4 ms·

We installed solar panels a few years ago. They take care of 100% of our electrical needs (and we live in Portland Oregon where it is cloudy 9 months out of the

We installed solar panels a few years ago. They take care of 100% of our electrical needs (and we live in Portland Oregon where it is cloudy 9 months out of the year). I haven’t had to pay more than $12/month, and that is the fee we are charged by PGE to be hooked into the grid so we can sell them our excess. One thing I’ve found out is that we no longer worry about electricity usage. I used to fret about lights being left on, but no longer. That doesn’t seem healthy, but when you are no longer worrying about paying for something you stop worrying about wasting it.

m463 6y ago
On the other hand, electricity pricing is a construct. To some extent it is designed so that you do worry and limit use of a shared resource. I think other utilities like internet service adopt this construct, then monetize worry to get you to pay a little more for all-you-can-eat. There's an interesting quote from a former chairman of the atomic energy commission: It is not too much to expect that our children will enjoy in their homes electrical energy too cheap to meter, will know of great periodic regional famines in the world only as matters of history, will travel effortlessly over the seas and under them and through the air with a minimum of danger and at great speeds, and will experience a lifespan far longer than ours, as disease yields and man comes to understand what causes him to age https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Too_cheap_to_meter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Too_cheap_to_meter
- nannal 6y ago
  Can you imagine being that hopeful about the future, I know a lot of people are opting not to have children due to the environmental nightmare those children would have to survive.
  - astrange 6y ago
    That's more relative than absolute expectations, or maybe you just know a lot of neurotic people. Even if climate change is as bad as WW2 (doubtful over the same time scale), people still had children then, and they still had children when every city was covered in a foot of horse poop, all your kids died at 14 and doctors didn't believe in handwashing. In fact they had more!
    - imtringued 6y ago
      As you have less children you put more resources into each child.
      - astrange 6y ago
        Aren't we talking about not having any kids at all here? It takes a bit less than 3x resources to have 3 kids though, since they share things.
        m463 6y ago
        also, children at some point might be might be like factorio, where the early ones start gathering resources for the later ones :)
  - Robotbeat 6y ago
    I am hopeful about the future, and I am training my children up to be assets in the fight against climate change and poverty.
  - m463 6y ago
    I like the book "the rational optimist" by matt riddley.
astrange 6y ago
What kind of lights do you have? As far as I know it takes a lot of LED lights before you have to care if you left them on or not, even if you left them on all year.
opo 6y ago
>... I haven’t had to pay more than $12/month, and that is the fee we are charged by PGE to be hooked into the grid so we can sell them our excess. Wow. If you are only paying $12 a month for access to the grid, you are paying a small fraction of your share of the cost of maintaining the grid. These consumer solar subsidies are a massive subsidy from the poor to the wealthy and really aren't sustainable.
- supertrope 6y ago
  Net metering is a temporary state intended to build critical mass and get mass production going. Solar panel owners don't pay the full cost of grid services, and utilities are not paying them for the full value of the electricity fed back in. Residential solar IMO is mal-investment because grid scale solar has better economies of scale. Solar plants are easier to maintain. The grid is not built for widespread net metering. Rooftop solar has more fatalities than nuclear because of installers falling off.
- reducesuffering 6y ago
  Hardly. My "access" bill is $20/mth, but my panels give $350/yr more to the grid than I use. PGE gives me like $30 of that back at the end of the year. So that $12 / $20 doesn't tell the whole story. They are also likely giving a lot more renewable energy to the grid that isn't compensated and is more like another $30/mth of cost.
  - opo 6y ago
    >...but my panels give $350/yr more to the grid than I use. You are likely confusing wholesale and retail prices of electricity. Even just considering solar, the cost for a utility to generate the power itself is likely between 2-4 cents per kilowatt. Most states require the utility to essentially pay the retail rate for electric power for any power generated by rooftop solar since it directly offsets the electrical usage. (Never mind that the electric power might have to be purchased when the utility doesn't want the power.) Buffet has complained about how this issue: >...His logic is simple, he wants to have to pay wholesale electricity rates for the energy generated by rooftop solar instead of the same price NV Energy is charging these customers since he says it will penalized customers without solar panels. https://electrek.co/2016/03/01/warren-buffett-explains-his-logic-for-killing-rooftop-solar-in-nevada-video/ https://electrek.co/2016/03/01/warren-buffett-explains-his-l... So unless you are using the wholesale price for the estimate for the value of the excess electricity generated, you are greatly overestimating its value. Besides overpaying for the electricity generated by rooftop solar, your $20 access bill is another subsidy. One estimate is that the average yearly cost to maintain the grid is about $750 per customer. https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/plugged-in/the-u-s-electric-grids-cost-in-2-charts/ https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/plugged-in/the-u-s-elec...

m463 6y ago

On the other hand, electricity pricing is a construct. To some extent it is designed so that you do worry and limit use of a shared resource. I think other utilities like internet service adopt this construct, then monetize worry to get you to pay a little more for all-you-can-eat. There's an interesting quote from a former chairman of the atomic energy commission: It is not too much to expect that our children will enjoy in their homes electrical energy too cheap to meter, will know of great periodic regional famines in the world only as matters of history, will travel effortlessly over the seas and under them and through the air with a minimum of danger and at great speeds, and will experience a lifespan far longer than ours, as disease yields and man comes to understand what causes him to age https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Too_cheap_to_meter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Too_cheap_to_meter

nannal 6y ago
Can you imagine being that hopeful about the future, I know a lot of people are opting not to have children due to the environmental nightmare those children would have to survive.
- astrange 6y ago
  That's more relative than absolute expectations, or maybe you just know a lot of neurotic people. Even if climate change is as bad as WW2 (doubtful over the same time scale), people still had children then, and they still had children when every city was covered in a foot of horse poop, all your kids died at 14 and doctors didn't believe in handwashing. In fact they had more!
  - imtringued 6y ago
    As you have less children you put more resources into each child.
    - astrange 6y ago
      Aren't we talking about not having any kids at all here? It takes a bit less than 3x resources to have 3 kids though, since they share things.
      - m463 6y ago
        also, children at some point might be might be like factorio, where the early ones start gathering resources for the later ones :)
- Robotbeat 6y ago
  I am hopeful about the future, and I am training my children up to be assets in the fight against climate change and poverty.
- m463 6y ago
  I like the book "the rational optimist" by matt riddley.

astrange 6y ago

What kind of lights do you have? As far as I know it takes a lot of LED lights before you have to care if you left them on or not, even if you left them on all year.

opo 6y ago

>... I haven’t had to pay more than $12/month, and that is the fee we are charged by PGE to be hooked into the grid so we can sell them our excess. Wow. If you are only paying $12 a month for access to the grid, you are paying a small fraction of your share of the cost of maintaining the grid. These consumer solar subsidies are a massive subsidy from the poor to the wealthy and really aren't sustainable.

supertrope 6y ago
Net metering is a temporary state intended to build critical mass and get mass production going. Solar panel owners don't pay the full cost of grid services, and utilities are not paying them for the full value of the electricity fed back in. Residential solar IMO is mal-investment because grid scale solar has better economies of scale. Solar plants are easier to maintain. The grid is not built for widespread net metering. Rooftop solar has more fatalities than nuclear because of installers falling off.
reducesuffering 6y ago
Hardly. My "access" bill is $20/mth, but my panels give $350/yr more to the grid than I use. PGE gives me like $30 of that back at the end of the year. So that $12 / $20 doesn't tell the whole story. They are also likely giving a lot more renewable energy to the grid that isn't compensated and is more like another $30/mth of cost.
- opo 6y ago
  >...but my panels give $350/yr more to the grid than I use. You are likely confusing wholesale and retail prices of electricity. Even just considering solar, the cost for a utility to generate the power itself is likely between 2-4 cents per kilowatt. Most states require the utility to essentially pay the retail rate for electric power for any power generated by rooftop solar since it directly offsets the electrical usage. (Never mind that the electric power might have to be purchased when the utility doesn't want the power.) Buffet has complained about how this issue: >...His logic is simple, he wants to have to pay wholesale electricity rates for the energy generated by rooftop solar instead of the same price NV Energy is charging these customers since he says it will penalized customers without solar panels. https://electrek.co/2016/03/01/warren-buffett-explains-his-logic-for-killing-rooftop-solar-in-nevada-video/ https://electrek.co/2016/03/01/warren-buffett-explains-his-l... So unless you are using the wholesale price for the estimate for the value of the excess electricity generated, you are greatly overestimating its value. Besides overpaying for the electricity generated by rooftop solar, your $20 access bill is another subsidy. One estimate is that the average yearly cost to maintain the grid is about $750 per customer. https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/plugged-in/the-u-s-electric-grids-cost-in-2-charts/ https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/plugged-in/the-u-s-elec...