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The Battle for Solar Energy in the Country's Sunniest State (newyorker.com)
Carolyn Kormann, writing for The New Yorker: Steyer [billionaire Tom Steyer, who for years has tried to pass Proposition 127, an amendment to Arizona's constitution that would require power companies to generate fifty per cent of their electricity from renewable sources by 2030] and his coalition say that the problem is simple: A.P.S. (state's largest utility, Arizona Public Service) is an investor-owned company, motivated primarily by its responsibility to protect profits for its shareholders, many of whom reside out of state. In 2017, the company made four hundred and eighty-eight million dollars, an increase of forty-six million from the previous year. The Arizona Corporation Commission (A.C.C.), a five-member elected "fourth branch" of state government, is supposed to keep the utility's monopoly in check -- setting limits on capital investments and pricing, while guaranteeing a certain margin of profit.
But critics have long argued that the arrangement incentivizes utilities to "gold-plate," or make inessential investments. (The phenomenon even has a name: the Averch-Johnson effect.) For A.P.S., a two-hundred-million-dollar gas-fuel plant would be more lucrative than a twenty-million-dollar solar array because the utility can charge higher rates to recoup its investment costs. Kris Mayes, a former Republican A.C.C. commissioner, who helped write the language of Prop 127, told me the Averch-Johnson effect explains why, in 2017, A.P.S. called for more than five thousand megawatts of new natural-gas additions, and almost no utility-scale renewables. "If they were truly acting in public interest," Kris Mayes, a former Republican A.C.C. commissioner, said, "they would not be proposing fifty-four hundred megawatts of new natural-gas plants."
But critics have long argued that the arrangement incentivizes utilities to "gold-plate," or make inessential investments. (The phenomenon even has a name: the Averch-Johnson effect.) For A.P.S., a two-hundred-million-dollar gas-fuel plant would be more lucrative than a twenty-million-dollar solar array because the utility can charge higher rates to recoup its investment costs. Kris Mayes, a former Republican A.C.C. commissioner, who helped write the language of Prop 127, told me the Averch-Johnson effect explains why, in 2017, A.P.S. called for more than five thousand megawatts of new natural-gas additions, and almost no utility-scale renewables. "If they were truly acting in public interest," Kris Mayes, a former Republican A.C.C. commissioner, said, "they would not be proposing fifty-four hundred megawatts of new natural-gas plants."
You don't get efficiency. You get a company skimming 20% off the top of an essential service. This is why you can't pay your power bill with a credit card without a 4% surcharge. The service is essential and (unlike housing) there are no alternatives so they don't have to play nice.
As for me, I'm in a city that saw smog days 80% of the time this summer. Screw the power company and their half a billion in profit. They need to be forced to build out solar so I can breath. Doesn't matter if I don't smoke if every day I go outside I'm getting the equivalent in bad air. I'm still gonna die of lung cancer in my 50s. And I don't get to move out of the city because I need money and like most working class Americans I live where the jobs are.
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Maybe you should look at the cost structure of wind and solar and the payback over time.
E.g. larger up front cost - very low operating costs.
At this point in time, its cheaper per MW/h to build solar in a high sun exposure state than it is to build gas or nuclear.
So no, it's more economical to build solar than gas.
When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators.
P. J. O'Rourke
Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
I early-voted "No".
I strongly believe in Solar Power - especially in Az. We don't have much in the way of wind resources (and I hate the view of windmills anyway), but sun we've got an abundance of. Solar and Fossil fuels are neck-and-neck for 30-year amortized costs, but solar should win simply from a public health standpoint.
However, I really don't believe complex law should be ensconced in the State Constitution. The entire US Constitution is four handwritten pages long. The first ten amendments fit comfortably on another. This amendment is four pages long by itself. If this was coming up in the legislature, I'd probably support a version of it (using a definition of "clean power" that includes existing hydropower and nuclear power).
And the worms ate into his brain.
First off, countries like Germany have been working with solar for decades as part of their infrastructure without issue.
The other is that renewables are a multiheaded thing.
E.g. you don't just build solar, you also build wind, you build hydroelectric, you build stored energy plants like water pumps during the night, you interconnect the power grids so a shortfall in one source means drawing on other sources.
e.g. same idea as today, just with more power sources.