You do not pay market rate for electricity.

Texas does allow consumers to pay market rate for electricity, you may have heard about last winter people getting bills in the several thousands of dollars when prices spiked.

CAISO was 97% renewable for only a moment, not the entire day.

The 3rd was a Sunday, not a peak day.

And the average price for energy for the day was $30.77 (day head) $27.1 (real time) for TH_SP15_GEN-APND (per MWh)

My understanding, to put it in AWS EC2 pricing terms, is that we do not pay the market "spot" rate for electricity (variable, often less than what you might pay elsewhere, but could spike up) - which is what Texas allowed. Typically we pay the "on demand" rate which is fixed. Large energy users probably negotiate "reserved" pricing.

My point being, we pay the market rate, those massive hikes are just built-in over a long period of time.

That only works if the demand curve (the price the market will bear at given levels of shortage) and the cost curve (the actual price to produce the energy) match up.

In fact they never do, especially in this market. Texas producers weren't spending 100x (or whatever) more to produce that electricity, that spike just reflected the amount that customers who "had to keep the lights on" were willing to bear. In fact total utility costs are basically flat. They didn't hire 100x more employees or work 100x more hours to get things running again. They didn't have to build 100x more substations, etc...

And that's why spot pricing is a disaster for consumers. It creates a perverse incentive for producers to reduce supply.

There are currently no residential consumers in Texas on spot rate plans since the only provider had their license revoked. https://www.cbsnews.com/dfw/news/ercot-shuts-down-wholesale-...

Yeah, after the last catastrophe. They learned a lesson.

The economic reason people should be paying 100x the cost to supply is to incentivize people to build spare capacity.

Generally agree although there is something a bit sinister about a market where you don't really know the price until after you've bought the product. IMO giving a utility provider blank check is like raw-dogging cheap hookers every night and then being surprised when your luck runs out.

If people WANT this kind of contract I hope that their consent is an informed one. I'm not one to stop people from engaging in their own reckless behavior.

The Texas spike was not what customers were willing to bear, the Texas spike was set to the max price by the regulator because they thought the pricing system wasn't working.

> Texas spike was set to the max price by the regulator...

IIRC, a member of ERCOT who resigned claimed high-ranked state politician(s) pressured the regulator to do set the max price - so it wasn't the independent judgment of the regulator that the system was working; or that this was the solution.

When you have an outage, it's possible the instantaneous cost of electricity is in fact 10x/100x/infinitely more than baseline cost. Looking at it as 100x more employees is the wrong direction. If you're producing 1/100th the electricity for 5 minutes due to power outtages but you still have to pay all your employees during that time, your instantaneous cost (per unit energy) actually are proportionally higher.

Total Texas energy production during the worst part of the crisis last winter was like 60% of maximum though. Most generators were running. If consumer had to pay a 2x premium then no one would have even complained; we'd have all said the system was working.

But that's not how it works, because as I mentioned the demand curve is non-linear. When you have 60% power, yet 60.1% of your capacity needs to go to "must keep the lights on" customers, then prices go to infinity (or in practice to the credit/spending limits of those customers making bids).

You don't 'need the lights on.' I have lived in multiple third world countries where outages happen regularly if you have electricity at all. This is a failure of customers to adequately prepare and instead playing the victim because of their failures. People knew for years Texas grid was vulnerable, and it's an exquisite display of Darwin Award for those who didn't prepare for it.

Only a moron doesn't keep some sort of off-grid combustibles and cold weather gear on hand, even if you live in the most southern edge of our nation. The customer is to blame for paying, not capitalism.

> You don't 'need the lights on.'

Hospitals do. Street lights do. Network operators do. Just think back to the beginning of the pandemic and how many industries were suddenly discovered to be "essential". You're thinking from the perspective of "can I, personally, suffer a power outage in my own home[1]" and imaginging that "running a civilization" works like that. There are many entities who simply can't stop buying power.

> Only a moron [...]

Please think harder here. It's not remotely as simple as you think it is.

[1] Knowing that you can use your phone to reach effective emergency services in the event of need, of course.

Hospitals are 60.1% of capacity? Hospitals have generators, also. Lets not make hypocritical statements about think harder.

>imaginging that "running a civilization" works like tha

And yet many rich civilizations do run just fine 'like that' and many may consider those civilizations just as good as yours. Your statement is simply ethnocentric arrogant elitism.

>Just think back to the beginning of the pandemic and how many industries were suddenly discovered to be "essential".

You're describing tyrants trying to shut down business. Being 'essential' was simply a chosen word of propaganda as part of a tyrannical process to destroy some people's line of work while favoring others. We are discussing free-market pricing and their interconnection with power disruptions and acts of god.

You should keep in mind that only one provider allowed end users to pay spot rate and ERCOT revoked their license to operate after the freeze where power rates went to $4000/MWh. The average Texan (excluding people in East Texas who are on the Eastern power grid, and people in Austin) buy their energy on a 12 month contract from an intermediary who THEN negotiates a flat rate or gambles on beating the sold contracts on spot.

That's not accurate. 99% of people are on fixed rate plans.

Mainly it was one company, Griddy, that sold gullible people variable rate plans.

Griddy was then banned as it failed to provide people power during this time, suggesting their users to switch.

Most Texans are on fixed rate plans via TXU, Reliant, or the many other normal providers.

It was suggested to pass a law preventing variable rate plans that gamble like that, but I'm not sure the state of that.

What was Griddy telling gullible people that wasn't the truth? As far as I've seen, they've been completely honest about their pricing.

> [Griddy] does warn customers, however, that the wholesale price is capped by state regulators at $9 a kilowatt-hour. [1]

It's not Griddys fault that Texas doesn't prepare for winter storms that hit the state once per decade. Griddy doesn't produce electricity. Griddy doesn't build power lines. Griddy did however get customers power and thats why many of them were upset about how much the state set the wholesale price at.

[1]: https://www.caller.com/story/news/local/texas/state-bureau/2...

Their page downplayed the risks of variable pricing and their process during the ordeal was unprofessional.

It was a 100 year freeze, not a decade one. Never in my life until then did we have longer than 2 days of snow/ice.

Most of us don't insulate our pipes for that reasoning, though flexpiping is common to help against minor freezing.

Same reason as to why a lot of people don't have A/Cs on the West Coast.

Yeah the grid should have been winterized, but the pricing problem for customers was entirely on Griddy.

I have a question, are you from Texas?

> Their page downplayed the risks of variable pricing and their process during the ordeal was unprofessional.

That's rather unspecific. As far as I've seen the risk of 9k/MW always comes up in articles about Griddy (even pre-2021) and even happened to customers prior to 2021. And before the storm they notified customers that they should "switch providers" due to expected high prices.

The 2021 storm could be a 1/100 year but a non-trival winter storm hits Texas every 10 years. Letting pipes burst due to an extreme event can be a valid strategy but just be honest that the plan is that.

https://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/05/us/05storm.html

> You do not pay market rate for electricity.

however it should be ... vaguely ... related.

In california it is not. it's easy to pay 40-50 cents/Kwh (~$500/MWh)

Every time I do the math, any money I would spend on a solar system, would be better invested in an energy utility and just collect the dividend to pay my electric bill.

If you want to do solar for the environment, fine - I won't fault you - but if you are doing it to save/make money, there are better places to invest.

The provider space seems quite volatile, where investors risk being wiped out (ala Griddy's investors), severely reduced in value (eg: PG&E),

PG&E: https://seekingalpha.com/article/4441976-formerly-bankrupt-p...

That's a super interesting angle I had never considered!

Part of my reason for thinking about solar is that if I'm going to spend 10k on a backup generator it might be far smarter to spend that on solar. For me the invest and pay cycle doesn't address the problem I'm solving. But I absolutely learned something today.

Just did that. PG&E's not quite bad enough to justify going off grid with current NEM 2 rates. (Trust me, I checked.) NEM 3 would have been bad enough for the middle finger treatment, but they're reworking and delaying it.

Anyway, if you want to use it as a backup, you'll need to oversize the solar so the battery can get you through power outages on cloudy days.

At that point PG&E will pay you 10-20% market rate for the excess energy you produce on most days. It's much better to dump those electrons into an EV battery than into the grid. My commute costs $4/week in electricity I don't send to PG&E, vs 20x that for the gas for the same commute.

(The EV gets 4.5 miles/kWh, and PG&E pays $0.04 / kWh, or $.008/mile. The old car gets 30mpg. At $5/gallon, that's $0.16/mile)

The punchline: Budget money for an EV for each of your household's commutes when you purchase the solar panels. Regardless if whether you buy panels, consider charging at work, assuming your employer subsidizes it and/or has solar panels.

(Also, check the milage on the EV you want. 3-5 mi/kWh is typical, but they can vary from 1 to 7.)

Who is your utility and what part of the country? My panels are earning me about 12% per annum post tax, low risk, with insurance against capital loss (home insurance in event of hailstorm, hurricane.) I don’t see stock market investment opportunities competing.

I am in new england, electric rates are a lot less here (for now anyway) than CA (if that is where you are), and thus the calculations for you may be better than they are for me.

Its been a few years since I did the math, but last time I was quoted about 60K for a complete system - 60K at 5% dividend (NGG at the time), would give me $3K per year, enough to cover my bill.

AT the end of 20-30 years, a solar system will be worth nothing, or almost nothing, whereas I will still own the same stock in the same company hopefully the stock will have appreciated as well), and will still be covering my electric bill.

This of course makes lots of assumptions: I need to invest in company that will still be around for decades, that electric costs don't go thru the roof during that time, and the dividend doesn't go away etc. - but also would have to make assumptions about how long a solar system would last - its impossible for any of us to see out 30 years, but for the time being, I feel like on a purely financial basis, it didn't make sense for me today.

But trust me, I would love to pay one sunk cost today and not have to pay an electric bill for the next 30+ years, if only I could see that far in the future with some certainty.

I’m in Illinois. $60k definitely ruins it. I wonder if you could find a more pragmatic vendor. I got a $55k quote but ended up finding 10.5kw for $22k and was happy with the work, financial health of vendor and warranties. After federal and state credits I’m paying back in several years and making money on the next 14-20. I may also need an inverter replacement between years 10-15 for a few thousand.

We have some of the cheapest rates in the US, due to our nuclear, so our state incentives are fairly good to compensate. Nuclear may be discontinued, but given recent events I’m less sure. Either way I think we only have upside on the ROI due to rate changes.

I’ve been trying to do the math for my own home, are solar panels actually cash flow positive, once you account for efficiency decrease overtime etc.? It always seemed like one barely breaks even in 2 decades

It depends on a whole lot of factors. In a sunny place like CA with good solar incentive programs, assuming good southern to southwestern exposure, they are cash positive after about 6 years [1]. In Wisconsin, 11 years [2]. In Washington State, 15 years [3]

1. https://www.energysage.com/solar-panels/ca/#:~:text=For%20Ca....

2. https://www.energysage.com/solar-panels/wi/#:~:text=In%20Wis....

3. https://www.energysage.com/solar-panels/wa/#:~:text=In%20Was....

Yeah, so far, with the rooftop system we put in about 1.5 years ago (Los Angeles), we are tracking to ~5.5 year payback period, so this feels right.

Guaranteed 15%+ ROI. Really makes you wonder why more people aren't investing in solar

At what state? It’s more like 15-20 year break even by me; and I can’t sell power back to the grid.

Wow is electricity really that expensive in CA? Our total expenditure on electricity over 20 years is around 20k.

But in CA that site says that their net 20 year savings using solar is 44k-60k. That's insane. Their savings alone is 3 times the cost of our entire electric bill...

> Wow is electricity really that expensive in CA? Our total expenditure on electricity over 20 years is around 20k.

Electricity in CA currently averages around 28c/kWh. Your total expenditure depends on a lot of things, including the size of your home and your loads. The average CA home probably spends around $2000/year on electricity, but that varies a lot based on location and lifestyle.

> But in CA that site says that their net 20 year savings using solar is 44k-60k. That's insane. Their savings alone is 3 times the cost of our entire electric bill...

That figure probably assumes increasing electricity prices over the 20 years, which by and large has held true due to both inflation and increasing wildfire liability.

That explains it then, looking at our past few bills it comes out to ~$0.13/kWh. So yeah, we are less than half the average price in CA. Crazy. That would really change the dynamics of how profitable solar is. I've been wanting to get solar myself.

In reality our rate is Basic - $23.15 + All kWh @ $.089. So it would be even cheaper if we used more on a per kWh basis.

I got a quote last fall in the SF Bay Area for a system:

- 6.4 kW (16x400W panels), microinverter-based (little to no maintenance expected in 25 years)

- estimated to produce 8,500 kWh in year 1

- the panels are warrantied to produce 86% in year 25. Let's use 80% as a more conservative estimate.

- up front cost: $16,500 after the federal tax incentive

- alternative: paying PG&E $.25/kWh on average (conservative estimate)

To a first approximation, the system would save $2,125 in the first year, or almost 13% of the initial investment. In year 25, we'd expect 6,800 kWh. At the same energy price, it'd be saving 10% of the initial investment. (This doesn't take into account inflation, changes in energy prices, and I'm sure other things. This is all very different if your local utility doesn't offer net metering, too.)

The system breaks even in year 8, similar to what others in this thread have reported. But you can also look at it as a pretty low-risk investment returning 10-13% per year for 25 years. That sounds pretty good to me.

The fact that the return is not compounding makes a very large difference here.

$16,500 returning 10% of the original principle per year isn’t a great investment. 25 years you have $41,000 + 25 yr old solar panels.

$16,500 returning 10% compounding over 25 years gets you $162,000 + the $16,500 principle.

Considering opportunity cost spread evenly over 25 years, those panels cost over $5000 per year.

There are plenty of reasons to go solar, but return on investment is not one of them.

You are ignoring investing the savings which if the stock market returns 8% vs the panels at 13%, you would get a 50% higher return with the panels + investing the savings in the stock market vs just the stock market after 30 years. Albeit, it does take 13 years to come out ahead.

  >>> x = 0
  >>> for y in range(0,30):
  ...   x *= 1.08
  ...   x += 2125
  ...   print(y, x)
  ...
  0 2125.0
  1 4420.0
  2 6898.6
  3 9575.488000000001
  4 12466.527040000003
  5 15588.849203200003
  6 18960.957139456004
  7 22602.833710612485
  8 26536.060407461486
  9 30783.945240058405
  10 35371.66085926308
  11 40326.39372800413
  12 45677.50522624446
  13 51456.705644344016
  14 57698.24209589154
  15 64439.10146356287
  16 71719.2295806479
  17 79581.76794709972
  18 88073.30938286771
  19 97244.17413349713
  20 107148.70806417691
  21 117845.60470931107
  22 129398.25308605596
  23 141875.11333294044
  24 155350.1223995757
  25 169903.13219154175
  26 185620.3827668651
  27 202595.01338821434
  28 220927.6144592715
  29 240726.82361601325
  >>> x = 16500
  >>> for y in range(0,30):
  ...   x *= 1.08
  ...   print(y, x)
  ...
  0 17820.0
  1 19245.600000000002
  2 20785.248000000003
  3 22448.067840000003
  4 24243.913267200005
  5 26183.426328576006
  6 28278.100434862088
  7 30540.348469651057
  8 32983.57634722314
  9 35622.26245500099
  10 38472.04345140108
  11 41549.806927513164
  12 44873.79148171422
  13 48463.69480025137
  14 52340.79038427148
  15 56528.0536150132
  16 61050.29790421426
  17 65934.32173655141
  18 71209.06747547553
  19 76905.79287351358
  20 83058.25630339466
  21 89702.91680766625
  22 96879.15015227956
  23 104629.48216446194
  24 112999.8407376189
  25 122039.82799662842
  26 131803.0142363587
  27 142347.25537526738
  28 153735.0358052888
  29 166033.8386697119

You're not adjusting for inflation (cash + increases in electricity costs), ambitiously assuming an equivalent 10% return on other investments, or re-investing the amount saved per year in your calculations (that $1650 you save in the first year also compounds to ~$16.25k).

Make those fixes and the numbers are much closer.

Just take the money you save on electricity and put it into the market...?

This is a good point!

No it is not. It assumes you store money gained under the bed and do not reinvest it in any way.

Solar in California is often breakeven after 4 to 7 years. Enphase enables microgrid systems, and the IQ8 can keep your house powered even when the grid is down, and even without batteries –– something never before possible.

https://enphase.com/sites/default/files/2021-10/IQ8SP-DS-000...

Worth nothing that PG&E is working with CA Democrats to try to kill rooftop solar. They want renewables, but only if distributed using their (badly operated and overpriced) grid. [1]

[1] https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2022/02/11/coalition-received-1-...

While I can't say anything useful about PG&E, net metering is problematic though. As used right now in many regions of the world, it is a large and inefficient subsidy to relatively affluent solar roof owners like you and me.

Where I live, a different regime is being introduced: - a capacity tariff: a base grid charge, calculated based upon quarterly average peak consumption - a feed-in rate: a wholesale rate compensation for injecting self-produced green electricity into the grid (my current rate: 0.064€/kWh) - a retail rate by one's electricity provider (my current rate: .02869€/kWh) - subsidies for installation of solar (up to 300€/kW peak) and storage (up to 30%)

This at least conceptually incentivises both of solar installation and peak shaving. Solar is less ridiculously profitable for me, but still a no-brainer in terms of profitability.

I'm happy with our enphase system. We have batteties from them too.

The Democrats (and Arnold) pushed back hard against the proposed NEM 3 rates that would have killed rooftop solar.

I have nothing nice to say about PG&E.

It can be cash flow positive if you do a bunch of the work yourself and plan accordingly.

https://www.sevarg.net/tag/solar/

From my point of view the nice thing about it is reducing or eliminating recurring expenses.

Once your recurring expenses drop below passive income you are pretty well set.

Depends on how much power you need and your access to sun. I'm in the Bay Area, installed solar panels about 18 months ago. Break even for the panels is estimated to be about 6 years at current market rates. Now I also had to do a new roof, which roughly doubles the break even time, ignoring the fact that I'd have needed a new roof anyways.

Currently I'm not taking into consideration decreased efficiency because the panels are warrantied for 90.08%+ at 25 years. Also something not taken into account on breakeven/cash positive is the fact that PG&E rates are always on the rise. As of March of this year rates went up 9%. The more rates go up, the faster I break even.

You can take increasing rates , but then you also need to take opportunity cost.

You paid say 50k cash for solar? Put that in SP500 for 6 years. It’s not 50k anymore.

I got solar in northern California with new roof that needed to be replaced. I got 30 percent tax credit on the roof as well. Paid for the roof in cash but took 10 year loan out for the solar panels at 3.0 percent. Break even at this rate is about 4 years already a few year in. With inflation right now I feel like I got good deal borrowing the money. Right now my loan payment plus then 10.00 monthly connection fee is less than my average monthly bill before 2019. Not sure I would do it with needing a new roof though. But everybody experience will be different.

You do, but it seems pretty good even taking into account opportunity cost? My calculations: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31105389

Someone else said it better in a different subthread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31105120

Yah I’m not doubting it is good in Cali, I’m just saying you need to include the opportunity cost if going that route.

I wish the break even was better further north for me.

Sounds about right for the power only, but you also probably get a battery with it to deal with power outages… I don’t know how to price the utility of that, but it’s why I bought solar.

35k for a 8kwh, 24kwh battery storage system. ~15k in credits?

Solar loan ends up at 175 a month. I got in before the recent ridiculousness around fuel prices. I'm sure I'm net positive at this point but haven't done the precise math.

One addition I'm considering, is some bitcoin/ crypto rigs to take care of excess power during the peaks. Even with my batteries, I produce a lot of extra power and don't get paid spit from the power company, and what I do get I can only use as credit.

https://www.nicehash.com/profitability-calculator/-bitmain-a...

Thing costs ~1.25k, but at ~$10/ day it will pay its self off in a quarter.

How long have you been able to stretch that battery out when your power is out? Don’t have a point to make or anything, I’m just curious. I hadn’t really considered that.

I only have 10kw but most days that is enough to get through the night. Air conditioning will go through it, but I don’t typically need it, especially after the sun sets.

24kW can lost a long time if you don’t need AC. Should be days

Even if only just break even after 20years, it is an acceptable cost for freedom of mind and autonomy.

It's honestly insane how PG&E is going bankrupt despite charging 35 cents/kWh. Where is all the money going??

one place:

> PG&E Corp. put a cost estimate of more than $25 billion Thursday on its effort to plant thousands of miles of power lines underground in an effort to tamp down wildfire risks.

https://www.sacbee.com/news/california/fires/article25824965...

Shame that they're not getting better publicity as a result of this. Our main complaint about the internet companies is that they pocket the money meant to speed up networks for their subscribers. This is exactly what utility companies ought to do to prepare for the future.

They’re doing it because they went bankrupt over $30B in liability from not preparing in this fashion.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/01/business/energy-environme...

> PG&E sought bankruptcy protection in January 2019 after accumulating an estimated $30 billion in liability for fires started by its poorly maintained equipment. One of the blazes, the 2018 Camp Fire, killed scores of people and destroyed the town of Paradise.

It wasn’t voluntary, really.

A large part of why they're doing it because they're guaranteed a certain percentage return on investments. There's ways to fix this problem without a $25bil investment, but you won't make nearly as much profit on that.

what's a better, cheaper way to fix the wildfire problem?

We don't have a wildfire problem. There have been fires for thousands of years. There are supposed to be fires.

Our problem is people build non-fireproof homes in forests and demand the government mismanage the forest by stopping fires.

Around 90% of wild fires are caused by humans. A few of the recent major fires (the Camp Fire being one of them) were caused by power lines. So there is definitely a major human-cause component here that can be addressed.

I am all for more prescribed burns, but the people in opposition to those burns aren't the people living in the most at-risk areas.

Fires were intentionally set by humans for thousands of years. The forests evolved with them. There needs to be fire. The causes don't need to be "addressed".

People who choose to live in the Wildlands urban interface should bear the cost for undergrounding the wires they rely on IMO.

Probably politically infeasible, unfortunately.

Wildfires in California not only affect California itself, but neighboring states as well. Last year I drove from CA to CO. The wildfire smoke from California covered all of Nevada and Utah.

I don't know where you live, but if you are in CA, there is a very high chance that you live in a wildland-urban interface zone. About 45% of housing in CA would fall under this category.

These risks aren't limited to people living up in the mountains. A large chunk of the Bay Area is a wildland-urban interface.

All of this to say, preventing wild fires is in everybody's best interest and trying to pass the costs to one group or another will only delay our timeline to address these issues.

Burying power lines is just one part of the solution.

Bury power lines. Address liability, insurance, and red tape around prescribed burns so that we can actually meet our goals. Better enforcement (and more government funding) of creating defensible space around homes.

$0.35 would be a bargain. It's more like $0.40 / kWh, it's complicated depending on which rate plan you have and what time of day / year you're using power. https://www.pge.com/pge_global/common/pdfs/rate-plans/how-ra...

Meanwhile my neighbors 30 miles away are paying half that rate to SMUD. https://www.smud.org/en/Rate-Information/Compare-rates

As a bonus, SMUD doesn't generally kill people and burn down cities.

Presumably the Sacramento utility district doesn't serve high risk fire areas, so their customers don't have to subsidize people that choose to live on the wildlands-urban interface.

SMUD does operate HV lines into the Sierras as part of the Upper American River Project consisting of 11 dams and eight power generating facilities. It’s capable of powering most of Sacramento in a pinch but is typically used only when they need more capacity. Throughout the course of a year, it ends up providing about 20% of Sacramento’s power.

SMUD has very strict preventative maintenance procedures for their HV transmission lines, clearing all underbrush from below the 15KV lines almost yearly. We have not had any major incidents involving electrical fires in my lifetime that I am aware of.

They also have never had to pay out dividends unlike PG&E, or been forced to optimize for what will deliver the most value to their shareholders.

https://www.pgecorp.com/investors/shareholders/dividend_hist...

Paying damages from all the wildfires they have caused.

It's incredible. Even more so if we consider that Silicon Valley Power (serving Santa Clara) charges a fraction of that and is more reliable.

Seems unfair to compare a utility covering 18 square miles to one covering 160k+ square miles across some of the harshest terrain in the country. But I agree that PG&E charges way too much.

As a Californian I think the electricity itself is pretty cheap at ~9cents/kwh but the total delivery costs are 3x that.

Going off-grid is really expensive unless you're willing to make significant quality of life cuts when you go outside your system capacity. A string of overcast days that only produce 50% of normal, or a series of hot or cold days that drive large A/C or Heat Pump usage can put you in a situation where you are shedding load during the day so you can bridge across the overnight period.

I expect it's just probably doable in a really temperate climate like SF, where you can live without running heating or cooling year-round and try to get your other electric usage way down, but anywhere with hot summers or cold winters is going to risk battery depletion.

California (rightly) prices in externalities of power generation

https://haas.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/WP294.pdf

In addition to what others have said -- renewable does not mean necessarily cheap.