5 ms·

Really? Isn't that how all successful technology starts off - highly priced, effectively experimental, but then becoming more and more available to the general

by pgl 7y ago

Really? Isn't that how all successful technology starts off - highly priced, effectively experimental, but then becoming more and more available to the general public as the price goes down and production increases?

reitzensteinm 7y ago
The trouble is that you're necessarily picking winners and losers in order to design the incentive scheme. It makes no sense to pay somebody $7500 to buy a new car to drive to work, but not to switch to cycling or telecommuting. In this case, it's not necessarily clear that this is a product that needs to happen. Grid scale solar is significantly cheaper due to the economies of scale. Were there a carbon tax, there'd be the same encouragement of environmental solutions while leaving the market some flexibility in achieving that goal. With that said - I'll take the politically feasible solution rather than nothing.
- rory096 7y ago
  >Grid scale solar is significantly cheaper due to the economies of scale. Utility scale solar has met the same ardent opposition in land use decisionmaking fora as denser housing, including from 'environmental' organizations. Some examples from around here: https://fredericksburg.com/news/local/culpeper/culpeper-county-planners-deny-solar-project/article_c1f3bdca-a5a9-5afd-acae-7e0c1c288563.html https://fredericksburg.com/news/local/culpeper/culpeper-coun... http://lakegastongazette-observer.com/news/article_8f621d6e-f89a-11e8-a2ac-aba2c52fbcb3.html http://lakegastongazette-observer.com/news/article_8f621d6e-... https://richmond.com/news/local/central-virginia/powhatan/powhatan-today/solar-farm-withdraws-application-after-board-denies-appeal/article_5efbcfd8-459a-11e9-9f47-ab35e59dc6b4.html https://richmond.com/news/local/central-virginia/powhatan/po... https://starexponent.com/news/county-committee-backs--acre-cap-on-utility-scale-solar/article_5d482d9b-6881-514b-8f5b-340593551e10.html https://starexponent.com/news/county-committee-backs--acre-c... https://www.pecva.org/library/documents/Our-Mission/Energy/Energy-Conservation/Utility-Scale_Solar_Policy_Document_-_Working_Draft_-_July_2019_-_Piedmont_Environmental_Council.pdf https://www.pecva.org/library/documents/Our-Mission/Energy/E...
  - robocat 7y ago
    Summary of 5 links: 2 projects cancelled due to NIMBY, 1 project being appealed due to NIMBY, 1 project cancelled due to ecological concerns (unclear if just NIMBY), 1 irrelevant link. fredericksburg.com - application cancelled - "He, like other neighbors of the project and another larger one south of Stevensburg, have consistently expressed concerns about impact to their property values ... Orye said he didn’t think solar fit anywhere in Culpeper County, emphasizing its rich historic resources related to the Civil War and early American history." lakegastongazette-observer.com "Opponents of the project ... turned out in droves at last week’s community meeting", "Many residents expressed concerns about the project’s effects on the ecology and their view", "the commission’s reasons for the denial were fivefold. They said the proposed facility develops more than 500 acres, is removing more than 1,100 acres of agricultural property from production, is proposed to be located in a populated residential area, is located on real estate that is located on the Virginia Scenic Byway and that setbacks and buffers on the proposed project do not adequately address the need to visually block the project from the view of its neighbors" richmond.com - "a solar project that had significant community opposition", "plans to build a solar energy farm on 1090 acres of a 2998 acre property", "400 acres of the project would [become] a conservation easement" , "The planning commission determined that the proposed use is not in accord with recommendations made in the 2010 Long-Range Comprehensive Plan, in particular since part of the project would fall into the area designated Priority Conservation Area and Protected Land.", "Among the citizen comments that were made, most were in stringent opposition because of the negative ecological impact the project would have on protected wetlands in the area, the only remaining wildlife corridor connecting the James and Appomattox rivers, and on rare and endangered species." starexponent.com - "Culpeper County will consider placing a cap on 'utility scale solar sprawl' equal to the amount of the renewable energy its residents could actually consume.", "In October, the board approved the county’s first-ever solar farm on 1,000 acres near Stevensburg to the dismay of neighbors, who have since filed a civil suit in the matter asking the circuit court to reverse the approval." www.pecva.org - looks like last link just shows planning details and doesn't show opposition.
    - rory096 7y ago
      >www.pecva.org - looks like last link just shows planning details and doesn't show opposition. They oppose utility-scale solar anywhere except existing industrial land, in favor of the "low hanging fruit" of rooftop solar. >PEC is an advocate for solar energy, especially distributed solar power generation - small scale solar (usually rooftop) primarily designed to meet the immediate demands of the property in which it is located. In comparison, the size and nature of USS Facilities create challenges for any locality to protect important resources and the public health, safety, and welfare of the community. Virginia has thousands of acres of rooftops, parking lots, and landfills devoid of solar panels in areas of moderate to high energy demand, in addition to contaminated and/or underutilized industrial sites. It is PEC’s belief that we should be looking to these developed areas as the low hanging fruit of future solar sites. >Utility-Scale Solar (USS) Facilities are industrial facilities and should not be allowed by-right on agriculturally zoned lands. Given their size and nature, they should be: >● Subject to a Conditional or Special Use Permit in agriculturally zoned areas with maximum acreage allowed per project and possibly per the entire County; and/or >● Limited to existing industrial zoned areas. > ○ Agricultural land should not be spot zoned to create additional industrial zoned areas for USS Facilities.
- metafunctor 7y ago
  That's exactly what regulation is and does. It picks winners, picks harmful phenomenon, and acts accordingly, with a short-to-medium timeframe based on what would get the most votes. I, too, believe that taxing actual atmospheric carbon impact would be great, but how would you measure such a thing fairly?
  - BlueTemplar 7y ago
    Go as much to the source of production as possible : forbidding unconventional fossil fuel extraction, heavily taxing fossil fuel imports long range plane landings, methane-producing livestock, &c.
  - specialist 7y ago
    Just like with other taxes: brackets, rebates, credits paired with subsidies and investment.
  - brashcal 7y ago
    >That's exactly what regulation is and does. It picks winners, picks harmful phenomenon, and acts accordingly, with a short-to-medium timeframe based on what would get the most votes. The subsidies are terrible. They are way too narrow and don’t address the root cause of the issue. Climate change is not happening because we don’t have enough renewables, climate change is happening because our GHG emissions are too high. Tax the emissions and all activities which generate emissions become less appealing, while all opportunities to reduce the emissions become more lucrative. The example of riding a bike instead of buying an EV fits into this as well. With a carbon tax, using a bike would be equally accounted for. By using subsidies, the government gets to pick the winner and doesn’t let people think. Renewables especially as they are now are a terrible way to tackle the problem. If we used taxes instead of subsidies, I’m afraid that not many renewable power plants would be built, because other alternatives are way more effective at curbing emissions. Solutions like rooftop solar – and by extension, these Tesla tiles - wouldn’t make a lot of financial sense if people were billed for their electricity appropriately based on costs. The cost of electricity distribution is primarily a fixed cost in the infrastructure and its upkeep. The variable cost of generating the electricity is small in comparison. People, however, are generally billed more in variable cost based on use of electricity rather than with a larger, fixed fee. It’s set up in this way because it makes sense; the poor can afford connecting themselves to the grid and keep the necessities powered, while reckless use of energy i.e. having AC on 24/7 is disincentivized by the cost. But once people start pushing rooftop solar on their grid and selling the energy back to the grid at the retail price, not the wholesale price, they are being massively subsidized in their electricity generation, as part of the fixed cost of operating the grid was baked into the variable cost of electricity prices. The pushback from utilities comes from exactly this perspective; if more and more people start net-metering their own bills lower with the rooftop solar, then it means that fewer and fewer people will be responsible for appropriately funding the grid. In an extreme scenario where everyone net-metered their bills down to zero, it would mean that nobody would be paying for the grid. Obviously, such a situation is unsustainable. And even though there’d be plenty of solar to go by in such a situation, the grid would still be a necessity, as is all the generation which functions as a back-up. And somehow, it would all still need to be paid for. But there’s more to it, too. Net-metering creates a reverse-incentive. Electricity prices in the wholesale market can even go negative if there is overgeneration, because overgeneration is harmful, and it needs to be dealt with. If net-metering practices are in place, and people start doing more and more rooftop solar to the point of more and more frequent overgeneration, the costs of operating the grid go up. Consequently, so would price of electricity. With a net-metering scheme still in place, everyone else is further incentivized to build solar panels on their roof and do the same to avoid paying the high prices. If the compensation for the electricity fed back into the grid was based on wholesale price instead, then, once average price (and value) of solar-generated electricity goes down, so do the incentives to build more solar panels. Adding insult to injury, the back-up issue is generally solved by using gas-fired power generation, as batteries cannot address the issue at this scale. Batteries are useful for bridging the gaps in between switching power generation sources, but the kind of quantity of capacity you’d need for a battery-only backup solution is not feasible. For back-up, gas is the primary back-up solution in California as well as in Australia, and the Russians are building a pipe to supply Germany. Ironically this makes solar generation - when the whole power generation solution is inspected at the grid-level - not all that green. And while this aspect of solar is ignored by subsidies, a carbon tax would still take it into account. The point being, subsidies can not only be ineffective, they can also be counterproductive in addition to ignoring all the alternatives. > I, too, believe that taxing actual atmospheric carbon impact would be great, but how would you measure such a thing fairly? You can measure emissions at sources and impose heavy fines on anyone who tries to circumvent them. The common problem in globalization, though, is defining and applying these standards universally and fairly. If you can’t trust the Germans to not fumble their numbers, what you’d think would happen in some other countries? Still, with a coordinated effort and systems to ensure transparency, it would be possible. Another method would be to subsidize more effective alternatives or for the government to build the more effective solutions by themselves. While this wouldn’t have the direction-changing impact of the carbon tax, it would be more straightforward to implement without the requirement of tracking pollution. Targets of subsidies could be selected by their impact on emissions per $ invested. Of course, the numbers could be fumbled here as well, but at least the calculations could be made public and be subject to scrutiny.
- jplayer01 7y ago
  Man, if they gave me $7500 to ride a bike, I'd ride the fuck out of that bike. I'd buy like 5 and attach them to each other and take my friends with me everywhere.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
jacquesm 7y ago
Solar is a solved problem. Anything that wants to displace regular panels has to do so by improving on them.

by pgl 7y ago

reitzensteinm 7y ago

The trouble is that you're necessarily picking winners and losers in order to design the incentive scheme. It makes no sense to pay somebody $7500 to buy a new car to drive to work, but not to switch to cycling or telecommuting. In this case, it's not necessarily clear that this is a product that needs to happen. Grid scale solar is significantly cheaper due to the economies of scale. Were there a carbon tax, there'd be the same encouragement of environmental solutions while leaving the market some flexibility in achieving that goal. With that said - I'll take the politically feasible solution rather than nothing.

rory096 7y ago
>Grid scale solar is significantly cheaper due to the economies of scale. Utility scale solar has met the same ardent opposition in land use decisionmaking fora as denser housing, including from 'environmental' organizations. Some examples from around here: https://fredericksburg.com/news/local/culpeper/culpeper-county-planners-deny-solar-project/article_c1f3bdca-a5a9-5afd-acae-7e0c1c288563.html https://fredericksburg.com/news/local/culpeper/culpeper-coun... http://lakegastongazette-observer.com/news/article_8f621d6e-f89a-11e8-a2ac-aba2c52fbcb3.html http://lakegastongazette-observer.com/news/article_8f621d6e-... https://richmond.com/news/local/central-virginia/powhatan/powhatan-today/solar-farm-withdraws-application-after-board-denies-appeal/article_5efbcfd8-459a-11e9-9f47-ab35e59dc6b4.html https://richmond.com/news/local/central-virginia/powhatan/po... https://starexponent.com/news/county-committee-backs--acre-cap-on-utility-scale-solar/article_5d482d9b-6881-514b-8f5b-340593551e10.html https://starexponent.com/news/county-committee-backs--acre-c... https://www.pecva.org/library/documents/Our-Mission/Energy/Energy-Conservation/Utility-Scale_Solar_Policy_Document_-_Working_Draft_-_July_2019_-_Piedmont_Environmental_Council.pdf https://www.pecva.org/library/documents/Our-Mission/Energy/E...
- robocat 7y ago
  Summary of 5 links: 2 projects cancelled due to NIMBY, 1 project being appealed due to NIMBY, 1 project cancelled due to ecological concerns (unclear if just NIMBY), 1 irrelevant link. fredericksburg.com - application cancelled - "He, like other neighbors of the project and another larger one south of Stevensburg, have consistently expressed concerns about impact to their property values ... Orye said he didn’t think solar fit anywhere in Culpeper County, emphasizing its rich historic resources related to the Civil War and early American history." lakegastongazette-observer.com "Opponents of the project ... turned out in droves at last week’s community meeting", "Many residents expressed concerns about the project’s effects on the ecology and their view", "the commission’s reasons for the denial were fivefold. They said the proposed facility develops more than 500 acres, is removing more than 1,100 acres of agricultural property from production, is proposed to be located in a populated residential area, is located on real estate that is located on the Virginia Scenic Byway and that setbacks and buffers on the proposed project do not adequately address the need to visually block the project from the view of its neighbors" richmond.com - "a solar project that had significant community opposition", "plans to build a solar energy farm on 1090 acres of a 2998 acre property", "400 acres of the project would [become] a conservation easement" , "The planning commission determined that the proposed use is not in accord with recommendations made in the 2010 Long-Range Comprehensive Plan, in particular since part of the project would fall into the area designated Priority Conservation Area and Protected Land.", "Among the citizen comments that were made, most were in stringent opposition because of the negative ecological impact the project would have on protected wetlands in the area, the only remaining wildlife corridor connecting the James and Appomattox rivers, and on rare and endangered species." starexponent.com - "Culpeper County will consider placing a cap on 'utility scale solar sprawl' equal to the amount of the renewable energy its residents could actually consume.", "In October, the board approved the county’s first-ever solar farm on 1,000 acres near Stevensburg to the dismay of neighbors, who have since filed a civil suit in the matter asking the circuit court to reverse the approval." www.pecva.org - looks like last link just shows planning details and doesn't show opposition.
  - rory096 7y ago
    >www.pecva.org - looks like last link just shows planning details and doesn't show opposition. They oppose utility-scale solar anywhere except existing industrial land, in favor of the "low hanging fruit" of rooftop solar. >PEC is an advocate for solar energy, especially distributed solar power generation - small scale solar (usually rooftop) primarily designed to meet the immediate demands of the property in which it is located. In comparison, the size and nature of USS Facilities create challenges for any locality to protect important resources and the public health, safety, and welfare of the community. Virginia has thousands of acres of rooftops, parking lots, and landfills devoid of solar panels in areas of moderate to high energy demand, in addition to contaminated and/or underutilized industrial sites. It is PEC’s belief that we should be looking to these developed areas as the low hanging fruit of future solar sites. >Utility-Scale Solar (USS) Facilities are industrial facilities and should not be allowed by-right on agriculturally zoned lands. Given their size and nature, they should be: >● Subject to a Conditional or Special Use Permit in agriculturally zoned areas with maximum acreage allowed per project and possibly per the entire County; and/or >● Limited to existing industrial zoned areas. > ○ Agricultural land should not be spot zoned to create additional industrial zoned areas for USS Facilities.
metafunctor 7y ago
That's exactly what regulation is and does. It picks winners, picks harmful phenomenon, and acts accordingly, with a short-to-medium timeframe based on what would get the most votes. I, too, believe that taxing actual atmospheric carbon impact would be great, but how would you measure such a thing fairly?
- BlueTemplar 7y ago
  Go as much to the source of production as possible : forbidding unconventional fossil fuel extraction, heavily taxing fossil fuel imports long range plane landings, methane-producing livestock, &c.
- specialist 7y ago
  Just like with other taxes: brackets, rebates, credits paired with subsidies and investment.
- brashcal 7y ago
  >That's exactly what regulation is and does. It picks winners, picks harmful phenomenon, and acts accordingly, with a short-to-medium timeframe based on what would get the most votes. The subsidies are terrible. They are way too narrow and don’t address the root cause of the issue. Climate change is not happening because we don’t have enough renewables, climate change is happening because our GHG emissions are too high. Tax the emissions and all activities which generate emissions become less appealing, while all opportunities to reduce the emissions become more lucrative. The example of riding a bike instead of buying an EV fits into this as well. With a carbon tax, using a bike would be equally accounted for. By using subsidies, the government gets to pick the winner and doesn’t let people think. Renewables especially as they are now are a terrible way to tackle the problem. If we used taxes instead of subsidies, I’m afraid that not many renewable power plants would be built, because other alternatives are way more effective at curbing emissions. Solutions like rooftop solar – and by extension, these Tesla tiles - wouldn’t make a lot of financial sense if people were billed for their electricity appropriately based on costs. The cost of electricity distribution is primarily a fixed cost in the infrastructure and its upkeep. The variable cost of generating the electricity is small in comparison. People, however, are generally billed more in variable cost based on use of electricity rather than with a larger, fixed fee. It’s set up in this way because it makes sense; the poor can afford connecting themselves to the grid and keep the necessities powered, while reckless use of energy i.e. having AC on 24/7 is disincentivized by the cost. But once people start pushing rooftop solar on their grid and selling the energy back to the grid at the retail price, not the wholesale price, they are being massively subsidized in their electricity generation, as part of the fixed cost of operating the grid was baked into the variable cost of electricity prices. The pushback from utilities comes from exactly this perspective; if more and more people start net-metering their own bills lower with the rooftop solar, then it means that fewer and fewer people will be responsible for appropriately funding the grid. In an extreme scenario where everyone net-metered their bills down to zero, it would mean that nobody would be paying for the grid. Obviously, such a situation is unsustainable. And even though there’d be plenty of solar to go by in such a situation, the grid would still be a necessity, as is all the generation which functions as a back-up. And somehow, it would all still need to be paid for. But there’s more to it, too. Net-metering creates a reverse-incentive. Electricity prices in the wholesale market can even go negative if there is overgeneration, because overgeneration is harmful, and it needs to be dealt with. If net-metering practices are in place, and people start doing more and more rooftop solar to the point of more and more frequent overgeneration, the costs of operating the grid go up. Consequently, so would price of electricity. With a net-metering scheme still in place, everyone else is further incentivized to build solar panels on their roof and do the same to avoid paying the high prices. If the compensation for the electricity fed back into the grid was based on wholesale price instead, then, once average price (and value) of solar-generated electricity goes down, so do the incentives to build more solar panels. Adding insult to injury, the back-up issue is generally solved by using gas-fired power generation, as batteries cannot address the issue at this scale. Batteries are useful for bridging the gaps in between switching power generation sources, but the kind of quantity of capacity you’d need for a battery-only backup solution is not feasible. For back-up, gas is the primary back-up solution in California as well as in Australia, and the Russians are building a pipe to supply Germany. Ironically this makes solar generation - when the whole power generation solution is inspected at the grid-level - not all that green. And while this aspect of solar is ignored by subsidies, a carbon tax would still take it into account. The point being, subsidies can not only be ineffective, they can also be counterproductive in addition to ignoring all the alternatives. > I, too, believe that taxing actual atmospheric carbon impact would be great, but how would you measure such a thing fairly? You can measure emissions at sources and impose heavy fines on anyone who tries to circumvent them. The common problem in globalization, though, is defining and applying these standards universally and fairly. If you can’t trust the Germans to not fumble their numbers, what you’d think would happen in some other countries? Still, with a coordinated effort and systems to ensure transparency, it would be possible. Another method would be to subsidize more effective alternatives or for the government to build the more effective solutions by themselves. While this wouldn’t have the direction-changing impact of the carbon tax, it would be more straightforward to implement without the requirement of tracking pollution. Targets of subsidies could be selected by their impact on emissions per $ invested. Of course, the numbers could be fumbled here as well, but at least the calculations could be made public and be subject to scrutiny.
jplayer01 7y ago
Man, if they gave me $7500 to ride a bike, I'd ride the fuck out of that bike. I'd buy like 5 and attach them to each other and take my friends with me everywhere.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

jacquesm 7y ago

Solar is a solved problem. Anything that wants to displace regular panels has to do so by improving on them.