A battle over solar power in Nevada

http://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-solar-power-buffett-vs-musk/

by elorant • 10 years ago

144 98 10 years ago

bloomberg.com

zrail• 10 years ago

Haven't finished the article yet, but that animated gif of Warren vs Elon is... something special.

tylersgordon• 10 years ago

Skip the article, view the gif... http://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-solar-power-buffett-v...

dogma1138• 10 years ago

Or don't unless you want this image for ever burned into your retinas....

Dwolb• 10 years ago

Gosh, I'm surprised and impressed at how non-traditional Bloomberg's digital content is. I've never seen a big name increasingly take these kinds of liberties on a continuing basis.

Rexxar2• 10 years ago

I wonder how they decide which article have such animation. Is it the journalists that ask for an animation or a graphic designer that looks at all articles and propose to add animations to some of them ?

andrewtbham• 10 years ago

The long term question here is will solar be distributed or centralized? I think the answer is distributed like the model Elon and solar city are using. It just doesn't makes sense for the old power companies like Buffet's NV Energy to maintain all the transmission lines when the cost of batteries falls.

fweespeech2• 10 years ago

Well, I think it really depends on the economics of grid storage and proximity.

For instance, there was someone saying they pay $.10/kwh year round on a thread the other day and it was due to their proximity to grid storage.

$.10 to .15/kwh is realistically the range battery technology will be in for the next 10-15 years, barring a major technological change. That simply is not going to be cost effective in many areas.

EDIT:

Since I can't post...

http://www.computerworld.com/article/2977655/sustainable-it/...

As energy push accelerates, battery costs set to plunge 60%
Lithium-ion (Li-on) batteries will drop from $550 per kilowatt hour (kWh) in 2014 to $200 per kWh by 2020; and flow battery prices will drop from $680 per kWh to $350 per kWh during the same time.

A daily cycle, 5 year battery is still going to be ~$.11/kwh in 2020.

You need generation + battery storage [combined] to get into the below $.15/kwh for it to make sense outside of peak June-Sept, 2-7pm times.

toomuchtodo3• 10 years ago

$.10 to .15/kwh is realistically the range battery technology will be in for the next 10-15 years

Forgive the lack of citation, but Goldman Sachs just put out a report on Tesla within the last few days, and they're estimating the cost of batteries dropping ~60% over 5 years due to the Gigafactory producing 35GW of storage each year.

EDIT: Found it, http://evannex.com/blogs/news/75718469-goldman-sachs-bullish...

"Discussing electric vehicle batteries, Goldman reports that: "technological advances play a significant role, growing economies of scale are the key driver of cost reductions. Led by Tesla and Panasonic’s 35GW Gigafactory, battery manufacturers have committed to approximately triple current production capacity over the next five years [Exhibit 36].... Autos analysts forecast the battery range for lower performance EVs to increase by over 70%, while battery costs are expected to fall by more than 60% over the next five years [Exhibit 37].""

epistasis4• 10 years ago

Solid pricing information for large quantities of batteries is hard to get, but GM recently disclosed their price to be $145/kWh, and apparently LG Chem's other customers are paying around ~$100 more/kWh [1].

Is your $0.11/kWh price just for the stored amount at $200/kWh? That conversion factor to kWh-stored prices is more favorable than I've been using, as I've been assuming about ~1000 cycles worth of storage, but then I don't really have a good number for that.

Since not all energy will need to be stored, and much (most?) can be used right away, then it will increase the overall cost of energy only by the X% that needs to be stored. So if solar is $0.05/kWh, and 50% can be used right away, then the overall cost for solar + storage would be $0.105/kWh on the generation side. Which is quite competitive already.

http://insideevs.com/lg-chem-ticked-gm-disclosing-145kwh-bat...

jonknee• 10 years ago

I think there will be both. In dense areas there is more electricity demand than available space for panels. There are also lots of very sunny areas without any people in the way.

Gravityloss2• 10 years ago

Couldn't one argue exactly the opposite? Since, due to physics, electricity is very hard to store and there are already transmission lines, why not use them?

There are going to be factories that probably can't realistically be supported by batteries. Another alternative is to run only in the summer and on sunny days. Or to do all heavy industry/manufacturing close to hydro, nuclear or geothermal power sources. In a sense, it would be a return towards the old mill brook economy.

They recently opened a big subsea transmission cable between Netherlands and Norway. Norway has mountains for hydro load balancing while Netherlands has wind turbines for volatile production.

maxerickson2• 10 years ago

The factory nearby here (a paper mill) has a larger power plant than the ~35,000 people that live in the area.

They aren't going to switch to something less reliable than the natural gas line feeding the plant, nor are they going to switch to something more expensive.

It typically only shuts down for several weeks a year and isn't all that profitable (at least, the owners keep going bankrupt, 4 or 5 times in the recent 20 years), I doubt running less would help.

epistasis4• 10 years ago

Since, due to physics, electricity is very hard to store and there are already transmission lines,

You're going to have to actually argue "due to physics" on this one, it's far more like "due to technology and engineering.

Transmission lines are hugely expensive, involve stringing valuable materials for miles. The cost is going to vary widely throughout the grid, but the EIA estimates an average of ~$0.04/kWh across the entire US [1].

Most storage costs are somewhat easier to estimate, as batteries costs are well known. Current prices on new lithium ion batteries put the cost at ~$0.15-$0.20/kWh. This is probably not the most cost effective storage model, vanadium redox flow batteries, or hydro storage, or used car lithium ion batteries will drive this down substantially. Also, storage costs are dropping dramatically, while transmission costs are unlikely to change much.

For many locations, it may make far more sense to pay $0.20/kWh than to build out the grid to that location. And this is definitely true for many locations, even in California, that are only a few miles away from grid-connected homes. It's all a matter of the costs of current technology, discount rates for the cost of up-front capital investments, and the expected tech curve.

Long-distance transmission does have the potential to hugely improve the cost-effectiveness of intermittent renewables. A recent study tried to optimize costs using high-voltage DC interties between US grids to distribute renewable energy across the country, and found that storage was not necessary, even when transitioning a huge percentage of the power source to renewables. [2]

There are going to be factories that probably can't realistically be supported by batteries

This again is all a matter of cost. I do think that transmission can help a ton here. But I think there's going to be both time shifting (storage) and distance shifting (transmission) in the future.

I think that people underestimate the rate at which storage will get cheap, just as they did with wind and solar, but that's just my humble opinion.

[1] http://www.eia.gov/forecasts/aeo/pdf/tbla8.pdf

[2] http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/01/making-a-single-us-el...

ZeroGravitas2• 10 years ago

In Australia the grid in already encouraging some outlying towns to leave the grid as just maintaining existing grid connections over long distances is more expensive that creating a micro-grid for them.

sremani• 10 years ago

Long term, it will be distributed but Utilities are fighting their fight. They want to collect rent on transmission lines, so we are not too far away where Solar customers would have accept that they have to pay say $50 fee for connecting to grid etc. That may help the utilities medium term, but if wall-mounts become economical, we may truly see off-grid take off.

Eridrus• 10 years ago

There would need to be a massive oversupply of energy to make a distributed model work since you can't share the excess you have or get extra when you need it.

I don't think people would be happy moving to a battery-only model where if their power usage spiked they were SOL until they installed more solar.

And that's assuming everyone has the space to install enough solar; residential high rises certainly wouldn't be able to power themselves unless they coated their sides with solar panels, and that may not even work in dense neighborhoods.

Unless the whole solar + battery kit was significantly cheaper than grid solar, not just on a per watt basis, but with all the overcapacity you need for fluctuations to not be brutal, I doubt the predominant model will be distributed.

grondilu• 10 years ago

Isn't solar power more efficient when concentrated? That should favor centralized solutions, shouldn't it?

epistasis4• 10 years ago

What type of efficiency are you talking about? For kWh/$ efficiency, non-concentrated flat-panel solar is the most efficient.

Concentrated solar power in practice is usually thermally based, heating up something and then generating electricity from that. It's more expensive, but also is a form of storage, so depending on the use case it may be cheaper over all, but that's highly dependent on the situation.

prostoalex5• 10 years ago

Distributed to what level - block, township, city, county, state? SCTY and others are already experimenting with "community storage" http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/Lesson-Learned-F...

rwj2• 10 years ago

As you seem imply, the trade-off here is between the costs of distribution and economies of scale. However, without numbers for the various costs, I don't see how you can make a prediction.

erikb• 10 years ago

The panels themself will be decentralized but I believe that every business will be centralized once it's profitable in itself and in widespread use. E.g. the gas in the car is yours, but the gas station is a global huge giant that has more control over gas than you.

jedberg4• 10 years ago

The problem here stems from two things:

1) Net metering means that the power company is required to buy electricity at retail rates from their customers instead of wholesale rates, which puts quite a burden on them. Why should they have to buy at a higher rate?

2) Electric companies for decades have been rolling the cost of transmission into the variable rate portion of people's bills. This means that larger consumers (who tend to be richer) have been subsidizing the poorer customers. This is generally considered a good thing by most, since it allows poorer people to have electricity (because you don't want to live in a society where some people have electricity and some don't). The solution here is to raise the fixed portion of the bill to cover the true cost of transmission, and then place a tax on those who go "off grid" to straight out subsidize the poor, so it's more obvious that is what is happening (And presumably most people would still support).

toomuchtodo3• 10 years ago

The solution here is to raise the fixed portion of the bill to cover the true cost of transmission, and then place a tax on those who go "off grid" to straight out subsidize the poor, so it's more obvious that is what is happening (And presumably most people would still support).

Its going to be untenable to tax someone for no longer using the electric utility (I'm revolted by that idea personally, and am pretty far left bleeding liberal).

You could possibly further subsidize low income electric consumers to have their own system installed using the federal general fund (solar installations receive a 30% tax credit; it might be possible to increase that credit to 50%-75% depending on your adjusted gross income, and have it be a rebate immediately applied at the time of system install).

jedberg4• 10 years ago

Its going to be untenable to tax someone for no longer using the electric utility (I'm revolted by that idea personally, and am pretty far left bleeding liberal).

Which is amusing, because you already pay the tax in the form of variable rate usage pricing that is higher than it needs to be. This is the problem with making hidden subsidies explicit -- people suddenly don't like the subsidy anymore.

Lawtonfogle• 10 years ago

Its going to be untenable to tax someone for no longer using the electric utility (I'm revolted by that idea personally, and am pretty far left bleeding liberal).

How is that worse than any other tax? You make a choice and the government charges you for making that choice.

nostrademons2• 10 years ago

Customers have had to buy electricity from power companies at retail rates rather than wholesale rates since forever. Why should they have to buy at a higher rate?

jedberg4• 10 years ago

For a couple of reasons.

- They aren't transmitting it, which has a cost. They aren't providing value add like the power company.

- They could pay wholesale if they figured out a way to get the electricity from the power plant to their house, which is the value add that the power company provides.

- They have a choice in how much they buy, by turning things on and off. The power company, being a regulated utility, does not have that choice. They must buy as much as is demanded.

vox_mollis• 10 years ago

Obviously because the utility provides the somewhat important role of actually transmitting and distributing the power in question.

Magic faeries don't hand out rights-of-way, substations, 150kv switchyards, transformers, capacitors, conductors, pole provisioning, pylons, transfer switches, and the maintenance of all of the above for free.

Net metering is stealing from those who provide the distribution infrastructure, full stop.

secabeen• 10 years ago

The history of net metering comes out of the fact that for many years, smart meters for electricity were very expensive, and not widely deployed. As such, net metering was a natural solution to the billing problem. A user who over-produced for their needs would just run the meter backwards during sunny days, and forwards at night, creating a net metering situation.

It's only with Smart Meters that the utilities can accurately measure per-house production and consumption separately. It's certainly possible to create new billing plans that take advantage of the Smart Meters, but with the capital nature of solar investments, there's a lot of legacy installs to deal with, and those people get angry when they deal they signed up for is changed without grandfathering them into the old way.

ju-st• 10 years ago

No, you can just connect two dumb meters. One counts the energy consumption and the other the production.

rhino3693• 10 years ago

Net metering has always been a subsidy for distributed solar. That's what it's intended as.

If you just wanted to account for peak pricing, you could just create a wholesale solar price that estimated average wholesale price for solar in a given area. You could get pretty damn close without having install smart meters.

fmihaila• 10 years ago

The conventional wisdom is that rooftop solar stresses the grid, and therefore net metering at retail prices amounts to a subsidy extracted from non-solar customers to the benefit of rooftop solar owners.

This, however, is a myth (reinforced at every turn by the incumbent monopolies). Rooftop solar tends to overproduce on the hottest days, which also happens to be the time when the grid is overloaded by air conditioners running at full throttle. In effect, rooftop solar is at maximum production exactly when the grid needs it the most, thus providing very valuable load smoothing. This greatly benefits utilities, since they don’t have to spend as much on peak-generation capacity.

There is ample evidence that utilities underpay for these benefits [1], while their profits rapidly increase. Three major Nevada casino operators “have expressed vocal criticism of NV Energy for generating huge profits over the past years and not lowering rates for customers of Nevada Power. [...] NV Energy’s profits increased 27.7% in 2014, yet the supplier has not introduced any electricity rates breaks to its customers since it was acquired by Berkshire Hathaway.“ [2]

Over the short term, the incumbents will get their way by flexing their political muscle, but this will only delay the inevitable. Electricity spot prices are at their highest during daytime, while people are at work and their solar generators put power into the grid. Utilities want to pay wholesale for this power, then turn around and sell it to non-solar consumers at the top rate. People return from work as their solar generators become inactive, so they will have to buy power at retail rates. For now, utilities will win both ways.

But what this means is that as storage prices drop, it will be more economical to invest in storage capacity in order to capture the valuable power during the day and use it during the night. This will deny utilities the demand-smoothing services that they currently enjoy, so they will have to increase their capex for peak generation, leading to higher rates for everyone else, which in turn will encourage _more_ customers to install solar and storage, etc. Soon after, people will start disconnecting from the grid altogether; welcome to Uber Energy.

Tectonic plates accumulate tension slowly, but they rearrange quickly.

[1] http://cleantechnica.com/2015/09/01/review-of-net-metering-s...

[2] http://www.casinonewsdaily.com/2015/11/26/major-casino-opera...

[reposted from a previous discussion on the topic because the thread had dropped off the front page when the comment was written]

dpierce99• 10 years ago

One reason net-metering is close to fair is that we are talking about delivered electricity. Every unit I send back to the grid is a unit that doesn't need to be delivered by the power company but the power company can sell it to my neighbor for retail price.

A second reason net-metering is close to fair is because mid-day units of electricity are more valuable. Solar production peaks midday while household usage is U-shaped, so most production flows out to the grid during the high-price periods. Rates average peak and off-peak pricing so rate customers typically don't see that.

In other words, solar production produces high-value kWhs the utility can sell to my neighbor for retail, even though they don't have to generate or deliver it themselves.

tomp3• 10 years ago

I don't understand your logic for "more valuable" - there's more electricity at midday (because sun) and less usage (because sun and people are at work), so more supply & less demand => price drops, not rises!

WaylonKenning5• 10 years ago

Hey, as someone who used to work for an energy utility looking at setting up a solar market place, there's some info you're missing:

- The wholesale price is the cost of generating electricity. The retail price includes the cost of serving the customer, i.e. billing. Sure, there are less transmission costs, but in New Zealand they only play about 20% of the retail cost.

- Also, just because midday rates of electricity are high, those high rates tend to subsidise the cost of running the network when rates are low (i.e. other times). Power Stations don't come for free. People want security of supply, but then to be able to poach from the most profitable parts of the day?

tmrgn2• 10 years ago

The high-value kWH logic only holds true with a negligible amount of running solar capacity, however. If we realize the vision of a massive restructuring of energy provision towards photovoltaics, we also have to remodel how to determine the fair price for solar production. In Germany, for example, wholesale rates on sunny days are severely depressed since a few years (which doesn't hurt producers, however, since they were guaranteed fixed feed-in rates, but electricity consumers in general who have to pay for the support programs.)

DrScump• 10 years ago

Your entire premise assumes that there is an immediate, local, retail consumer who will buy all of your production the instant you produce it. Under the net-metering model, the utility has to pay you retail for the power even if it is surplus and unsellable.

crdoconnor2• 10 years ago

Net metering means that the power company is required to buy electricity at retail rates from their customers instead of wholesale rates, which puts quite a burden on them. Why should they have to buy at a higher rate?

It always amuses me when people complain that we're not being "fair" to monopolies.

The whole set up isn't fair. There's no market discipline on the transmission side, so there's no point in transmission being privatized at all.

It's clearly not politically feasible (yet) to push for nationalization but there's no reason to indulge their whinging either.

Gibbon1• 10 years ago

Oh yeah, low risk business where the government backstops any losses? By rights investors shouldn't expect very high returns.

Also yes with power distribution you have long tail network effects that make charging for service using pure market mechanisms essentially impossible. Hint, when the US stopped subsidizing rail by things like land grants and turning a blind eye to graft, they all went bankrupt.

prostoalex5• 10 years ago

Electric companies for decades have been rolling the cost of transmission into the variable rate portion of people's bills.

Perhaps this is the problem, both at ownership and billing level. Why does the utility get to own the power lines instead of the citizens (via local governments and municipalities)? How do you know if utility's claim of the cost of transmission is correct, when they still manage to pay out bonuses to themselves and produce dividends for shareholders? As a consumer you're supposed to blindly trust their statements on costs.

strommen• 10 years ago

These are _potential_ problems. They will become real problems when a significant amount of electricity is generated from rooftop solar. That isn't happening yet - according to the article, Nevada has already capped rooftop solar at 3% of peak demand.

Net metering needs to be phased out at some point in the future. Not ended abruptly today.

LordKano• 10 years ago

I think I'm missing something in your position.

Why is the solution to tax people who go off grid?

7952• 10 years ago

I may be naive, but it would seem more logical to charge consumers solely for the transmission and roll the price of production into that (rather than the other way around). So that the rate you pay per kWh would depend on your proximity to where power is actually being generated on an hourly basis. If you are connected to a substation that is exporting power you would pay less than one that is importing.

If energy costs are so dependant on location and distance why don't we actually acknowledge that in the pricing? If your city is not generating energy why should it pay the same price as one that is?

dpierce99• 10 years ago

In the US wholesale energy prices are locational and determined by three things: the cost of energy, congestion in the transmission network, and losses in delivery. Retail rates are also locational but principally determined by state-level organizations (Public Utility Commissions) who regulate the natural monopolies who control the distribution network in the state so they are unable to charge monopoly rents. Rate setting in most places is a very political process.

paulsutter• 10 years ago

In Germany, wholesale power prices can actually go negative on sunny afternoons. Conditions in the US are trending towards that.

Why should actual generators get paid low (or negative) wholesale prices at the exact same moment that some consumer gets paid full retail rates? It doesn't make sense.

Very practically, this is illustrated by California's duck curve. Also from Bloomberg:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-10-21/california...

It has nothing to do with Musk and Buffet. How do you price power, both wholesale and retail, in a way that recognizes that there's a need to provide power even when it has been overcast for three weeks? It's crazy to unfairly penalize power companies just because the public loves solar power.

It's a complicated question.

cbr• 10 years ago

Specifically: http://assets.bwbx.io/images/ilVXr6BF7iAU/v4/-1x-1.png

ZeroGravitas2• 10 years ago

It's a little weird that the article claims that the problem is worst in winter, when there is least sun.

Also, that graph is unreadable? I'm already aware of what the duck curve is, and I can't make head nor tail of it.

skolos2• 10 years ago

You are talking about spot market prices, not wholesale power prices. Most of the wholesale prices are established in forward markets (several months to a day ahead) and I don't remember ever seeing them negative. So following your logic it would be unfair that some power plants can run and earn positive income (when their production is sold forward) at the same time when other need to pay to run (when their production is sold on spot market). But there is nothing wrong in this - that's how balancing in power markets works.

Also you mentioned that wholesale and retail power prices can be very different. There are multiple of reasons why this is the case, but the important result is that consumers do not understand how balancing market works and why prices can be one hour $1000 and the next negative. If we want to encourage solar power installations by retail customers the pricing should also be based on retail model.

So I would disagree that your comment about negative prices is relevant to how prices should be set for power produced by home solar panels.

But I do agree - it is quite complicated question as most questions concerning power grid.

Rexxar2• 10 years ago

Meta comment : it's always surprising to see how different is the destiny of a submission based on timing and randomness. For example, my previous submission of this link got only one vote. (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11052575)

jtlien1• 10 years ago

It reminds me of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthurs Court after the Interdict came down and stopped all that progress. Our Interdict is the PUC, regulation, lobbyists and corrupt political decisions, then subsidies and more counter subsidies. No, rooftop solar is not a no brainer anywhere. Try to figure in the cost of energy storage which is still astronomical in price. Or jump into 100 years of utility regulation fights when all we need is power generation that should be just based on common law rights etc and competitive capitalism only.

tlrobinson• 10 years ago

"All this has enraged independent, free-market, and environmentally conscious Nevadans."

...

"Nevada forces utilities to buy the excess energy at rates set by regulators"

How was the government forcing utilities to buy excess energy at mandated rates "free market"?

rwj2• 10 years ago

Plus there is the fact that utilities are state-regulated monopolies... Until you have competing utility providers, it isn't much of a market.

rifung• 10 years ago

All this has enraged independent, free-market, and environmentally conscious Nevadans.

I'm all for green energy, but how is leasing solar panels that are government subsidized and then having companies forced to buy back electricity at a set price considered part of a "free market"?

landryraccoon• 10 years ago

They might be more upset about being forced to pay to not be connected to the grid. It's not free market if a customer can't refuse to be connected to the grid and refuse to pay for it.

r00fus• 10 years ago

It's not. The energy production market is nowhere near a free market, thus these pricing absurdities for net metering.

WaylonKenning5• 10 years ago

This whole article is weird to me as a New Zealander, since most of the problems comes from weirdly, not letting the market set the buy-back rate of electricity.

I worked for one of New Zealand's largest electricity generators and retailers, and we investigated a solar market. Here's how it works.

Electricity is broken up into generation costs, distribution costs, retail costs, regulatory costs, and profit.

Generation capacity goes up and down throughout the day, as does demand. In New Zealand an automated auction happens 30 minutes where generators bid in electricity at a price. The system operator then buys capacity required at any particular area at the cheapest price that is available. This sets the wholesale price of electricity.

This then gets distributed by the system operator throughout the country to a local lines company. They maintain the power lines to your house, but also to that person in the middle of nowhere.

The energy company figures out how much you've consumed, and bills you. Of course, when you have a problem, you call them, so there's a call centre always available as well.

Finally, there are taxes and levies that the government applies.

After all that, if there's anything left over between the retail price, and the sum of those costs, well, that's the profit.

The weird bit is, where do you set the buyback rate for solar? The retail price? But there's so much expenses there, not all of which are the retailer's cost. The fair price of the market is the generating price, or wholesale price. But, there maybe political incentives to set a higher rate, as well as cap the number of people who can get that higher rate.

But if you want it sustainable for everybody, then using the wholesale rate makes more sense.

skolos2• 10 years ago

What you just said is that the buyback rate should be somewhere between wholesale rate and retail. There is no clear cut way to figure out what it should be so regulators and politicians get involved in setting the rate.

"Sustainable for everybody" argument can be used on both sides - if rate is set too low, the solar panel owners subsidize the rest of the customers if it is set too high then other customers subsidize solar panel owners.

So the argument is not as clear as you tried to make it sound.

WaylonKenning5• 10 years ago

There is a clear cut way - the wholesale rate. In New Zealand, an auction happens every 30 minutes where demand is tallied by the system operator (Transpower) at a Grid Extraction Point, and generators bid in what they think it's worth.

The system operator then purchases the cheapest electricity available (taking into account demand is different throughout the network, and the network can't transfer all electricity to all parts of the grid because of line constraints).

This is the cost of the 'raw materials' of the retail electricity price. A solar panel on your house really isn't any different that a little power station. You still have to transport that electricity somewhere, maintain those lines, maintain the voltage, run a power station when it gets dark, bill you, etc.

It's not a big conspiracy, it's just that the cost of energy makes up about half the costs of the electricity system. If you set at a rate higher than the wholesale rate, then there must be other reasons to do so rather than pure financials.

A good example would be if an Energy Utility wanted to attract solar customers, sell them solar systems, and put it on the bill to make them more sticky customers.

dang• 10 years ago

We changed the title so it wouldn't be ludicrous linkbait. If anyone can suggest a better (more accurate and neutral) title, we're happy to change it again.

Submitters: the HN guidelines ask you not to use the original title when it is linkbait or misleading. Please change it in such cases, preferably using a subtitle or representative phrase from the article. (I couldn't find one in this case, but if anyone else does, let us know.)

chinathrow2• 10 years ago

"For years the state provided rebates for homeowners who wanted to go solar through a lottery system."

What the heck...

chinathrow2• 10 years ago

On a second thought, the utilities should have never been privatised.

cjensen• 10 years ago

Here's the problem with Net Metering: suppose you have two neighbors with exactly the same sunlight conditions:

1. A person whose house is large, inefficient, and uses a lot of electricity

2. A person with a small efficient house.

If both of these people buy the exact same solar panels and generate the exact same amount of electricity, then the utility has to pay #1 a lot more money than #2. (If you really want to ramp up the rhetoric, call #1 rich and #2 poor, and ask why the rich guy gets paid more for his solar power)

How does this happen? In order to encourage conservation, we have different price tiers. The more electricity you use the higher the price per usage is. When the solar "rolls the meter backwards", it's rolling away the high-cost tier from the wasteful guy, and the low-cost tier from the conservationist.

We want to encourage solar generation, so it makes sense that solar generators should be paid more per kWh. Net Metering is the Wrong Way to accomplish this goal.

A battle over solar power in Nevada

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