Solar Subsidies

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If Solar was cheaper, then it wouldn't need subsidies to get people to buy it. Anyone could see that the benefits would outweigh the costs without them, and there would be widespread adoption. In other words, the fact that you have to subsidize it to get people to buy it, is proof that the economics aren't there to do it without subsidies. So while residential solar can make sense for individual, in high energy cost states and factoring in subsidies, that's not because Solar is ACTUALLY cheaper. It's that under the fake economics of a regulator state, it might appear cheaper. Those aren't the same things.

Examples

For our house the costs of a solar system (say $10,000), and figure that with a $200/month energy bill, that means a 50 month (4 year) break-even. Which would be a good enough return. But that's not how the math actually works.

In reality, it's more like $20K to get peak power up enough to eliminate your bill... and another $10K to get the excess capacity required to charge for night, and another $10K for the storage and infrastructure costs. So at $40K your break even is about 17 years.

That's without interest/opportunity costs of capital (the idea that if you put that $40K in an investment, you should be making about 6-7% interest, compounded) -- so that $40K, if invested, should be worth $126,352.61 after 17 years -- in order to save $40,800 in energy bills? That kind of math only makes sense to left wingers.

Factor in maintance costs, that the solar only has a 20-25 year lifespan (with regrading returns), and so on. No one that can do math or logic would get it, if it wasn't for either subsidies, or the threat of raising their energy costs over time. (In a free market, you could expect that the cost of energy would decrease over time, not go up -- but California isn't a free market, and the cost of power there is already about 3x what it is in free'er states like Texas).

So no one would buy Solar without subsidies (and artificially high energy prices). So what did we learn? I know, if Greens/Progressives could learn, they wouldn't be Greens/Progressives. But this is written for the others, who still have some common sense.

Solar Power
SolarFreeLoader.jpg
There centralized (big plant) or distributed (residential) solar power, with goals of targets or residential use. They all have different issues. While I like the idea of residential Solar Power and people not being dependent on government regulated grids, and having the ability to survive in case of natural or man made disasters, and I plan on adding it to my next home, what I don't like is lies (flim-flam), about how much Solar Power costs, or the bullshit about how "green" it is. It is not as green as the proponents pretend, and if it was cheaper, how come places that implement it at scale have higher energy costs and less reliability? Someday, it might be ready (and that may be coming in a few short years or decades), but the point is that means they've been lying for the last 30 that it had already reached cross-over. Here's some of the lies.

more...

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Solar Power
SolarFreeLoader.jpg
There centralized (big plant) or distributed (residential) solar power, with goals of targets or residential use. They all have different issues. While I like the idea of residential Solar Power and people not being dependent on government regulated grids, and having the ability to survive in case of natural or man made disasters, and I plan on adding it to my next home, what I don't like is lies (flim-flam), about how much Solar Power costs, or the bullshit about how "green" it is. It is not as green as the proponents pretend, and if it was cheaper, how come places that implement it at scale have higher energy costs and less reliability? Someday, it might be ready (and that may be coming in a few short years or decades), but the point is that means they've been lying for the last 30 that it had already reached cross-over. Here's some of the lies.