[opo]

The consumer rooftop solar cost is usually one of the most expensive ways you can generate electricity - often several times the cost of utility solar installations. The high rooftop solar price is usually hidden (at least in the USA) because no power source has been as subsidized as rooftop solar. Besides direct subsidies, wealthier home owners have often been paid the retail rate for the electricity they sell to the grid. This causes higher electricity bills for those in apartments and those who can't afford to put panels on their roof. Also, in almost all cases, the home installation doesn’t have enough battery power to actually last through inclement weather and so is free riding on the reliability provided by the grid, putting more costs on the less well off. The whole thing is sort of a reverse Robin Hood scheme.

Rooftop solar is good but it shouldn't be a gift to the wealthier residents paid for by those less wealthy. Any subsidies for solar power should go to utility grade solar. Money is limited and is fungible - a dollar spent subsidizing utility solar will go much, much, further than a dollar spent subsidizing wealthy homeowners who install panels on their roof.

[nicoburns]

> The high rooftop solar price is usually hidden (at least in the USA)

My understanding is that the (unsubsidised) price of rooftop solar is only high in the USA. Because the cost is almost entirely labor (high in the US) and issues around permitting (more restrictive in the US). Pretty much everywhere else in the world you'll now save money with rooftop solar + batteries even if you can't sell back to the grid at all. Even places that aren't that sunny like the UK where I live.

It is still more expensive than "grid scale" deployments. But there are positive externalities that make up for that: uses otherwise unused space, less grid capacity needed, adds resiliency to the grid (if implemented well with storage).

[enslavedrobot]

Rooftop solar in Australia is ~60cents per Watt installed.

[balderdash]

in the US - admittedly 4 years old info, the cost of utility scale solar was like ~$1/watt - rooftop solar was like $2.5-$3/watt

[enslavedrobot]

I recently specced a 500kW project. Quote was $CA1.67/Watt. But I'm pretty sure they would have bumped that up a lot higher later in the process if we hadn't stopped due to permitting hurdles.

[subhobroto]

> Besides direct subsidies, wealthier home owners have often been paid the retail rate for the electricity they sell to the grid. This causes higher electricity bills for those in apartments and those who can't afford to put panels on their roof

I don't think you thought this up yourself, so I won't blame you for it, as this exact, word for word swill is mindlessly repeated by a lot of people, so thats ample evidence of brainwashing going on.

The subsidies and retail rate (both of which have been murdered by now thanks to swill like this) incentives were not a sneaky reverse welfare program snuck in by the wealthy.

They were infrastructure incentives for people who could afford to make those infrastructure investments.

Investments have always required incentives and a positive ROI. You don't put money into your 401k, Roth or HSA because you expect to lose money in 20 years.

The goal of solar subsidies was never some sneaky wealth redistribution with unforseen sideeffects but rather to rally support from the private industry and wealthy homes to spearhead rapid decarbonization, energy independence, and grid decentralization.

A single mother treading water, barely being able to afford groceries isn't your persona for actually making rapid decarbonization, energy independence, and grid decentralization happen - however, the wealthy that you so despise of, certainly put a 10kWh (sometimes more) PV array on their 3000 sqft rooftop and actually feed power to the grid that was reeling under tremendous growing strain.

People hanging portable solar panels from the balconies of their apartments barely make power to run their kitchen fridge so that's out as well.

Mom and pop landlords and corporate run apartments aren't going to put solar for their tenants because they are not legally allowed to sell power above utility rates while they don't enjoy the 10% guaranteed ROI that utilities get (which is where utilities actually make their money), so that's out too.

This makes me sad - We could have had a future where the grid was fully decentralized, where our single mother neighbor would never had to worry about the lights getting turned off even when there was a downed power line or wildfire or a snowstorm turning down power lines half a mile away, where she could plug in her EV into my shed instead of having to drive miles away to a crowded charging station.

We are numbers people here - so here's a numbers perspective:

If I had taken the same money I had to spend on a "grid compliant" installation (so I could connect all of this to the grid) and put it into the SNP500 instead, I would never have had to worry just about a power bill (as bad it is - $0.60/kWh) but also my inflation adjusted grocery bills for the rest of my life.

[opo]

You won't convince many people if you think ad hominem attacks and insults are acceptable. Yes, subsidies are done to help drive adoption. The key is that the subsidies should go where they can do the most good. Money is limited and is fungible - a dollar spent subsidizing utility solar will go much, much, further to decarbonizing the grid than a dollar spent subsidizing rooftop residential solar.

[subhobroto]

My response is the opposite of ad hominem. It's me noticing and acknowledging that a large group of people comment on energy policy who understand neither energy nor policy but feel confident to both vote and comment on energy policy because they have been brainwashed.

> a dollar spent subsidizing utility solar will go much, much, further to decarbonizing the grid than a dollar spent subsidizing rooftop residential solar

That's completely, trivially provably wrong.

For one, rooftop residential allows decentralization and redundancy. Customers can have their house continue to run while the grid as a whole is down.

Utility solar absolutely does not - solar here is just another source of energy into the centralized grid. From a physics and math perspective, that source of energy could very well have been a coal plant. It doesn't have the same decentralized and redundancy benefit as a 10kWh PV array and a 30kWh battery on a home where the home no longer even needs the grid anymore.

Any rational consumer would appreciate having power than not - We cannot argue physics and math or consumer demands - that's just insanity.

A person who repeatedly argues against this basic math doesn't have the best interest of the consumer in mind. Further, when there's a group of people who repeatedly argues the same illogical swill using the same phrasing as the others, it's a cult.

I could go on and on but I have learned that arguing with brainwashed people takes a lot of time and effort and most of the time, in the end, it ends in a stalemate. Most of the time, it reenforces them they are right and the other side is ignorant and "doesnt get it". No thank you.

On this very thread a person who actually designs and implements grid projects agreed that the only objective utility solar serves are those of the utilities themselves.

The reason why this person is provably correct is because you could come to the same conclusion from first principles as well. To most people, the above statement is a "duh!" moment.

They gave solid, clear, objective examples of how utilities have other much higher priorities than ensuring consumers have access to the most affordable, reliable, resilient power.

They further gave evidence and insight into how the way utilities fund their infrastructure projects actively make them opposed to what's good for the consumer, because decentralization and redundancy would collapse the value of existing collateral.

Now that's a high quality, high value, high merit discussion.

When someone comes and lectures me about how my dollars should go towards initiatives that absolutely do not help me, rather makes me even more dependent on a 3rd party that doesn't have me as their first priority, I dont care about what they have to say especially when I have options available where my dollars directly go towards initiatives that absolutely do help me.

The most generous interpretation I have of their motives is that they are brainwashed.

I would encourage beginning from first principles, gaining clarity into what the final objective is - to provide affordable, redundant, reliable, resilient power to the consumer or to ensure the utility has smoother operations and a tighter grip over the consumer and ensure the consumer is completely dependent on the utility?

If the brainwashing isn't complete and there's a tiny chance of a breakthrough, maybe changing domains would help?

What's better for a local economy that has willing, capable backyard farmers:

- allow them to sell their product that meets all regulatory requirements, to other willing consumers at the same market clearing price or

- destroy them completely and remove any incentives for them to grow, in favor of having a massive, centralized farm?

[enslavedrobot]

I have some experience with distributed energy generation and have met with senior utility executives many times while trying to implement some grant supported projects through my work.

It turns out that a big problem is that whenever we install local generation it costs utilities a ton of money. They bundle the cost of grid maintenance into their per kWh charges. These costs, which include debt service, maintenance, upgrades etc amount to 5-7 cents/kWh. Whenever you generate your own energy you cost the utility 5-7cents/kWh that they have to pay regardless of your usage.

This business model, which has bundled grid maintenance into usage costs means that utilities put up huge roadblocks for distributed generation. They say they love it, but they actually hate it. Utility executives have looked me in the eye and said as much.

It gets worse though, because energy infrastructure is backed by trillions in utility bonds. These "low risk" debt instruments are owned by national and private pension funds of mind boggling size. In order to bring about a distributed energy future the grid (and low pressure nat gas infrastructure) must be reorganized in a manner that is likely to make those bonds worthless. These background factors are definitely in play when you see these bait and switch enthusiastic green energy programs that turn out to be a regulatory quagmire when you dig into them. Public utilities and pension funds hate green energy, they are a major factor in west's pathetic performance when it comes to solar adoption vs China.

[subhobroto]

> It turns out that a big problem is that whenever we install local generation it costs utilities a ton of money

So a question:

- Lets hypothesize that distributed, decentralized systems cost way more than centralized systems

- If you agree with that hypothesis, can we next hypothesize that building a distributed, decentralized system that can support power on one block and can allow it to continue to stay on while the "central feeder line" (please tell me the proper word for this made up word is) to all the blocks is down, because that one block has a local distributed, decentralized power source, is of value to the community?

In the past, commercial factories were the only places that could afford this kind of redundancy but it feels to me, thanks to crashing prices of solar and batteries (I could never have imagined 12kWh brand new LFP could be purchased for $2k), this level of redundancy is now very much realistic at the consumer, residential level. It just doesn't work locally today because the utility poles lack the smarts to do the isolated switching and safe islanding. For example: one unsettled question today is if a lot of customers on one such island are on solar and the grid is down, how do we safely supply power within nominal specs to the whole of the island - but this isn't a physical unknown, we know how to solve it. It just is lacking implementation.

> These costs, which include debt service, maintenance, upgrades etc amount to 5-7 cents/kWh. Whenever you generate your own energy you cost the utility 5-7cents/kWh that they have to pay regardless of your usage

Capitalism has repeatedly proven its ability to cut costs down while improving QoS. I realize you really believe in the numbers you have been provided - that it costs a utility 5-7cents/kWh that they have to pay regardless of my usage, but before SpaceX, it used to cost multiple millions of dollars and years of planning and design to launch one rocket.

[enslavedrobot]

In this case the utility executives work for public utilities. So capitalism isn't to blame. It's about the incentives of the incumbent energy providers.

It is already cheaper to build the distributed energy solution you describe but making that change would require a massive restructuring of electricity and natural gas utilities. Such a restructuring would revalue the debt that backs the existing infrastructure. This would be a great thing for the average person but not for the people currently in charge of regulating what types of systems are allowed.

Costs of distributed energy may drop so low in the next 5-10 years that it will no longer be possible to keep things from moving to a micro grid network.

[subhobroto]

> but making that change would require a massive restructuring of electricity and natural gas utilities. Such a restructuring would revalue the debt that backs the existing infrastructure. This would be a great thing for the average person but not for the people currently in charge of regulating what types of systems are allowed

fair. I appreciated the insight in your original message - datapoints from industry insiders like yourself do help people like I gain some understanding of why we have to go in alone on this and not wait

[subhobroto]

> Public utilities and pension funds hate green energy, they are a major factor in west's pathetic performance when it comes to solar adoption vs China

No this statement is absolutely wrong. Here's why:

> west's pathetic performance when it comes to solar adoption vs China

China is dominating energy because the CCP doesn't care what their citizens think. They need energy and they are doing everything they can do to get it. They will put you behind bars at best or kill your family and demolish your house if it gets in the middle of a power line trench. For China, energy isn't a "nice to have" - they realize it's essential and they won't stop until they get there.

China is the person out in the mountains being chased by a hungry bear while we in the west is the person sitting in their air conditioned room debating whether to drive or take an Uber to have a drink with buddies.

News came out last week that you can buy a Chinese hypersonic missle for $100k - you can't even build a little two car garage where I am for double that price.

> Public utilities and pension funds hate green energy

Pension funds don't care whether energy is green or orange. What they hate are the horrible returns affected by all the stealing and grifting that happens in the name of "green energy".

Public utilities (atleast in the jurisdictions that I am aware of) love any infrastructure work - they are guaranteed a 10% ROI by the government on any approved infrastructure work they do. If you could work with them to build infrastructure to cremate just newborn kids and get it approved by the CPUC, they will happily start work on it tomorrow. The reason why they hate green energy is because after they've made their 10% ROI, they are now stuck with a power source that costs them more than their non-green sources and that hurts their razor thin margins.

However, as the customer - I don't care either about what public utilities and pension funds hate or don't.

What I do care about is having affordable and reliable power and I absolutely can get that with my own solar panels and batteries. The fact that it's green is a happy sideffect for most.

The reason why every home in the U.S. isn't overflowing with solar panels and batteries is because of regulation and government shenanigans making retail costs really high. Average people in Pakistan, South Africa and Lebanon certainly power their whole homes with solar panels and batteries but their governments don't have nonsense taffifs and fees on Chinese solar equipment.

[enslavedrobot]

Totally agree that regulations and government interference are the reasons we don't have cheap solar panels.

Those regulations and that interference result from the fact that in a distributed world the current utility bond value drops to zero. Utilities will not build infrastructure that makes their existing infrastructure lose value.

I recently negotiated with a government owned utility on a large solar project. They were 100% against it until I demonstrated that the project would never feed back to the grid and wouldn't reduce the amount of power we currently buy from them. Zero interest in distributed solutions on their side. They are focused on giant transmission line projects and hydro.

[subhobroto]

> They are focused on giant transmission line projects and hydro

Is that because of the scale they need to achieve to support the investment?

> until I demonstrated that the project would never feed back to the grid

Financial greed aside, and I mentioned this previously, feedback at a large scale isn't free especially if the impedance of the grid cannot be predicted - the frequency or voltage or both would spike. Monitoring for these conditions are expensive and addressing them is even more expensive - the cheapest solution is you do a shutdown until things stabilize but this is kinda catch-22 because that itself might have its own cascading effects.

Let me ask you this - if you were to update a local neighborhood (like a block or two of 1000 homes) distribution station, that all have their own solar and battery, where the homes could independently power themselves for a day - what changes or upgrades would you make to ensure they can share load for that one day when the larger grid is suffering an outage?

Now would that cost and complexity be lower or higher if instead, nothing was changed at grid scale at all but each of the individual 1000 homes doubled their own capacity (let's say 30kWh a day if you're OK with that)?