California slashes residential solar feed-in rates

[demarpaint]

Have you not read any of my previous posts? PV is not something you want en mass in the grid for the reasons I’ve previously stated. Lack of spinning mass, lack of droop control, lack of reactive support, shoddy installations leading to improper relay settings that can cause cascading outages, shorter lifespans creating more waste & expenditure, large ramps of shifting load pickup due to variable nature.

All I know is solar roof panels is not the answer for me. If they want the big push for all electric they better start thinking nuclear, because solar and wind farms are a joke. They don't want gas, oil or coal.

 

[MVAR]

All I know is solar roof panels is not the answer for me. If they want the big push for all electric they better start thinking nuclear, because solar and wind farms are a joke. They don't want gas, oil or coal.

I’m on my phone and at a water polo scrimmage so don’t have the link handy. That said, NERC had a recommendation to regulators this year to stop with the “green” agenda & work with the industry to educate themselves on grid reliability. EPA doesn’t look into reliability at all prior to new mandates that get pushed onto reliability entities. Things are reaching a point where these mandates are causing instability & reduced reliability

 

[demarpaint]

I’m on my phone and at a water polo scrimmage so don’t have the link handy. That said, NERC had a recommendation to regulators this year to stop with the “green” agenda & work with the industry to educate themselves on grid reliability. EPA doesn’t look into reliability at all prior to new mandates that get pushed onto reliability entities. Things are reaching a point where these mandates are causing instability & reduced reliability

My brother retired from Con Ed a little over a year ago. The engineers there said their grid was a few decades away from supporting the so called green new deal. 2035, is a pipe dream according to them, and wind and solar, won't cut it. These were people in the know. I can see a lot of the people pushing this green deal with egg on their faces in 2035, and ICE vehicles still dominating here in the USA. Maybe on the West Coast it might be a little different come 2035, only because gas is so high there. But things can change, hopefully soon.

 

[MVAR]

My brother retired from Con Ed a little over a year ago. The engineers there said their grid was a few decades away from supporting the so called green new deal. 2035, is a pipe dream according to them, and wind and solar, won't cut it. These were people in the know. I can see a lot of the people pushing this green deal with egg on their faces in 2035, and ICE vehicles still dominating here in the USA. Maybe on the West Coast it might be a little different come 2035, only because gas is so high there. But things can change, hopefully soon.

I’m a system operator on the west coast. Things are a mess since the heavy penetration of so called green energy. We’re nowhere near a 2035 target & CA even removed “green” status from hydro >50mw. It’s laughable

 

[demarpaint]

I’m a system operator on the west coast. Things are a mess since the heavy penetration of so called green energy. We’re nowhere near a 2035 target & CA even removed “green” status from hydro >50mw. It’s laughable

Laughable, you're too kind.

 

[MVAR]

Laughable, you're too kind.

I could give my full opinion over a beer but would likely get me banned here from the rant I’d likely go on

 

[Rmay635703]

This is not the way to encourage homeowners to install solar systems.

Make it legal to pick and choose which utilities your attached to.

Water, sewer and maybe natural gas would be my selection, they can keep their electric connection fees and other bs as I don’t need an electrical grid connection.

 

[CourierDriver]

Some time in the 80s , and I could be wrong, florida was on a solar program,,,people that had it loved it....I dont know if the any of those systems are still in florida..

 

[JeffKeryk]

In my case, I focused on minimizing consumption by insulating our house, use of ceiling fans and thermal curtains.

We get hail storms that only show up on radar then the entire area is swamped by roofing contractors. I wonder how a roof full of panels would do in a hail storm?

My panels are guaranteed for damage by hail and other conditions. It would be pretty silly to install an expensive solar project if the panels could not stand up against wind, snow, hail, etc.

I would like to see time of use for solar panel houses. I still charge our EV at night due to lower rates, even though my annual electricity cost is peanuts. In addition, brown outs are caused by high AC use during peak summer afternoons so I want to support generation at peak times... Might be nice if I could direct when and where my production goes... Can't be that hard. I hate giving PG&E all that power when I was the one who made the big capital investment, not them. They win coming and going because they have a monopoly.

Regardless, our solar project investment has turned out to be great. I love my solar.
Some say I was lucky to buy when I did; to a certain point they have a point. It did not take a genius to predict energy costs would continue to rise... I can do basic arithmetic.

 

[Owen Lucas]

I can see a lot of the people pushing this green deal with egg on their faces in 2035

IMHO, they won't care. The narrative will change or there will be some other "new thing".

I have a family friend, I believe they live in Red Oaks CA, who had solar installed on their new construction home. Due to "an old transformer in the neighborhood", their solar system couldn't feed their energy back into the grid and save some of the capital costs from the install. Hopefully the transformer will be upgraded eventually but maybe this was just an excuse for some financial reason by the grid operators?

This electro-political financial topic is too complicated for me so that's all I have to say.

I my self am hoping for more nuclear but the recent cancellation of a small scale nuke project (NuScale in Nebraska) isn't promising.

First planned small nuclear reactor plant in the US has been canceled

NuScale and its primary partner give up on its first installation.

arstechnica.com

 

[dnewton3]

This who boondoggle is precisely why I said years ago that solar can be complementary to existing non-emitting sources IN MODERATION as long as the installed capacity doesn't start trying to bite into the share held by lower emitting reliable sources, like nuclear and hydro.

It is beyond idiocy, and bothers me to no end, to see wind and solar advocates take shots at nuclear for not being able or allowed to maneuver out of the way to let wind on the grid when it's particularly windy, as if this is somehow the fault of the reliable generator and not a glaring problem with the intermittent one, producing out of phase with demand.

The problem is that their advocacy isn't predicated on the usefulness of the source, but rather their desire for there to be as much of it as possible. So the lack of logic and reason doesn't matter, because it isn't premised on that. This makes rational conversation nary impossible, because they aren't really looking to solve the problem of having reliable non-emitting generation.

No truer words, my dear sir, no truer words!

 

[Snagglefoot]

I thought I’d report in on the Travers solar project which I believe is the largest in Canada. It happens to be near Vulcan, Alberta. ( the home of Spock). It’s name plate is 465 MW and it had no problem achieving that today. Here is the list of commercial solar projects in Alberta. Travers is the largest by far. It covers about 5 square miles of scrubby grazing land. TNG is the current output.

View attachment 175558

Here it is on Dec 17, just a few days prior to the winter solstice and the solar plant described about is putting out 181 MW or about 40% of its nameplate capacity. It’s partly sunny and just above freezing. It has double sided panels that pick up solar energy from light reflected off the snow as well as direct irradiation.

Here is a summer shot showing the back of the panels. Enjoy.