Posted on 12/16/2022 12:57:41 AM PST by blueplum
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California utility regulators on Thursday approved major changes to the state’s booming rooftop solar market that they say will more evenly spread the cost of energy and help reduce the state’s reliance on fossil fuels in the evening....
...The policy approved unanimously by the California Public Utilities Commission lessens the overall payment for selling excess power. It also revamps electric rates to try to encourage people to build home storage systems alongside their panels...
(Excerpt) Read more at apnews.com ...
Store it where you collect it.
Now if they would just figure out that hating domestic and industrial hot water makes sense even more.
I've been heating our hot water with solar for over 40 years.
Added some more a few weeks ago.
Now, year round we heat about 90% or more of our hot water with solar, 99% in the summer.
And that's in northern NH where we get nowhere near the sun that CA gets.
Well, maybe not northern CA in the winter.
Big Gov giveth, Big Gov Taketh Away.
Reminds me of when the Prius first began selling. Pretty soon the Kalifornia Highway System let any Prius drive in the carpool lane. More commuters bought a Prius expecting to use the carpool lane. A few years later, SORRY, special privilege for special cars and special people, revoked.
True that on solar heating water. I installed a solar system a year ago and added onto it this year. I looked heavily at solar heating water directly like you do and was thiissss close to doing it. The only reason I didn’t is I wanted that roof space for making power (which I could use for both heating water and other things). I wound up replacing my gas water heater with a hybrid water heater, which is so efficient it moves the math on me being glad I decided to use that roof space for solar power instead of solar water heating. If not for the uber efficiency of hybrid water heaters I’d have solar water heating like you do.
I always ignore “average costs” and “estimates” in articles, especially anything solar related. Solar activists are about the worst at using nothing but overly optimistic scenarios in their calculations.
1: Increase incentives for solar to take the strain off of the grid.
2: Get rid of incentives for EVs. They can't supply enough to charge all of them as it is.
But, it is California, so they will do the opposite of common sense.
What a joke this is. Major selling point of installing solar panels was to sell the extra power back to the utility to reduce total cost and shorten return on investment. Nope, just a bait and switch once again.
The issue here is that California law forces electricity providers to buy power from home rooftop solar generators at the retail rate. The problem is that rooftop arrays generate excess power in the afternoons when nobody anywhere is home to use it. Before solar arrays, In the mornings fossil fuel generators were racing to slow their “turning stock” fast enough to keep up with the demand drop. Now add in the morning dump of solar power onto the grid. Generators have to dump their BTU oversupply to buy the influx of solar supply as the afternoon sun heats up.
Ratepayers have to pay for the dumped BTU’s. Then, as the sun goes down everyone returns home and cranks up their air conditioners. It requires that providers maintain generating plant sufficient for generating peak load, but not receiving a return on the investment for half of every day. Multiply these factors by 365 days per year and you have exhorbitantly high electricity rates which customers who don’t have solar arrays must pay.
Welcome to the People’s Republic of California.
There is another reason to disincentive rooftop solar panels, And that is That they produce access heat and increase the risk of fire
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