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Why promote roof top solar when grid solar is substantially cheaper? Is it for emergency preparedness?
by 7e 3y ago
Why promote roof top solar when grid solar is substantially cheaper? Is it for emergency preparedness?
- mattnewton 3y agoIs grid solar always cheaper? I could see that, I could also see that not being the case in the short term if the power lines need to be replaced (or buried in California because of wildfires). It seems harder to do coordinated actions politically rather than let consumers buy products.
- baggy_trough 3y agoBy "let" you mean "force", correct?
- bombcar 3y agoI don't see how rooftop solar can ever really be "cheaper" than grid, if you allow grid to be "small grid" - e.g., in a local area.
- sbierwagen 3y agoHow many people are connected to "small grids" today in California?
- bombcar 3y agoEveryone is, because the grid is built out of smaller grids. You and some number of your neighbors are connected to a transformer, some number of those transformers are connected to a larger transformer, and so on up the chain until you have an actual large grid.
- sbierwagen 3y agoOkay, but this thread is talking about billing, right? That's the point of talking about costs. How many people in California are paying their electricity bills to a utility that covers just their neighborhood, and nobody else?
- bombcar 3y agoThe thread was talking about non-rooftop solar overloading the grid. But you don’t have to go straight from non-rooftop to multi square mile power plant - you can have an intermediary that would reduce grid stress and not increase it.
- anonuser123456 3y agoRooftop solar doesn’t need to pay for a grid. Residential generation is 0.06$/kwh. Residential storage is 0.20$/kwh. My power from the utility is 0.53$/kwh. If you look at power price increases in CA, you get a pretty good ROI today going solar+battery. But amortized battery prices are going to drop by 75% in the next 5 years (e.g. lifecycle improvement + cost reductions). If you have the capital, it’s going to be a no brained to go residential solar provided you are allowed to disconnect from the grid.
- pseudosavant 3y agoI happily have two solar systems and I have wondered this for a long time. Why can't I buy electricity generated from PV panels that an energy provider operates without putting those panels on my house? Why isn't the price to buy solar generated electricity from my utility company comparable to buying from a roof top solar company? I would assume that installing bespoke aftermarket systems one house at a time would not have a cost advantage over a project built to scale? I don't want to operate my own utility, just buy cheaper greener power.
- ThatPlayer 3y agoSolar is only cheap during the day. For the rest of the time, you still need other power plants, especially because during peak hours of 4-9pm, there's no solar. During peak solar, California have so much power that it is exported [0]. But you can't turn off natural gas generators, because they're slower to ramp up and down. With so much solar, gas has to be able to quickly ramp up to meet peak power. This is a problem they call the duck curve [1]. California doesn't need more solar, it needs more batteries. That's why the residential power buyback plan changed to incentivize batteries rather than just allowing 1:1 rates (new NEM 3.0). You probably got solar panels before that, as that changed just this year. With the old NEM2 1:1 rates, you're using the grid as a free battery during the night. [0] https://www.eia.gov/electricity/gridmonitor/dashboard/electric_overview/balancing_authority/CISO https://www.eia.gov/electricity/gridmonitor/dashboard/electr... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck_curve https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck_curve