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Large scale solar has substantially better economics that distributed solar. The economies of scale should be pretty obvious. But even distributed solar has a

Large scale solar has substantially better economics that distributed solar. The economies of scale should be pretty obvious. But even distributed solar has a positive ROI, it’s just a long pay off period (20 years etc) without government incentives. But there are plenty of investments out there with lower ROI and longer payoffs that people still invest in. So it’s all economically feasible and has been for almost a decade (which is why we’re seeing so much solar and wind deployment at the moment). Government incentives just accelerate a trend that was going to happen regardless.

jandrese 5y ago
The downside of Utility Scale solar installations is that my utility provider has zero interest in creating them. Rooftop solar is something I can do that's more effective than creating an online petition to convince my local utility to pursue solar.
- avianlyric 5y ago
  Why would you want your utility provider to provide solar? Electricity is bought and sold in markets. Anyone with the capital can build a solar farm, sell the energy into grid, and allow local utility providers to buy it. If that energy happens to be the cheapest, then your utility provider will buy it. Thankfully wind and solar tend to be the cheapest forms of wholesale energy production. If you personally want to invest in solar, then you should look for cooperatives that are raising funds to build solar farms and put some capital in. But your utility provider should have nothing to do with this, they just provide the cables and buy energy to resell to you (exactly what they're responsible changes region to region, in some parts of the world they just buy and resell energy, and others maintain the cables). Expecting them to build solar would be like expecting your supermarket to manufacture every item on their shelves. They may manufacture some products because it makes sense for them to do so, but the majority are made by others.

jandrese 5y ago

The downside of Utility Scale solar installations is that my utility provider has zero interest in creating them. Rooftop solar is something I can do that's more effective than creating an online petition to convince my local utility to pursue solar.

avianlyric 5y ago
Why would you want your utility provider to provide solar? Electricity is bought and sold in markets. Anyone with the capital can build a solar farm, sell the energy into grid, and allow local utility providers to buy it. If that energy happens to be the cheapest, then your utility provider will buy it. Thankfully wind and solar tend to be the cheapest forms of wholesale energy production. If you personally want to invest in solar, then you should look for cooperatives that are raising funds to build solar farms and put some capital in. But your utility provider should have nothing to do with this, they just provide the cables and buy energy to resell to you (exactly what they're responsible changes region to region, in some parts of the world they just buy and resell energy, and others maintain the cables). Expecting them to build solar would be like expecting your supermarket to manufacture every item on their shelves. They may manufacture some products because it makes sense for them to do so, but the majority are made by others.