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Power companies will just switch to charging a high monthly grid interconnect fee. And people will pay because no one wants to "run out of power". This is alre

Power companies will just switch to charging a high monthly grid interconnect fee. And people will pay because no one wants to "run out of power". This is already proposed to happen in California: https://www.solarreviews.com/blog/california-net-metering-changes https://www.solarreviews.com/blog/california-net-metering-ch... "It also adds a monthly Grid Participation Charge of $8 per kilowatt (kW) of solar to the bills of all people who go solar after implementation of the new rules, costing the average homeowner almost $600 per year, or $15,000 over 25 years."

hedora 4y ago
If they increase the interconnect fee enough, homeowners will simply stop paying the bill and disconnect from the grid. The PG&E proposal would cost the homeowner approximately 100% the price of their solar panels over 25 years. If it were not for net metering, that would already be enough to make a rational consumer oversize solar and batteries by another 50% and close their PG&E account. The price of solar and batteries is dropping so fast that the threshold for a "too high" bill will soon be below the cost of line maintenance. Unless something changes, at that point, the power grid will collapse in the same way the landline phone grid is collapsing. That will drive up bills for remaining subscribers, driving more loss of business, creating a death spiral. I think they should jack up the cost of electricity to cover grid maintenance, and allow community net metering, so that people without a roof can buy into solar collectives that count toward net metering. This would rapidly phase out nonrenewable generation by severely penalizing people that rely on power plants. Once that became untenable, the aging zoomers can sit outside on their non-ruined planet and fret about supporting their carbon neutral power grid with taxpayer dollars.
- beeboop 4y ago
  >and disconnect from the grid. Pretty simple for the awful, awful power companies to do some lobbying to not allow this - just make it so that if you have solar, you're required to have active electric service to your house, even if you're not an active account holder to any power company. I have heard there's parts of Mexico that do this - you're not allowed to run your house on only solar, you're required to be hooked up to the grid and you can only sell your solar back to the grid, it can't be used directly to power your home. So you're forced to sell at a certain rate and then buy it back at a certain rate.

hedora 4y ago

If they increase the interconnect fee enough, homeowners will simply stop paying the bill and disconnect from the grid. The PG&E proposal would cost the homeowner approximately 100% the price of their solar panels over 25 years. If it were not for net metering, that would already be enough to make a rational consumer oversize solar and batteries by another 50% and close their PG&E account. The price of solar and batteries is dropping so fast that the threshold for a "too high" bill will soon be below the cost of line maintenance. Unless something changes, at that point, the power grid will collapse in the same way the landline phone grid is collapsing. That will drive up bills for remaining subscribers, driving more loss of business, creating a death spiral. I think they should jack up the cost of electricity to cover grid maintenance, and allow community net metering, so that people without a roof can buy into solar collectives that count toward net metering. This would rapidly phase out nonrenewable generation by severely penalizing people that rely on power plants. Once that became untenable, the aging zoomers can sit outside on their non-ruined planet and fret about supporting their carbon neutral power grid with taxpayer dollars.

beeboop 4y ago
>and disconnect from the grid. Pretty simple for the awful, awful power companies to do some lobbying to not allow this - just make it so that if you have solar, you're required to have active electric service to your house, even if you're not an active account holder to any power company. I have heard there's parts of Mexico that do this - you're not allowed to run your house on only solar, you're required to be hooked up to the grid and you can only sell your solar back to the grid, it can't be used directly to power your home. So you're forced to sell at a certain rate and then buy it back at a certain rate.