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In an ideal world this should incentivise more people with single family homes and capital to invest in Solar + batteries and even with tariffs I am sure the br

In an ideal world this should incentivise more people with single family homes and capital to invest in Solar + batteries and even with tariffs I am sure the breakeven time will still be less than 10 years (also after accounting for the fact that utilities will not be paying a lot for your electricity though time of use pricing and batteries may help a bit)

bevr1337 1y ago
An ideal world doesn't look like land owners building moats. I work in energy/home automation. I'm burnt out.
- FirmwareBurner 1y ago
  We don't live in an ideal world though but in a world run by the incentives of the capital/asset owning class.
  - bevr1337 1y ago
    > In an ideal world this should incentivise... > An ideal world... > We don't live in an ideal world though... Yes. That was thoroughly established in the original comment and my reply. Have you come to look for an argument? Or to show off how pragmatic you are? What's your point besides "shit sucks?" If that's your point, I'm glad to commiserate. Shit sucks.
    - FirmwareBurner 1y ago
      >Have you come to look for an argument? Nope I just gave my opinion, but judging from your spiteful reply it's clearly you looking for an argument but I won't bite.
- mindslight 1y ago
  What's the target market of your business? I'm doing a DIY solar setup, plus a bunch of liberty-respecting automation, and often lament that there aren't better ways to make such things serviceable by contractors (when I'm gone, etc). It feels like every commercial offering I've seen is for extremely rich people's "dream houses", deploying expensive niche-commercial solutions in a very top-down manner (lots of homeruns of narrow-purpose cables to multiple racks in a centralized control room, etc).
  - bevr1337 1y ago
    > What's the target market of your business? > It feels like every commercial offering I've seen is for extremely rich people's "dream houses" You nailed it! I don't want to say much more because I do enjoy my scant little paycheck to build the moat SAAS
skappapab 1y ago
An ideal world the same companies who are heavily benefiting from subsidizing the American people would pay the lion share of this and then some. Instead, they get to offshore jobs or bring in H1Bs to further their bottom line.
hdgvhicv 1y ago
I looked at that, then the conservatives decided to subsidise electricity consumption to great acclaim, and that threw off the ROI and I bought an oil boiler and decided to not bother with rooftop solar as the time for return more than doubled. Thanks Boris, Yu confirmed that the market would be manipulated.
blindriver 1y ago
I live in the SF Bay Area. My rates have roughly doubled in about 5-6 years. I'm paying almost $0.50/kWh or more depending on what tier I'm in at the time. PG&E does NOT reward conservation or solar power usage. They say "We aren't make enough money! We need to raise your rates! We need to charge solar users to connect to the grid!" The exact same thing happens with water utility companies, when they first preach water conservation, and then complain they aren't making enough money so they have to raise rates. PG&E wants to charge solar power users $80+/month just for the privilege of connecting to the grid even if they are fully self-powers through solar, and give new users $0 to return energy back to the grid. The entire system is a scam, and every politician involved is a corrupt.
- skybrian 1y ago
  This is because California has so much solar that it can’t use it all during the day: https://www.gridstatus.io/charts/curtailment?iso=caiso https://www.gridstatus.io/charts/curtailment?iso=caiso From here on out, batteries are where it’s at. Overprovisioning solar helps, but the demand isn’t there and they aren’t going to pay much for it. (More utility-scale batteries would increase demand for solar somewhat, for charging them.) Meanwhile, California needs to maintain and improve the electrical grid to lower the risk of wildfires, but more solar in the wrong places doesn’t help much with that.
  - StillBored 1y ago
    Batteries are just an extension of the thinking that PV or Wind are 'cheap'. There is slight U shape in the price where an initial fraction lowers the cost, but then it just additional cost overhead. Cost shifting some of the excess solar into the evening to reduce the peak load there is fine, but then your still paying for a pile of excess backup capacity to sit around idle for those days when the sun doesn't shine, and adding more batteries beyond a certain point is the same. They just sit around idle most of the time adding to the cost. I've posted here napkin math for how much a W of solar or reliable PV actually costs and been down voted but the math is easy when you stop believing that a W from PV/Wind is the same as a W from your local Gas/Coal/Hydro/Nuke plant. All those gas plants and batteries sitting around idle soon start dominating the cost structure because the price of their produced watts starts to go exponential.
bboygravity 1y ago
Man that's some environmentalist centralist government planner thinking: mess up your energy policy so badly that prices rise like crazy and it starts making sense for people to switch to way more expensive ways to convert energy. Is this supposed to be positive?
- rasz 1y ago
  Its only more expensive in US, because of the government.
clickety_clack 1y ago
Why would an ideal world have electricity become so expensive that individuals have to construct their own power stations? I have better things to do with my time. I don’t want a society where we are designing incentives such that individuals to have to build and maintain all their own infrastructure.

bevr1337 1y ago

An ideal world doesn't look like land owners building moats. I work in energy/home automation. I'm burnt out.

FirmwareBurner 1y ago
We don't live in an ideal world though but in a world run by the incentives of the capital/asset owning class.
- bevr1337 1y ago
  > In an ideal world this should incentivise... > An ideal world... > We don't live in an ideal world though... Yes. That was thoroughly established in the original comment and my reply. Have you come to look for an argument? Or to show off how pragmatic you are? What's your point besides "shit sucks?" If that's your point, I'm glad to commiserate. Shit sucks.
  - FirmwareBurner 1y ago
    >Have you come to look for an argument? Nope I just gave my opinion, but judging from your spiteful reply it's clearly you looking for an argument but I won't bite.
mindslight 1y ago
What's the target market of your business? I'm doing a DIY solar setup, plus a bunch of liberty-respecting automation, and often lament that there aren't better ways to make such things serviceable by contractors (when I'm gone, etc). It feels like every commercial offering I've seen is for extremely rich people's "dream houses", deploying expensive niche-commercial solutions in a very top-down manner (lots of homeruns of narrow-purpose cables to multiple racks in a centralized control room, etc).
- bevr1337 1y ago
  > What's the target market of your business? > It feels like every commercial offering I've seen is for extremely rich people's "dream houses" You nailed it! I don't want to say much more because I do enjoy my scant little paycheck to build the moat SAAS

skappapab 1y ago

An ideal world the same companies who are heavily benefiting from subsidizing the American people would pay the lion share of this and then some. Instead, they get to offshore jobs or bring in H1Bs to further their bottom line.

hdgvhicv 1y ago

I looked at that, then the conservatives decided to subsidise electricity consumption to great acclaim, and that threw off the ROI and I bought an oil boiler and decided to not bother with rooftop solar as the time for return more than doubled. Thanks Boris, Yu confirmed that the market would be manipulated.

blindriver 1y ago

I live in the SF Bay Area. My rates have roughly doubled in about 5-6 years. I'm paying almost $0.50/kWh or more depending on what tier I'm in at the time. PG&E does NOT reward conservation or solar power usage. They say "We aren't make enough money! We need to raise your rates! We need to charge solar users to connect to the grid!" The exact same thing happens with water utility companies, when they first preach water conservation, and then complain they aren't making enough money so they have to raise rates. PG&E wants to charge solar power users $80+/month just for the privilege of connecting to the grid even if they are fully self-powers through solar, and give new users $0 to return energy back to the grid. The entire system is a scam, and every politician involved is a corrupt.

skybrian 1y ago
This is because California has so much solar that it can’t use it all during the day: https://www.gridstatus.io/charts/curtailment?iso=caiso https://www.gridstatus.io/charts/curtailment?iso=caiso From here on out, batteries are where it’s at. Overprovisioning solar helps, but the demand isn’t there and they aren’t going to pay much for it. (More utility-scale batteries would increase demand for solar somewhat, for charging them.) Meanwhile, California needs to maintain and improve the electrical grid to lower the risk of wildfires, but more solar in the wrong places doesn’t help much with that.
- StillBored 1y ago
  Batteries are just an extension of the thinking that PV or Wind are 'cheap'. There is slight U shape in the price where an initial fraction lowers the cost, but then it just additional cost overhead. Cost shifting some of the excess solar into the evening to reduce the peak load there is fine, but then your still paying for a pile of excess backup capacity to sit around idle for those days when the sun doesn't shine, and adding more batteries beyond a certain point is the same. They just sit around idle most of the time adding to the cost. I've posted here napkin math for how much a W of solar or reliable PV actually costs and been down voted but the math is easy when you stop believing that a W from PV/Wind is the same as a W from your local Gas/Coal/Hydro/Nuke plant. All those gas plants and batteries sitting around idle soon start dominating the cost structure because the price of their produced watts starts to go exponential.

bboygravity 1y ago

Man that's some environmentalist centralist government planner thinking: mess up your energy policy so badly that prices rise like crazy and it starts making sense for people to switch to way more expensive ways to convert energy. Is this supposed to be positive?

rasz 1y ago
Its only more expensive in US, because of the government.

clickety_clack 1y ago

Why would an ideal world have electricity become so expensive that individuals have to construct their own power stations? I have better things to do with my time. I don’t want a society where we are designing incentives such that individuals to have to build and maintain all their own infrastructure.