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.
“So much of this story demonstrates the utter folly of business getting in bed with government. Anything the government provides can be eliminated at their whim.”
Dear Miss Welfare Mom:
We just imported millions of new Democrats and no longer need to fund you to get your vote.
Team Donkey
We can hope or not. Unsure what will be worse.
We have seen this in ethanol and coal bed methane in the energy industry. I was sent on a mission to find 1 TCF of coal bed methane and to make a recommendation about getting into that business. I recommended against it. We didn't and I believe time proved me right.
I believe ethanol has died twice and been resurrected by gooberment mandate or manipulation. It simply can't stand alone.
If gooberment has to incentivize something or mandate it to make it viable it isn't. If it can't stand alone it is not competitive, practical or essential. It will not work. There is no such thing as a temporary incentive.
Usually these fluster clucks get started by a lobbyist who stands to make a fortune or some wack job environmental promoter or some feral agency trying to justify their existence with some hair brained idea to save the world.
Some would probably conclude the subsidy and regulations worked. They would be wrong of course. Instead the subsidy and regulation was wasted.
No crisis was solved. No industry created. The gooberment either spent a lot of taxpayer money or forgave a lot of taxes, contractors reaped a windfall of over priced systems, there is a surge of electricity on sunny days and the number of power plants remains the same to cover the cloudy days. Big freakin’ woop. Wasted money and effort.
At worst though it is cheating the system. You are not contributing to the maintenance of the base load capacity that you need 100% of but only 20% or more of the time. Somebody has to eventually pay all the cost of that base load capacity. Until everyone has solar to the same degree people who do have solar are depending on their neighbors to pay higher rates 100% of the time to provide the solar owner 100% of his needs 20% of the time at that higher rate. The solar owner is being carried.
Solar can reduce fuel consumption but the physical plant that burns fuel for the times when solar is either crippled or unavailable remains the same size and probably even higher cost than to depend on it 100%. Solar and wind are problems.
The only add I make to your comments, and it is a small one, is that solar and wind and other gimmicks only makes good sense when there is not viable conventional alternative or that it is cost or logistically prohibitive.
In my particular case I might consider solar as a hedge against inflation in energy prices that I perceive will exceed general inflation because of all the hair brained initiatives that will put us back in the dark ages. Eventually some Peter is going to have to pay to rebuild all the power plants they are forcing to be torn down.
As for public transportation, the auto industry has seen to it to destroy public transportation when, after the war, they bought up and destroyed all the trolley cars and inter-urbans. Doing this created a demand for cars they were too ready to fill. They created a new alternative while destroying the old one. That is what this green net zero mess is trying to do, artificially create an new alternative that is mandatory because the old one has been destroyed.
The auto industry, GM in particular, did what they did with what was sort of their own money. Money they got from war profits.
They don’t buy or generate their electricity they sell to you at retail rates so why should they pay you anything other than a wholesale rate?
> Did you spend time and/or money doing things to make your house more efficient?
I followed that advice. Knocked 35% off the house usage by replacing the AC and reduced peak from 9.5KW to 5.5KW. We’re all electric including heater, hot water, stove, and pool pump.
I calculate a solar install on the house would pay for itself in less than 5 years. We live in Southern AZ and conceivably could use no utility power for about 7 months out of the year.
Thinking of building a house on some property I own and the cost of installing the electric service is comparable to installing an 18KW solar. Tempted to forgo the hookup since it’s not mandatory.
It was about time someone put an end to this horse crap.
______
Yes.
Moreover, they are selling the power to utilities exactly when the utility does not need it!
Since the explosion of solar, the price of power on wholesale spot market is quite often NEGATIVE during sunny days.
Utilities have in such time so much power, that they need to pay somebody to take away some of the solar power! They are even building some huge resistor boxes to burn that unwanted power.
And solar is very irregular, so lot of it plays havoc with the grid!
Yet some schmo demands to be paid retail for the power which is less than worthless!
Too bad schmo, you are still paid more than your power is worth it!
Details are at https://freerepublic.com/focus/chat/4200504/posts?page=24#24. Latitude is 33°.
It's not good for everybody. And half of the magic of making it effective is making your home more efficient to begin with (that portion I should have done many years ago before going solar) so not as much solar and battery capacity is needed.
Even with it working for me, I'd rather our country not be in a situation with the Dims' stupid war on energy. But since I can't change the Dims or put an end to their vote fraud, it makes sense to me for each of us to do what we can to make ourselves as energy self-reliant as we can feasibly do. The experience has been positive -- inspiring my wife and I to look for other ways to be more self-reliant (such as we've expanded our gardening -- to be honest I don't know if we'll make that work well enough to really put a dent in our grocery costs experiencing Bidenflation, etc.).
If you think about it, if all Americans looked for ways to make each of us more self-reliant, it wouldn't be as easy for government to control us.
Concurrent to foam insulating the walls of the new addition I relented to foaming beneath the deck of the roof in the older section of the house and somewhat sealing the rafter bays to alleviate the air washing of that usually not well insulated area. The attic will not be encapsulated though but vented in the summer. My jury is still out as to the effectiveness of foaming the roof decking but the house seems more uniformly warm thus far.
The new addition roof is foil reflective cool ply roof decking and the ceiling plane will be R-60 blown fiber glass and ventilated.
One of the most disruptive energy users in this house is wash day and the electric dryer. Even after switching to a tankless propane water heater wash day and hours show up on the utility tracking software as hourly and daily spikes.
The duct work coming away from the water heater has a split and two dampeners so that during the winter I duct the cold air away from the living quarters into the attic (the water heater is in a closet in the laundry room close to the living room and master bedroom). When winter is over I flip the dampeners to direct the cold air towards the floor of the water heater closet -- which has a new air receiver for the central HVAC. Thus the water heater's cold air output is spread out among the house for the couple of hours the water heater runs -- making my home variable speed heat pump stay at low speed longer during the day.
The water heater runs at 300W. The variable speed heat pump is usually running at about 500W. So even with both running together they don't put a strain on my inverters (max 18kW continuous AC power). Thus it's very infrequent that the total load of my house exceeds my inverter capacity (which would mean pulling from the grid).
I don't know how electrical billing works every where. But here's how it works in Alabama for residential customers.
1) The first $14.50 of the bill is a flat monthly fee to handle the normal lines and plants and upkeep.
2) Then there's a $0.50 natural disaster rider. That along with the other fee means $15.00 in total flat fees before being charged per kWh.
3) Add to that a 4% state tax to mean you pay $15.60 that month even if you pull no power from the grid. At least ostensibly that's the part of the bill that's supposed to pay for the infrastructure costs. To be honest I don't know if my utility compartmentalizes their revenue like that.
Then come the per kWh charges.
A) The default rate plan (and best for almost everybody) is 12.4384¢/kWh for the first 750 kWh of the month in Oct to May (11.2384¢ for any kWh after the first 750 kWh). From June to September (our peak months since it's a warm state and we spend a lot more energy running the A/C in the summer than we do running the heater in the winter) it's the same 12.4384¢ for the first 1,000 kWh and after that it's a higher rate of 12.6913¢/kWh.
B) But on top of that is a fuel rider per kWh that's not disclosed unless you are a business customer.
C) And these per kWh charges have the same 4% state tax as the flat monthly fees.
So when I did the math on whether or not it was worth me going solar, I realized that the first $15.60 of my bill would not go away unless I installed enough solar to go off-grid (which isn't feasible). All solar does is reduce the per kWh charges. So how much is that exactly with item B not being disclosed in the bill? I looked at each of my past 12 bills, subtracted the first $15.60, and whatever amount was left I counted as my total usage cost. I divided that by the # of kWh the bill said I pulled from the grid and derived my real charge per kWh (after all fees and tax were added, not including the flat monthly fees and tax). Over the past 6 months that's been 15.25 cents to 16.72 cents per kWh.
Two months ago I started selling power to the grid, which among other things added a new flat fee.
4) I have to pay $0.97 fee no matter how much I buy or sell that month. With the 4% state tax that's $1.03 added to the prior $15.60 flat fees to make it $16.63 I pay in flat fees every month.
5) I also pay a new demand charge which is $1.50 X whatever my highest kW pull is at any point during the month. (I guess the idea is that solar users may not need power often, but when we do we sometimes need a lot so we pay a demand charge.) For November that was 11kW X $1.50 = $16.50 + 4% state tax = $17.16. Add to that the aforementioned $16.63 and I paid $33.79 in fees before paying per kWh or selling per kWh. Is $33.79 per month ($18.19 more than my next door neighbors' flat fees without solar) enough in your opinion for my share of the infrastructure upkeep?
At least that's how our power bills are structured. I can't say for how it works in other states. And by the way, when I do sell power to the grid I get paid 1/4th per kWh what I paid (4 cents/kWh). IMHO that's reasonable, particularly since here in the south the grid needs help during the parts of the year and time of day I'd be most likely to put power onto the grid (hot summer afternoons).
They will pull the same with EVs.
It’s all about them being in control.
>my entire energy project pays for itself on the 11th year.<
The good news is it comes with a 10 year warranty.;=)
I am in a similar, yet smaller situation. I also had a wind turbine. It broke and isn’t worth the $5000 to fix it. So I am down to solar, battery, grid, and gas generator. This setup is not by choice. There was no grid available until 3 years ago.
I just replaced the batteries for 12 grand. It’s going to take the rest of my lifetime to catch up...but it’s the least I can do to save the planet for the Gretas. /spit
EC
My solar panels have a 25-year warranty guaranteed to be still operating a 70% in the final year. My batteries have a 19-year/50% warranty.
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