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SolarCity Will Eliminate Over 550 Job Due to State’s Anti-Rooftop Solar Decision

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Re: SolarCity Will Eliminate Over 550 Job Due to State’s Anti-Rooftop Solar Decision

#171

Post by rsync »

jacquesm wrote: post #18
marvin wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ironic part here is that the Nevada utilities are accelerating their own demise by opposing rooftop solar. In a few short years, batteries will be cheap and plentiful enough that it will be unnecessary to cut deals like these with the utilities in order to have a profitable solar rooftop installation. By removing the incentive for customers to cooperate with the utilities, the utility companies are further incent…

It's not that simple. A system that is not grid connected will need a lot more than just a battery to make it as reliable as a grid connection. Those 'few short years' are more likely a couple of decades, in other words well over the horizon for the people that are currently trying to squeeze the most profit from those utilities. Residential battery storage is just one component is a complex chain that needs to be de…

"It's not that simple. A system that is not grid connected will need a lot more than just a battery to make it as reliable as a grid connection. Those 'few short years' are more likely a couple of decades, in other words well over the horizon for the people that are currently trying to squeeze the most profit from those utilities."

How are panels + battery not as reliable ? I think you mean they don't last as long, right ? As in, theoretically you could use up the battery before the sun rises again so it's not as nice as the utility ...

As far as I can tell, panels + battery (properly sized, and admittedly expensive) are all you need. You can just cancel your electric service at that point.

Re: SolarCity Will Eliminate Over 550 Job Due to State’s Anti-Rooftop Solar Decision

#172

Post by criddell »

CWuestefeld wrote: post #66
ndonnellan wrote: post #9

This article seems to have a more thorough explanation: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/is-this-sunny-state-trying-... snip ----------------------- A little-understood billing mechanism called net metering is at the heart of the Nevada controversy. Net metering means that residential and commercial solar customers are billed for their “net” energy consumption. They are allowed to send back to the grid the electricit…

Wow, that's a long reach to get to the OP's "de facto ban on rooftop solar". If we take the OP at face value, then, it seems to be declaring that solar energy is completely impractical, and can't survive without life support. I realize that other forms of energy generation are all subsidized in various ways, so it's clearly not as serious as my above interpretation, but still, it doesn't speak well of solar.

> can't survive without life support

Unless they have to, power companies are not going to buy your excess solar power from you at all. So yes, regulation is required to prevent monopoly (or oligopoly) providers from abusing their position.

Re: SolarCity Will Eliminate Over 550 Job Due to State’s Anti-Rooftop Solar Decision

#173

Post by maxerickson »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #167
maxerickson wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bet natural gas is not available there. (the not at all rugged township I used to live in had it in their planning documents that there would not be natural gas lines run -- they want to discourage development)

LP tank onsite. Its what most rural folks use for heat when there's no infrastructure available. http://www.missiongas.com/images/500gallonpropanetank.jpg

Sure, that's what we used. It ends up being noticeably more costly than natural gas so I think about them as different things (the price is also less stable, this hit Minnesota hard a couple years ago).

Re: SolarCity Will Eliminate Over 550 Job Due to State’s Anti-Rooftop Solar Decision

#174

Post by oppositelock »

vinceguidry wrote: post #81
CWuestefeld wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, that's a long reach to get to the OP's "de facto ban on rooftop solar". If we take the OP at face value, then, it seems to be declaring that solar energy is completely impractical, and can't survive without life support. I realize that other forms of energy generation are all subsidized in various ways, so it's clearly not as serious as my above interpretation, but still, it doesn't speak well of solar.

It's not that simple. Solar is only really practical if it fits into the grid system, otherwise there's no real point. The energy it gives you goes up and down, and not in sync with your own household needs. So you need something to do with excess capacity. All by itself, units of power aren't all that expensive. But a solar installation is very expensive. You need to amortize the cost of the installation, the people…

Allowing flow of power from rooftop solar into the grid isn't free.

The cheapest power to generate is the base load - long running gas, nuclear, coal, whatever. These are plants that take days or weeks to spin up and down and produce the most cost effective, efficient power. Since supply on the grid must exactly meet, always, these efficient plants can only be used to provide the base load - the amount of load below which the grid never drops.

Any power required beyond the base load comes from generation designed to be used periodically. It's not as efficient. There are stages to this too - you can have generators which take hours to come up which are more efficient than those which take minutes.

Residential power generation can cause the base load to drop, and require more peak load generation, increasing the production cost of power.

The power which customers generate must also go through transformers, rectifiers, and all that good stuff to be usable by others, and that equipment isn't free either.

Whether the company buys in wholesale quantities doesn't really matter, since the costs incurred from supporting residential net-metering aren't zero. It makes sense that they pay less for power they buy than what the sell, otherwise, that cost is shifted to someone else.

Re: SolarCity Will Eliminate Over 550 Job Due to State’s Anti-Rooftop Solar Decision

#175

Post by ZeroGravitas »

twoodfin wrote: post #71
pjc50 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't seem to be about subsidies per se, it appears to be about net metering, and whether new customers are allowed to use it?

Eh, through a couple of levels of bureaucratic indirection and regulation, net metering is effectively a subsidy. Power companies would essentially never "get their money's worth" paying retail rates for the surplus power generated by residential panels during the day. If they were unregulated, consumers would thus never get such a deal.

Is this just a gut feeling you have?

The power supply curve from solar is going to correlate highly with the air-conditioning load that'll drive the peaks in Nevada. Peak shaving is a big business because the energy at the peak is (by far) the costliest to generate. Just a customer supplying their own household power from solar power will be saving the utility money at peaks, sharing the excess with nearby customers even more so.

You are of course correct that they wouldn't get this deal if they where unregulated. The way you say it might fool people into thinking that minus regulation a utility would be a great example of free market competition, rather than a Monopoly (or a Monopsony in this particular case). So I'm confused why you bring it up? That's like talking about a business deal and saying if this was a Mad Max style post-apocalytic wasteland then you wouldn't offer as much. Of course not, you'd just take it from them at the point of a gun. What does this say about its actually value though?

Re: SolarCity Will Eliminate Over 550 Job Due to State’s Anti-Rooftop Solar Decision

#176

Post by polartx »

xavi wrote: post #154
JoshTriplett wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What this is all about is the power companies are suddenly deciding they want to pay wholesale for excess power. Why should they pay wholesale? The power companies (normally) have enough power to supply everyone; they buy that power at wholesale prices and sell it to the customer at retail prices. So why, if they can always buy power at wholesale prices, should they deliberately pay retail prices instead? Doing so…

Instead of subsidizing green power, I think it would make more sense that producers of non-green power would pay for the real cost of their power, including the environmental cost, through a carbon tax for example (also suggested by others, https://twitter.com/paultoo/status/672568359033040896 ). Because, it's not that we have to do a favor to green producers, but we should make non-green producers pay for the possib…

The state already taxes electricity consumption, the same way you pay state taxes per your rate of gasoline consumption.

People that drive 'green' cars are inherently rewarded with paying few taxes at the pump, because they are buying less fuel. Though they may be using the roads and travel infrastructure (which are partially funded by gas taxes) as much as 'non-green' drivers..is this fair for all? Not really, but imagine the fallout of charging Prius drivers more per gallon in order to increase their contribution to the infrastructure that they're using.

In many places, people using solar energy ARE charged more per kilowatt, for the exact scenario above--Increase their contribution to the infrastructure they're using--which is the opposite of what you proposed.

In your proposal to punish the folks that haven't jumped on the solar power band wagon--who receives the benefit$ of their 'punishments'?

Re: SolarCity Will Eliminate Over 550 Job Due to State’s Anti-Rooftop Solar Decision

#177

Post by jacquesm »

rsync wrote: post #171
jacquesm wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not that simple. A system that is not grid connected will need a lot more than just a battery to make it as reliable as a grid connection. Those 'few short years' are more likely a couple of decades, in other words well over the horizon for the people that are currently trying to squeeze the most profit from those utilities. Residential battery storage is just one component is a complex chain that needs to be de…

"It's not that simple. A system that is not grid connected will need a lot more than just a battery to make it as reliable as a grid connection. Those 'few short years' are more likely a couple of decades, in other words well over the horizon for the people that are currently trying to squeeze the most profit from those utilities." How are panels + battery not as reliable ? I think you mean they don't last as long, r…

No, it's a matter of coverage. Every year you'll have one stretch of 4 to 7 days without appreciable sun and this tends to deplete your batteries to the point where you will wreck the pack if you don't recharge.

So you install either a wind generator, a genset or both.

> As far as I can tell, panels + battery (properly sized, and admittedly expensive) are all you need.

In some locations this may be true, in most it isn't.

> You can just cancel your electric service at that point.

As soon as you have backup power you can do that anyway.

Re: SolarCity Will Eliminate Over 550 Job Due to State’s Anti-Rooftop Solar Decision

#178

Post by amluto »

encoderer wrote: post #145
JoshTriplett wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What this is all about is the power companies are suddenly deciding they want to pay wholesale for excess power. Why should they pay wholesale? The power companies (normally) have enough power to supply everyone; they buy that power at wholesale prices and sell it to the customer at retail prices. So why, if they can always buy power at wholesale prices, should they deliberately pay retail prices instead? Doing so…

It's a bit more complicated than that, too. I don't know about NV, but in California the power company never actually buys net power from you. At best you can owe $0, you never get a check from the power company, even if you pump all of your juice to the grid. So it's only paying "retail prices" insofar as it's offsetting the retail prices you're paying for your overnight/cloudy day power. And incidentally, overnight…

Incorrect.

http://www.cpuc.ca.gov/PUC/energy/DistGen/netsurplus.htm

Re: SolarCity Will Eliminate Over 550 Job Due to State’s Anti-Rooftop Solar Decision

#179

Post by jacquesm »

throwaway1037 wrote: post #168
jacquesm wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'll want to think long and hard about how you're going to deal with fuses. For the kind of currents that batteries can put out it can be quite expensive to properly fuse things. 50V was a fairly arbitrary voltage deemed to be 'safe', however there are cases known of people dying from 50V and even lower (in particular, one very nasty accident involving a Swiss ham in pre-internet times). A bus made of thick copper…

You probably wouldn't want to use copper anyway. Power lines in the US tend to be aluminum. It's cheaper and lighter, even though it requires a larger gauge.

The problem with aluminum for conduction is that (1) it does not like to be clamped down (it tends to back away from the screw terminals so you will have to re-tighten them or use a different clamping mechanism) and (2) it tends to oxidize so even a slight loss of contact will turn into a much higher resistance on the joint.

Copper doesn't have these draw-backs which is why it is used a lot more on the 'low power' side of things.

But for the transmission lines the reduced weight more than offsets all the other issues, those are very well taken care of connections with resistances in the milli-Ohms, an expensive connector is not an issue when it comes to power infrastructure.

Re: SolarCity Will Eliminate Over 550 Job Due to State’s Anti-Rooftop Solar Decision

#180

Post by jacquesm »

blacksmith_tb wrote: post #164
jacquesm wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just keeping the grid connection is a major cost.

It's my only cost here in cloudy Oregon. I generate around 1.5MWh a year above what I use, so net-metering means I have more credits than I can ever use. But I have to pay $10 a month to be connected, whether or not I am giving away power.

That's impressive, how much solar do you have? (W / Composition of the panels)?
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