The Guardian has published a revealing piece about how Florida has low household solar penetration compared to some Northern states, because households can’t sell their energy back to the grid. My question – why are buyback schemes needed to make Solar attractive?
Sunshine state shuns solar as overcast New York basks in clean energy boom
Despite its natural advantages, disincentives mean Florida has few solar panels but the Empire state’s policies have boosted installed solar capacity by 800%
Oliver Milman in Miami and New York @olliemilman Monday 27 March 2017 18.00 AEDT
If you were to fly a camera-laden drone several hundred feet above Pani Herath’s house in south Miami, Florida, it would become clear his rooftop is an oddity compared with virtually all of his neighbors. Despite living in a part of the world that bakes in the sun throughout the year, just a few thousand people across Florida, such as Herath, have installed solar panels.
“Unfortunately, not many people know about solar. That’s why nobody around here has solar at all,” said Herath. He has become an object of curiosity in his tidy neighborhood, where watering the manicured lawn and scooping debris from the pool is of greater concern.
“I was telling my friend next door about it and he was wondering why I would want to go solar,” said Herath, who has had solar-heated water for the past six years and is now looking to lower his electric bills with more panels. “I wish that everybody would know about it.”
…
In many states, a solar company can lend panels to a homeowner and then sell the cheap power generated directly to the owner. But that isn’t allowed in Florida. Nor is a homeowner able to sell on his or her generated solar power to anyone else, such as a neighbor or tenants.
By Florida logic, anyone with rooftop panels is providing a utility and therefore must be able to provide power 24 hours a day. And as only the state’s vast monopoly utilities, such as Florida Power & Light, can do this on demand, households are barred from this sort of third-party ownership.
“It’s ludicrous that Florida outlaws such a thing,” said Justin Hoysradt, chief executive of Vinyasun. His West Palm Beach company has instead attempted to boost solar sales through loans structured like car or mortgage repayments.
“Places like New York, Massachusetts and California have recognized the jobs and environmental benefit of solar. We have more of a challenge.”
…
If the raw economics of solar made any sense, buyback schemes would not be needed to make household solar attractive. Householders could simply switch off the grid supply, and switch their house to cheaper rooftop solar supply, to reduce their electricity bills.
According to the CDC Wonder site, Florida receives an average of 18,581.94KJ/m2 of sunlight every day, but New York State only receives 13,933.79KJ/m2. Solar panels in Florida receive 33% more sunlight than solar panels in New York State.
If solar panels don’t help reduce household bills in a sunny state like Florida, where owners receive 33% more return on investment, how can they possibly make economic sense in New York State?
The reason has to be market distorting government subsidies and energy policies. Government subsidies and energy policies in this case are self evidently causing tremendous resource misallocation, motivating the installation of solar panels in less sunny states. My evidence for the resource misallocation is the simple fact that if market signals were working properly, nobody would install solar panels in less efficient northern locations, until they ran out of optimal southern installation opportunities.
Of course, even sun drenched Florida households are not installing solar panels – because without generous taxpayer funded power buyback schemes they don’t make economic sense. Without subsidies, solar panels can’t compete with cheap, reliable, 24×7 fossil fuel or nuclear generated electricity available straight out of the wall socket.
This gross resource misallocation is a big deal. The money wasted by market distorting government subsidies in New York State could have been spent on hospitals, police, or badly needed infrastructure repair. Or it could simply have been left in the pockets of taxpayers.
Worse, the subsidies for solar panels tend to disproportionately hit poor people. The recipients of these market distorting subsidies are the rich and middle class. Whether they pay through state taxes, or the cost is passed on via electricity bills, poor people who don’t own a home with a nice big South facing roof get slammed – they end up helping to pay everyone elses electricity bill in addition to their own.
The Guardian wishes Florida would follow New York State’s example, by implementing regressive taxes on poor people to subsidise the electricity bills of the middle class. Let us hope Florida sticks to their principles, and continues to refuse to impose this cruelty tax on the poor.
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The problem is, that unlike in New York state, the Earth is not transparent in Florida, so it is dark at night and solar panels just do not work.
Hurry up someone, with an unrelenting political will to fix this.
Solar will never work until the storage problem is solved-period.
Solar will never work until the Physics problem is solved-period.
Agreed.
Agreed
+10!
Really depends what you mean by work and what you are trying to achieve with the system in mind.
Solar power fills a useful niche for some people.
“Mark Stephens March 28, 2017 at 2:40 pm
Solar power fills a useful niche for some people.”
Indeed, for *SOME* people. It does not fill the needs for *MOST* people.
30 years ago, this held true, and it remains to this day:
There are only three reasons to get solar PV for your house:
1. You have a huge wad of cash burning a hole in your pocket.
2. You want to save the world.
3. It’s cheaper and more cost effective than having grid electricity installed to remote locations.
Ridiculous subsidies from gullible politicians tilted the playing field, but those three reasons remain.
I’ve watched the renewable energy market get twisted by subsidies. Solar water heating used to be the most effective method for renewable energy use. It still is, but subsidies have skewed the entire market to favor photovoltaic. Free market? Yeah right! (sarc) It’s a politically manipulated market.
“Hats off… March 28, 2017 at 6:08 am”
Bravo!
I *have* to call BS on this: “According to the CDC Wonder site, Florida receives an average of 18,581.94KJ/m2 of sunlight every day.”
Solar variation is measured at 0.1%, meaning that only the first 3 digits are significant. The reported number SHOULD be 18,600 +/- 200 KJ/m2. The last 4 digits (“81.94”) are spurious and can only serve to mislead the naive into believing that the ‘scientists’ at CDC know much more than they really do.
A classic case of the abuse of significant figures…
Thanks, tad! Sanity, at last!
Those numbers sound fishy. The average of 7.1 million station records between 23.5 S to 23.5 N lat, across 75 years gets 7,200 W/m2 a day if the sky is clear, and this is facing the sun. The average Enthalpy is 73.8 kJ/m3, with a daily swing of 11.6kJ/m3.
18582 KJ/m^2 per day works out to an average of 18,582,000/(24*60*60) = 215 Watts/m^2 continuously. With ground level peak solar of 1000 W/m^2, that works out to 215/1000*24 = 5.16 hours of peak sun per day. That agrees with NREL redbook data from sites in Florida (Tampa = 5.3 hrs/day; West Palm Beach = 5.1 hrs/day; Key West 5.5 hrs/day; Jacksonville = 5.0 hrs/day).
The sunroof project at Google provides a simple tool to estimate payback years on a solar PV installation that uses local solar insolation and utility rates, and available fed, state and local rebates and tax credits. For a home in Tampa with a 4.25kW array (installed cost of $4/Watt DC), the payback time is 20 years.
A 20 years roi is a nonstarter, and the system will have likely have failed a couple of times that would need repaired. You watch, 10 or 15 years it’ll be a mess of systems underperforming and half broken, and people will rip them out, or just let them slowly fail.
That they can’t sell power to tenants or others who want it is absurd.
Just another example of government using it’s power to create and protect monopolies.
It’s interesting that theguardian didn’t mention either batteries in general or specifically the Tesla Powerwall..
The company released upgraded versions of both the Powerwall and Powerpack and also unveiled its solar roof product. Tesla is on track to begin producing and installing its solar roof during the second half of this year.
http://www.businessinsider.com/15-tesla-powerpack-battery-projects-2017-3
It is battery storage that can make rooftop solar practical. But … it’s pretty expensive and hard numbers might kill the story.
Is it just me or does it always seem Tesla/Musk is always on the verge/on track/slightly delayed/will do next year? I will be interested to see a solid year or two of just delivering stuff that works, that will be impressive.
It’s vaporware just like his batteries. Musk is like the Communists in the old Soviet Union (as opposed to the green communists in America today). They always advertised lower prices than what capitalists produced. Bread would be advertised as a dollar in Moscow if it were $1.50 in NYC. Of course the Soviets never had any bread on the shelves.
Solar power is certainly viable, provided it does not generate electricity directly (which can’t be stored cheaply &. efficiently), but some energy rich, non toxic, neither explosive nor flammable chemical. Like sugar. Its is stored locally and converted to electricity on demand by fuel cells.
Unfortunately the technology is not quite there yet.
Otherwise it could readily be used to desalinate water, because we do have the technology for inexpensive storage of the end product.
What is more, it is what nature does with sunlight, both sugar manufacturing from carbon dioxide &. water and a desalination process called rain.
The only missing ingredient is cheap fuel cells running on sugar and oxygen, producing electricity. That’s what should be developed, before marketing it.
Feed the sugar to hamsters, then have the hamsters power your flywheels.
electric eels?
Not necessarily. Tech is getting close anyway (it was in 2014).
A high-energy-density sugar biobattery based on a synthetic enzymatic pathway
http://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms4026
Why such complicated units: “18,581.94KJ/m2 of sunlight every day, but New York State only receives 13,933.79KJ/m2.” The Greenees resort to such complexity so that it would be difficult to compare numbers and/or to remember them. Sunshine comes as power, so the units is the watt. The average sunshine reaching the US ground is 200 W/m^2. Thus 230 W/m^2 in Florida and 170 W/m^2. the North.
And, BTW, there is no such unit as KJ/m^2 (or kJ/m^2). Let’s keep it simple and correct.
There is another advantage to their madness.
18K is a much bigger number than 230.
Saying that the sun delivers 18K whatevers is much more impressive than saying it delivers 230 something elses.
Does anybody think that Florida only gets 30% more sunlight than NY State? That number seems very low to me. Am I just being fooled by because Florida is much hotter than NY?
joel March 28, 2017 at 8:15 am
Have a look at this chart:
http://www.pveducation.org/pvcdrom/average-solar-radiation
Gives a nice overview of the amount of solar energy a horizontal m^2 receives throughout the year in various places around the world.
No…they resort to such complexity because they believe it adds a degree of “truth/precision” that isn’t there. “Hey…they measured it to 3 significant digits, so it MUST be true!”
Here’s WaPo’s coverage of the recent Heartland conference in DC:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/the-mercers-trump-mega-donors-back-group-that-casts-doubt-on-climate-science/2017/03/26/dc1fde86-109b-11e7-9b0d-d27c98455440_story.html?utm_term=.703c558e46eb
As previously stated, first good Hurricane…and these “panels” are toast!
Regarding the idea that hurricanes and the solar panels are especially susceptible, see: https://floridasolardesigngroup.com/do-solar-panels-meet-miami-dade-hurricane-wind-requirements/
I have news for people: if a major hurricane hits, a lot of houses are going to be severely damaged with or without solar panels. As the article says, “that’s the price of living in coastal Florida.” (Personally, no thanks.)
Those panels that haven’t been ripped off the roofs completely are going to be cracked, or at a minimum extremely scratched. Any solar panel in an area hit by a major storm will have to be replaced.
Insurance costs for those panels will have to be expensive to cover periodic replacement.
While I’m not defending government subsidies of solar, it’s equally wrong to defend government *prohibitions* against being self-sufficient, or partially so, or selling power to others. It’s incorrect to conclude that people in Florida are not going off-grid because the solar is uneconomical. Economics isn’t the entire issue – suppose people value being independent over being dependent on a huge centralized power system? The thing is, it’s *illegal* for Floridians to go off grid, and that would include the case where solar was cheaper. See: http://wakingtimesmedia.com/florida-makes-off-grid-living-illegal-mandates-homes-must-connected-electricity-water-grid/
Yeah, but.
That article just states the house has to be “connected”…it doesn’t say you have to use any of it. So technically, I guess you’re not off the grid, but in reality, you are. Yes, you have to pay for power/water/sewer to be connected, but that’s where it stops. Frankly, if I opted to love “off the grid”, I’d still want those connections. What if you get injured, and are incapable of doing maintenance, or for any other number of reasons.
jb
Septic systems are for the protection of neighbors. So may be the other regs. IF the person has a septic system, and has approved heat and light sources, okay. These people don’t live on 35 acre lots away from everyone else. What they do can greatly affect their neighbors. If one wants to live “off-grid” then one needs to be sure the place they are buying or renting to live allows this. People just do what they want and then complain when they are found to be breaking laws. Do the research before you decide to live off-grid.
A complicated topic requiring knowledge of engineering, economics, politics. This is above my pay grade. Still mere ignorance never yet kept an American quiet, so I will venture some random thoughts.
Providing power to the public falls naturally into two sections: generation and distribution. Distribution, by its very nature, requires a monopoly. You can’t have multiple physical grids running all over town. The historical abuses of monopolies in turn motivate heavy governmental regulation of the distributor. So free market principles are already heavily compromised.
Generation, by contrast, is open to substantial competition. There was a time when local utilities would generate and distribute power, in house. Those days are long gone. My city-owned utility (Azusa Light and Water) buys power from all over the West: Nuclear from Palo Verde, Coal (likely from Four Corners), Wind from who knows where….). I see no reason why home owners should not be able to enter this competitive market. This does not imply that they should be subsidized or given preferential treatment.
On another subject, John at 2:19 am seems to suggest that 2-3 days of electricity would be useful for disconnecting from the grid. That amount of storage might be useful in a battery-buffered grid tie, as it would greatly reduce the in and out transfers between the grid and the local household. But it would be inadequate to actually go off the grid. Let me use my own installation as an example. It is a small, nominally 2KW, system that went on line on June 16, 2011. In the subsequent years it has produced almost exactly the amount of power that we have used (just 20 KWH under this morning). But that’s an average. Every year there are weeks during which we generate more power than we use, but there are also weeks (think winter) in which we use more power than we generate. To go entirely off grid without household rationing would require weeks worth of battery storage. Don’t see that becoming practical any time soon.
While PV solar is not really economically viable without subsidies or cheap storage (which doesn’t exist yet), I still don’t understand why you don’t see passive solar heating water tanks in Florida. If you travel around the world from SE, Africa, to W. Indies, through out China, solar heating water tanks are ubiquitous and they work incredibly well (sometimes too well, when the water can be scalding). When I was last in China or W. Africa, you can buy these tanks are sold on street corners and a quite affordable. Not sure why they aren’t popular in the US. Does FL. have restrictions on these? Also, in NYC where I live, I power all my outdoor lighting with affordable PV units. Every street light in most W. African cities are now self contained solar units. Far cheaper and more reliable than centralized power. Contrary to some on this forum, under the right circumstance (low wattage, low storage requiremen, sunny location like FL or passive), solar can be viable.
I live on the Gulf Coast, near Clearwater. There are hot water solar panels everywhere. Our pool is heated during the winter with panels, supplemented by NG.
For someone to say that people living in Florida would be akin to claiming that people in Maine know nothing about black flies.
Another reason solar should be more attractive in Florida is air conditioning. A/C is much more of a necessity in Florida than in New York. And fortunately those hot sunny days when you really need A/C is when sunlight is most abundant to power your solar collectors. Use that solar power to run the Air during the day and just run off the grid at night.
Except the cost of electricity from solar is much higher than grid power.
One of the first things we learned when we moved to Florida 3yrs ago was how to run our A/C, which is actually opposite of what we first started doing.
Initially, we would turn the A/C down to 74 during the day, and up to 78 or so at night. A friendly neighbor said: “You’ve got it backwards. During the day, you’re in and out, up and moving. Set your A/C at 78. When you go to bed, close everything up and drop it to 74. You sleep more comfortably, and you’re cooling your home with cheaper, non-peak power. In the morning, when you turn it up to 78, it’ll take a couple of hours for the interior to warm up, but by then, you won’t mind it.”
He was absolutely correct, and the cost difference was amazing.
The AC is also a smidge more efficient when the temperature outside drops.
“By Florida logic, anyone with rooftop panels is providing a utility and therefore must be able to provide power 24 hours a day.”
Bingo! That’s because unlike South Australian buffoons, Florida policymakers know consumers want reliable electricity supply and you can’t make a reliable system from unreliable components. However it’s a bare faced lie that-
“as only the state’s vast monopoly utilities, such as Florida Power & Light, can do this on demand, households are barred from this sort of third-party ownership.”
because households with solar could install battery storage, thereby being able to provide a certain quantity of power 24 hours a day, allowing of course for worst case scenario cloudy days. But at what cost for such meagre returns and now you can see the pea and thimble trick with unreliables like solar and wind in South Australia. The spruikers always want a licence to dump unreliable electrons onto the grid and leave reliable thermal to pay the insurance cost of doing that. When they’re prevented from doing so with a level playing field tender, the results are clear for all to see in Florida vis a vis South Australia with thermal generators going to the wall (even more so with direct subsidies for unreliables).
So much here that is wrong and misinformation. Really, dude (author) try spending 5 minutes on a Google search before you embarrass yourself. Ditto with the Brits.
In Florida there is no law against contractors installing panels on rooftops and selling the power generated to utilities. Indeed, the big utilities sponsored a citizen constitutional amendment initiative just last year that would have had just that practical effect, though it was vaguely worded and really didn’t mandate anything. The utilities spent millions of dollars on TV ads extolling their amendment and touted it as promoting solar – but of course that was the opposite of their intent. The proponents of solar exposed the misleading utility paid ads in their own counter-ads, and most of the big news operations in the state panned the “solar amendment”. The “solar amendment” lost in the November election, with a slight majority in favor (50.77%), but constitutional amendments require 60% super majorities in Florida.
The fact is that Florida utilities actually are investing in large scale, utility owned solar plants, with Florida Power and Light (FPL) being the biggest investor in solar … they plainly don’t want competition from the little guys. Indeed, a little ways from my home in southwest Florida a developer has created a “new town” that is solar powered, with a massive solar array, that it co-developed with FPL.
Florida utilities are allowed, but not required, to offer net metering to homeowners and businesses. Some do, some don’t. Those that don’t allow net metering end up with relatively little rooftop solar, for obvious reasons.
Florida is actually an ideal place for solar energy. We have abundant sunshine – our motto has been “The Sunshine State” for many years now. And our peak electrical consumption has always been in the warm season during daytime hours, when air conditioning loads are at their peak, unlike northern climates where the largest energy demand is in the winter during night time hours when there is obviously no sunlight.
But as long as the utilities are allowed to deny net metering, adoption will be spotty, only taking place in those locations where the utility allows met metering.
The average home uses 901 kWh per month. At 11.6 cents per kwh, this is $105/month. Without storage, Solar panels might cut this cost by a third, = $31 bucks a month savings, or $378/year. The system may cost $10k. How many years, at $378 per year, does it take to re-pay $10 k? 26 years. Average length of time a person lives in their home = 13 years.
There’s your problem. Big up front, with repayment dribbling in over decades.
If you take into account that the output of PV panels declines by 1-2% every year, then it will actually take even longer pay back.
Bazinga.
In Mass, several years ago a co-worker in high tech told me a story over coffee. Said he’d finally had to cave, and was having solar installed on his home. He said this while smiling over a cup of coffee.
Do tell, said I 🙂
He broke out his paperwork.
The actual cost of his installation was a bit over $48k.
The paperwork then subtracted various grants and subsidies, line item by line item.
First one was an automatic $9k “grant”.
In the end, his total out of pocket costs were a bit over $8k.
$8k for a $48k installation of goods and services. It’s a government miracle.
But wait…there’s more.
The republic of Massachusetts, to promote solar, of course, then gave him a contract to buy additional power. He had 2 choices, a 12mo or a 24mo contract. The 24mo contract was for a lower rate, but for twice the term.
Given his projections, he would put roughly $9k in his pocket at the end of the 2yr contract…so would be net +$1k on his initial $8 investment after 2yrs.
So the obvious thing that solarites never want to address is that the missing $40k all came from a very common but seeminly unknown entity, OPM, (Other People’s Money), a.k.a. taxes.
Why so many people continue to think this is a GOOD idea (other than the ones taking advantage of it) is beyond me.
Your friend got ripped. Typical rooftop solar installations here in Florida (around 9 to 12 KW) are selling installed for less than $20K these days … the prices have dropped a lot from just a couple years ago. If your utility allows net metering, they pay for themselves in just 3-4 years and then your power bills are next to nothing for the rest of the life of the system. In Florida most electrical usage is daytime (due to A/C use), so it matches well with the power output of the solar set up, and with net metering no storage is necessary. It actually does reduce required peak power generation by the utilities, again, because of the timing of power generation compared to timing of power use.
And if you are one of the legion of millions of part-year Florida residents who spend the warm season up north, you end up being a net power/revenue generator, since use of A/C with an empty home in the summer is far less (not zero, though – you still have to run the A/C enough to control humidity).
Not sure how having the taxpayers pay for his entire setup except for $8k, which he recovered in 2yrs due to more subsidies points to him getting “ripped”.
The taxpayers got ripped, plain and simple.
Also, if a minimal investment gives you free power for life, why isn’t every homeowner doing it?…without everyone else’s money, it doesn’t work, the math just isn’t there.
California has solved this problem by instituting tiered rates. The more you use, the more you pay. With the top tier now at $.40/kwh and low tier usage levels set unbelievably low, typical systems pay for themselves in about 6 years.
California also prides itself on setting environmental standards for the rest of the country. So beware.
It actually costs less to deliver power to the big users. (Fixed costs are the same for everyone, so the more you use, the more KW’s to spread those fixed costs over.) (I’m thinking residential here, not commercial or industrial)
This is just another example of those who have the votes, voting to force other people to pay for their stuff.
The money to install those panels was either borrowed, or it could have been invested instead. If you factor in the interest/foregone investment income, you will increase the recovery period by another 50%.
Now factor in the fact that you will be lucky if your panels last 20 years, much less 26 to 40 years.
(PS: Don’t forget maintenance costs.)
There is next to no maintenance cost for solar panels … just keep them clean, that’s it. Electronics have extremely long MBTAs (mean time between failure), no moving parts to wear out, no lubrication, no mechanical switches to replace, no need for anything, really. A 30-40 year lifetime is to be expected, and roofs themselves rarely last that long without requiring total replacement, typically every 20 years.
That is one of the reasons that solar roof tiles are replacing solar panels in rooftop solar. Since every house has to have a roof anyway, replacing typically 1/3 to 1/4 of the roof tiles or shingles with solar tiles also reduces the net cost of rooftop installation, and solar tiles actually last far longer than asphalt shingles and last at least as long as concrete tiles.
The panels only account for about 1/3 of the cost of solar installation anyway … most of the cost of rooftop solar is wrapped up in labor to install the electrical system (wiring, inverters, connections to existing house electrical system, physical installation of the rooftop panels, etc.), nearly all of which is a one-time cost.
You must not have calculated a mtbf of a bunch of panel,10 forty year panels has a mtbf in parallel of 8 to 12 years. And sitting in direct sun, outdoors, that’s a rough environment. And the panel manufacturers at least of about a year ago, hadn’t done any done(or published) and life test data.
Replying to Duane below. Yes, electronics fail. Enphase and SolarEdge had to learn this the hard way by putting electrolytic capacitors in their microelectronics, which, went on hot rooftops. Same holds true for inverters in a mechanical room. They lose tolerance with repeated heating cycles. And, yes there are mechanical switches in most e-panels and inverters… Go to any quality manufactures tech manuals: Outback, Midnite Solar, SMA, Enphase, SolarEdge…
Amazing to me how many posts her consist of nothing but arm-waving theatrics.
Want to generate your own power? go for it. No one is stopping anyone. Want to sell you power to the utility? fine, as long as both parties agree on the price.
But here is the thing. Solar advocates are stupid – they want to be paid retail prices for a wholesale product. That is, the price of wholesale electricity is not 11.6 cents a kwh, it is more like 1-3 cents per kwh. That is for 24/7 reliable power. For intermittent supply of power? The value is zero. ZERO. That is why utilities won’t buy it – it has no value. It is not about monopolies, or government regulation – you are selling a product with zero value.
This is very hard for solar advocates to understand – how is it the product has value to me, but not the utility? This happens all the time in economics. Frequent flyer miles are very valuable to fliers, but nearly valueless to airlines, because the incremental cost of filling an otherwise empty seat with a frequent flyer is so low.
Let me give you another example. Say I like apples. I plant some apples trees in my yard. I end up growing a great many more apples than I can eat. What to do? I decide to go down to the local big chain grocery store and sell my apples. I tell them that I will bring over only as many apples as I decide not to eat, when they are in season, and when I have time to bring them over. Maybe a few dozen apples. And I would like to be paid the going rate for apples – the same price the store sells them for. Does this sound like a successful business proposition for the store? Besides being over priced, they want an apple supplier they can count on. They can’t just put of a sign and say “Tenn decided to eat all his apples today, so no apples.”
Yes you an mitigate this if you have thousands, or millions of apple growers. But here is the other problem.
For electricity, when demand is highest, that is the time when independent solar producers are LEAST likely to want to sell power to the grid. Hot sunny day at noon? Most homes will find they have no “excess” electricity to sell back, and this corresponds to the greatest demand. meaning they are useless to the utility.
Utilities want to control generation not because they are greedy meanies, but because they want to ensure reliability of the system.
No – most solar advocates or users aren’t “stupid” as you say … but stupid straw man arguments like yours are still stupid.
Net metering allows the utility to recover their indirect power generation/network delivery costs by reducing the retail rate. Anybody who understands economics has no problem that. Some states regulate that, most don’t and leave it up to the utility to decide (as here in Florida, where it is up to the utility).
Rooftop solar levels. Pick one!
1. Net meter no storage, who were promised they’d recoup their cost in a reasonable time. They won’t.
2. Net meter no storage, who honestly thought they had invested in a system that was a few dollars and a screwdriver’s turn away from becoming one that would keep their lights on when the power goes out. It doesn’t.
3. Meter un-spinners with some off the shelf “storage option” who are about to discover how inefficient every little thing is and how soon the music stops, and will be borrowing batteries from their neighbors to put into portable radios and flashlights.
4. Rooftop solar system with storage and proper inverters and separate AC/AC-emergency/DC house wiring busses and computer server farm dual power supplies and most efficient LED lighting bankrolled by survivalists who already have solar water heaters and swamp coolers, knew exactly what was necessary, knew they could afford it and don’t give a hoot about the scrip that net metering saves.
5. Environmentalists who won’t ever be able to afford any of this but write their Congress critter to demand it because, free green stuff.
I would add to the discussion that the sunlight down here is damaging to most the solar panels manufactured – it is just absurdly intense. Enough so that oil systems running a small steam turbine are viable. I live just south of Lakeland, FL and the sunlight down here degrades plastic bottles and burns woodchips directly into CO2 and ash.
Our grid has the added complexity of hurricane resistance AND lightning as well.
Solar panel installations have to meet Florida building code for your particular location as with respect to windspeeds and missile penetration, just like any other exterior component of any building. They’re treated like any other structural product.
With another year or two of 20 to 30 percent cost plunge in utility scale solar among the low cost leaders in that segment, Florida will be miles ahead of the pack with no grid impairment from rooftop and hopefully no politically connected fake companies in the bid process. A few 500 mw solar array projects from the bonafide majors would leave a lot of demonstration states and nations looking pretty sad.
Solar is 10 years away from being profitable.
Always has been and always will.
+35 years waiting, and, it’s still true.
When I worked at the Florida “Public Service” Kommissariat (the state government’s utility monopoly enforcement racket), the laws were such that, theoretically, solar, and natural gas, and waste combustion… co-generation was officially to be encouraged. In practice, not so much.
Officially, the local monopolies were required to buy surplus electricity from businesses and residents. But there was a lot of scrapping over “system compatibility”, switching mechanisms (both automatic and manual). In essence, the monopolies were fighting a delaying action and grasping for silver bullets to block it from ever actually happening.
The other problem is climate and weather related. Yes, officially it is the “sun-shine state”, but a lot of that “sun-shine” is liquid, to borrow a phrase from late governor Reuben O’D. Askew. It is rainy, cloudy, and humid over much of the state much of the time. Haze blocks solar collectors, condenses on and inside them, corrodes them, wreaking havoc on the whole scheme. And where it is not cloudy or hazy, there are trees and vines and mold and moss to grow over and through, and drop things on those panels. The same people who would be apt to want solar energy devices are the same ones hugging those trees and wrapping the vines around themselves.
Why would someone in Newyork or some other northern state put in solar? It’s simple. Over the solar arrays life it costs less money than utility power even if the owners don’t bother to take any government provided tax credits. Utility companies in the US have been fighting against the rising tide of solar installations around the country because they are worried it will erode their state sanctioned monopoly. The fellow that responded ahead of me didn’t take the time to do his research. There are two main types of solar electric systems. Battery based systems that can operate independently from the utility grid, and grid tie systems that feed power into your home when your home can use the power and run your meter backwards giving clean power to your neighbors when you don’t need the power. The numbers are simple. The cost of the system plus reasonable mantainence divided by the power generated over the life of the solar installation. Even in Oregon where I live solar power is less expensive than utility power. In Florida the utility companies have made it so no one can feed power back to the grid. It’s easy to understand why, they don’t want the competition.
Not likely, I pay 7 cents /kWhr generation. And a 10 panel system (just the 10 panels), with a 40 year life have a MTBF of 8 to 12 years. And outside in the Sun and rain is horrible for electronics.
The Hidden Cost of Wind and Solar Electricity Generation
G A Keen 26/03/2017
Residential , commercial and industrial customers of a grid supplier expect electrical energy to be supplied whenever needed by the customer , ie dispatchable energy is required . The grid operator may be expected (forced ?) to absorb intermittent renewable energy from generators . The onus to make this non-dispatcheble energy into dispatchable energy then becomes the responsibility ( read headache) of the grid operator . He has to scratch around to do so in various ways . However , this “scratching around” turns out to be quite costly , and the grid operator has to build this into the price he charges his customers , on top of the charges he has to pay the basic and intermittent generators – and the price of electricity goes up . This is the current modus operandi in most electricity services around the world . The price of intermittent renewable energy is artificially low to start with (only low when the sun shines or the wind blows), but in the end the customer has to pay more . Countries with a high penetration of intermittent renewables all have high electricity prices .
An alternative modus operandi is suggested . The onus to make energy dispatchable lies with the generator of whatever technology , rather than the grid operator . The grid operator only purchases dispatchable energy from the generators and then transmits and distributes dispatchable energy to his customers . His contract with the generator might specify that the energy supply must be say 95% dispatchable . The intermittent generator must make his energy dispatchable by either storage ( batteries , pumped storage or heat storage) and/or standby generator sets (fossil fuelled or hydro) , which likely includes intense weather forecast scanning . All this is expensive . This proposal puts the hidden costs in full view right up front . The net result might be no more grid scale solar or wind generation at present , as it will be too expensive , unless there are massive subsidies from somewhere . Until storage becomes very much cheaper , intermittent renewables will now take their rightful place today 1) at an offgrid site where grid connection is prohibitively expensive or just not possible and 2 ) as an adjunct “fuel saver” in grid supplied buildings . The offgrid site has effectively no choice but to erect wind/solar generators and provide some form of storage and/or backup generators to supply rather expensive electricity to the site . There is no haggling about the cost – it is expected and accepted to be high . The “fuel saving” function in on-grid buildings might take the form of rooftop photovoltaic panels generating entirely for self-consumption – to reduce the cost of importing (but not replace significantly) grid energy for operating a factory , hospital , whatever . There would be no requirement for storage and the grid is not loaded with intermittent energy to be made into dispatchable energy . The grid supplied customers do not experience an artificially high cost of electricity . Time-of-use billing could reduce possible resulting peaking on the grid .
Intermittent renewable energy has two significant disadvantages 1) it is intermittent and hence effectively non-dispatchable and 2) it lacks the buffering power of heavy spinning machinery . Without storage , the grid requires generation to exactly balance the load at all times and the frequency stability (50 Hz ) is a measure of this balance . When a heavy load is switched on to the grid , the frequency instantly drops a fraction and the inertia of the heavy spinning generators keeps generation going and they sense this frequency drop immediately and automatically “step on the gas” to keep the frequency stable very accurately and hence also keep the grid stable . The large inertial mass of a pumped-storage motor-generator spinning in air (without water in its turbine blades) can switch rapidly back and forth between absorbing and outputting electrical energy to act as an excellent buffer to stabilize a grid . Wind and solar have little or no inertia and cannot suddenly “step on the gas” at all , and high wind/solar penetration can lead to grid instability as has been seen in South Australia recently , with its high penetration of wind and solar . Germany , with its high wind/solar penetration on the grid , has also experienced more “wobbly periods” than in earlier times but friendly neighbours and the typical over-engineering of their grid has enabled them to come through largely unscathed ………….thus far . The wind and solar generators generally take their frequency from the grid ie they are frequency followers , and their disconnection from a stable grid setting the pace causes havoc , as the Australians have also experienced recently in stormy weather .
Making intermittent renewables into dispatchable energy does improve both the above deficiencies : some storage can pretty well instantly “step on the gas “ or “step off the gas” for buffering in both directions .
If grid operators are forced to accept preferentially wind and solar generation , then electricity markets are disturbed , and central base-load generators lose out and become less or non-viable unless subsidised . These base-load generators are needed for grid stability . In a way , this could also be considered a part of the “cost” of solar and wind electricity , but different (financial) from the technicalities outlined above .
If intermittent renewables are to be valued for their “clean” generation , as many wish , then their true high cost must be accepted as the price of “cleanliness” . Whether it is worth it at present is a political/public decision that needs to be debated . There is at present a distinct lack of debate about the true (high) cost of intermittent renewables , there is merely a punting of how equipment costs have come down , which is of course true , but this is only part of the problem . The hidden costs of dispatchability and buffering remain . In the present state of technology , it is doubtful any country can run entirely on renewables , other than hydro . Cheap efficient storage would totally change this picture , but this is likely some way off .
References
May , Andy 17/03/2017 Exergy and Powerplants : Can renewables ever replace fossil fuels and nuclear ?
https://andymaypetrophysicist.com/exergy-and-power-plants/ (Accessed 26/03/2017)
Vahrenholt , Fritz Jan 17 2017 Germany’s Energiewende : A Disaster in the Making .
(A presentation to The House of Commons)
http://www.thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2017/02/Vahrenholt-20171.pdf (Accessed 26/03/2017)
Has any coal, natural gas, or nuclear energy provider ever received a government subsidy?
Since the chances of an accident exceeding what’s in the fund are close enough to zero that we don’t need to spend time talking about it. That’s a “subsidy” that doesn’t cost anybody anything.