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On a tangential note, California electrical utilities are trying to destroy residential solar through excessive taxation. It's pretty sick considering the stat

On a tangential note, California electrical utilities are trying to destroy residential solar through excessive taxation. It's pretty sick considering the state of the climate. https://solarrights.org/ https://solarrights.org/

GloriousKoji 4y ago
My friend in San Diego county was looking into getting solar panels and he was telling me it's a long term gamble for possibly saving money. Solar panels forces him onto the local utilities solar plan, which raises the cost of each kwh from the grid by 10%. If he produced surplus energy the credit only offsets 1/15th the cost of each kwh. The result is the upfront cost is quite big, he would need enough solar panels to power everything and batteries to power his house through the night. Now it's a gamble between his system breaking or degrading, local utility rate increases, being required to sell and move, or if he just invested that large chunk into a relatively safe investment like a S&P index over the next 12 years.
- xsmasher 4y ago
  I thought California law (for now) forced utilities to provide "net metering" - where your credits during the day offset your usage at night 1:1. No batteries needed. I don't know why that wouldn't apply to your friend.
missedthecue 4y ago
$57 a month to maintain the connection? I think that's fair to be honest. Solar panel owners shouldn't be able to use the grid as a battery for free. That costs real hard cash to maintain. And a lot of it. At present, solar panels users expect to be able to generate all the electricity they want on sunny days, sell the excess back to the utility for bill credits (at retail prices), and then spend the bill credits on cloudy days, or days with high energy demand. Well this doesn't make sense for the utility. They have to maintain the grid and the more people that put up solar panels, the fewer people that are left paying for upkeep on hundreds of billions of dollars of infrastructure. You can argue that it should be $37 instead of $57, but clearly it needs to be >$0
- colordrops 4y ago
  Looks like their propaganda is working. Do you realize that everyone already pays to maintain a connection to the grid? It's right there on your electric bill whether you have solar or not. Getting solar doesn't exempt you from existing fees and taxes. In fact some utilities don't even allow you to disconnect from the grid. It's also not $57 a month. That's the "average" tax, whatever that means. With the size of my installation, it would be over $110 a month. And my installation is not out of the ordinary. And it's not a "free battery". That's the opposite of what is happening. The utilities pay less than half of what they charge for the excess electricity that you produce. It's an attempt to destroy residential solar. No less. I'd actually not care about their extortion if they allowed us to disconnect from the grid and run without them, but that is illegal, at least in Los Angeles.

GloriousKoji 4y ago

My friend in San Diego county was looking into getting solar panels and he was telling me it's a long term gamble for possibly saving money. Solar panels forces him onto the local utilities solar plan, which raises the cost of each kwh from the grid by 10%. If he produced surplus energy the credit only offsets 1/15th the cost of each kwh. The result is the upfront cost is quite big, he would need enough solar panels to power everything and batteries to power his house through the night. Now it's a gamble between his system breaking or degrading, local utility rate increases, being required to sell and move, or if he just invested that large chunk into a relatively safe investment like a S&P index over the next 12 years.

xsmasher 4y ago
I thought California law (for now) forced utilities to provide "net metering" - where your credits during the day offset your usage at night 1:1. No batteries needed. I don't know why that wouldn't apply to your friend.

missedthecue 4y ago

$57 a month to maintain the connection? I think that's fair to be honest. Solar panel owners shouldn't be able to use the grid as a battery for free. That costs real hard cash to maintain. And a lot of it. At present, solar panels users expect to be able to generate all the electricity they want on sunny days, sell the excess back to the utility for bill credits (at retail prices), and then spend the bill credits on cloudy days, or days with high energy demand. Well this doesn't make sense for the utility. They have to maintain the grid and the more people that put up solar panels, the fewer people that are left paying for upkeep on hundreds of billions of dollars of infrastructure. You can argue that it should be $37 instead of $57, but clearly it needs to be >$0

colordrops 4y ago
Looks like their propaganda is working. Do you realize that everyone already pays to maintain a connection to the grid? It's right there on your electric bill whether you have solar or not. Getting solar doesn't exempt you from existing fees and taxes. In fact some utilities don't even allow you to disconnect from the grid. It's also not $57 a month. That's the "average" tax, whatever that means. With the size of my installation, it would be over $110 a month. And my installation is not out of the ordinary. And it's not a "free battery". That's the opposite of what is happening. The utilities pay less than half of what they charge for the excess electricity that you produce. It's an attempt to destroy residential solar. No less. I'd actually not care about their extortion if they allowed us to disconnect from the grid and run without them, but that is illegal, at least in Los Angeles.