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Comment by Braxton1980 | Hacker News Reader

Braxton1980

You want to connect to a grid then you need to pay a certain percentage for upkeep regardless of the amount of electricity you use.

"The entire system is a scam, and every politician involved is a corrupt."

What an immature over simplification that means nothing. none of the examples you provided are an example of corruption

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In Arizona, the power company also charges for a solar tie in. If I remember the wording correctly, it’s required if any electricity is generated on premises. So if I have a solar powered Air Conditioning unit with grid backup for the evening, I’d need to pay the tie in. That’s true, even if it has NO grid backup. Solar powered pool pump - pay the solar grid fee. Solar powered Gnome garden light? The way I read it, I’d have to pay the fee. I want to do a ton of solar projects without actually tying into the grid, but am concerned that 10 years from now, some overly enthusiastic intern is going to search Google maps for solar installs and check to see if those owners are paying the tie in fee. That’s when I’d get stuck with a retroactive back charge for the past 10 years and probably some fine. So, when a monopoly utility gets to dictate the terms of how you use your property, it’s not an immature over simplification. In AZ the power company also provides the water for the farmers. The board votes are allocated based upon acreage, which is of course dominated by the farmers. What do the farmers want? Cheap water. So they’re incentivized to ensure there are no disruption to their electricity generating capital investments, otherwise water rates would need to go up to cover those fixed costs. So, is that corrupt? Sure seems rigged in favor of those “poor” farmers who own literal square miles of land at $200k/acre here in metropolitan Phoenix. At what point would you consider it corruption?

It's an immature simplification to claim all politicians and the system are corrupt because fees are required.

The fees should be the same regardless of solar tie in or not, as it’s a grid cost (physical cables etc) And then the power companies should charge a price per kWh for power they deliver. Instead they only charge solar customers, causing an artificially high barrier to exit. They can only do this because they have monopoly power.

Because computers are so predictable and rule-driven, programmers tend to overlook that the real world is very much adversarial and unpredictable. The "normal" thing to do here is to simply play with your small solar projects and not pay the fee, because the chance that you'll ever get charged the solar tie-in fee for a solar-powered garden light is basically zero. It's not precisely zero, but it's comparable to things like a drunk driver crashing into your house and killing you - one of those little tiny risks you just have to ignore because dealing with the risk costs more than the expectation cost of the risk.

Consider that they have a finite number of people and it costs more for them to go around inspecting everyone's garden lights than their expected revenue from that, so they won't.

Also, real-world risk and reward are dynamic. When the Deutschlandticket came out in Germany, almost everyone in Berlin bought one, so now they very rarely check tickets on trains - the expected gain is near-zero because almost everyone has a ticket for almost every train now. But if people start exploiting that by riding without a ticket, the gain will go up and after a time lag, they'll notice and start checking tickets more often.

Target, the store, is known to not arrest shoplifters until they exceed the felony threshold, at which time they arrest and prosecute the shoplifters.

If a solar tie in fee is $100/month, and a “customer” is using their garden lights for 1 year, it’s only $1200 to find them and issue a fine (assuming the fine is simply equal to the avoided tie in fees). Probably not worth it for the power company. But… after 10 years, the tie in fees would be $12k - certainly profitable for an intern to do some Google image searches, if they can find just 100 violators, that’s $1.2M. In 10 years, it’s not going to be an intern doing this, it’s going to be some AI agent tasked with optimizing revenue generation, and their costs approach zero.

Failing to fulfil a contract, even assuming they can make such an argument, is not a crime.

I suspect I’ve accepted some terms or conditions which obligates me to pay them these fees if they find I ever generated my own power. Again, this is only possible because they have monopoly power, which is not adequately checked by the regulators, who are all likely captured to some degree. Thinking otherwise makes you naive.

So separate the interconnect fee from the energy unit price.

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