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Then why is it so damn expensive. Honestly one of the reasons I can’t wait to own a house is to purchase enough solar panels and batteries to give a huge middle

• rcpt 4y ago
  California (rightly) prices in externalities of power generation https://haas.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/WP294.pdf https://haas.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/WP294.pdf
• ceeplusplus 4y ago
  It's honestly insane how PG&E is going bankrupt despite charging 35 cents/kWh. Where is all the money going??
  • not2b 4y ago
    Paying damages from all the wildfires they have caused.
  • Trias11 4y ago
  • bryan0 4y ago
    one place: > PG&E Corp. put a cost estimate of more than $25 billion Thursday on its effort to plant thousands of miles of power lines underground in an effort to tamp down wildfire risks. https://www.sacbee.com/news/california/fires/article258249655.html https://www.sacbee.com/news/california/fires/article25824965...
    • jimbob45 4y ago
      Shame that they're not getting better publicity as a result of this. Our main complaint about the internet companies is that they pocket the money meant to speed up networks for their subscribers. This is exactly what utility companies ought to do to prepare for the future.
      • ceejayoz 4y ago
        They’re doing it because they went bankrupt over $30B in liability from not preparing in this fashion. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/01/business/energy-environment/pge-bankruptcy-ends.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/01/business/energy-environme... > PG&E sought bankruptcy protection in January 2019 after accumulating an estimated $30 billion in liability for fires started by its poorly maintained equipment. One of the blazes, the 2018 Camp Fire, killed scores of people and destroyed the town of Paradise. It wasn’t voluntary, really.
        • bcrosby95 4y ago
          A large part of why they're doing it because they're guaranteed a certain percentage return on investments. There's ways to fix this problem without a $25bil investment, but you won't make nearly as much profit on that.
          • bryan0 4y ago
            what's a better, cheaper way to fix the wildfire problem?
            • sagarm 4y ago
              People who choose to live in the Wildlands urban interface should bear the cost for undergrounding the wires they rely on IMO. Probably politically infeasible, unfortunately.
              • dntrkv 4y ago
                Wildfires in California not only affect California itself, but neighboring states as well. Last year I drove from CA to CO. The wildfire smoke from California covered all of Nevada and Utah. I don't know where you live, but if you are in CA, there is a very high chance that you live in a wildland-urban interface zone. About 45% of housing in CA would fall under this category. These risks aren't limited to people living up in the mountains. A large chunk of the Bay Area is a wildland-urban interface. All of this to say, preventing wild fires is in everybody's best interest and trying to pass the costs to one group or another will only delay our timeline to address these issues. Burying power lines is just one part of the solution.
  • NelsonMinar 4y ago
    $0.35 would be a bargain. It's more like $0.40 / kWh, it's complicated depending on which rate plan you have and what time of day / year you're using power. https://www.pge.com/pge_global/common/pdfs/rate-plans/how-rates-work/Residential-Rates-Plan-Pricing.pdf https://www.pge.com/pge_global/common/pdfs/rate-plans/how-ra... Meanwhile my neighbors 30 miles away are paying half that rate to SMUD. https://www.smud.org/en/Rate-Information/Compare-rates https://www.smud.org/en/Rate-Information/Compare-rates As a bonus, SMUD doesn't generally kill people and burn down cities.
    • sagarm 4y ago
      Presumably the Sacramento utility district doesn't serve high risk fire areas, so their customers don't have to subsidize people that choose to live on the wildlands-urban interface.
      • simfree 4y ago
        They also have never had to pay out dividends unlike PG&E, or been forced to optimize for what will deliver the most value to their shareholders. https://www.pgecorp.com/investors/shareholders/dividend_history.shtml https://www.pgecorp.com/investors/shareholders/dividend_hist...
      • samtho 4y ago
        SMUD does operate HV lines into the Sierras as part of the Upper American River Project consisting of 11 dams and eight power generating facilities. It’s capable of powering most of Sacramento in a pinch but is typically used only when they need more capacity. Throughout the course of a year, it ends up providing about 20% of Sacramento’s power. SMUD has very strict preventative maintenance procedures for their HV transmission lines, clearing all underbrush from below the 15KV lines almost yearly. We have not had any major incidents involving electrical fires in my lifetime that I am aware of.
  • outworlder 4y ago
    It's incredible. Even more so if we consider that Silicon Valley Power (serving Santa Clara) charges a fraction of that and is more reliable.
    • bink 4y ago
      Seems unfair to compare a utility covering 18 square miles to one covering 160k+ square miles across some of the harshest terrain in the country. But I agree that PG&E charges way too much.
• haliskerbas 4y ago
  I’ve been trying to do the math for my own home, are solar panels actually cash flow positive, once you account for efficiency decrease overtime etc.? It always seemed like one barely breaks even in 2 decades
  • swid 4y ago
    Sounds about right for the power only, but you also probably get a battery with it to deal with power outages… I don’t know how to price the utility of that, but it’s why I bought solar.
    • Forgeties79 4y ago
      How long have you been able to stretch that battery out when your power is out? Don’t have a point to make or anything, I’m just curious. I hadn’t really considered that.
      • brianwawok 4y ago
        24kW can lost a long time if you don’t need AC. Should be days
      • swid 4y ago
        I only have 10kw but most days that is enough to get through the night. Air conditioning will go through it, but I don’t typically need it, especially after the sun sets.
    • RosanaAnaDana 4y ago
      35k for a 8kwh, 24kwh battery storage system. ~15k in credits? Solar loan ends up at 175 a month. I got in before the recent ridiculousness around fuel prices. I'm sure I'm net positive at this point but haven't done the precise math. One addition I'm considering, is some bitcoin/ crypto rigs to take care of excess power during the peaks. Even with my batteries, I produce a lot of extra power and don't get paid spit from the power company, and what I do get I can only use as credit. https://www.nicehash.com/profitability-calculator/-bitmain-antminer-s17e-(64th) https://www.nicehash.com/profitability-calculator/-bitmain-a... Thing costs ~1.25k, but at ~$10/ day it will pay its self off in a quarter.
• jweir 4y ago
  You do not pay market rate for electricity. Texas does allow consumers to pay market rate for electricity, you may have heard about last winter people getting bills in the several thousands of dollars when prices spiked. CAISO was 97% renewable for only a moment, not the entire day. The 3rd was a Sunday, not a peak day. And the average price for energy for the day was $30.77 (day head) $27.1 (real time) for TH_SP15_GEN-APND (per MWh)
  • m463 4y ago
    > You do not pay market rate for electricity. however it should be ... vaguely ... related. In california it is not. it's easy to pay 40-50 cents/Kwh (~$500/MWh)
  • samkater 4y ago
    My understanding, to put it in AWS EC2 pricing terms, is that we do not pay the market "spot" rate for electricity (variable, often less than what you might pay elsewhere, but could spike up) - which is what Texas allowed. Typically we pay the "on demand" rate which is fixed. Large energy users probably negotiate "reserved" pricing. My point being, we pay the market rate, those massive hikes are just built-in over a long period of time.
    • ajross 4y ago
      That only works if the demand curve (the price the market will bear at given levels of shortage) and the cost curve (the actual price to produce the energy) match up. In fact they never do, especially in this market. Texas producers weren't spending 100x (or whatever) more to produce that electricity, that spike just reflected the amount that customers who "had to keep the lights on" were willing to bear. In fact total utility costs are basically flat. They didn't hire 100x more employees or work 100x more hours to get things running again. They didn't have to build 100x more substations, etc... And that's why spot pricing is a disaster for consumers. It creates a perverse incentive for producers to reduce supply.
      • csours 4y ago
• ejb999 4y ago
  Every time I do the math, any money I would spend on a solar system, would be better invested in an energy utility and just collect the dividend to pay my electric bill. If you want to do solar for the environment, fine - I won't fault you - but if you are doing it to save/make money, there are better places to invest.
  • simfree 4y ago
    The provider space seems quite volatile, where investors risk being wiped out (ala Griddy's investors), severely reduced in value (eg: PG&E), PG&E: https://seekingalpha.com/article/4441976-formerly-bankrupt-pge-corp-still-a-terrible-investment https://seekingalpha.com/article/4441976-formerly-bankrupt-p...
  • 1123581321 4y ago
    Who is your utility and what part of the country? My panels are earning me about 12% per annum post tax, low risk, with insurance against capital loss (home insurance in event of hailstorm, hurricane.) I don’t see stock market investment opportunities competing.
    • ejb999 4y ago
      I am in new england, electric rates are a lot less here (for now anyway) than CA (if that is where you are), and thus the calculations for you may be better than they are for me. Its been a few years since I did the math, but last time I was quoted about 60K for a complete system - 60K at 5% dividend (NGG at the time), would give me $3K per year, enough to cover my bill. AT the end of 20-30 years, a solar system will be worth nothing, or almost nothing, whereas I will still own the same stock in the same company hopefully the stock will have appreciated as well), and will still be covering my electric bill. This of course makes lots of assumptions: I need to invest in company that will still be around for decades, that electric costs don't go thru the roof during that time, and the dividend doesn't go away etc. - but also would have to make assumptions about how long a solar system would last - its impossible for any of us to see out 30 years, but for the time being, I feel like on a purely financial basis, it didn't make sense for me today. But trust me, I would love to pay one sunk cost today and not have to pay an electric bill for the next 30+ years, if only I could see that far in the future with some certainty.
• GloriousKoji 4y ago
  As a Californian I think the electricity itself is pretty cheap at ~9cents/kwh but the total delivery costs are 3x that.
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
• outside1234 4y ago
  In addition to what others have said -- renewable does not mean necessarily cheap.
• secabeen 4y ago
  Going off-grid is really expensive unless you're willing to make significant quality of life cuts when you go outside your system capacity. A string of overcast days that only produce 50% of normal, or a series of hot or cold days that drive large A/C or Heat Pump usage can put you in a situation where you are shedding load during the day so you can bridge across the overnight period. I expect it's just probably doable in a really temperate climate like SF, where you can live without running heating or cooling year-round and try to get your other electric usage way down, but anywhere with hot summers or cold winters is going to risk battery depletion.