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“The bank is imaginary, an accounting fiction, because it is not easy to store electricity.”

This is a very misleading article. The excess solar energy is not being “banked”, rather it is saving whatever other fuel would have been used to generate what is being fed to the grid by solar.

It’s a bit sad that we have to be just as careful about propaganda spewed by our side as well as the other.

...rather it is saving whatever other fuel would have been used to generate what is being fed to the grid by solar.

Not saving anything. The rest of us are forced to buy it (net metering) when we could be buying reliable power for 3-4 times less money.

Our local paper is run by a guy that loves the green energy stuff. He advocated it for years. When he got to the point where he wanted to install it on his own house, he wrote articles on it. By the end, he didn’t install it.

He looked into the leasing and all the rules it involved. It would have ended up costing about 5X his actual electric bill, restricted how he could sell his house, and how repairs could be done to his house. He went into details of all the hidden costs. At the end, he was very disappointed over the entire ordeal. You could almost feel the mental pain he had over finding out how bad it was. He never got to see if the panels actually produced as the claims stated.

I suspect that if people bought the panels and other equipment outright things might have been different. Most of the solar in my area are on some type of a lease program.

Some people at work did lease solar panels and found they are generating much less electricity than they were told the panels would produce. I suspect that is likely due to the salesman setting unrealistic expectations rather than the technology or the installation of the panels not being optimal.

This is a very misleading article. The excess solar energy is not being “banked”, rather it is saving whatever other fuel would have been used to generate what is being fed to the grid by solar.

Except that what the power company charges you includes employee labor, infrastructure, repairs/maintenance, and many other costs. The tiny bit they save on fuel (zero if it's nuclear or hydro sources, essentially zero per home for NG/others), does not reimburse them for the amount of money they pay you for your "banked" power. They would be losing money.

If a significant portion of the populace did this, you can bet that power would become essentially free, but you'd have some very expensive surcharges or higher-cost flat rate tiers. (eg 1-5000kWH of power is a flat $200 a month: $100 in fees and $.02/kWH.)

What is your back ground in energy supply? In particular baseload, peaking and interruptible supplies? Which entity is taking on the responsibility of supplier of last resort? Is it the utility or the customer? What is the cost to the utility to have standby supply ready to serve said customer whose supply may not be there as promised?