Gambling State Says the Solar Gamble Is Over 298
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 retail? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why should you be paid retail for generation? That totally ignores the part the grid takes in handling your energy...
Re:Why retail? (Score:5, Interesting)
The argument was that you were supplying the electricity right at the point of consumption (it just flows to your neighbor), hence you aren't incurring all of the transmission costs of typical retail power. You're also likely reducing power company expense -- our local substation can't handle our neighborhood's power draw, and we used to complain about flickering lights...until 3 people on the block got solar, and no no lights flicker and the pwoer company didn't have to upgrade the substation.
Re:Why retail? (Score:5, Insightful)
What about the spinning reserve that the power company has to maintain in the event your solar panels or wind generator drop off line?
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What about the coal they don't burn, or the gas, or the...
You can go "What about" all day.
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In principle they have to maintain less, so it's a win. In practice, it's early days for new generation mechanisms like solar, despite the rather terrifying amount of capacity that we now have. When everybody has panels, we'll have to have some way to pay for the grid, so obviously net metering _by itself_ doesn't scale, and particularly in states with lots of sunny days, this kind of adjustment was inevitable.
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What about the spinning reserve that the power company has to maintain in the event your solar panels^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H coal plants or wind generator^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H or nuclear plants drop off line?
FTFY ... there is no difference in spining reserves unless you are reaching 50% or more coverage by renewables. And then, they are likely geographically so much distributed that, there is no need for increasing spinning reserves either. A no brainer.
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How about the 20% grid loss(I^2R) the utility doesn't incure when generating power at peak load, compared to locally generated power which incures almost no losses??
Re:Why retail? (Score:4, Informative)
The argument was that you were supplying the electricity right at the point of consumption (it just flows to your neighbor), hence you aren't incurring all of the transmission costs of typical retail power.
That argument doesnt hold water. Even local neighborhood infrastructure has a significant cost. When excess solar is available from one home is probably when it is least needed in nearby homes, and solar itself still depends on support from the greater generation/transmission system to be economically viable to begin with as battery storage is still cost prohibitve.
Re:Why retail? (Score:5, Informative)
It still lowers the total power that needs to be generated, and 'daytime' is still the point of highest demand. If they're not having to worry about neighborhoods(remember, more retired people means more power use during the day by retirees), they can concentrate on businesses more.
I'm going to agree with others - net metering doesn't scale beyond a point. Nevada has NOT hit that point by any reasonable measure, they'd still need 10X the solar installs for that.
Hawaii has hit that point. I think they're looking into time of use billing (which requires smart meters), and it's quite likely that night time power in Hawaii is going to end up more expensive than daytime due to the amount of solar. The electric company is having to adjust/update their distribution centers to allow backfeeding from them, because a few neighborhoods can actually go negative now.
Which can actually make batteries(which have been dropping cost too), and other storage solutions viable. When electricity is cheap/free, make sure your hot water tank is 'topped off'. Heck, have a cold water tank for what little AC homes there need, and chill that at that point. Etc...
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They wouldn't have *had* to build to handle power coming back if the entire system had been allowed to naturally turn into a power circuit instead of an out and back again distribution network. So, they kind of brought that expense down on themselves.
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They wouldn't have *had* to build to handle power coming back if the entire system had been allowed to naturally turn into a power circuit instead of an out and back again distribution network.
That makes absolutely no sense at all.
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You have to remember that Hawaii is actually a number of islands. The most inhabited one, as per the last official study, is actually a pretty bad candidate for geothermal power - while they could certainly install it, it'd have to go too deep. That being said, we've developed a LOT of new drilling technology in the last decade or so with the fracking and deep wells and such, so re-doing the math might make it make more sense today.
The 30MW station is on a different island, which is much less inhabited, a
power circuit, network, etc... (Score:2)
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 f
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"Probably" was a pretty bad term to rely on in an argument you're making that someone else's argument doesn't "hold water".
"Probably" to whom, when? You're talking about the middle of the day, when most power companies have determined is the best time to charge the most for power, because that's when the most is actually being used--
wait a minute, have you ever even paid your own power bill? You're not ... 14, are you?
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Probably is perfectly appropriate when we are talking about overall behavior, as there are always exceptions when talking individual homes.
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No, the argument is that in general society wants to get away from fossil fuel usage and solar just is not ready to compete on even terms with fossil fuels (so the only solution is to give solar a artificial advantage). No serious person ever made the argument that paying retail was actually fair.
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I'd be in support for wholesale pricing on generation, or an infrastructure fee to cover the costs of transmission. The problem here is that the Nevada PUC is allowing both.
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Yes, exactly. The folks who sized solar generation to meet *their* needs aren't harmed by this change. The only ones harmed are the ones who thought they'd get rich quick on an artificial market.
Depends on how you measure "*their" needs." (Score:3)
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.
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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.
They are way ahead of where they'd be if they had to use batteries to store their power instead of depending on the grid, which make the whole approach viable to start with.
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Um... by generating power on your side of some transformer, you are reducing the load on that side, plain and simple.
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if you want to treat the home producer as a wholesaler of electric power,
No, that's not it. The parent is trying to treat power distribution as a chain of delivery of something like goods. This is the mentality that has been allowed to creep in on power regulation like a toothless hollar-dwellar getting people worked up in a meeting of the galactic federation: "hey it's just as expensive to put your solar generated power on the back of a track, fill it with gas, and ship it all willy nilly up and down da countryside as it is for the energy company ta have ta do it!"
Parent obviou
Props to Mr mdnuclear (Score:5, Funny)
Ha ha, suck it mdsolar.
I knew something was up (Score:4, Interesting)
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...
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No worries. With the Great Global Warming Conspiracy in place, power companies have already been raising rates and gouging people for years and anticipated being able to do so for decades. Solar simply bites into that with net metering.
But it is nothing like the bite that is going to happen if any of the three or four companies or major projects that claim to be on the verge of fusion energy turn out to be correct within the allotted timeframe. Or, better yet, if two or three companies solve it slightly
Something is always up. (Score:2)
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 informati
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I see net metering as a purposefully over-complicated scheme with a few minor selling points but an all-too-familiar drawback:
If you see net metering as 'over-complicated', I'd hate to think of what you think of 'carbon trading' schemes.
At least to the Consumer, net metering is actually about the most simple system.
Net metering:
Uses: 1000 kWh. Generated 800 kWh. Electric Bill: 200 kWh@12 cents each.
Nevada rough example:
Used:1000 kWh.
Generated: 800kWh.
Internally used: 500 kWh
Sold: 300 kWh @ 6 cents (example amount)
Bought: 500 kWh @ 12 cents
That being said, given current generation profiles, solar panels aren't displacing 'wholesa
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It would also be worth looking at shifting demand. Set things up to run the dishwasher etc during peak solar production. Pre-cool the house and the fridge. Then size based on that.
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A good point. A relatively small amount of battery, just to charge at minimum demand/max production points, might also make sense.
Re:Something is always up. (Score:4, Interesting)
piles upon piles of legalese to build up
When I installed my solar, I looked at what sort of incentives that I could get. It would have paid a good chunk of it but after seeing all of the 'legalese ' and who owned what, I decided to go it alone.
Now a few years later, my system is 100% paid off (ie, already paid for itself), all mine, making free electricity and don't have to bother with any companies. And since I built up a good base system, I can add quite a few more panels without any additional cost. In the years since I set up my system, the price of solar panels have fallen to a less than one year payback time
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Net metering, as someone else said, is the simplest scheme.
With 'old-fashioned' meters, you get net metering for free. The spinners spin forward when you use electricity and they spin backwards when you generate electricity, leaving the meter to show you the net amount of power you used. simple.
To do other than this requires the fancy smart meters that can tell whether or not you are consuming or generating electricity, and can meter them separately.
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That's a big twinkie.
Time-of-day metering (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Time-of-day metering (Score:4, Informative)
Wholesale peaker rate is different than wholesale baseload rate.
The best price of all is for wholesale on peak dispatchable (on demand) power. Which solar isn't.
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The best price of all is for wholesale on peak dispatchable (on demand) power. Which solar isn't.
The spot market dos not care if the 2GW you are about to sell the next 2h are produced by a dispatchable plant or not. The price is the same.
Re:Time-of-day metering (Score:4, Insightful)
Spot electricity prices are typically higher during the day but that is not always so. Imagine a situation where a large number of people on a local grid had grid tied solar. On a cool sunny day it is conceivable for the spot electricity price to go negative. Would the people with the solar panels be then expected to pay the utility for taking their electricity? Perhaps the utility should have the choice to simply not buy their electricity at that time.
As the laws are typically written for rooftop solar the utility must, *MUST*, purchase the electricity from the homeowner at the retail rate. This is awesome for early adopters, and perhaps even for the utility. The problem arises when the number of rooftop solar customers exceed what the utility can handle. Too much solar power and the electric grid is now "running backwards" along some runs, the grid is not designed for that. An electric utility certainly can make an electric grid to handle rooftop solar but then the people with the rooftop solar are no longer "customers" in the traditional sense, they are producers. As producers they should be no different from other producers. Failing that then the economics start to break down, people with rooftop solar could conceivably be paid for the privilege of getting back-up power from the utility. Too many people doing this and the utility will have to raise prices. The income from the utility to the rooftop solar people goes up and the people that cannot have rooftop solar, apartment dwellers (typically the poorer people) and industry see their rates go up.
Solar subsidies like paying rooftop solar producers retail rates is a wealth redistribution from the poor to the wealthy. It's time for it to stop.
Solar power is now a mature technology, we don't need subsidies to encourage adaption anymore. Solar makes sense on its own, we don't need to prop it up with government mandates and subsidies. Solar subsidies are now just corporate welfare and regressive taxation.
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Solar subsidies like paying rooftop solar producers retail rates is a wealth redistribution from the poor to the wealthy. It's time for it to stop.
We are essentially paying part of the power bills for those people who are in a position to install solar and take advantage of all the financial help. I have always felt the best thing to do is take all that solar incentive money and use it to buy solar panels for schools. Then the schools get the financial benefit, we still get solar panels installed, and those that want solar in their homes will still install it (if it is as good a deal as the solar industry claims).
Plan B (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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I think there might still be some municipalities wherein if two properties share their own independent distribution line, then the power supplied by that distribution has to be isolated from the grid entirely. So you would find two people with solar panels willing to maybe run a line between their back patios but not to the rest of their house.
This might come back to bite the utilities (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
That's NOT the real question. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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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.
In CA the electron prices are straight pass thru from the powerplants.
subsidies (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Energy subsidies [wikipedia.org] (discusses both fossil and renewable)
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Subsidy Comparison
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/3/21/1372244/-New-data-on-energy-subsidies-from-EIA [dailykos.com]
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 o
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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.
Time to buy some batteries (Score:3)
Re:Time to buy some batteries (Score:4, Informative)
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What do they mean by regressive? (Score:2)
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
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You can view WSJ articles (up to 5 per day) by googling the title ("Nevada's Solar Flare" in this case) and clicking on the WSJ link. It's also possible to bypass the paywall permanently [redflagdeals.com].
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just typical WSJ editorial word salad.
It's the fees, not just the rates (Score:3)
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"?
Plow The Grid Under (Score:2)
Have you ever looked at an electric bill for a sol (Score:2)
Sabatoge (Score:2)
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.
Wholesale price is fine. If it is spot price (Score:2)
So if the utilities want wholesale price they should pay spot market price. Electronics is cheap, we ca
Just goes to show. . . (Score:2)
the Republican governor of Nevada doesn't want his citizens to have good paying jobs. Keep 'em down with menial jobs at the casinos.
Sure, s/he... (Score:2)
"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?
A quarter of it's NEVADA workforce (Score:3)
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)
Re:Government should not pick winners and losers. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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If they raise rates enough, switching to solar becomes attractive, though. Even with the time-of-day problem.
Re:Government should not pick winners and losers. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Government should not pick winners and losers. (Score:5, Interesting)
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... [ucsusa.org]
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/... [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 th others is hypocricy at t's finest.
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Now they'll be selling at the same rate everyone else sells and paying at the same rate everyone else pays.
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Re:Government should not pick winners and losers. (Score:4, Insightful)
"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.
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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?
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"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.
Re: Government should not pick winners and losers. (Score:2, Insightful)
Sadly, I am not an island. Your decision to smoke, drive a car, or buy power from a coal-fired plant impacts me.
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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.
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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?
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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]... [ucsusa.org]
Or petroleum? Or NatGas? Or Hydroelectric?
From another article:
http://www.misi-net.com/public... [misi-net.com]
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 subsidi
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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.
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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?
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This will make batteries more important. Now it's no longer profitable to use the grid for storage.
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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 thes
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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 jus
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> 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
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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
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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?
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There ARE multiple buyers and sellers of wholesale electricity: https://www.eia.gov/electricit... [eia.gov]
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.
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Re:Government should not pick winners and losers. (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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top comment
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>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 bi
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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.
Re: Government should not pick winners and losers. (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
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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 fo
Re:Government should not pick winners and losers. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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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, deter
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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.
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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.
Ideological sleight of hand. (Score:3)
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.
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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.
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Simple answer:
Greed destroys common sense (along with respect and fairness.)
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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.
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And some commentary on the quality of Forbes' science reporting... http://blogs.agu.org/wildwilds... [agu.org]