No, there is literally no truth to this article.
Cory dropped the ball.
Totally fake.
There is one tiny grain of truth. Homes in Florida(and many states) are required to have a utility service. It has zero to do with solar. It has zero impact on solar.
I stand corrected. Thank you.
Here’s the thing about the cash problem - all of these utilities have stupid people running them who flat out refuse to view the world beyond the next quarter. They all should have been investing in their own solar/green infrastructure on as large a scale as possible, but they have come close to flat out refusing.
I live in the south west. The fact that the utilities here haven’t been working directly with local municipalities, property owners and the state of CA to build and expand solar right where we all live is just plain dumb.
Imagine if they started with large property owners like parking lots, malls, vast tracts of business buildings and partnered with them to cover all of it with panels. They could partner directly with homeowners as well. Cover every square foot of roof space and sell the power back at a reduced rate. My little house right this moment is basically using zero electricity on this perfect Southern CA day but would be spinning shit like crazy back into the grid with a covered roof. On its worst day with the air cranked, if the whole roof was covered, it’d still be a net provider of power from an array.
Now that’s some serious BS right there.
It is dumb, but it isn’t an anti-solar policy. There seems to be a bit of “telephone” going on and the reporters are all misreporting the story.
There is a rule that says you still need a utility feed, but that is because in many places the utility has traditionally paid for running utility service with the knowledge that you will pay service for 30+ years. Same is true for water/sewage/etc
Large scale solar projects just broke $0.06/kwh over the life of the project. The cost of production via other means is $0.035/kwh. There is absolutely no reason for these companies to back a technology that is still absurdly expensive.
There are some companies starting to bet on it in Texas, forecasting that costs of oil will raise energy costs about 6 cents per kwh.
It isn’t a “next quarter” problem. It is a basic economics problem. Solar costs 2x more than natural gas or nuclear. Why would they build solar?
Good luck with that, regardless to any veracity or potential lack thereof.
Telling the authors what they ‘should’ and ‘should not’ post rarely works, in my experience.
Hey, worth a shot. I just hate to see fake news from @doctorow
Start your own site; problem solved.
Or, I could just bitch when people flat-out lie
Yeah, that’ll fix everything; go for it.
Better than the alternative. Apathetically living in a bubble of bullshit
Don’t do that then, if it bothers you.
The the question is how are the utilities supposed to pay for the line maintenance if no one is paying for electricity? Where they were traditionally getting that money. I agree that it is short sighted on the behalf of the utilities. But they still need to pay for the linemen and the copper. And in the meanwhile not break the consumers
It’s a short-term outlook economics problem. That’s the issue. Solar is the future, especially in the southwest.
That’s just a fact. They have to get out in front of it.
We still need a grid and we have to start producing more and more power via clean means. Building and partnering here within the grid - not out in some far flung place - allows the overall build to scale.
Also -
That article is incredibly misleading. Solar may have reached “grid parity” for home users, but not for power producers. It is on the cusp of being cost-effective. See the following two articles
-https://www.wsj.com/articles/next-texas-energy-boom-solar-1440149400
Conclusion: Grid power costs 3.5 cents per kwh
-https://www.nrdc.org/experts/kevin-steinberger/sunshot-target-met-three-years-early-clouds-linger
Conclusion: Solar Power costs 6 cents per kwh
Now, here is the bigger problem. Solar is a highly variable producer.
You need another source of power to carry the electrical load for the rest of the time. These power plants are known as “load following power plants”. -https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Load_following_power_plant
You could use hydro, but hydro is at 16% and we cant build much more hydro.
You could potentially use nuclear, but that requires newer designs.
Currently, if you want “load following” to accommodate all of that solar you would need a lot more natural gas power plants.
People talk about “batteries”, but people don’t realize how much energy we are discussing.
-https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/castelvecchi-how-big-battery-would-it-take-power-usa/
This article does a good job explaining.
Thank you for the thorough write-up.
Is this a residential requirement of the IEEE rule? Because on the industry side I thought these were programmable (I had a pair of Automated Transfer Switches, one for UPS and one for generator only)… so if you have a relatively stable, non bumpy grid source you could choose to risk it with a shorter cutover period. This would be desirable if you trust your generator (or battery backup) less than you trust the grid.
Yes, but they will be woefully unprepared for the apocalypse. Not really joking. Even if you have a refueling contract, FEMA and other agencies may commandeer the fuel trucks.
I get all that - my point is that solar tech is changing very quickly and makes sense when looking in the long term.
Also, why would we need more natural gas plants than we already have if they are currently carrying a large portion of the load anyhow?
Large scale solar projects just broke $0.06/kwh over the life of the project. The cost of production via other means is $0.035/kwh. There is absolutely no reason for these companies to back a technology that is still absurdly expensive.
That depends very much on where in the country (or the world) you are. For existing nuclear or US natural gas (at least for now), that’s usually correct. For natural gas elsewhere, it’s somewhere between a tossup and solar wins hands-down. New nuclear plants are starting to look uneconomical pretty much everywhere, especially when you factor in the seemingly obligatory 150%-plus cost and schedule overruns. Large-scale solar plants in India and Dubai have come in at under $0.04/kWh, and a residential end-user doesn’t care about those figures anyway – he/she cares about how the cost of the system on the rooftop compares with retail rates that are much, much higher.
You do need other sources to deal with nighttime and inclement weather with solar, but utilities are rapidly learning how to deal with that and it isn’t a stretch for them anyway – they’ve been using a mix of power sources with very different costs and operating characteristics for decades. But then, running a whole grid using all [insert favorite power source here] is probably always going to be an economically stupid pipe dream anyway…
You are confusing generator rules with IEEE 1547(which is for solar only).
Solar is ALWAYS backfeeding the grid. Something you don’t do with a generator! So they made a special rule. The device has to shutdown within 10 cycles of detecting a power outage.
