Few solar installations in the Mid West?

[Lake Girl]

Hubby and I just got back from a trip the the US Mid & Pacific northwest and were surprised by the lack of solar installations. So much sunlight, so few installations... Caught a couple of articles on utilities using charges and net metering that reduce savings for the consumer and wondering if that is slowing the adoption of solar. I know this is steadily becoming an issue.

http://www.denverpost.com/2015/06/0...ng-to-colorado-system-owners-electric-co-ops/

 

[EatenByLimestone]

Once the price of batteries comes down I think you'll find the grid losing a lot of customers. If I'm sure I'll get a 10 year break even I'd jump on it in a heartbeat. Then the utility company can play whatever games they want. It wouldn't matter to me.

Personally I feel it's unfair to force the utility company to buy excess power at costs that greatly exceed their costs of energy from other sources. That's just a bad business practice.

 

[Circus]

Once the price of batteries comes down I think you'll find the grid losing a lot of customers. If I'm sure I'll get a 10 year break even I'd jump on it in a heartbeat. Then the utility company can play whatever games they want. It wouldn't matter to me.

Personally I feel it's unfair to force the utility company to buy excess power at costs that greatly exceed their costs of energy from other sources. That's just a bad business practice.

You make it sound like the utilities don't benefit. By happy coincidence solar works best when the most expensive power, for the utility, is needed most. Not to mention local power never reaches very far so it eases stress on main trunks.

 

[EatenByLimestone]

Grid companies are adding MW of large scale solar. The costs of production is said to rival that of more traditional sources. Now, if they can buy that for the wholesale rate, why should they pay the guy who threw up a dinky littlesystem more than that? Other than decentralization, which isn't a bad reason, why should they do it?

 

[begreen]

The growth of solar installations in the PacNW, especially Oregon and urban centers in WA is quite impressive. OR is doing a better job with more open legislative support. WA state's best incentives require the system to be WA state made.

 

[blades]

Gotta love the utilities always on the lookout to circumvent the spirit of current regs. in their favor.

 

[Lake Girl]

Wyoming seems to have very little but big solar potential. Lots of sunshine, little rain...

 

[iamlucky13]

The Midwest is installing a lot of wind, which provides more energy per dollar invested than solar in most, if not all of that region.

The growth of solar installations in the PacNW, especially Oregon and urban centers in WA is quite impressive. OR is doing a better job with more open legislative support. WA state's best incentives require the system to be WA state made.

To get the maximum incentive, it has to be Washington made, but there's smaller incentives for out-of-state components - $0.15 basic level, $0.18 if your inverter is made in Washington, $0.36 if your panels are made in Washington (but not the parts, if I understand right, so a low overhead assembly shop can buy Chinese-made cells, diodes, frames, and wiring, and assemble them in Washington), or $0.54 if both the panels and inverters are made in Washington.

The incentive is on gross production, not net metering. So if you use all the energy you produce, the utility still pays you 6 times as much as the value of the saved energy. Plus you get the federal tax credit, and are exempt for sales tax.

Honestly, it seems really excessive.

 

[iamlucky13]

Grid companies are adding MW of large scale solar. The costs of production is said to rival that of more traditional sources. Now, if they can buy that for the wholesale rate, why should they pay the guy who threw up a dinky littlesystem more than that? Other than decentralization, which isn't a bad reason, why should they do it?

The cost compared to other sources is heavily dependent on the area.

Here in the Pacific NW, commercial scale solar at $2.50/W has a 20-year amortized cost (@4.5% and 3.5 kWh/kW/day) of around $0.15/kWh, compared to ~$0.04 for our hydro-electric power, $0.06 for wind, and $0.05-0.06 for natural gas. Hence, almost all of the solar is residential or small commercial, taking advantage of the large subsidies the state offers.

That's a very different picture from southern California, where 20-year costs are a little over half those in Washington, and where solar peak production is relatively closely aligned with peak demand, allowing it to have a relatively high value, because the cost of peak-demand power is in the ballpark of $0.20/kWh there.

What's less obvious is that even though the residential costs are about 1/3 higher than the commercial-scale costs, utilities in the SW don't seem resistant to buying the power because they don't have to take on the risk in investing in expensive new generation. So they're getting their solar both from the dinky little systems and the big wholesale systems. That might change as they near the level of solar the grid can manage, but that point actually tends to favor decentralization.

 

[Jags]

In Illinois we seem to favor wind power generation in the world of renewables. Of course we also cook a lot of zoomies in the form of nuke generated power.