this post was submitted on 24 Sep 2023
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Here in California, utility companies are "solving" this by instituting extremely high fees for the privilege of connecting your solar power to the grid. If I recall from the last time I ran the numbers, rooftop solar panels no longer make economic sense for the vast majority of residential customers - it costs more money to install me solar panels and pay the monthly connection fees then you'll save by producing energy over the lifetime of the solar panels.
Edit: I just googled and it looks like after public outcry the regulators pulled their really bad fee schedule to replace with a slightly less bad fee schedule. The system works!
Probably the one time in history PG&E tried to fix a problem ahead of time. ๐
Fucking greedy cunts.
Can you at least legally have solar that doesn't put any power into the grid?
From what I know the batteries you need to store your own electricity at home are crazy expensive
Yes, but you don't necessarily need batteries. If you just have a bit of solar, you'll use up all the power it produces as it does that.
I'm sure this has been discussed, but storing your solar energy as potential energy could avoid paying connection fees. Pump some ground water into a raised tank - or hoist heavy objects (large logs)?
Now that I type it out, it seems either dangerous or inefficient or not cost effective. Or all of the above.
Fun to think about, though
There was a company that stacked concrete bricks to store electricity, with the point being that on demand the crane could pick up bricks and gain the energy from dropping them down. Hit all sorts of news sites, never heard of it reaching practical use.
EDIT as noted by another commentor, apparently it did.
Sure! As far as I know, county and city ordinances permitting, you can be off grid in CA.
However, if you're on grid, and you connect your solar panels to your home electric system, your solar power is now connected to the grid. I don't think you can segregate electricity by source. You could in theory have some of your home powered by your solar and some of your home powered by the grid, separate systems that don't connect, but I think that would be both dangerous and illegal. Maybe you could have an ADU that's totally solar powered while your house is on grid?
And googling today - it's been a while - it looks like CA regulators withdrew their shitty fee schedule and approved a slightly less shitty fee schedule, so good news there ๐
There are solar inverters that will just take some load off the grid, but never put power into it for this use case. It's technically connected to the grid but for the grid, there are no downsides or risks.
If the fee also applies to that, it's just straight up stupid.
They are at it again, trying to block solar on churches and schools. Tell Gavin Newsom to get his CPUC in line.
get more solar, battery and fully disconnect?
In Colorado, it's actually illegal to disconnect from the grid once you're on the grid. Yay capitalism!
Nova Scotia Power proposed something similar, and then walked it back.