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Solar feed in tariffs made a lot of sense initially when they helped bootstrap the market for solar panels but now panels have gotten so cheap the costs of roof

Solar feed in tariffs made a lot of sense initially when they helped bootstrap the market for solar panels but now panels have gotten so cheap the costs of rooftop solar are dominated by installation costs we really should reconsider where we allocate our money to achieve the highest reduction in in emissions. I have more sympathy for the regulations requiring solar on new buildings since it is far cheaper to install while the roof is being built than to retrofit later. But as a renter who pays for these subsidies through my electricity bill and cannot benefit from them I want to see the maximum amount of renewable generation built out for the cost added to my bill. Utility scale solar works out 1/3rd the price of residential, or roughly the cost of the residential subsidy alone. Distribution accounts for only 5% or so of the cost of electricity. It is far more cost effective to build utility scale solar in the desert than on individual roofs.

ZeroGravitas 4y ago
Deserts aren't good locations for solar, for several reasons: 1. They get hot, and solar PV needs light, not heat to work. Heat actually reduces the effectiveness which is why the difference in output between the best and worst places for solar PV in the USA probably isn't as wide a delta as you would think. 2. They're generally not near people, who mostly live on the coast and so have higher transmission costs. Transmission is enough of a cost factor that building solar and battery (or datacenters) on sites of old coal plants is often done to re-use transmission and save money. Desert like conditions are required for concentrated solar, which require strong direct sunlight and heat, but PV doesn't have that requirement and can still work in cloudy regions and is generally cheaper than CSP these days even in the desert regions. So solar should be distributed more towards where people live and use electricity. I think adding the costs to the consumers electricity bills made sense when the grid was mostly polluting, as it incentivises efficiency but as we get closer to a clean grid, it makes less sense. Shifting to time-of-use is probably a good next step to keep the incentive to not burn polluting fuels, shifting the costs to people still burning gas makes sense too. The whole of society is rigged to give money to homeowners (due to racism and classicsm mostly), so it's not unexpected that solar would lean the same way, it's not inherent to the tech though, just how society works at the moment.

ZeroGravitas 4y ago

Deserts aren't good locations for solar, for several reasons: 1. They get hot, and solar PV needs light, not heat to work. Heat actually reduces the effectiveness which is why the difference in output between the best and worst places for solar PV in the USA probably isn't as wide a delta as you would think. 2. They're generally not near people, who mostly live on the coast and so have higher transmission costs. Transmission is enough of a cost factor that building solar and battery (or datacenters) on sites of old coal plants is often done to re-use transmission and save money. Desert like conditions are required for concentrated solar, which require strong direct sunlight and heat, but PV doesn't have that requirement and can still work in cloudy regions and is generally cheaper than CSP these days even in the desert regions. So solar should be distributed more towards where people live and use electricity. I think adding the costs to the consumers electricity bills made sense when the grid was mostly polluting, as it incentivises efficiency but as we get closer to a clean grid, it makes less sense. Shifting to time-of-use is probably a good next step to keep the incentive to not burn polluting fuels, shifting the costs to people still burning gas makes sense too. The whole of society is rigged to give money to homeowners (due to racism and classicsm mostly), so it's not unexpected that solar would lean the same way, it's not inherent to the tech though, just how society works at the moment.