugees' was a wise decision. I'm not trying to be condescending in pointing these things out, it's just that they are crucial in coming to grips with the tragedy. I believe Japan has acted in hysteria and the risks of nuclear energy have been grossly overstated by the press. It has been a time of madness! That is true in Japan as it is in the United States.
Please check out the writings of Leslie Corrice at Hiroshima Syndrome . I would have chosen a different name for the site but no matter, the man is a brilliant writ
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
It took only twenty seconds of flipping through your misi-net reference to find a glaring flaw in the calculations. Namely, those "incentives" or what you call "subsidies" are on the whole not subsidies at all. There are tax credits, regulatory effects ("gains realized by energy businesses when they are exempt from federal requirements that raise costs or limit prices", etc.).
A lot of it is BS, and >>90% is stuff other than "subsidy", i.e., a payment to someone. Whoa, it even says so on page 9:
"F. Disbursements
This category involves direct financial subsidies such as grants. Since 1950, direct federal grants and subsidies have played a very small role in energy policy, accounting for â"$6 billion, a negligible fraction of total incentives."
See that word, negligible? In your own source? Grok it.
I see your point but I think solar off the grid power is going to be a force down the road. It's inevitable. The only reason it's not now is that batteries are so expensive. Even so it will happen. I see more and more panels going up. I intend to start on my own system later this year. I think energy independence is a beautiful thing.
These systems already exist - used for protecting rugs, carpets and furniture on sundecks. Just needs a water/wind sensor and an electric motor:
http://mil.ufl.edu/4924/projec...
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
It took only twenty seconds of flipping through your misi-net reference to find a glaring flaw in the calculations. Namely, those "incentives" or what you call "subsidies" are on the whole not subsidies at all. There are tax credits,
And some are written on green paper, some on white and a few others in purple ink.
Money is not money in your world, eh?
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
The utilities may have won a short-term victory, but starting a war against solar is a mistake, because ultimately the utilities need solar customers more than solar customers need them. Batteries, cogeneration engines, natural-gas fuel cells - all are rapidly developing. Within 10 years in sunny states it will be quite possible and even affordable to go off-grid entirely, especially when compared to punitively high fixed fees. Then the utilities will be left with the same expensive grid to maintain on an even smaller revenue base, because solar former customers won't be paying anything at all, not even the fixed fee. Any arguments about "fairness" have to take into account the considerable environmental costs of fossil-fuel consumption, which probably already exceed the actual cost of the fuel itself. In the meantime, at least the early adopters (who in general paid much more for their systems) ought to be grandfathered. The whole point of the net metering program was to expand the market and bring down the price of solar installations. In that sense the program was a spectacular success, and the early adopters who made it possible deserve to be rewarded.
That's what he just said
It is not the utility's fault solar doesn't break even. It just doesn't break even in practice at market wholesale rates. I know someone is going to reply with some math equation that assumes inverters last for 15 years without degradation, panels last for 25 years without degradation, maintenance costs are $0, costs for delivery of power during non-surplus periods are $0, temperature loss is zero, configuration error is zero, damage is zero, the panels are always completely clean, etc etc etc, but it's just absurd.
I have solar panels. I did not buy solar panels to break even. I knew at the time of purchasing that the marketing spreadsheets solar companies use to calculate your ROI are bullshit.
It has always been strange to watch people who don't have solar argue that it has a positive ROI or break even. And that's only trumped by the people who do have solar but don't actually pay attention to actual generation data and the relationship to their bill.
Money taken from someone and paid to you is different from money you earned and kept.
The fact that you believe this is profitable shows you have no idea what you're talking about. And mentioning adding a battery to the mix shows you have never run the numbers on the cost to do this. By the way you are describing the system I have.
He is pointing out that the paper is intentionally misleading in how it uses the term subsidy.
So shut down coal and use the money that subsidizes that to subsidize cleaner ways to generate electricity like geothermal, wind, various forms of solar, and even nuclear which don't harm the environment or cause medical problems for people through normal operation. Clean coal is green-washing on an epic proportion. It will require vast amounts more energy to capture CO2 from emissions requiring the burning of even more coal. Never mind how destructive coal mining is in the US.
I doubt that I would be cooking a rat over a charcoal fire since I'm at a computer typing this. I live in a province that uses no coal to generate electricity and we are doing just fine. In fact there are times that we have so much base load generation that we are paying some states to take it from us. It's not a great situation but goes to show that we don't need any of that stinking coal. It's time to get rid of it. Now if we could just get rid of the natural gas generators too.
Yes and the point is that this is not specific to Texas or any other state that separates the charges. The costs are separate costs naturally in the market and in some states combine them. But the delivery cost is still there. So giving 100% credit at the combined kWh cost for excess power is not sustainable.
Depends. If they were a drug user, alcoholic or smoker, you are correct. They made their lifestyle choice so they should have to live with it. Why is it my responsibility to help them when for decades there have been warnings about the dangers of smoking, doing drugs and yes, alcoholism.
Obviously the kid knew more than the experts because they chose to ignore well-settled science.
If you like, we can use a similar spurious example: some people choose not to go to college and end up making minimum wage their entire life. Why is it my responsibility to give them my money because of the choice they made?
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
I am pretty sure this only makes sense if hail or high winds are common in your area. Otherwise panels are pretty damn cheap compared to the total system cost, so just replace if damaged
Are you suggesting it is profitable to store in batteries?
Going off grid is so expensive that the most important part of planning such a system is figuring out how to cut your energy usage way way down. That should tell you something.
By the way, I have a hybrid grid tie and battery system with about 4 days of autonomy with my normal daily usage. Even then there are 4 household items that are not on the circuit backed up with batteries: air conditioning, dishwasher, oven, and electric dryer. If I had electric heat that would be on there too. If I wanted to add these to my backed up circuit, it would dramatically increase the cost on an already very expensive system.
I don't think most people understand the scale at which batteries must improve for off grid to be viable.
Since you said you are looking at a system of your own, let me know if you have any questions. There is a lot of bullshit in this space and honestly the solar installers you talk to do not know as much as you might expect. They told me a lot of things I later determined for myself were simply not correct (and I don't think they were intentionally trying to mislead; they were just wrong).
As others have pointed out, our government is already picking winners and losers, through a wide range of subsidies to the fossil-fuel industry, including allowing them to externalize much of their cost onto the rest of us. But more importantly, in a place like Las Vegas, solar electricity is worth much more than its wholesale value because of its impact on peak capacity. Much of the cost of delivering energy through the electric grid is the cost of the grid, not the cost of the energy. This is especially true in a place like Las Vegas where much of the power is hydroelectric. The grid and all its components must be sized to handle the highest anticipated demand, which in the southwest occurs on hot, sunny days. But that's very close to when solar output peaks (peak solar output depends on the orientation of the panels, peak demand typically occurs around mid-afternoon). Solar energy goes into the grid close to the point of consumption. From the standpoint of the grid, it effectively reduces overall peak demand. It's common for capacity cost to be higher than energy cost, depending on the regional mix of generating resources. So at a minimum, solar producers should be paid for the service they provide in reducing overall peak demand. That value can easily be double the wholesale price.
You are mostly correct but they are not only buying the excess power. They are also buying the REC which is then sold.
Making government the arbiter of compensation for externalities has its own significant negative side effects
That is a terrible analogy. There are many alternatives to wired high speed internet, including cell, satellite, dial up, etc. Wired broadband is not a necessity. In contrast the alternatives to wired electricity delivery are few and partial, to the extent that I would argue they are not alternatives in the minds of most market participants.
The problem with that is someone must decide what is in the public's interest. If left alone the market can accommodate a diverse set of opinions, viewpoints, value judgments, etc. Your suggestion means only a limited set of opinions, viewpoints, value judgments, etc. are represented in cases where someone decides it's in the public's interest. That works as long as nobody disagrees with that decision. But if someone does, then you have created a situation where wealth is destroyed.
SolarCity has bout 16,000 employees. 550 is a quarter of it's Nevada workforce. The article itself is poorly worded.
(yes, I work for SolarCity)
No, I have never run the numbers, where I live there are 53 sunny days a year on average. My point was that this change in prices should not effect the building of a battery plant. This will cause more people to want to store there own power instead of buying it back at a higher price at night. The GP said the change would make the plant useless.
Star Trek, there maybe hope.
If it's possible to make Gorilla glass for smartphones, wouldn't that work for solar panels? Perhaps someday, it will be possible to make solar panels as thin as plastic.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
They are already very tough. Remember they were built to power satellites where any damage basically bricks the entire satellite as maintenance of any kind is not feasible
I've been researching the thing for over a year now. I'm aware the costs for a full up off grid system are pretty hefty, around the price you'd pay for a nice new car. I plan to start a little smaller than that and build on it. Batteries are definitely the biggest investment. I so wish that Musk or someone else would come up with a way to cut that by at least 50 percent. I see all this money being spent on solar panel research when to me it should be spent on battery research.
There is a huge difference between satellite solar panels, which have a lot of thought put into a degrading but not failing design and roof top solar panels, which are cells soldered to a bus or wiring harness covered in glass and framed in aluminium.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Maybe a bmw 7-series or something. Going fully off grid without dramatically reducing your energy usage will cost you 75k-100k. Perhaps more depending on where you live and how much energy you use at different times of the year. The problem with fully off grid is that you have to build the entire system for peak usage, which you may only need for a couple weeks in the summer or winter. And that's not 1 day of peak usage, because the highest usage times of the year are also not very efficient for PV (peak winter=little sun, peak summer=high temp).
Of course nobody does that because it's insanely expensive. It's cheaper to convert all lighting to DC LED, replace all appliances to DC and/or their most efficient models, run fans instead of A/C, convert heating systems to gas/propane/wood/pellet, etc. etc. etc.
oops i managed to mix multiple thoughts in my point about it not being 1 day of peak usage. What I intended to say was that in the winter where you can have no sun for multiple days, you need to have enough battery storage to support that peak usage for that number of days.
An oil company gets a tax break - That's not a subsidy in your world.
I put up a solar electricity generating system abd get a tax break, as has happened in the past. Whaddya think? Exact same situation, So is my tax break a subsidy? I earned my money, I'm keeping it instead of paying it to someone. I get this situation via a tax break. As I recall,
I call that a subsidy. You can wordsmith it all you like. It's a subsidy. The Government is giving you in one form or another, money it has collected.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
So how do you get the best deal, don't use solar city or the others?
Yeah, I was thinking running a propane powered generator for back up power. Been pricing Industrial batteries too. Yep....it's a load of cash. Still, it looks like they're determined to kill coal and if that happens I look for electrical prices to climb drastically. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.
Perhaps my confusion is the definition of "grid tie." I think the clarifying question might be "what is the difference between the fees paid by a power supplier and a resident?"
compare China and their constant contaminated by anything and everything baby formula problem
I guess the Co-op is buying the electricity as the exact same rate as anyone from the generator...
looks like the company serving the city is making 350% profit selling the electricity... question is, what do they do with all that money that the co-op doesn't seem to really need ?
they only used part of the available ground there, and have plans on expanding the factory at least 5-fold
you mean, fool cells ?
batteries are actually much more efficient that what you propose
agreed, the companies making profits on the tobacco and alcohol the person consumes should be made responsible for that person's health issues contracted from having consumed those products...
"So is my tax break a subsidy?"
No, not if it's a tax break.
But many solar installations are tied to the grid, and the owner receives an inflated - subsidized! - feed-in-tariff for the electricity their system generates.
Or tax the problem so that the solution is paid for (or more than paid for in the case of smoking in the UK and it's cost to the NHS)
He is pointing out that the paper is intentionally misleading in how it uses the term subsidy.
No, I think it has it right. A subsidy is "a sum of money granted by the government or a public body to assist an industry or business so that the price of a commodity or service may remain low or competitive". Any time the government cuts them a break (whether by just handing them the money, or choosing not to tax them at the regular rate, or choosing not to apply regulations to them.. that's all subsidies.
And I'm not horribly opposed to the concept (the power grid is kind of necessary, after all). But those dollars should be accounted for and compared to their profits. In particular, if a companie's profits > their subsidies, some questions should be asked.
No, it is misleading, and your response doesn't address my point. If I subsidize the purchase of a car by paying $10k of it, that is different than giving $10k to a car manufacturer or care sales lot. It's not a question of the form of the $10k.
Generator is much cheaper option than batteries. In hindsight I wonder whether I should have done that instead. One installer I talked to tried to talk me into that direction. I ended up paying about 2.5x more (not counting the cost of the propane) for a battery solution, and the only thing I can really point to as an incremental benefit is that they get recharged for free. But I bet if I factored in the replacement cycle, I wouldn't like the results.
Oh, I'm well aware of WHY electricity is so expensive in Hawaii, I just didn't want to expand and keep expanding my post. Yes, it's a special case.
I'll also note that, at least to me, 'cheap' is a relative measure, IE 'less expensive than other available options'.
'Free' would be an 'effective' measure - IE demand is low, supply is high, and the electric company pays jack.
I don't read AC A human right
Well, unless you're "the government or a public body", then you'd be correct - you're not a subsidy.
But assuming that you are the gov'mint here, there isn't really a difference between you paying for $10K worth of cars from Don's Dealership, and you giving Don 10K upfront. You've still given Don 10K, and presumably I got a slightly cheaper car. (To answer what I expect to be the obvious rebuttal - that paying for part of the car reduces the price - you only need to look at private universities for examples where the cost mysteriously rises by roughly the amount of the subsidy. There's no guarantee either way, barring regulations, of making sure that the subsidy money isn't ending up in Don's pocket rather than indirectly going into ours. Even if you give me the money directly, if it's a known that buying a car gives me an $X subsidy, that's incentive for you to raise your prices to capture part of that 'free' money.
From some googling (e.g. I found http://www2.buildinggreen.com/... [buildinggreen.com] ) it seems that such systems do exist but they are the exception not the rule.
You are correct. However, I felt that if I mentioned that they did it by shutting down until they got a power signal again, people would have brought that up as incorrect.
I don't read AC A human right
Um, yes there is a difference. If Joe buys a $30k car with a $10k subsidy, that has very different behavioral influence than if the subsidy went to Joe's dealer and is spread across all of the dealer's costs and may or may not shot up in any consumer based pricing. And the latter is exactly what tax credits and other shit do. So, no, you are not correct.