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Comment by dataviz1000 | Hacker News Reader

> Solar prices in the US are criminal, protecting oil and gas who bought all the politicians.

It would be worth including control of the people who vote for the politicians by direct investment such as when the oil producing Saudis bought the second largest stake in NewCorps which controls FoxNews controlling the content that influences voters. And, less than ethical control using bots on social media by Russia.

A lot of what influences "solar prices in the US" is controlled by foreign oil producing countries like Saudi Arabia and Russia controlling content and media consumed by American voters.

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Here in California, they drastically cut back on the price that you get for solar powered electricity from homeowners. It used to be around $0.30/kWh at any time of day and now it's can drop to $0.00-$0.05/kWh during the day when the state is sunny. If you can afford to have a battery installed, the rates are far better as you can either run off the battery when rates are the highest in the evening, or you can export it back to the grid when prices are much higher.

That’s because net metering is a transfer from people who can’t afford solar to the rich people who can. https://energyathaas.wordpress.com/2024/04/22/californias-ex...

Which is true. But it's a rug pull for people who spent money on their panels expecting an RoI. Were existing installations grandfathered in?

Yes, existing installations get 20 years of grandfathered rates [1].

Which makes it more of a ladder pull than a rug pull...

[1] https://www.sce.com/clean-energy-efficiency/solar-generating...

That's fine. If we have enough X then stop paying people to build more X.

Late thought: we continue to reward those who built more X when we needed more X, and that's fine too.

The first round of people paid way more for their solar panels though, and those higher prices helped bootstrap the industry. Should people who paid much less for panels get the same reward? I'm having trouble getting outraged about this, it seems to be incentives working exactly as they should.

I agree, and maybe my "ladder pull" comment comes off as too negative. Most early solar buyers were either in it for environmental reasons or for a modest return on investment. I don't think many were expecting a windfall.

Solar has become all about ROI these days just like home ownership has become an investment.

The price is signaling that additional solar power production during the day isn't very useful; and additonal solar power production in the early evening when demand is high and the sun isn't shining and you need a battery system to have already been accumulating energy during the day is useful, albeit more expensive and complicated to build and run.

With falling battery prices this should be an addressable problem. Soak up the locally generated excess energy and sell it later in the day when the need is there. Electrical arbitrage seems like a win/win solution for the utilities their customers.

Residential solar is completely counter-productive right now in california. Just take a look at the CAISO price maps during the day when the sun is shining. There's so much power they are paying people to consume it. It's a negative force for grid stability. Getting paid for making the grid less stable is ridiculous. Until there is widespread battery storage or massively improved transmission and distribution systems grid-tied residential solar is a solution in search of a problem.

I agree wholeheartedly, and the technocrats are complicit with the GOP here.

It's funny how “free markets” keep producing the most expensive solar prices in the developed world. Don't get me started on Healthcare (I just moved back to the U.S. a couple years ago after 18 years in Canada, what a cluster*ck).

Oil and gas buy politicians, foreign oil money buys media influence, and social-media bots keep voters angry at the wrong targets.

Saudi capital helps shape the messaging, Russia helps amplify the noise, and Americans get stuck paying more for clean energy while being told it’s patriotic.

But hey, Make America Great Again, right?

If even a Democratically-led California is doing this, how can you point fingers at just the GOP? It's endemic to the system, and not restricted to just one party.

Republicans are always trying to increase and protect oil subsidizes, cheer "drill baby drill", and have social media tools peddling their bs who are funded by foreign influence campaigns. The Democats may not be perfect, but they are much more likely to cut oil subsidies or at least subsidize solar and other renewables to balance. This is especially true as the next generation takes over by primarying the tepid fossils currently in office. Meanwhile, dear leader Dumpty likes to suggest windmills cause cancer because he doesn't like what they look like on the horizon of his golf dumps. Saying this is a "both sides" problem is laughable.

Fly over Texas and the California and compare the number of solar and wind installations you see.

Yup. 46.8 GW photovoltaic in California and 22.8 GW photovoltaic in Texas. Over twice as much PV in California even though they have higher standards for new construction in general than Texas does.

I just can’t with “both sides” when one side is increasingly becoming lawless and reckless.

The US doesn't have a free market in either health care or electricity generation. An actual free market in solar power would probably result in more or less what we are seeing with the actual highly regulated market in electricity, namely extremely cheap prices for additonal solar energy in the middle of the day when the sun is shining, higher prices for additonal solar energy in the evening when demand is high and the sun has gone down, and some fixed cost to pay for physical electric grid infrastructure that needs maintenance regardless of whether it is being used at any particular moment.

Oil and gas don't buy polticians more than any other industry does, but voters do get particularly angry at politicians when the price they pay for energy suddenly spikes.

When you can influence the citizens of Rome for dimes on the dollar, why not steer the empire in the direction that benefits you?

I'm kinda tired of the argument where we only focus on some bad actors when it comes to online influencing.

Our countries absolutely do the same if not more to influence voters both here and in these other countries, especially online.

What could western nations possibly do to propagandise voters in Russia and Saudi Arabia?

The list of the oil producers listed and omitted on a given forum in these contexts is always interesting. On HN it is often SA or Russia, and almost never Qatar or Iran.

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