70% of Americans Support Solar Mandate on New Homes

Re:70% of Americans Support Solar Mandate on New Homes by DoingIsLearning on Monday October 25, 2021 @06:50AM (#28986345)

> What is going to happen once everyone owns solar panels and there is no one left to subsidize base power? Well prices will keep going up and up until they reach a singularity and the whole system will collapse. Then prices will have to be recalibrated to fit the actual market price. Which means people will no longer pay for base power by the KWh but instead by fixed costs no matter how much they use....

I know the discussion is specifically US centric but in many markets you already have a fixed cost/fee/tax on electricity as a base cost and on top of this an electricity usage cost. In these cases the Micro-generation offsets a usage cost not the base cost (but in a lot of places micro-generation is still heavily subsidized on the purchase of solar panels).

So as with many other things YMMV.

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Re:70% of Americans Support Solar Mandate on New Homes by mrjangles on Monday October 25, 2021 @09:22AM (#28987461)

As far as I'm aware, in places with fixed costs, the fixed costs simply pay for the infrastructure, whereas the usage costs go towards running the base power station. However my point is that the base power station costs the same to run regardless of usage.

If some places already do have a properly priced power system then what I described wouldn't happen, but I also have trouble understanding how intermittent power could compete in a system where base power is essentially free.

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