4 ms·

It's not an unsolvable impasse, but it's tricky. Just the technological mechanisms for your example proposals are rather hard; the economic and social problems

by mlyle 3y ago

It's not an unsolvable impasse, but it's tricky. Just the technological mechanisms for your example proposals are rather hard; the economic and social problems are even harder. > This is not a consumers vs producers zero-sum issue. It's not zero sum, but if we externalize the entire cost of the infrastructure onto people who cannot deploy solar, it will be very inequitable; that's been the default path we've been on. And it's going to be an issue of significant debate what exactly is equitable and good policy.

abc_lisper 3y ago
Meh. Aren't there industrial, agricultural and public customers for electricity? Already, electricity in CA is among the expensive in the country. We do want to save the planet, right?
- mlyle 3y ago
  > Meh. Aren't there industrial, agricultural and public customers for electricity? Yes, but someone has to pay for transmission and distribution into (and out of) residential areas.
  - abc_lisper 3y ago
    So the solution is to charge more the people who already pay for their solar? Who now only get 8$ for 300$ for any additional electricity they produce(NEM 2.0, best case, or get 4c worth of electricity for every 1$ of electricity they produce in NEM 3.0)
    - mlyle 3y ago
      I don't think you're understanding my comments. I didn't defend current policy. I merely pointed out there's a big set of tradeoffs to be made and in the end it's a normative choice. Someone has to pay for transmission and distribution in residential areas. If the choice is "residential users without solar panels bear the full cost," you end up with apartment dwellers and the poor paying for all the infrastructure. Hence, IMO you have to do something and think carefully about policy to have reasonable outcomes and avoid unnecessary complexity. It's not zero sum, but it is a complicated social, technical, and economic problem. If we reach a good compromise, we should expect that few will be happy with it.

by mlyle 3y ago

abc_lisper 3y ago

Meh. Aren't there industrial, agricultural and public customers for electricity? Already, electricity in CA is among the expensive in the country. We do want to save the planet, right?

mlyle 3y ago
> Meh. Aren't there industrial, agricultural and public customers for electricity? Yes, but someone has to pay for transmission and distribution into (and out of) residential areas.
- abc_lisper 3y ago
  So the solution is to charge more the people who already pay for their solar? Who now only get 8$ for 300$ for any additional electricity they produce(NEM 2.0, best case, or get 4c worth of electricity for every 1$ of electricity they produce in NEM 3.0)
  - mlyle 3y ago
    I don't think you're understanding my comments. I didn't defend current policy. I merely pointed out there's a big set of tradeoffs to be made and in the end it's a normative choice. Someone has to pay for transmission and distribution in residential areas. If the choice is "residential users without solar panels bear the full cost," you end up with apartment dwellers and the poor paying for all the infrastructure. Hence, IMO you have to do something and think carefully about policy to have reasonable outcomes and avoid unnecessary complexity. It's not zero sum, but it is a complicated social, technical, and economic problem. If we reach a good compromise, we should expect that few will be happy with it.