Re:Rooftop solar power may be flooding the grid
by stephen_g on Thursday June 07, 2018 @04:14AM
(#17254154)
Yeah, we had extremely generous feed-in tariffs for a while. It's generally net-metering too so pretty good value, even as the prices have come down. We have no shortage of sun most places, so it's pretty easy to almost wipe out your entire bill (except for the service/distribution fees, which have gone up a lot over the last few years, I guess to combat that).
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Re:Rooftop solar power may be flooding the grid
by sjwright on Thursday June 07, 2018 @04:30AM
(#17254237)
A very relevant YouTube video from Dave at EEVBlog, where he goes through the numbers for his five year old solar installation, to see whether it has paid for itself. He also does hypothetical modelling of adding a battery, which proves to not be financially compelling at all.
Re:Rooftop solar power may be flooding the grid
by John_KZ on Thursday June 07, 2018 @05:44AM
(#17254507)
This is because those "environmentalist" laws weren't created to satisfying national energy demand, but only the people's desire to roleplay environment-savers and get paid for it.
Similar government schemes played out in much of Europe. Install subsidized solar panels, and the government/electricity companies have to buy your electricity at unsustainably high prices whenever you produce it, regardless if they need it/can handle it.
Obviously, as far as I know, this didn't last very long, especially in the countries with more limited budgets. Eventually the sale prices dropped close to normal wholesale electricity prices and the subsidies were dropped. Those who installed the panels late in the bubble probably got out with a loss.
It was just a terrible idea all around. The grid isn't made for distributed production, energy storage isn't solved, and solar electricity is just not sustainable as rooftop photovoltaics.