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Your post seems to imply that solar and wind have not been heavily subsidized. >Solar + wind arent the same or cheaper, theyre much cheaper. Wind has received

by opo 4y ago

Your post seems to imply that solar and wind have not been heavily subsidized. >Solar + wind arent the same or cheaper, theyre much cheaper. Wind has received many different government subsidies over time. The GAO found 82 different types of subsidies even 9 years ago: https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-13-136.pdf https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-13-136.pdf The largest subsidy was likely the production tax credit of $23 per megawatt-hour through the first ten years of a turbine’s operation. I think starting last year that one is being phased out. But no power source has been as subsidized as roof-top solar. That has never been cheap and won't be cheap in the future. Rooftop solar lives off of huge subsidies from the government. Wealthier home owners are often paid the retail rate for the electricity they sell to the grid and are subsidized by higher electricity bills by those who can't afford to put panels on their roof - sort of a reverse Robinhood scheme.

pydry 4y ago
I'm not at all implying that they haven't been subsidized. I'm implying that, unlike the nuclear subsidies, A) those subsidies were good value for money and B) these technologies are viable without subsidies, which nuclear isn't. >But no power source has been as subsidized as roof-top solar. This simply isn't true. Rooftop solar has been slammed with heavy import tariffs ever since Obama and while feed in tariffs have been generous in the past they haven't been generous for some years now.
- opo 4y ago
  The subsidies for nuclear likely saved more than a million lives that would have been lost to air pollution if the industry did not exist and coal had been used instead. One might argue those subsidies were a good value for money - if you care about human life. >>But no power source has been as subsidized as roof-top solar. >This simply isn't true. Rooftop solar has been slammed with heavy import tariffs ever since Obama and while feed in tariffs have been generous in the past they haven't been generous for some years now. The import tariffs have little impact on the costs of rooftop solar. The big price for rooftop is the large amounts of human labor and the inverters etc that aren't needed for utility grid solar. While feed in tariffs might have been lowered in some jurisdictions, they certainly aren't lower in big markets like CA. There the PUC was going to lower the credit to 5 cents a KW and the uproar from wealthy people was large enough that the plan was put on hold. The 5 cents is still more than the 3 cents it costs PG&E for nuclear power, but if the change was implemented, "The manufacturers of solar systems predicted the death of solar in California,". Rooftop solar was never, is not and will not ever be cheap. https://www.ocregister.com/2022/04/29/ghosted-by-the-puc-folks-await-new-plan-for-rooftop-solar-but-get-silence/ https://www.ocregister.com/2022/04/29/ghosted-by-the-puc-fol...

by opo 4y ago

pydry 4y ago

I'm not at all implying that they haven't been subsidized. I'm implying that, unlike the nuclear subsidies, A) those subsidies were good value for money and B) these technologies are viable without subsidies, which nuclear isn't. >But no power source has been as subsidized as roof-top solar. This simply isn't true. Rooftop solar has been slammed with heavy import tariffs ever since Obama and while feed in tariffs have been generous in the past they haven't been generous for some years now.

opo 4y ago
The subsidies for nuclear likely saved more than a million lives that would have been lost to air pollution if the industry did not exist and coal had been used instead. One might argue those subsidies were a good value for money - if you care about human life. >>But no power source has been as subsidized as roof-top solar. >This simply isn't true. Rooftop solar has been slammed with heavy import tariffs ever since Obama and while feed in tariffs have been generous in the past they haven't been generous for some years now. The import tariffs have little impact on the costs of rooftop solar. The big price for rooftop is the large amounts of human labor and the inverters etc that aren't needed for utility grid solar. While feed in tariffs might have been lowered in some jurisdictions, they certainly aren't lower in big markets like CA. There the PUC was going to lower the credit to 5 cents a KW and the uproar from wealthy people was large enough that the plan was put on hold. The 5 cents is still more than the 3 cents it costs PG&E for nuclear power, but if the change was implemented, "The manufacturers of solar systems predicted the death of solar in California,". Rooftop solar was never, is not and will not ever be cheap. https://www.ocregister.com/2022/04/29/ghosted-by-the-puc-folks-await-new-plan-for-rooftop-solar-but-get-silence/ https://www.ocregister.com/2022/04/29/ghosted-by-the-puc-fol...