Point Counterpoint: Solar Energy in New England
 

To be fair, presenting the other side of solar panels. . .

Rooftop solar was overlooked. Now it's closing a New England power plant. - E&E News by POLITICO

From an individual ROI and cost for rooftop solar in MA, individual installations might not prove to be a great investment return with the amount of clouds and short winter days. But if you get enough small investments online, you might get to critical mass for success. Brownian motion of humans in a free society.

FERC, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has agreed to shut down a small but existing power plant given the amount of rooftop solar in New England.

from a different point of view, there are positives from solar at the critical mass level

Interesting

Complete and unfettered false news.

The residential solar business in New England is a complete disaster, despite the some of the highest levels of government subsidies in the US.

The closing of Mystic 8 & 9 has little or nothing to do with Solar or Wind Power. It has to do with environmental issues, reduced demand and improved prediction tools.

New England’s electric grid could be more stable than anticipated in the next few winters | WBUR News

Getting "news" from E&E, is like only watching FOX news ... unbiased isn't the word that comes to mind.

I didn't read either article but I did check and found a wikipedia entry. Here are some snippets (and yes they all have sources that you can check, at the bottom of the entry page):

So - Eversource, one of the big-league power companies, will get to improve its own plants, and Wynn gets a new casino. Eversource uses solar farms, geothermal energy and wind turbines, in addition to more traditional fossil fuel resources, to generate their power.

We installed 175 solar panels on the 200 ft long barn roof on our farm in Massachusetts in 2014 or so. With SRECs included, our entire energy needs were met with money coming in to us. 8 year payback. We were able to convert our oil furnace to electric. Our typical February electric bill (before converting the house) was $2500.00. Granted, we had a large horse farm with 70X200ft indoor riding arena, apartment and heated barn. But solar was a huge saving for us!
If we had 3phase on the street, we would have done more and sold back to the grid.
This was with the panels covered by snow about 3 months a year. I dont understand why there wasnt a trickle charge melting the snow to allow continuous daily production.
There were only a certain number of net metering setups allowed yearly.
Hail didnt happen often in MA, but I still dont know why we dont have more panels here in FL.

I believe the main reason for the relatively low number of solar installations is the low cost of electricity in FL. This can lead to an actual, or perceived, long payback period. Other factors might be the concern about potential damage during the relatively infrequent tropical storms in this area along with the additional costs associated with removal and reinstallation with a reroofing.

Compared to SECO, Eversource totally sucks from a cost prospective if you are a customer. The cost of their so called green power sources are very expensive and those costs are passed on to their customers. I recently compared our monthly Eversource bill from our Massachusetts home to our SECO bill from our Villages home and the results were shocking. We used about two thirds of the power in Massachusetts and our bill was almost 150% of the SECO bill. I’ll take SECO over Eversource seven days a week and twice on Sundays. To be fair to Eversource, they are mandated to buy overpriced power from sources designated as green, and their costs of trimming trees overhanging power lines in rural New England towns is a factor as well. SECO also doesn’t have to deal with frequent winter power outages from heavy snow, ice, and freezing rain dropping trees and limbs on their above ground power lines. The bottom line with residential roof top solar in New England is that it is uneconomical without government subsidies and forced net metering. I’m all for green power, as long as its economics hold up without taxpayer or rate payer subsidies.

Truestory: NY regulators bankrupted Niagra Mohawk in the late 1990's, which had the lowest cost of generation in the northeast, due to hydro electric plants. The regulators forced them to "purchase alternative sources" at higher prices but didn't allow them to pass along the increased prices to the customers.


All energy has costs, some more than others. . .

Pre retirement work story:
back in the 1990's the high paid consultants' energy forecasts (I worked with some of them) were for the world to start to run out of oil in the 2020's, this decade. Perhaps that forecast has hatched the mind worms of the many politicians, scientists, etc resulting in the expensive transition to "green" energy before we all go the way of the dinosaurs. .

former finance guy

Rooftop panels do not make economic sense in Florida. Typically, the payback period is close to 20 years, and when you reroof, you need to pay thousands of dollars to have the panels removed and reinstalled. They can also cause your roof to develop leaks. The companies that sell these systems lie to customers by presenting a payback calculation that totally ignores the time value of money, which at today's interest rates, doubles the payback period. They also offer a 25-year parts and labor warranty, which no small company could ever be able to fulfill. Another lie is that solar panels will increase the value of your house. It won't. Why should homeowners install solar panels on their roof, when the power company could do the same thing at their power plant with fewer problems?

The Villages makes use of solar panels for the lights in the golf cart tunnels and other spots around the community. Some folks use solar light sticks for lawn and walkway illumination. I absolutely LOVE this. I think it'd be awesome if we could all put up a solar pole that is wired to all the external lighting around our homes. Maybe even to illuminate the inside - put all lights on the same circuit, and everything else can be powered however they're currently powered (some folks have gas stoves).

Lights don't use up a lot of electricity - and can be powered for free once you buy the pole and panel and hook it up. The panels aren't big, I've seen mostly just 2x4' panels on poles less than 3 feet off the ground, set near the house or in front of the shrubbery.

The bigger deal is that Florida doesnt sell SRECs. That was a 12-18000 dollar yearly benefit for us depending on what the selling price was.

In the end, economics always wins. Solar power generation is economically feasible only at scale over the long run. Smaller installations are not good short-term investments currently, and maybe never, as the marginal cost of current electricity sources is lower.

Ironically, environmentalists are at odds over renewable energy that results in practical problems. To get power from large solar panel farms (and wind farms) to areas of high populations, where electricity is in highest demand, requires large new investment in transmission line infrastructure. Environmentalists generally don’t like new construction of transmission lines because it disrupts animals, environment, and so on. The government permitting process for new transmission lines over large areas is long and costly.

Also, solar power only works during daylight when the sun shines, Battery storage systems are needed for power consumption during non-daylight hours and overcast days. Although battery costs are falling, they are hugely expensive for large installations. Someone has to pay for all the costs. (I doubt most SECO customers want to pay more now for possible payback in the distant future.)

Almost certainly, the main reason we do not see more solar power generation in the USA is economics. Without even more government intervention, the private sector will not make solar happen at scale because of economics.

E&E News is owned by Politico. Many believe that Politico leans left.

There is no such thing as a free lunch.

I have a friend who owns a farm some distance from TV; some cattle, hogs, chickens, and a sheltered greenhouse-type of building for starting plants as well as a large area away from the greenhouse for the plants to grow once started. Plants are watered automatically according to a set schedule, using rainwater which is stored in huge plastic drums (1,000 L?) and collected from the roof of his shop. Recently he put in a solar array. Big one, on a stand some distance from his house. He also has two storage batteries. His array keeps him in electricity for all routine operations, but the two flies in his ointment are apparently the fact that if clouds or bad weather persist for more than about two days he has to go back on the grid for power as the battery backup isn't sufficient, and the cost of the unit means that it won't pay for itself for (as I understand it) 15 years, and that is without maintenance costs, new batteries, etc.

Solar is great, but all your eggs cannot go into that basket.