Posted on 05/14/2016 5:48:26 AM PDT by Kaslin
What if I told you there’s a cronyist program designed to be irresistible to politicians that not very many people are familiar with? This is a policy that combines American manufacturing, high-tech startups, Silicon Valley billionaires, “green energy,” and enough layers of complexity to hide how these cronyists are fleecing Americans.
Welcome to the world of “solar leasing.” This is a new business model pioneered by a handful of solar panel companies in the last couple of decades in which the solar company “leases” panels to homeowners – sometimes covering installation and other associated up-front costs – in order to provide and sell solar energy to customers.
A key variable in this business model is what is called “net metering.” In a lot of jurisdictions, homes with solar panels that are also connected to the traditional power grid get to sell their unused solar energy back to the local utility company for a profit. In fact, in many places, the power companies are required to buy back excess solar energy. And, as you can imagine, this comes with political fights.
In places with net metering mandates, there are local regulatory authorities that set prices at which the power companies are required to buy-back this excess solar power. Naturally, power companies fight for lower prices to be set on these net metering mandates. Solar panel owners and solar panel companies fight for higher rates.
The companies involved in solar leasing have the biggest incentive to fight. In the solar leasing business model, the leasing company pockets the net metering money as pure profit.
Analysts will tell everyone that solar leasing is a bad deal for homeowners. For those who are truly dedicated to greening their home with solar energy, the good move is to purchase the panels, not lease them. The leasing model is a complicated scam by the solar corporations as a way to take minimal up-front risk and profit for years and years off of homeowners.
What the net metering pricing fights have revealed is that much of the solar leasing business model is unsustainable without central regulators setting artificially high prices for net metering buy-back. When Nevada lowered their net metering prices from what’s called the “retail rate” (the rate that customers buy from the power company) to the “wholesale rate” (the bulk rate for power generation), many solar leasing companies protested. Some exited the market entirely.
Elon Musk, billionaire Silicon Valley entrepreneur, pioneer of high-tech darlings Tesla and SpaceX, is also at the helm of one of the biggest players in the solar leasing market, SolarCity. He’s a major investor and has consistently funneled money into the company as its chairman. And he’s continued to support the company even as it’s been described as preying on “subprime” customers in its leasing program. But the allure of Musk and the high-tech industry is often irresistible for politicians who want to claim they’re major players in the “green” economy.
Unfortunately, data doesn’t bear this out. It turns out that the entire “solar leasing” market is dependent on government subsidies. A report from Navigant Consulting in March revealed that the solar leasing companies only “choose to operate in jurisdictions where they can maximize their return by undercutting utility offset rates,” and that “providers’ project returns vary by utility service territory.” There’s only one explanation for this: government policy is subsidizing these leasing projects. The companies pick and choose their service areas based on how much money they can extract from the government and from utility companies. The solar panel technology has potential, but the technology is unable to stand on its own without subsidy.
When Nevada changed its net metering subsidy from the retail rate to the wholesale rate this year, and Solar City announced it was exiting the Nevada market. Late last year, Hawaii ended its net metering subsidy program, and a coalition of solar companies, including SolarCity and ZEP Solar, promptly filed a lawsuit. All over the country – in California, Arizona, New York and more – these net metering fights are breaking out, and the big solar companies are throwing their weight at the political fight, nervous that they’ll have a cash cow taken away from them.
When utility companies are mandated to buy energy at artificially high prices, the people who pay the cost are people who are on the traditional energy grid – in other words, everyone who is a paying customer from the utility company. Everyone who gets an electric bill every month is paying to subsidize their neighbor with the solar panel – and often, their green-friendly neighbor is just a conduit to subsidize a billionaire-helmed solar corporation.
The allure of solar panels, like the allure of green-friendly lightbulbs and other green-friendly household appliances, should be that customers can pay something more up front in exchange for lower energy prices in the future. (And, of course, that great going-green feeling it gives you.) The current net-metering policies – and, in particular, the artificially high prices bestowed by many energy regulators – is such an over-the-top subsidy that it has created an entire crony industry. Those energy regulators should reconsider their net metering policies. It’s a cronyist subsidy and it comes straight out of the pocket of ordinary Americans.
Elon Musk deserves a whoopin’ for daring to use the name of Tesla.
OK!! Everybody pay attention!
Lesson for today:
1. The sun is 1,300,000 times as big as the earth.
2. The sun is a giant nuclear furnace that controls the climates of all its planets.
3. The earth is one of the sun’s planets.
4. The earth is a speck in comparison to the size of the sun.
5. Inhabitants of the earth are less than specks.
Study Question: How do less-than-specks in congress plan to control the sun?
Faced with either no feed-in tariff, a low feed-in tariff, or a reduced feed-in tariff, Musk offers his home battery called Powerwall.
Utility scale solar generation requires more sunlight than most areas of the US can provide. That’s not economics, its physics. Investing in this technology despite the facts isn’t economics either, its stupidity.
Finding parts for equipment is already a problem in this throw away world. Finding qualified workers. ..?
Also not mentioned is the net waste of resources that will eventually result.
Add to that the customers that will be forced to return to the public utility grid that is not building its own power generation systems
In Germany, the rates for selling power back to the utilities were so high that Germans could buy a diesel generator and feed the power from the generator. They made a significatn profit after paying for the generator and for the fuel. The utilities only caught on when they discovered that they were buying a lot of power on overcast days.
Duh.
Solar and wind energy are FALSE energy alternatives. They don’t work. That is, their cost/benefit analysis is terrible.
1. Their environmental footprints are YUGE.
2. Short term maintenance costs and long term replacement costs are unacceptable.
3. Electricity production is not constant, so they both require an equal amount of traditional energy as backup. (When the wind don’t blow and the sun don’t shine)
4. They are totally UNNECESSARY!
Nuclear, (or nucular if you’re a Bush), has the smallest environmental footprint.
It is self sustaining. More nuclear energy can be produced than is used to produce it.
It is safe, ask France. Before you pounce, (Chernobyl was a design disaster and the Japanese are just morons).
Peak oil is a myth. Technology, (fracking, horizontal drilling, deep water drilling, etc.), outpaces consumption and the earth is constantly, quickly, producing new oil and gas through core heat and pressure, NOT piles of grass and woolly mammoth pooh.
Man made climate change is ridiculous on it’s face. Man is insignificant in proportion to the earth’s environment.
CO2 is not pollution. The earth, (God), regulates the balance between CO2 and O2. Man doesn’t need to, and HE CAN’T, even if he wanted to.
The CO2 pollution MYTH is the main reason the left is destroying the coal industry. Coal, our cheapest and most abundant energy resource, must be utilized to the fullest. The coal industry must be revitalized. It can be safe as well as clean.
ENERGY INDEPENDENCE NOW and you don’t need or want solar and wind to accomplish it.
I had a friend that worked for a Californian solar equipment producer. He quoted me a rate that was well above what public utilities charged in Nevada. He said it only made financial sense in portions of California without local utilities, the ones that got crushed during the Grey-out Davis era.
That doesn't mean people can't still install on the grid systems, they just need to realize they are paying luxury rates for a basic public commodity. I installed a tankless water heater in my last house. The company was very up front in telling me I wouldn't make my money back. I told them I knew that, and I just wanted enough hot water for a family of five to gang rush the bathrooms in the morning. Cost analysis complete. I wanted limitless hot water and was willing to pay twice as much to get it.
And all the natural gas turbines installed to meet demand when solar can’t drives up the cost of solar, when you might as well just build the natural gas turbines and run them all the time.
Actually, the solar companies AND NV Energy are scamsters. NV Energy is a Warren Buffet scam that also gets subsidies by providing expensive solar. Warren is just mad that Elon is infringing on his shakedown.
bkmk
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