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America Lags on Renewable Energy. Blame Regulations and Grid Connection Issues (msn.com) 127
"For years, renewable energy proponents have hoped to build a U.S. electric grid powered by wind, solar, geothermal and — to a lesser extent — nuclear power..." writes the Washington Post. In America's power markets "the economics of clean energy are strong," with renewable energy cheaper than fossil fuel plants in many jurisdictions.
But the Post spoke to the "electricity modeling" director at nonpartisan clean energy think tank Energy Innovation, who offered this assessment. "The technology is ready, and the financial services are ready — but the question nobody really put enough thought into was, could the government keep up? And at the moment, the answer is no." [R]enewable developers say that the new technologies are stymied by complicated local and federal regulations, a long wait to connect to the electricity grid, and community opposition... "The U.S. offshore wind business is at a very nascent stage versus Europe or China," Rob Barnett, a senior analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence, said in an email. "With the new permitting pause, it's doubtful much progress for this emerging industry will be made...." After the Inflation Reduction Act passed, Rhodium Group — an independent clean energy research firm — estimated that between 2023 and 2025, on average, the country would add between 36 and 46 gigawatts of clean electricity to the grid every year. Late last year, however, the group found that the country only installed around 27 gigawatts in 2023. The U.S.'s renewable growth is now expected to fall on the low end of that range — or miss it entirely.
"It actually is really hard to build a lot of this stuff fast," said Trevor Houser, partner in climate and energy at Rhodium Group. As a result, Rhodium found, the country only cut carbon emissions by 0.2 percent in 2024... A significant amount of this lag has come from wind power, where problems with supply chains and getting permits and approval to build has put a damper on development. But solar construction is also on the low end of what experts were expecting...
Developers point to lags in the interconnection queue — a system that gives new solar, wind or fossil fuel projects permission to connect to the larger electricity grid. According to a report from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, it can now take nearly 3 years for a project to get through the queue. The grid operator that covers the Mid-Atlantic and parts of the Midwest, PJM, had over 3,300 projects in its queue at the end of 2023. The vast majority of these applications are for renewables — more than the entire number of active wind farms in the nation... There are possible solutions. Some developers hope to reuse old fossil fuel sites, like coal plants, that are already connected to the grid — bypassing the long queue entirely. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has instated new rules to make it easier to build transmission lines.
Part of the problem is that wind and solar facilities "sometimes need to be built hundreds or even thousands of miles away" — requiring long transmission lines. Sandhya Ganapathy, CEO of EDP Renewables North America, tells the Post that in America, "The grid that we have was never designed to handle this kind of load." And yet last year just 255 miles of new transmission line were built in the U.S., according to the American Clean Power Association. And Ganapathy also complains that approval for a new renewable energy project takes "anywhere between six to eight years" — which makes developers hesitant to build. "Why are we taking a big risk of a massive investment if I will not be able to sell the electrons?"
The end result? The Washington Post writes that "Experts once hoped that by the end of the decade the United States could generate up to 80 percent of its power with clean power... Now, some wonder if the country will be able to reach even 60 percent."
But the Post spoke to the "electricity modeling" director at nonpartisan clean energy think tank Energy Innovation, who offered this assessment. "The technology is ready, and the financial services are ready — but the question nobody really put enough thought into was, could the government keep up? And at the moment, the answer is no." [R]enewable developers say that the new technologies are stymied by complicated local and federal regulations, a long wait to connect to the electricity grid, and community opposition... "The U.S. offshore wind business is at a very nascent stage versus Europe or China," Rob Barnett, a senior analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence, said in an email. "With the new permitting pause, it's doubtful much progress for this emerging industry will be made...." After the Inflation Reduction Act passed, Rhodium Group — an independent clean energy research firm — estimated that between 2023 and 2025, on average, the country would add between 36 and 46 gigawatts of clean electricity to the grid every year. Late last year, however, the group found that the country only installed around 27 gigawatts in 2023. The U.S.'s renewable growth is now expected to fall on the low end of that range — or miss it entirely.
"It actually is really hard to build a lot of this stuff fast," said Trevor Houser, partner in climate and energy at Rhodium Group. As a result, Rhodium found, the country only cut carbon emissions by 0.2 percent in 2024... A significant amount of this lag has come from wind power, where problems with supply chains and getting permits and approval to build has put a damper on development. But solar construction is also on the low end of what experts were expecting...
Developers point to lags in the interconnection queue — a system that gives new solar, wind or fossil fuel projects permission to connect to the larger electricity grid. According to a report from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, it can now take nearly 3 years for a project to get through the queue. The grid operator that covers the Mid-Atlantic and parts of the Midwest, PJM, had over 3,300 projects in its queue at the end of 2023. The vast majority of these applications are for renewables — more than the entire number of active wind farms in the nation... There are possible solutions. Some developers hope to reuse old fossil fuel sites, like coal plants, that are already connected to the grid — bypassing the long queue entirely. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has instated new rules to make it easier to build transmission lines.
Part of the problem is that wind and solar facilities "sometimes need to be built hundreds or even thousands of miles away" — requiring long transmission lines. Sandhya Ganapathy, CEO of EDP Renewables North America, tells the Post that in America, "The grid that we have was never designed to handle this kind of load." And yet last year just 255 miles of new transmission line were built in the U.S., according to the American Clean Power Association. And Ganapathy also complains that approval for a new renewable energy project takes "anywhere between six to eight years" — which makes developers hesitant to build. "Why are we taking a big risk of a massive investment if I will not be able to sell the electrons?"
The end result? The Washington Post writes that "Experts once hoped that by the end of the decade the United States could generate up to 80 percent of its power with clean power... Now, some wonder if the country will be able to reach even 60 percent."
Capitalism (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Capitalism (Score:4, Insightful)
What's holding it back is corruption not capitalism. For example Donald Trump just revoked every single lease for wind farms offshore. The problem with shit like that is it creates a ton of uncertainty in projects that are guaranteed to go multi-year and will typically run across presidential administrations and congressional administrations.
The oil companies incidentally gave Trump half a billion dollars for his campaign. That we know of.
The problem with our capitalism is we fired the ref and replaced him with somebody from the mob.
Re: Capitalism (Score:3, Insightful)
You're mixing up capitalism and fascism (Score:5, Insightful)
A properly running capitalist economy does several things. First it takes basic necessities off the table. Food, housing and health care are guaranteed rights. You can't enter into free contracts when somebody gets to decide whether or not you have the things required for human life.
Capitalism works best at finishing goods and providing services that make life worth living. If you look at the Soviet Union post Stalin and his crazy bullshit it actually did a very very good job of providing basic necessities but the living was absolutely miserable because it couldn't provide the niceties that make it worth getting out of bed.
People like to call this a hybrid economy but I don't see it as that. Capitalism is fundamentally competition to create better products and a better life for everyone. That is the central promise of capitalism.
However a lot of people mix up the promise of authoritarian right wing extremism with capitalism. The idea of that a rigid hierarchy produces the best results. This is because in unregulated capitalism you inevitably get monopolies and the rigid hierarchy so people mix the two up.
Again though proper capitalism as envisioned by Adam Smith was people engaging in free trade and free contracts. You have to remember that you're not free as long as somebody controls your access to the food, shelter and medicine you need to live.
Unfortunately all of this is counterintuitive. Because the only real way to take food shelter and healthcare off the table and have truly free capitalism is to form a system of taxation and distribution for those things. America has done that since the '50s to certain degree and we hid it using a bewildering system of subsidies and government contracting and the world's biggest social program the US military....
But as soon as you just give people food and shelter and healthcare it triggers that lizard brain that says it's not fair to take from one person and give to another without The person being taken from getting something in return, even if it's just praise for being altruistic.
That lizard brain is causing the collapse of capitalism that you're seeing today.
Re: You're mixing up capitalism and fascism (Score:2)
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That's YOUR version of properly running.
Let's define "properly", then.
To my mind there can be only one definition, which has two parts: Sustainable, and in the service of The People.
It doesn't matter what you think, only what the people who get into power think.
It in fact very much does matter, because The People have the power when they come together to use it. And they do that when they start starving. Unfortunately that's a point at which they are weakened, so revolts leading to collapse tend to be more slow and painful than they need to be. But the system doesn't work when the plebes don't work, and it's very very far fr
Re: You're mixing up capitalism and fascism (Score:2)
Re: You're mixing up capitalism and fascism (Score:3)
"Lol, there is no concept in capitalism of sustainability or being for the people"
No shit. That's not in the meaning of capitalism, as I often point out. However, there are lots of kinds of capitalism, and if that's not what we've got then we have to make it that way or it will surely fail and while the poor will suffer the most, some of the rich will too. Especially if some of the poor have anything to say about it. And when the economy collapses, the bodyguards get more concerned with food than pay that
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You're not wrong. I've made that point myself many times as well. All the parts of capitalism that make it sustainable are socialism. The part that makes it powerful and productive is the profit motive. If we don't have enough of the former then the latter destroys us, as it is doing right now.
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Your typical large company is only able to achieve becoming large because of the government. Government tries to protect your IP and patents. If we had zero patent and ip law, it would be significantly harder to become a large company.
Regulations are a double edged sword in this scenario. With no regulations, companies couldn't grow and capitalize on their inventions and good ideas. With to much regulation, you allow a large player to add barriers to entry to a particular market and that makes it extraordin
So again you're mixing two things up (Score:2, Flamebait)
The problem you're seeing is a lack of antitrust regulation. It's not that those large players support regulation they don't but they have much much better ways of killing their competition then a handful of safety regulations.
Those much much better ways are antitrust violations. Companies really don't lobby for regulation to hurt competitors. Because they don't need to. Why create a regulation you're going to have to spend money follow
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It's easy to do because unregulated capitalism has a bad habit of devolving into fascism because large corporations tend to favor fascism so they can increase their power and wealth.
An example of that is General Motors, Firestone Tire, Standard Oil of California, Federal Engineering, Phillips Petroleum & others [wikipedia.org] who bought public transit systems and closed them down or otherwise made them unattractive to passengers to that they could sell more cars, petroleum, etc. They were convicted but only after they had done a lot of damage. I have doubts that they would be held to account under your current president.
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They weren't held to account, either. They fined them five bucks a piece and they learned to get sneakier. Also, the damage was done, and they had won. They got everything they wanted and all it cost them was apparently no hit whatsoever to their reputations.
You're mixing up capitalism and socialism (Score:3)
A properly running capitalist economy does several things. First it takes basic necessities off the table. Food, housing and health care are guaranteed rights. You can't enter into free contracts when somebody gets to decide whether or not you have the things required for human life.
That's not a capitalist economy. That is a socialist economy which allows capitalism for luxury items. ...Not necessarily a bad idea for an economic system, but it's not capitalism.
...
People like to call this a hybrid economy but I don't see it as that.
Yes, you could also call it that. But since it's socialism for the necessities, capitalism for luxuries, I'd say it's basically socialism with a layer of capitalism on top.
...
Again though proper capitalism as envisioned by Adam Smith was people engaging in free trade and free contracts. You have to remember that you're not free as long as somebody controls your access to the food, shelter and medicine you need to live.
Adam Smith said nothing of the sort. You are referring to "wage slavery [wikipedia.org]", a concept from the Marxist critique of work in capitalist economies.
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Wage Slavery is more than just a concept, it's put into practice; more like a description of what happens. It's good descriptions and characterizations that resonated with the world in Marx's writing.
Truth is Marx was correct on a great many things which is why he's the most influential economist in history. He coined the term "Capitalism" so I suppose we need to invent a new word because it came from him?
It's the MISTAKES of Marx that made him infamous, the worst of which were done in his name and no more
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Not necessarily. A Capitalist Democracy has some latitude as to where the line between public and private goods and services is drawn. There is a limit, but I'm not sure that we know where exactly it is. Venezuela crossed it, but the Dutch (for example) hav
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Not necessarily. A Capitalist Democracy has some latitude as to where the line between public and private goods and services is drawn.
The line may be flexible, but "all the necessities of life are provided by a mechanism outside of capitalism" is outside of that latitude.
Again, not that this is necessarily a bad suggestion. But it's not capitalism.
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Millions of people died of starvation/thirst and frost burns and lack of anti sanitary in gulags.
I think that is an exaggeration. The "gulag" was a prison system and they are never pleasant. But it gets conflated with exile to Siberia which was not pleasant but the problems it created (cold, lack of food, etc) were the same for people who lived their to begin with. And it was hardly an invention of the Soviets, it was just a continuation of Tsarist practice. It had nothing to do with either communism or capitalism. It was just authoritarians acting like authoritarians.
Re: Capitalism (Score:2)
Trump just picks the way that benefits himself the most. It's personal capitalism, a.k.a. corruption.
The average Joe won't benefit.
Re: Capitalism (Score:2)
Tariffs are not capitalistic (Score:2)
But that's what I mean. Trump is a pure capitalist force. You can't say capitalism will work and then say but Trump. They are one and the same.
People like Trump because he's not a capitalist. He's willing to cheat the system, allegedly for them (I disagree with that personally, but that's their view). Capitalism requires a free market and the ability to choose. Trump is not anti-regulation. It's all a show. He clearly loves regulation to favor his donors and pet projects. Tariffs are a great example. In a free market economy, we could choose between cars from Germany, China, Japan, or the USA. The USA has made it nearly impossible for BYD
Re: Tariffs are not capitalistic (Score:2)
Sorry, words mean things...look it up (Score:2)
You people keep trying to say Trump isnt a capitalist for various reasons, but a true capitalist is about making the most money which is what Trump is doing. There is no rule in capitalism that you have to follow laws if they get in the way of you making money. That's the whole problem.
Then by your logic, Vladimir Putin is a pure capitalist...as is Kim Jong Un...as is the entire upper tiers of the Chinese Communist Party. All have enriched themselves quite handsomely...making the most money regardless of laws.
Look up the definition of Capitalist. You're wrong here. Trump is all about central planning, when it suits him and those who flatter him. He has no interest in cultivating a free market. Trump is putting his thumb on the scale to levels never seen in my lifetime.
The hope
Re: Sorry, words mean things...look it up (Score:2)
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Re: Sorry, words mean things...look it up (Score:2)
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Re: Tariffs are not capitalistic (Score:2)
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Also, minimal != none. So, minimal government intervention is still some intervention.
Not that it matters, you didn'
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I don't think that's quite right. Trump is more like a bizarro-regulator than a pure capitalist force. He usually doesn't go with the cheapest and "most capitalist" solution and this is a prime example. He's not passing anti-renewable regs to save money, it's for culture war horseshit reasons that not only don't make sense but don't make dollars and sense. Renewables are the cheapest form of newly-built energy production, the only reason it hasn't replaced everything in areas with the right geography for it
Re: Capitalism (Score:2)
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How many trees would need to be cut down for the solar and wind farms? All of those take up an enormous amount of space.
Basically none. Wind farms are best positioned in the kind of areas where trees get blown over and so aren't there to be cut down. They can also co-exist with the kind of greenery that grows in that landscape, like grass. Similarly for solar farms. Almost all of them have greenery growing under the panels and in fact provide a micro-climate that's much better for most vegetation.
Re: Capitalism (Score:2)
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No, he's not a capitalist. He's an authoritarian crony capitalist.
Most people will route around him as long as possible with local solar. I'll have 4 to 7 kwH of solar by the end of this year. That will absolutely kill my electric bills during the hottest part of the day. That'll be fairly cheap ($3k) and pay for itself in about 9 years but if we have any more power outages, it will pay for it self much faster in saved food. My current system paid for itself during two power outages this year.
Re: Capitalism (Score:2)
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@offgridwanabe
1 year ago
I live in Ontario Canada on the 45th parallel we get a lot of snow in the winter so that cuts down the production but I have had solar for 7 years and my system has paid for itself now, so along with a Water furnace for heat and air conditioning I basically have no utility bill the net metering gives me almost enough to get through winter. So many people are against solar maybe because they make a living from fossil fuels and are scared they will be unemployed in the future.
@joedalto
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The main purpose is disaster recovery
So then you need batteries.. You didn't get batteries and panels for $3k.
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Right now, wind and solar (and even some hydro) depends on rare earth elements that are strip mined in China leaving dangerous waste in landfills. The US and other countries can't compete with that because they have to clean up after themselves, which is why 95% of rare earth elements are mined in China. If there should be tariffs, it should be against China using unfair practices like this to undercut world prices.
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A lot of what is holding it back is reality. It doesn't matter how much richer it will make you, it still takes two or three years to train an engineer. And you can only train as many as you have spaces in your university. Of course, you can grow Universities, but it takes three years to train a trainer.
Likewise, it takes time to build more wind turbines, time to build more steel factories, time to build more deep water ports. The supply chains were already stretched before hand.
Globally, Biden's policies d
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Re: Capitalism (Score:2)
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No I didn't.
You suddenly added transport of goods as a concern which was not in your original post. That's moving the goalposts.
You just failed to consider all the aspects by which humanity needs to convert from oil to electric
That's entirely your projection.
Re: Capitalism (Score:2)
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Renewable energy will have a hard time gaining traction under capitalism. It just doesn't make sense under a capitalist system to stop using oil, because using oil helps us produce way more, which is the point of capitalism. I'm certainly not going to afford an EV at current prices. Not one that will be big enough for me in terms of cargo space and passengers.
Sounds like what you're saying is: (1) renewable energy will be held back by the need to put gas in conventional ICE vehicles, which are affordable, unlike EVs; and (2) oil has an inherent advantage for production.
I'm not sure I agree. First of all, the auto industry is moving towards EVs, inexorably. That means EVs in the used market will grow, and prices will drop, thereby alleviating your concern. And ICE vehicles will disappear gradually, and with them, the need for lots of oil.
Second, outside of gas fo
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It just doesn't make sense under a capitalist system to stop using oil
That depends on what kind of capitalism you've got. If it's winner takes all, no regulations, being the biggest bastard makes you win capitalism then you're right. If it's the kind where you want to have sustainable profits and a future then you're wrong.
Having regulations on capitalism doesn't make it not capitalism, because the government is not the means of production, and capital controlling the means of production is what capitalism means. It does NOT mean capital controlling the controls.
That's fascis
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Why wouldn't capital buy government because it is the means of production for regulations?
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Why wouldn't capital buy government because it is the means of production for regulations?
You're funny. You think that hasn't happened already?
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Why wouldn't capital buy government because it is the means of production for regulations?
Of course it will, if it can, because government is weak.
Government becomes weak because citizens are weak.
Citizens are weak because they let government compromise their education.
This illustrates the principle that you can never, ever become complacent and take your hands off the reins of government and just trust that it will do the right thing for you. Only citizen involvement can keep government working for The People.
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What you're
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Re: Capitalism (Score:2)
Additional problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Why would you engage in a 6 year investment if there's zero stability to your business case. Every 4 years the government seems to flip between people who want to invest in green energy and people who think wind farms cause cancer. Even if the grid connection in the USA isn't a hold-up the investment case still isn't there. You can't invest large sums of money with such economic uncertainty.
Re:Additional problem (Score:5, Informative)
Why would you engage in a 6 year investment if there's zero stability to your business case.
Ironically renewable projects are running into the same headwinds nuclear projects do, for different reasons.
A great deal of the cost (and cost overruns) for nuclear power are related to financing. They're extremely large capital expenditures, and you end up committing huge sums of money (much of it financed) for very long periods in an uncertain risk environment. All that cost of capital is a cost of doing the project, either in interest payments or unrealized gains elsewhere. Whether it's engineering hiccups or local opposition or changes in federal policy doesn't really matter, the instability in the planning/execution environment mixed with cost of capital is the real killer.
Now renewable projects are running into the same issues. To bring down the cost curve we're trying to build increasingly massive infrastructure, like multi-megawatt wind towers over vast areas. These require very large capital commitments. These projects also still lean heavily on subsidies and favorable government policy that ensure most of the investment is either paid back up front or locked in without risk, as the long term planning environment is too unstable* to get financing otherwise. And the interconnection queue is hard to navigate: that queue basically exists to determine how much it will cost to connect your project to the grid in a way that wont destabilize it, and project planners don't actually know how expensive their project will be until they get that number back. Add up the high costs and regulatory uncertainty and you're basically in the same boat as a nuclear plant, with the same potential for cost overruns and delays.
The issues with the queue have really been self inflicted to some degree: developers would try to game the queue by flooding it with projects, hoping a few of their projects would be able to go ahead with minimal connection cost by getting in under the threshold for a transmission upgrade. The projects that didn't would just get canceled, there were no real penalties for withdrawing them. Of course doing this massively drug out the time it took to evaluate projects, which endangered the cost basis for the projects so badly that even projects that won the transmission lottery and had low connection costs might become unviable. Which led to this massive amount of planned renewable energy in the queue, 99% of which would get canceled ultimately. The solution has been to bucket renewable projects together into large regional tranches (say 5 GWs) for planning purposes and all projects in the tranche share the upgrade costs. If a project backs out, the next project in line gets added to that tranche, until you've filled your bucket with greenlit projects.
*One of the main instabilities in projecting long term profits for renewables is that unless you build the project coupled with a long-term purchase agreement at a fixed price, you can't count on making any money from the energy sales. Renewable facilities aren't dispatchable, and tend to sell large amounts of unneeded power into the market at the same time on the same transmission lines. Depending on the topology of the grid around you and the associated congestion, you might routinely sell power for little to no profit after taxes and maintenance are considered. You can say "build batteries," but at that point the guy with the battery is making money not the guy building the renewable generators. Green energy mandates have really been propping up the whole sector, as many companies would cut purchase agreements with very high fixed compensation so that they could claim corporate carbon reductions. The energy markets themselves actually aren't going to be very favorable to renewable energy once a certain saturation point is reached, theoretically.
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Good overview. It's even worse because the sales price of energy is unknowable. On a sunny windy day power approaches too cheap to meter. On a calm night energy might be really expensive and you could make bank, but it's calm so no wind power, and dark, so no solar. Oops.
Just use batteries? Did the batteries get fully recharged the previous day, or was it cloudy? Was the wind blowing yesterday? No? Uh-oh. The batteries were still nearly discharged from the previous night. Oops again.
Given all that it's toug
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What's the deal with domestic solar? I know you need permission to get it connected to the grid in some places, but if they won't give it to you then could you have an off-grid installation? As in it never feeds energy to the grid, only your home.
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That is not what off-grid means. Off-grid means you don't have a grid connection, even as a backup.
Grid-tied solar equipment, whether it feeds the grid or only your home, is required to have an automatic disconnect powered by the mains so that it does not feed the grid and either burn itself out (probable) or potentially kill a lineman trying to maintain it (also possible).
You could have a separate solar powered segment which was not connected to the grid. It could have batteries, and those batteries could
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You are conflating issues at grid-scale with issues at home-scale. This article is about grid-scale energy generation.
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What you're talking about has a name. Zero-Export Systems. Off-grid exclusively means there is no grid connection at all. Zero-Export systems cost around $300-500 on top of your solar system, they consist of a monitoring station on your incomer and will connect to the inverter to limit the power produced in case of oversupply. They only really make any kind of sense if you have a battery because otherwise the times you're cutting back your solar system are usually the times they generate the most and the ti
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On Solis inverters and others I have looked at you can simply disable grid export in the menus. No need for any additional equipment or a battery, although a battery does make a lot of sense and they are cheap now. There's literally just an on/off toggle for it, as well as the ability to set a limit for the maximum export power.
haha. blame. (Score:2)
Haha. Blame the market. California is the leader in renewable energy. California is the leader in the cost of energy. Duh.
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>> California is the leader in renewable energy. California is the leader in the cost of energy.
"Californians pay the second highest rates for electricity in the country. That’s not because of renewables, but in part because utilities’ electrical equipment has set off wildfires" — "and now they’re passing the costs that come from lawsuits and burying transmission lines to their customers."
https://grist.org/energy/calif... [grist.org]
I can vouch for this (Score:5, Interesting)
America is big. And "individualistic". Where the latter often ends up meaning that the rulers at every level of government want a say in how things are done.
At the time I worked for the US (then) largest residential solar installer, my job was to maintain the application that was responsible for doing (or just verifying) layout designs for rooftop solar.
The app had to take the following into consideration:
* Federal regulations (generally none because the feds are not allowed to make these kinds of laws - which is ironically bad)
* Panel company installation requirements
* State regulations
* County regulations
* City regulations
* HOA regulations
* Power company rules
* Building inspector decisions/personalities
Just trying to find the rules and regulations for each level of government/oversight and how to apply them was a lot of work. That last bullet point is a little facetious, but really, if the building inspector thinks a rule means something then we had to take that into consideration - even if it's total BS. The thing is that some of these levels of rules make sense. The building rules and requirements in Florida are really really different than the ones in Washington. And there are states where geographic regions are just as bad (California, Hawaii). Building to deal with fires and earthquakes is really different than tornadoes and hurricanes which is really different than heavy snow. I forget which state it was that required a "Home Efficiency Review" as a hurdle before installing solar because COAL!
And the feds can't make [much in the way of] building regulations - *states rights!!!*
All of which adds up to: it's hard to install solar in the US. Way harder than a lot of smaller countries with a more federally regulated building code.
Too many think milk comes from a carton, (Score:3, Insightful)
electricity comes from the wall, and that roads and bridges just appeared fully formed from Zeus's head.
It's a consequence of generations of prosperity. If you're in your mid 70s today, you have even odds of remembering a childhood of abject poverty without indoor plumbing as you do of remembering a childhood of manicured suburbia, two cars in the garage, and the biggest problem standing between you and what you want being not enough fiat currency in your pocket, not the stuff you want not existing.
Enough people grow up with stuff already built, they stop viscerally understanding the need to build stuff. And things like deindustrialization, disinvestment in infrastructure, and permitting hell all follow.
You can try to paper over this cultural problem with permitting reform or some other paper solution. But to change attitudes...I don't know. I fear the only thing that will change that is a massive erogenous stimulus that makes plain the need to build stuff...because that massive external stimulus took away the stuff that was already built.
I would have thought covid was big enough of a shock to set people's heads right about this. But outside a little bit of noise around the edges about re-shoring glove and mask manufacturing, most people just managed to muddle through sitting on their couch in their pjs and declared victory.
So my hypothesis isn't that the shock would be sufficient, but I do think it is necessary.
Lags? (Score:2)
Lags compared to what? Other countries that are geographically far more conducive to switching over? Or some arbitrary deadline?
The growth of renewable energy is happening on a large scale in the US. In my rural county we have had HUGE amounts of acreage covered in massive solar farms. We have a 20 megawatt solar farm already online, a 75 megawatt solar farm under construction, and a 52 megawatt battery storage facility under construction as well. Plus others in the planning.
It's a little annoying when you
Lags? US is #2 in the world (Score:2)
I suppose, if "lagging" means you're not #1 in the world.
https://www.irena.org/Data/Vie... [irena.org]
Maybe this explains why Texas leads the US (Score:3)
Much to the chagrin of Texas Republicans, the state has become THE leader in green energy in the US. Perhaps this is due to its *lack* of regulation.
https://insideclimatenews.org/... [insideclimatenews.org]
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Oh, so Texas has a monopoly on wind? Right.
Well guess what, Texas is also the nation's leader in installing new grid-scale solar. California does currently have a slight lead, but not for long. Does Texas also have a monopoly on sunlight?
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Perhaps not, but the governor certainly seems to be.
https://www.texastribune.org/2... [texastribune.org]
That's actually the scary part (Score:4, Insightful)
There is absolutely no reason why progress and civilization have to continue to improve. We could just collapse like the Romans did and I think we're well on our way to doing it what with all those Roman salutes going around
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Re:Cost matters (Score:4, Informative)
solar +battery means no power in winter for days at a time, and a huge excess in summer. I live off grid. I have a generator that runs for 3 hours a day in winter. So basically I am paying for two generating systems.
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Regardless of the source of power you need to pay for more than one. Power demand varies by time of day. As you note, fuel costs are not why nuclear power is so expensive. Its the infrastructure required to build, maintain and distribute the power that are expensive.
There will be a lot of emissions during the 10-20 years it takes to get a nuclear power plant online, assuming you do it successfully. Those emissions will hang around for most of the life of the plant.
Re:What? (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem is the electric industry which is protecting its turf. Solar is cheaper than grid power and yet almost no houses have solar panels on their roofs even where they have full sun. Instead we are relying on huge centralized solar and wind farms that require grid connections and transmission facilities.
This reason for that is largely the electric industry's business model relies on those large centralized facilities. There is money to be made distributing power from them and the huge concentrations of capital that attracts. By contrast, putting solar panels on homes is mostly a cottage industry. Neither the electric utilities nor the solar industry have any real interest in promoting an alternative that is cheaper for the consumer but far less profitable for the industry.
The problem is there is no capital for the investment needed for putting solar on rooftops. It may be cheaper for the home owner in the long run but they lack the capital to invest up front. The same thing is happening with conservation, people are leaking energy from their homes but can't afford to fix the leaks. And the electric industry blocks any effort that would actually fix that problem. We have subsidies for those things, but they all require financial resources to use.
Imagine if the local governments actually funded home solar and conservation by loaning money to homeowners that become a tax assessment that stayed with the property. Essentially, no up front cost to the home owner and a slightly higher property tax bill that was more than made up for by the energy saved/produced. Its not going to happen because there is no real money to be made by investors. And we are a country driven by providing a return to investors.
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"Solar is cheaper than grid power and yet almost no houses have solar panels on their roofs"
My typical electric bill is between $80 and $180 per month. How do I buy $1000's of panels, inverters, batteries, etc. to make that pay. Even if I generate 100% of my usage, it'll still be cheaper to buy the electric than buy the solar hardware, AND maintain it - think hail, lightning, etc.
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Your electric bill depends on fossil fuel subsidies, both real and effective. So far you've been insulated from that, but don't count on that persisting.
You also don't need to have batteries to decrease your power bill with solar. For example you can buy quasi-legal grid tied solar inverter systems which simply plug into an outlet and reduce your bill while the sun is shining. They have anti-islanding protection so they will not power the grid. What makes them only almost legal is that they don't have a pan
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>> and yet almost no houses have solar panels on their roofs
"At the end of 2023, SEIA estimates there were nearly 5 million residential PV systems in the United States. "
https://www.energy.gov/sites/d... [energy.gov]
You can borrow the money for it as part of the deal or lease the system, no problem.
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here were nearly 5 million residential PV systems in the United States. " https://www.energy.gov/sites/d [energy.gov]... [energy.gov]
There are about 130 million households in the United States.
You can borrow the money for it as part of the deal or lease the system, no problem.
If you financially qualify and if you plan to stay in the home those are certainly options. But people aren't using them for good reason. They are taking on debt that they could use to buy a larger house or a new car and they have to pay interest.
You will note, those options provide opportunities for money to be made by professional investors. Which was my larger point. Almost all the "incentives" for solar that actually get widely used are subsid
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>> There are about 130 million households in the United States.
So what? Your claim was "almost no houses have solar panels on their roofs". Millions do.
>> Almost all the "incentives" for solar that actually get widely used are subsidies directed at investors
Not at all true. You get a federal a tax credit of 30% of the installation costs for solar energy systems. And unlike a car, solar panels eventually pay for themselves.
$10,000 (Score:2)
You get a federal a tax credit of 30% of the installation costs for solar energy systems.
Exactly right. Assuming you have the money to invest and the need for the tax credit. Most people don't. So they have to finance it. And the credit is non-refundable, which means only those that have sufficient outstanding tax liability can use it. If you spend $10,000 on a solar system you get a $3000 credit that will reduce your taxes at some point in the future. But you need to come up with the $10,000 when you install the system and you won't see any credit until future tax years. Its essentially desig
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>> So they have to finance it
Obviously most have to finance it, but the savings on electricity fees pay for the loan. Eventually it is paid off and the electricity is free.
>> only those that have sufficient outstanding tax liability can use it
Most people do have that, and you can carry forward any excess unused credit.
The problem is cost of doing everything at once (Score:2)
First, there's an enormous increase in demand from data centers and other IT resources. A single data center can use somewhere between 5 and 100 MW of power, depending on the size. In Virginia, there are already plans to build about 50 GW worth of data centers over the next few years in comparison to the whole state's existing energy draw of something like 23-25 G
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"This reason for that is largely the electric industry's business model relies on those large centralized facilities."
Partly correct. The customers depend on electricity being available on a continuous basis. Since the availability of wind and solar is not continuous at any given site we need grid connections and dispatchable power. Then there is the surge problem. Peak rated power on the range is 11.3 kw. The oven alone is three kw.
This will actually get worse if the government strongarms everyone into goi
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The customers depend on electricity being available on a continuous basis. Since the availability of wind and solar is not continuous at any given site we need grid connections and dispatchable power
Yes, but the solar does not need to centralized. The preference for huge fields of solar panels is driven by the utilities, not the customer's needs or the nature of solar.
This will actually get worse if the government strongarms everyone into going all electric.
I agree to some extent. There is NO guarantee that the electric grid is going to become emission-free. But there is no money to be made from conservation.
We are pushing electric cars because there is money to be made from selling new electric cars and investing in factories to build them. There isn't money to be made from discouraging pe
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If rooftop solar were some kind of "no brainer" investment then banks would be tripping over each other to offer loans to cover the capital costs.
Why? Its just a personal loan like any other. The bank has no stake in the relative cost of solar.
there was much discussion on how then new regulations was forcing electrical utilities to separate generation from distribution.
And its happened in a few places. But we aren't talking about what power is cheapest at wholesale for the utility. To the contrary, we are talking about power that is cheaper to the customer than the utility offers their retail customers.
If it were then people might have a grid connection as a kind of backup, or supplemental income from selling excess production
There is a system for that, its called "net metering".Its use has been discontinued in some places because it became so popular. Utilities complained about having to credit cu
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Large loans from a bank will go through some kind of review to determine the risk to the bank, and that will determine the interest rate and other conditions
They are solely concerned with whether the person will pay the loan. They don't care how it will be spent.
If I can make money from rooftop solar PV then the bank can make money on giving me a loan for rooftop solar PV.
They could care less about whether its a vacation or a rooftop solar installation. Neither one is collateral for a loan. The only question is whether you are good for the payments. They aren't going to pay much attention to your utility bill.
If solar PV made a good return on investment then we'd be seeing plenty of private investment from banks, utilities, and others to make it widespread.
That is cle