Posted on 12/01/2023 5:14:27 PM PST by Ronaldus Magnus III
That grim future is tied to the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) changing the state’s solar rules a year ago, slashing the value of rooftop generated electricity.
The legislatively mandated review led to changes that cut the value of electricity generated by residential solar panels by 75% in the CPUC ruling, making it harder for residents to recover the cost of installing new systems. Solar arrays can carry price tags in the tens of thousands of dollars.
FTA
""The residential solar market enjoyed double digit growth for the past decade with what they thought was a bright future.""
""The market, in real time, is 80% below where it was last summer""
""Many of the state’s 1,100 installers and developers could be forced to reconsider their business model.""
There is no 'market' when subsidies are eliminated. Kalifornia passed laws that make residential solar power MANDATORY on all new construction, and still the solar 'market' implodes without government (taxpayer) dollars.
This last quote from the article is the ultimate:
""Every opportunity we have, regulators need to make it easy to put solar on, not more difficult.""
The utter idiocy of asking democrats and government to make anything easier speaks to the insanity of trusting government at all.
You know a product sucks when they have to send out conga-lines of door bangers to peddle this stuff.
Most wildly over pay for their solar systems, Solar works great for stand alone systems like my well or a small cabin with limited electricity use, but a whole house operation is a different ball game altogether.
In the famous words of William F. Buckley, “when you subsidize something you get more of it like illegitimacy and cheese.”
I was told after the solar panels are installed on roofs; the contractors move on to the next job, and there is no one to maintain them.
Talk about a bait and switch. As it was the break even point was about a week before have to be replaced now this
Talk about a bait and switch. As it was the break even point was about a week before have to be replaced now this
Okay, what is the net result, are home owners being paid the same price the utility is paying other solar power sources or paying the going rate? Maybe before they were paying inflated price? The article doesn’t say. Seems like on the surface they should buy/sell electricity from homeowners at the same rate. But maybe that is too simple?
Basically the state is FLOODED with electricity during sunny days, due to all of the solar panels - so even more rooftop production is simply not needed.
What is needed (by the Leftists there) are ‘clean’ systems that can produce power when it’s not sunny and there’s no wind. Hydro can do that, but they’re too busy tearing down dams to know that, so can nuclear (LOL). Batteries too, but they’re expensive and still have to buy the power to charge them.
So the state is saying to the solar owners, we’re not going to pay you much money for something we don’t even need.
Sounds right to me...
My 2,300 sq ft all-electric home has 80% of the power provided by solar (on average 20% of my power has to be bought from the grid, most of that in the winter). That includes charging my EV for 16K miles per year (not counting the miles charged on the road during trips). Assuming a reasonable 3% inflation rate in energy costs that I'm avoiding, my entire energy project pays for itself on the 11th year. And that's without selling power to the grid (which I've been doing only 2 months, but don't count it as a given because state regulations might change and I decide to turn the grid sell feature back off).
Admittedly that's only for people in a situation that's good for solar (in the south where we get lots of sun, I spent some money making my house more energy efficient, I drive enough miles for the EV to be worth it, etc.). But I'm an exception where solar is good for a whole house operation.
You can play the stupid games of robbing Peter to pay Paul when there are many Peters and few Paul’s.
But what happens when the number of Peters gets less and the number of Paul’s increases?
Margaret Thatcher: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other peoples’ money.”
That is the problem with most of this solar and wind power, EV’s, and many of these other so called green, regenerative, sustainable, carbon neutral, zero emission, baloney.
Almost all of these require a form of subsidy in order to work. Left on their own (without special tax breaks at purchase, free electricity for the car, subsidies for charging stations, subsidies for the manufacturers, example Tesla had over $5 billion in tax dollars as of 8 years ago) all of these great ideas would have a minuscule market share as they are only economically viable in a few niche areas.
It makes perfect sense to maybe put up some wind turbines and solar panels for a cabin that is 25 miles from the nearest power line and in the middle of a forest or mountainous area. But when you skew the market as government has with a plethora of programs which infuse money to ultimately create an artificial market, you get to where we are at today. It’s not unlike public transit, another wet dream by the left. Name me one public transit system in the entire country which is in the black? There isn’t one. They are all running at a loss, getting city, state, federal money pumped into them to stay alive. Here in DFW the Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) gets 2% in the form of a sales tax in the entire Metroplex on top of what they charge for tickets. It does not matter if you dine out, buy clothes or watch a movie, DART gets 2% from everyone even though only a small minority uses this junk.
The more dead weight government creates, the more wealth they destroy. So called “Green jobs” is government creating market inefficiencies at the EXPENSE to productive and the actual true demand driven private sector which is producing wealth.
In solar lingo, California used to do what's called "net metering" -- it's a phrase that's in an old federal law from when solar was not really a thing (maybe the Carter years) that says if a home owner sells power to the grid then the utility has to pay them the same rate per kWh that the utility charges per kWh when homeowners buy from the grid. Also as part of the net metering federal law the utility can't charge large monthly fees to administer the grid buyback.
Some states did away with net metering (Alabama did many years ago, again before solar became good enough to be worth considering). So when I did the math on whether or not I should go solar, I assumed I'd never sell power to the grid (if I wound up doing so I'd count it as gravy on top). That also meant I had to buy inverters with the feature to optionally turn off the grid sell (putting power onto the grid in Alabama without going through the approval phase automatically signs you up for the grid buyback plan with a default large monthly fee that in my case would have been $130/month). I'm now selling power to the grid the past 2 months only because I've had solar for over a year and know how much I'd make selling power to the grid throughout the year (not much, 1/4th the rate per kWh that I pay for power) and the extra monthly fees added are small (I was able to opt for ones that are based on my grid demand what little I buy from the grid). But if that ever changes I'll turn my grid sell feature back off and cancel my grid sell contract -- making me back to being a normal power customer like everyone else only I pull a lot less power from the grid.
Some people didn't do the math like I did or get inverters with the feature to turn off the grid sell because they anticipated being able to sell power and an obscene rate. (Some of my solar contractors told me I could in Alabama but I knew better and didn't do business with them.) It pays to do your homework ahead of time. And it pays to make sure that, whatever the situation, and however it changes when regulations change, you're always the one in control and can pull yourself away if thing go out of your favor.
.
Reminds me of decades ago when the territories were being devised and
made available (to be invested in) of the then newly forming cable tv industry.
My dad invested pretty heavily (for him at that time) in it.
And of course I don't even need to tell you the rest of the story.
The IRS 'changed the rules' - so what would have been a profitable
investment, was magically turned into a loss for my dad.
Also reminds me of when Amtrak was formed and Pennsylvania railroad bonds
became mostly worthless (in 1970) - and I heard my grandfather
(who owned a good number of said bonds) use profanity EVER.
I have a smaller home than yours, I have no electric vehicle, and I am probably a little further north than you are, yet my experience is quite similar. About 80% of my electrical needs are supplied by rooftop solar panels, which will pay for themselves in less than ten years.
Thank you for the detailed explanation. Short of the utilities wanting cheap power, is there any reason that they shouldn’t be paying for electricity at the same rate as they charge for it? Or, is that 25% rate the wholesale rate they pay for electricity?
Did you spend time and/or money doing things to make your house more efficient? I did so, and to be honest I was embarrassed that I didn't do that part many years before going solar. That portion of my energy project was the most practical ROI and the simplest.
“You know a product sucks when they have to send out conga-lines of door bangers to peddle this stuff.”
I’ve had a few show up at my house. They come on with the line “do you want to join your neighbors and get low cost solar electricity?”
I tell them that I am not even a little interested and they need to leave my property.
As was mentioned above, the net metering tariffs paid the guy with the solar panels the same rate per kWH as he purchased it at. The thing is though that the rate from the utility is the all in cost of purchased power, transmission and the operation and maintenance of the local distribution system. Of that total maybe 30-40% was the actual power supply. A customer with a solar array large enough to have a zero bill from the utility is paying nothing towards maintenance of the local distribution system and therefore gets a free backup power supply when the sun goes down. The poor schmuck who can’t afford a solar array winds up subsidizing the rich guy with the solar array.
It was about time someone put an end to this horse crap.
Great line…. descriptive
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