151–160 of 329 posts
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> require a total net power draw for the home Not good either. Just let people pay for what they use. Each person can decide how to optimize for his or her needs.
That's basically what we do now, but the trouble is cheap power sources with undesirable externalities win the energy market because consumers want more energy for less money.
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Yeah a tax on electricity would make the most sense.
A tax on carbon fuel would make more sense still. Polluters should pay for their pollution rather than foisting their externalities on others.
Requiring specific technical solutions is rarely a good idea. For example mandating that all new cars have catalytic converters is a common but not very good requirement. The requirement should be formulated as a goal/limit, not a solution. Having one solution required means you can’t innovate to find a cheaper or better solution to the same problem. The answer in this context would be to require a total net power dr…
I also think there should be a progressive component to the requirement. The standards could be looser for a $100K house vs a $1M house or perhaps a progressive tax credit of some kind.
One exciting thing about this is that the costs of solar will be much lower for solar than otherwise. All homebuilders will have to make their designs solar ready, soft costs such as customer acquisition will be lower for solar companies, economies of scale, etc.
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I don't know enough about the energy market to weigh in on this proposal, but that response is the epitome of the perfect is the enemy of the good. It is presenting a false choice. Getting something like this approved is much easier politically than large solar and wind farms. Sometimes the politically expedient solution is the proper choice over the ideal but politically unrealistic solution.
Politically expedient but dramatically inefficient and less effective is... still dramatically inefficient and less effective. The idea that it's clear that this is "good" relies on a bunch of assumptions about carbon costs that haven't been made. It's not sufficient to say "fossil fuels are bad, solar is good," because then you make stupidly inefficient decisions that limit your overall capacity to tackle the big pr…
VOX just released a video on the "Duck Curve" phenomenon that arises as a result of renewables[1]. Does anyone here have any insight on what the state is trying to do to mitigate negative downstream affects of the duck curve? [1] https://youtu.be/YYLzss58CLs
[1] https://www.utilitydive.com/news/california-puc-finalizes-ne...
An energy economist on why it's a bad idea: http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/borenste/cecweisenmiller180... . Basically, rooftop solar is less capital-efficient than large solar or wind farms, so we can save more carbon/$ by doing grid-scale generation.
I don't know enough about the energy market to weigh in on this proposal, but that response is the epitome of the perfect is the enemy of the good. It is presenting a false choice. Getting something like this approved is much easier politically than large solar and wind farms. Sometimes the politically expedient solution is the proper choice over the ideal but politically unrealistic solution.
Why wouldn't that always be the case? What's different about this case where this expedient choice is proper but other's aren't?
I feel like the real motivation behind this is that far too many people believe that the hard part of getting solar panels adopted is in finding places to put them. So this law "solves" the problem. But that's never been the real problem. It's arguing about the color of the bike shed when the real mover of solar panels is price and output. Price isn't addressed here and you should expect installing it everywhere will…
Requiring specific technical solutions is rarely a good idea. For example mandating that all new cars have catalytic converters is a common but not very good requirement. The requirement should be formulated as a goal/limit, not a solution. Having one solution required means you can’t innovate to find a cheaper or better solution to the same problem. The answer in this context would be to require a total net power dr…
Your point isn't incorrect, but it's at best misplaced and mistimed. You should have been yelling about this when the law was being written, not now that it's passed. To those of us who care about the subject, your pedantry is harmful, not helpful.