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Don’t underestimate how politicized renewables have become. You’d think essentially free energy would sell itself, but any time solar comes up in a rural commun

Don’t underestimate how politicized renewables have become. You’d think essentially free energy would sell itself, but any time solar comes up in a rural community there’s a whole host of bad faith “but what about x?” comments

himata4113 6mo ago
I do have a funny story to share for this specific case: A landowner wanted to run power to their land, they got quoted 100k and possibly 250k to run less than 2 miles of powerlines. The land owner fired back with the question of installing solar panels instead as it would be cheaper and free. The representitive replied with: "Look around you, there's no solar panels because they don't work." Less than 100k later, the landowner had full off-grid power via solar and a backup generator. I guess at the end of the day they saw all the sunshine around them and said: "You're right, all that sun is mine and mine alone."
- nashashmi 6mo ago
  2 miles of power line? 11k ft of line? For 100-250k$? About $10-23/ft? Sounds about right. I’m guessing the land was far from the right of way. And a little bit off road.
  - lazide 6mo ago
    Probably needed a transformer off a medium voltage distribution line too. It would also likely have some expensive maintenance at times.
enraged_camel 6mo ago
>> You’d think essentially free energy would sell itself I think it would if it was indeed “essentially free”. Rooftop solar is unfortunately a racket though, and companies price-gouge like crazy and also collude to keep prices inflated.
- CalRobert 6mo ago
  One of the things I like most about balcony solar is that you can DIY it (at least, in the places I know that have approved it) instead of getting scammed.
  - BizarroLand 6mo ago
    I have one of those terrible fake balconies on the front of my house. I am working on replacing it with a real deck/carport combo and will probably put 600w solar over it, should be room for 4-6 of them. That will be a 2-3kw solar install, not enough to replace my entire draw by a long shot, but enough to carve a pretty big dent out of it. I'm already going to be spending $10k-$15k on the deck/carport install plus the french doors to replace the window looking over the fake balcony, so what's another $3k-$5k for a modest solar install?
  - jauntywundrkind 6mo ago
    The disruption from below cycle is coming on hard here. I'm so excited for balcony solar. This is going to expand solar access for so many people & be such a great thing! It's also such radically better priced equipment when it's consumer focused. My little Bluetti Elite 100 v2 was $400. It's a 1kWh battery. But as much as anything I bought it because it takes 800W of solar input! On this tiny cheap thing! That's better solar input density than most of these stations, but also, the other guys don't really have an excuse: if you are making a power station like this, it's such a minimal extra cost to integrate a decent solar buck MPPT controller controller on too. 60v 20a capable mosfets transistors have become unfathomably high performance & affordable. There's all sorts of really amazing units being built. Zendure SolarFlow 2400 Pro doesn't come with batteries but is ~ 1500$ for a 3000w input unit. Not quite as good a proposition (2W:$1 again, but no battery) but is more home sized, to put down another data point. Lots of players & competition, vs the "buy Victron" age! (Still, that Victron reliability.) https://www.notebookcheck.net/Zendure-SolarFlow-2400-Pro-review-Is-the-XXL-balcony-solar-system-with-2-400-W-AI-worth-it.1261424.0.html https://www.notebookcheck.net/Zendure-SolarFlow-2400-Pro-rev... When there's so many contractors involved, it's like, yeah, give me the good expensive electronics; the marginal cost is whatever. I like how balcony solar is so disruptive from below though, how it breeds a cost conscious
kilroy123 6mo ago
Maybe, but the data speaks for itself. Texas, a huge oil state, is loaded with wind and solar and is leading the country in battery storage right now.
- cogman10 6mo ago
  Idaho is as well. AZ just has some of the dumbest rules in the US WRT to solar. It's a state where every home should have solar panels.
  - Jblx2 6mo ago
    Here is a source that claims that Arizona is the #2 state for residential solar. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1419901/us-residential-generation-from-solar-by-state/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1419901/us-residential-g...
- peterlada 6mo ago
  Lot of people died for that pragmatism. Froze to death in the outages of winter storms or overheated in the summer ones. Sustainability was the last resort.
- rconti 6mo ago
  Texas looks _almost_ as underserved by solar as AZ/NM in that map, TBH.
  - tadfisher 6mo ago
    AZ/NM have highly concentrated populations, so I would expect to see only a couple of hexagons over Phoenix and Albuquerque. Texas looking like that is pretty bad, but I suspect this has more to do with the data set. I would expect Texans to independently go for solar, given the... complications of their power market.
  - sjs382 6mo ago
    https://www.ercot.com/gridmktinfo/dashboards/fuelmix https://www.ercot.com/gridmktinfo/dashboards/fuelmix
saltyoldman 6mo ago
Rural conservative areas in CA are highly pro-solar. Mostly because PG&E is a company many do not like.
MetaWhirledPeas 6mo ago
I was shocked (pun) to hear how my relatives were each reacting to solar energy. One was rural and was concerned about nearby land getting turned into a solar farm. Another was concerned about farmland being edged out in favor of solar. And a third spent some time in emergency response on a solar farm and was off-put by their vastness and the electrical danger while traversing through them. Coincidentally this video emerged within a day of my conversation with the three of them. I shared it; they probably didn't watch it but it sure was pertinent. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtQ9nt2ZeGM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtQ9nt2ZeGM
- RankingMember 6mo ago
  That video is imho his best work, the ending made all the more powerful by how reserved he normally is.
  - AndrewDavis 6mo ago
    I really liked the land usage discussion. That (for the US) if you took the land currently being used to grow crops for ethanol based motor fuels. Turned them into solar farms you'd cover 80% of current grid demand. I was already pro renewables for a myriad of reasons. But that put the scale into a much better perspective.
    - andbberger 6mo ago
      or we could build like 200 more fission plants and rewild all that ethanol land. not really a compelling point in favor of solar land use this factoid...
      - iSnow 6mo ago
        That, however, would be vastly more expensive. Maybe worth it from an overall ecological PoV, but I doubt power companies have an appetite for the CAPEX involved.
    - svpk 6mo ago
colechristensen 6mo ago
I understand why. The people excited about it turned it into a other-shaming morality issue. That kind of behavior creates opposition. It got obviously associated by the Democratic party and thus a target for opposition for Republicans. The attention economy feeds on making people upset at each other so the fire was stoked so we have a nonsensical moral battle over renewable energy. If you want to ruin something and turn it into a needless battle, treat it like a moral imperative and start shaming people for not agreeing with you. No better way to harm a cause you care about.
- yks 6mo ago
  I know this narrative is very popular these days cause it allows to frame voting against one’s interests as some sort of justified rebellious act, but let’s not forget that the opposition to renewables is a decades in the making, paid for, “opinion-shaping” operation (uncharitably, brainwashing)
  - colechristensen 6mo ago
    Eh, I think the "political agenda" brainwashing is overrated and the real issue is more "anything to get me elected / to get people to watch advertisements". Abortion/environmentalism/crime/drugs/whatever are the selected political issues because it's what successfully gets people emotional to watch tv and vote. Sure there are people with agendas pushing these things but the real reason they're the issues is evolutionary -- the ideas at the center are there because they upset people not because they are the subject of dark motives of people pulling strings. They throw everything they think of at the wall and whatever sticks becomes the agenda.
- maxerickson 6mo ago
  Yeah, it's the people that think solar is relatively clean and has become cheap that are the problem, not the people that never grew out of oppositional defiance disorder.
HeyLaughingBoy 6mo ago
I was going to say that's weird because around here (I live in a rural community), all the new barns going up and many new houses, have solar panels on the roofs. Given the cost to run power hundreds, if not thousands of feet to an outbuilding, it's no wonder people are putting up solar. However, my general area is somewhat upscale, so that might account for it.

himata4113 6mo ago

I do have a funny story to share for this specific case: A landowner wanted to run power to their land, they got quoted 100k and possibly 250k to run less than 2 miles of powerlines. The land owner fired back with the question of installing solar panels instead as it would be cheaper and free. The representitive replied with: "Look around you, there's no solar panels because they don't work." Less than 100k later, the landowner had full off-grid power via solar and a backup generator. I guess at the end of the day they saw all the sunshine around them and said: "You're right, all that sun is mine and mine alone."

nashashmi 6mo ago
2 miles of power line? 11k ft of line? For 100-250k$? About $10-23/ft? Sounds about right. I’m guessing the land was far from the right of way. And a little bit off road.
- lazide 6mo ago
  Probably needed a transformer off a medium voltage distribution line too. It would also likely have some expensive maintenance at times.

enraged_camel 6mo ago

>> You’d think essentially free energy would sell itself I think it would if it was indeed “essentially free”. Rooftop solar is unfortunately a racket though, and companies price-gouge like crazy and also collude to keep prices inflated.

CalRobert 6mo ago
One of the things I like most about balcony solar is that you can DIY it (at least, in the places I know that have approved it) instead of getting scammed.
- BizarroLand 6mo ago
  I have one of those terrible fake balconies on the front of my house. I am working on replacing it with a real deck/carport combo and will probably put 600w solar over it, should be room for 4-6 of them. That will be a 2-3kw solar install, not enough to replace my entire draw by a long shot, but enough to carve a pretty big dent out of it. I'm already going to be spending $10k-$15k on the deck/carport install plus the french doors to replace the window looking over the fake balcony, so what's another $3k-$5k for a modest solar install?
- jauntywundrkind 6mo ago
  The disruption from below cycle is coming on hard here. I'm so excited for balcony solar. This is going to expand solar access for so many people & be such a great thing! It's also such radically better priced equipment when it's consumer focused. My little Bluetti Elite 100 v2 was $400. It's a 1kWh battery. But as much as anything I bought it because it takes 800W of solar input! On this tiny cheap thing! That's better solar input density than most of these stations, but also, the other guys don't really have an excuse: if you are making a power station like this, it's such a minimal extra cost to integrate a decent solar buck MPPT controller controller on too. 60v 20a capable mosfets transistors have become unfathomably high performance & affordable. There's all sorts of really amazing units being built. Zendure SolarFlow 2400 Pro doesn't come with batteries but is ~ 1500$ for a 3000w input unit. Not quite as good a proposition (2W:$1 again, but no battery) but is more home sized, to put down another data point. Lots of players & competition, vs the "buy Victron" age! (Still, that Victron reliability.) https://www.notebookcheck.net/Zendure-SolarFlow-2400-Pro-review-Is-the-XXL-balcony-solar-system-with-2-400-W-AI-worth-it.1261424.0.html https://www.notebookcheck.net/Zendure-SolarFlow-2400-Pro-rev... When there's so many contractors involved, it's like, yeah, give me the good expensive electronics; the marginal cost is whatever. I like how balcony solar is so disruptive from below though, how it breeds a cost conscious

kilroy123 6mo ago

Maybe, but the data speaks for itself. Texas, a huge oil state, is loaded with wind and solar and is leading the country in battery storage right now.

cogman10 6mo ago
Idaho is as well. AZ just has some of the dumbest rules in the US WRT to solar. It's a state where every home should have solar panels.
- Jblx2 6mo ago
  Here is a source that claims that Arizona is the #2 state for residential solar. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1419901/us-residential-generation-from-solar-by-state/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1419901/us-residential-g...
peterlada 6mo ago
Lot of people died for that pragmatism. Froze to death in the outages of winter storms or overheated in the summer ones. Sustainability was the last resort.
rconti 6mo ago
Texas looks _almost_ as underserved by solar as AZ/NM in that map, TBH.
- tadfisher 6mo ago
  AZ/NM have highly concentrated populations, so I would expect to see only a couple of hexagons over Phoenix and Albuquerque. Texas looking like that is pretty bad, but I suspect this has more to do with the data set. I would expect Texans to independently go for solar, given the... complications of their power market.
- sjs382 6mo ago
  https://www.ercot.com/gridmktinfo/dashboards/fuelmix https://www.ercot.com/gridmktinfo/dashboards/fuelmix

saltyoldman 6mo ago

Rural conservative areas in CA are highly pro-solar. Mostly because PG&E is a company many do not like.

MetaWhirledPeas 6mo ago

I was shocked (pun) to hear how my relatives were each reacting to solar energy. One was rural and was concerned about nearby land getting turned into a solar farm. Another was concerned about farmland being edged out in favor of solar. And a third spent some time in emergency response on a solar farm and was off-put by their vastness and the electrical danger while traversing through them. Coincidentally this video emerged within a day of my conversation with the three of them. I shared it; they probably didn't watch it but it sure was pertinent. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtQ9nt2ZeGM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtQ9nt2ZeGM

RankingMember 6mo ago
That video is imho his best work, the ending made all the more powerful by how reserved he normally is.
- AndrewDavis 6mo ago
  I really liked the land usage discussion. That (for the US) if you took the land currently being used to grow crops for ethanol based motor fuels. Turned them into solar farms you'd cover 80% of current grid demand. I was already pro renewables for a myriad of reasons. But that put the scale into a much better perspective.
  - andbberger 6mo ago
    or we could build like 200 more fission plants and rewild all that ethanol land. not really a compelling point in favor of solar land use this factoid...
    - iSnow 6mo ago
      That, however, would be vastly more expensive. Maybe worth it from an overall ecological PoV, but I doubt power companies have an appetite for the CAPEX involved.
  - svpk 6mo ago

colechristensen 6mo ago

I understand why. The people excited about it turned it into a other-shaming morality issue. That kind of behavior creates opposition. It got obviously associated by the Democratic party and thus a target for opposition for Republicans. The attention economy feeds on making people upset at each other so the fire was stoked so we have a nonsensical moral battle over renewable energy. If you want to ruin something and turn it into a needless battle, treat it like a moral imperative and start shaming people for not agreeing with you. No better way to harm a cause you care about.

yks 6mo ago
I know this narrative is very popular these days cause it allows to frame voting against one’s interests as some sort of justified rebellious act, but let’s not forget that the opposition to renewables is a decades in the making, paid for, “opinion-shaping” operation (uncharitably, brainwashing)
- colechristensen 6mo ago
  Eh, I think the "political agenda" brainwashing is overrated and the real issue is more "anything to get me elected / to get people to watch advertisements". Abortion/environmentalism/crime/drugs/whatever are the selected political issues because it's what successfully gets people emotional to watch tv and vote. Sure there are people with agendas pushing these things but the real reason they're the issues is evolutionary -- the ideas at the center are there because they upset people not because they are the subject of dark motives of people pulling strings. They throw everything they think of at the wall and whatever sticks becomes the agenda.
maxerickson 6mo ago
Yeah, it's the people that think solar is relatively clean and has become cheap that are the problem, not the people that never grew out of oppositional defiance disorder.

HeyLaughingBoy 6mo ago

I was going to say that's weird because around here (I live in a rural community), all the new barns going up and many new houses, have solar panels on the roofs. Given the cost to run power hundreds, if not thousands of feet to an outbuilding, it's no wonder people are putting up solar. However, my general area is somewhat upscale, so that might account for it.