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Are you kidding? Get real. The power fed back to the lines has to be stepped up to the same voltages as everything else on the lines. The only thing you have accomplished with your argument is to show how ridiculous central power is compared to distributed power. Thanks for arguing for solar.

What's a generously sized solar system put out? Maybe 50 amps at 110v on a sunny day if you're lucky after it's inverted, then subtract any usage. So what's left now has to run through a step-up transformer to 220 or 440. It gets to the street and gets stepped back up to however many thousand volts is required for the local transmission lines. Then this trickle of amps has to go down the street to your neighbor, at minimum, where it gets run through another transformer to step it back down. When all is said and done, what percent of the power the utility is paying for actually makes it to the neighbor in this best case scenario, assuming they actually need it at the time?

I'm not arguing for or against distributed power. I'm arguing against forcing utilities to pay for power they can't use so that an uneconomical solar installation can claim to be "green", "independent", or a "success story".

Absolutely, but you don’t have to send it at 110, you can send it at 220, or 440 or higher. But it sounds like solar might not be optimal for your situation.

I was illustrating a point. If it ain't economical to send "free" power across my yard, it sure as heck isn't economical to send it down the street to my neighbor.

It's one thing to have thousands of volts and amps at one end and have to push it through at a relative trickle to the other - you can bill based on what it costs on the front end to cover all the losses through the system to get to the use point. But when you're trying to push it backwards, and billing on the low voltage/amps end, it doesn't make economic sense.

Here's an example. Let's say it takes 5kw of power at the power company to give you 1kw at the use point. You pay for 1kw, but you're actually paying for the power company's costs to produce 5kw. The other 4kw are transmission and transformer losses or 80%. I'm just pulling easy numbers out of the air for easy math, but they work regardless of the actual figures.

So now you decide to push 1kw backwards into the system. Does the power company get 5kw back? No, more likely they get 0.2kw because of the same 80% loss in the other direction.

They're forced to pay you for the 1kw, which they bill at the rate it costs to otherwise cover their costs to produce 5kw, but they only get back .2kw of usable power to redistribute.

“What’s a generously sized solar system put out?”
http://www.we-energies.com/residential/energyeff/active_installdata.htm
If you look at the link I provided in #24 (I think) and again here you can look at the real time data from existing systems.

“Mybe 50 amps at 110v on a sunny day if you’re lucky after it’s inverted, then subtract any usage.”

You need to understand many grid tied systems do not invert to 110v but to 240v.

“then subtract any usage. So what’s left now “

You are right that if only one person on a grid stuffs back in a little solar power it is a drop in the bucket. But if thousands of people during peak demand sunny summer days, make no demands on the gird, but instead feed it with 100KW of power, yes it does make a difference. Don’t forget the difference the lack of demand makes.

“I’m arguing against forcing utilities to pay for power they can’t use so that an uneconomical solar installation can claim to be “green”, “independent”, or a “success story”.”
They can and do use it. The utilities have taken enormous sums of tax dollars, and with that comes responsibility to answer to gov’t and tax payers.

“So now you decide to push 1kw backwards into the system. Does the power company get 5kw back? No, more likely they get 0.2kw because of the same 80% loss in the other direction.”

No! That power is ALREADY distributed. It may not even have to go through a single other transformer before your neighbor consumes it.