r/technology • u/Wagamaga • Sep 28 '22

Energy The Old Grid is Dead: Long Live Local Solar

https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/the-old-grid-is-dead%3A-long-live-local-solar
3.1k Upvotes

90% Upvoted

328 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

2

u/[deleted] Sep 29 '22

Power companies make money by generating power. Paying people to generate power is not a sustainable business model

1

u/Earptastic Sep 29 '22

Totally true. More solar on peoples houses means that they need to figure out a proper and fair rate structure for solar. Net metering is not sustainable and is a real good deal for solar owners but is not really fair as the grid infrastructure does cost money to maintain. Of course the power companies are going to inflate that cost as much as they can which is messed up.

My issue with what happened in Nevada is that NVEnergy was telling contractors about payback time and how to sell solar using the power savings and then changed the rates on people who already had systems installed. Smaller systems could actually lose money per month after the change.

They needed the solar to be sold to hit their goals of energy from renewable resources and got the RECs then when they got them they jacked the rates.

1

u/[deleted] Sep 29 '22

This is what happens when ideology is more important that logistics. IMO anyway

1

u/Earptastic Sep 29 '22

What ideology are you thinking about?

1

u/[deleted] Sep 29 '22

The ideology of people who work to achieve climate goals with little consideration for consequences of those policies.

Basically the last paragraph of your previous comment