I'd also like to hear more about Solar cause we live on top of a hill, have a 2500 flat roof that needs replacing AND not only are we looking at a new electric car we need to replace our 32 year old gas furnace we heat our home with.
i'll check back thru your thread to see what you did say about solar so far so you don't have to repeat what's already said. i'm also curious what happens to the EXTRA you say you can sell?
Every state is different. When we lived in Pennsylvania, they wouldn’t buy back anything. Not to get too political... but it is ALL political... I feel that made for a huge de-incentive! Purposefully! So by NOT taking in excess power during the day, it forced you to have a place to store it. That meant a big and expensive battery storage unit for your solar. Most of the time that would double the cost of your system! Not to mention the resources used in battery manufacturing.
Here in Colorado, all excess power generated by solar during the day is fed back into the grid and used by the power company. You build up a dollar for dollar credit. At night or during cloudy days, you use that credit. Again, it’s a dollar for dollar trade. BTW, you still pay your monthly fee to the power company just to be tied into the grid. For us it’s a nominal $25 fee. However, that will surely rise over the years to be much higher as more people go solar. The utility company still has to pay for their infrastructure. That’s fair and I understand the reasoning.
At the end of the year, if you have an excess amount of credit built up you can either roll it over to the next year or sell it back. Here is the only downside. The sell back is pennies on the dollar. So it benefits you to simply use what you produce.
Lastly, there is a 25KW maximum system size limit. Can’t build anything bigger. And depending on the grid capacity in your area, there may also be a limit on how much electricity can flow back into the grid at any given time. Kind of like the grid drinking through a small sized straw. Right now, for me, this isn’t a problem. However, if a few people around me install similar systems, we may all end up trying to push excess power back into the grid at the same time. And it all won’t fit at once.
In a lot of big cities, having privately owned solar systems installed, helps with the demand on the grid. It prevents, black outs and brown outs. However it does cut into the costs of the utility companies profit on the energy used. The more resources purchased (gas, oil, coal, etc...), the better the deal on the resources. It’s kind of like buying in bulk. But looking at it in a much broader view, like from a state standpoint, it’s much more cost efficient on infrastructure to not have to build more plants when the population grows. Each state subsidizes utility companies, using our tax dollars, to keep the grid at the same size of the population use.
Now we have to ask, how far into the states pockets does each utility company have their hands? Pennsylvania has always been influenced greatly by utility companies. First when oil was found in northwestern PA in Oil City and Drake PA. Yes, that is where the oil drake was invented. Then later with coal, when we realized how easy it was to get to the coal, even at the cost of so many lives. Then the steel mills that emerged using that coal. And now with natural gas. The Tri-state area has THE LARGEST natural gas reserve IN THE WORLD! Billions of years ago, the Appalachian Mountains were some of the tallest in the world! Over the last few hundred years we have realized how rich in resources they are. It’s just a matter now of how to extract those resources and to do it safely. I grew up with relatives that worked in all those areas and I’ve seen terrible consequences from working in those industries. My great grandfather, grandfather and father all lived shorter lives because of it. And when the resources ran out or it wasn’t economical to pull out those resources anymore, the companies closed... overnight! Leaving those formerly employed with nothing. It’s those ties that a region either has or doesn’t have that usually correlates directly to the restrictions/benefits of having solar.
Now please don’t take me the wrong way; I have a big gas guzzling truck and many, many gas burning motorcycles and I love gas guzzling boats as well. I am tied tightly into the grid and use fossil fuels in many, many products of my daily life. However, both I and my wife have spent our entire military careers on deployments in some foreign country all in the name of oil. We ABSOLUTELY NEED to become smarter in our extraction and use of finite natural resources. Solar is just one of many ways we can rid our dependency on foreign oil and our use of a finite resource.
If / when solar really kicks into high gear, due to demand and costs of extraction of resources, utility companies will eventually go from privatized to publicly run endeavors, where we all pay a certain amount to be tied into the grid and have an on-demand usage fee.
I could talk for hours on the cost / benefit of solar. We all have our different views of it as well. Our biggest issues usually rise when we discuss it with our wallets doing the talking, not our common sense. You cannot look at this with a “how this effects me now” viewpoint. You have to look at it with a “how does this effect all of us over the rest of our lives” viewpoint.
I apologize profusely if I’ve said anything here that offends you or perhaps effects your financial state, particularly if you work in the natural gas and oil fields. This is only my opinion. I’m not incredibly smart and only have a short 51 years of life experience. I continue to learn and change everyday.
