A fight over rooftop solar panels | Hacker News Reader

A fight over rooftop solar panels

slate.com

23 pointsjseliger15 comments

This post was killed by user flags.

>On Monday, Google announced that it was cutting ties with the American Legislative Exchange Council

WTF??? Google was participating in ALEC?! All the backward and oppressive laws brought to life across America at federal and especially state levels during the last decade are basically ALEC's doing. Animal Enterprise Terrorism Acts and Stand Your Ground are among those for example. And Google was among the ones behind it!

Solar panels have dropped so much in cost since 2009 that what used to be a cute, green-washing positive card for utilities to play is now a dangerous threat.

If too many install solar they won't be able to make the payments on their existing polluting plants.

The US government should offer now to cover all defaults on existing plants, but not on new gas or coal plants. That would reduce utility incentive to oppose widespread solar.

In reality, residential solar can benefit utilities in a major way in areas with high cooling loads, because the generated power comes right at the peak load (if the panels are oriented to the west, slightly less so for south orientation). And solar is much cheaper for peak power than a peaking plant that only operates a few days a year. Peaking power is the most expensive power because you need to make payments for a plant that rarely is turned on and generating revenue, but must be there otherwise you'd have brownouts whenever everyone runs their air conditioners run at the same time.

That's simply not true. For the majority of the United States, solar panels don't make economic sense. Your average kWh price after solar installation needs to be less than what the utility charges for it to be feasible. This only happens in places with really high rates (e.g. Hawaii), extremely sunny places (e.g. Arizona), or places with high tax incentives (e.g. Louisiana).

Also, solar production doesn't peak with consumption.

the generated power comes right at the peak load (if the panels are oriented to the west, slightly less so for south orientation)

Why would anyone do this? You generate more power by pointing them south, and the net metering rules mean it doesn't matter to you what time of day that happens.

Not everyone has an optimally oriented roof, right?

I don't understand why this is such a large issue. I get charged a generation fee, and a transmission fee for my electricity. If my generation is done by the power company, my neighbor with solar panels, or a giant wind farm out in the desert I'd expect the generation money to go to the person who generated the power[1]. Then the transmission fee would be paid to the power company to maintain the grid and everything else that goes with it.

So as people start generating their own power, transmissions charges go down. This means that transmission charges for people not generating their own power go up to cover the mostly fixed cost of maintaining the electric grid. I think charging a reasonable transmission fee (or toll) per kWh sold back to the power company is a reasonable compromise that prevents people from benefiting from a fully maintained electrical grid, but not paying for it.

[1]Obviously it's impossible to tell where any specific user's generation came from

Under "net metering" rules, which were enacted broadly to support distributed solar, that's not how it works: the generating consumer can offset billing for power use from the grid with excess power generation pushed back into the grid on a 1:1 basis, which amounts to paying them both for generation and for transmission.

People who have solar, who sell solar, who install solar, want to install solar, or who think distributed solar are a public good worthy of subsidy want to keep this rule.

Exactly. Also, the argument that solar provides the grid with power when it needs it most is incorrect. Solar production peaks at around noon while electric consumption peaks around five when people arrive home from work. Solar houses basically use the utility as a no-cost battery.

Commercial consumption peaks at noon, residential consumption peaks at 21, but with a much less prominent spike.

In addition, the price of energy and the economy behind new plants is based on the commercial peak ("please run your washing machine in the afternoon", used to remember you state-run companies with every bill). Nice graph at http://www.mpoweruk.com/images/elec_load_demand.gif from http://www.mpoweruk.com/electricity_demand.html (please note that that graph is from 1999's Californa; now the commercial spike is much higher due to air conditioners being active in almost all office).

Thus, solar helps when it is "needed" the most.

Another thing to help is if solar is overproducing around noon, homes could leave their AC temperatures cooler than they normally would, and the AC wouldn't have to work as hard when they get home.

I.e., using the home's temperature as a very inefficient battery but better than throwing it away.

Thanks, I think solar should be subsidized, but I don't know if I agree that the local utility should be the one subsidizing it.

Why was Google funding ALEC in the first place?

Don't be evil...

... sometimes?

...wow, could we have a more biased article please? There's really no need for even the tiny hints this one provided about the reasons electric grid maintainers don't like net metering.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com