All-powerful for-profit utilities have apparently bribed/persuaded Florida officials to crush what they consider to be a developing threat - solar power
This is disgusting just like everything else the Republicans do where they take bribes, and it hurts people of lesser means. Homes and their maintenance costs mean everything to people busting their ass to make a living. These individual solar projects have to pencil-out over a period of years to make it available to an average income person. So once again, the Republicans can't stick up for anyone but their donors.
That Nevada article explains it's even worse than that, because the utilities involved are willing to take the excess electricity produced and sell it as if THEY generated. This legislation creates a free resource for THEM, not the people of their state.
My hope is that, with the electric vehicle they will buy and with proper storage units that will work with your solar system, there will be little excess electricity to sell into the grid. That's a worthy goal without this latest stick-it-to the little people plan.
Big solar projects will not be held back in either Florida or Nevada. A few are there already with many more in the works. This is the future. The sun will not go to waste there. But as usual the Republicans will make sure someone rich will get richer while they screw the working people.
I lived in Naples Floridumb until 1995, but moved when the water got too deep. I built a new house and looked at solar very seriously because FPL was going to charge me $15,000 to bring in electricity.
I could have gone off grid for an extra $15,000, but I traveled internationally up to 300 days a year for work. Although solar is pretty reliable, if it did fail, my wife would have to fly a service technician in from a blue state, adding a lot of delay and cost.
I ended up going back to FPL and found a new guy who ran the wires for free. He had 25 years with the company, and both being Electrical Engineers, we chatted. He said FPL wasn't really opposed to solar, the problem was they had built nuclear power plants, and they had to keep those plant fully loaded. He admitted that solar was 1/3 the price for electricity, but they had nuclear contracts that didn't allow them to "go solar".
FPL was quite advanced when I built in 1990. I granted them permission to remotely enable or disable breakers, and they gave me $25 a month to do so. Since I was at the end of a long line, I generated kVARS so they never shut anything off.
Today, I have a solar home. It cost me $16,000 to install the plant. I only have a $20 electric bill, just a connection charge to my utility. I could add a battery pack for $10,000 and go off grid, but why bother? It's dead easy to install the new stuff. My panels have micro inverters and put out 120VAC. My electronics box handles feeding them back to the utility, feeding me from the utility, or I can install a battery pack and it just plugs in. The vendor remotely monitors all my equipment in case of failure, and I have a lifetime warranty. Simple.
My local engineer said the utility is going 100% wind and solar. The new electronics make it easy. At first they were worried about lack of control causing safety issues, But the new electronics take care of that. He said the only reason they hadn't gone 100% solar and wind was because they had a 30 year coal purchase contract on their coal power plant, and had to buy the coal regardless. Recently, they announced that they had sold the coal fired power plant and were going 100% solar and wind.
The way they are doing it here is a battery bank capable of a week of power will be installed at every substation. They will use homeowner rooftop solar that is already installed, and will install solar and wind at every substation they can, or nearby if not on site. They are excited to have their cost of electricity drop to zero.
The 'practical' solutions to shared energy systems are complex, on the one hand most people are not going to be in support of 'stand-alone' energy systems: The want their homes connected to the public utility grid, with the assurance that power will be forth-coming in any amount when they need it for cooling or heating. However, in order for the public utility system to be able to maintain, service and provide an often unpredictable amount of electricity they need an operating economic system that is 'fair.' Allowing individual home owners to stay connected to a public utility system and not sharing the costs of maintaining it seems unrealistic, and deserves some consideration.
However, there is a compelling need to de-centralize our electric grid and move away from investor owned utility systems to co-ops that serve it members with fair rates and stability; the profit system has distorted all our utility systems.
This is disgusting just like everything else the Republicans do where they take bribes, and it hurts people of lesser means. Homes and their maintenance costs mean everything to people busting their ass to make a living. These individual solar projects have to pencil-out over a period of years to make it available to an average income person. So once again, the Republicans can't stick up for anyone but their donors.
That Nevada article explains it's even worse than that, because the utilities involved are willing to take the excess electricity produced and sell it as if THEY generated. This legislation creates a free resource for THEM, not the people of their state.
My hope is that, with the electric vehicle they will buy and with proper storage units that will work with your solar system, there will be little excess electricity to sell into the grid. That's a worthy goal without this latest stick-it-to the little people plan.
Big solar projects will not be held back in either Florida or Nevada. A few are there already with many more in the works. This is the future. The sun will not go to waste there. But as usual the Republicans will make sure someone rich will get richer while they screw the working people.
I lived in Naples Floridumb until 1995, but moved when the water got too deep. I built a new house and looked at solar very seriously because FPL was going to charge me $15,000 to bring in electricity.
I could have gone off grid for an extra $15,000, but I traveled internationally up to 300 days a year for work. Although solar is pretty reliable, if it did fail, my wife would have to fly a service technician in from a blue state, adding a lot of delay and cost.
I ended up going back to FPL and found a new guy who ran the wires for free. He had 25 years with the company, and both being Electrical Engineers, we chatted. He said FPL wasn't really opposed to solar, the problem was they had built nuclear power plants, and they had to keep those plant fully loaded. He admitted that solar was 1/3 the price for electricity, but they had nuclear contracts that didn't allow them to "go solar".
FPL was quite advanced when I built in 1990. I granted them permission to remotely enable or disable breakers, and they gave me $25 a month to do so. Since I was at the end of a long line, I generated kVARS so they never shut anything off.
Today, I have a solar home. It cost me $16,000 to install the plant. I only have a $20 electric bill, just a connection charge to my utility. I could add a battery pack for $10,000 and go off grid, but why bother? It's dead easy to install the new stuff. My panels have micro inverters and put out 120VAC. My electronics box handles feeding them back to the utility, feeding me from the utility, or I can install a battery pack and it just plugs in. The vendor remotely monitors all my equipment in case of failure, and I have a lifetime warranty. Simple.
My local engineer said the utility is going 100% wind and solar. The new electronics make it easy. At first they were worried about lack of control causing safety issues, But the new electronics take care of that. He said the only reason they hadn't gone 100% solar and wind was because they had a 30 year coal purchase contract on their coal power plant, and had to buy the coal regardless. Recently, they announced that they had sold the coal fired power plant and were going 100% solar and wind.
The way they are doing it here is a battery bank capable of a week of power will be installed at every substation. They will use homeowner rooftop solar that is already installed, and will install solar and wind at every substation they can, or nearby if not on site. They are excited to have their cost of electricity drop to zero.
The 'practical' solutions to shared energy systems are complex, on the one hand most people are not going to be in support of 'stand-alone' energy systems: The want their homes connected to the public utility grid, with the assurance that power will be forth-coming in any amount when they need it for cooling or heating. However, in order for the public utility system to be able to maintain, service and provide an often unpredictable amount of electricity they need an operating economic system that is 'fair.' Allowing individual home owners to stay connected to a public utility system and not sharing the costs of maintaining it seems unrealistic, and deserves some consideration.
However, there is a compelling need to de-centralize our electric grid and move away from investor owned utility systems to co-ops that serve it members with fair rates and stability; the profit system has distorted all our utility systems.
Net-metering https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_metering_in_the_United_States should be a legitimate and effective goal for everyone to fight for with their legislators-it's not a liberal or conservative life-style issue. It's a common-sense systems approach. There are many effective ways for individuals to do this diligently: https://www.fpl.com/energy-my-way/solar/support-fair-net-metering.html and https://www.seia.org/initiatives/net-metering. There is, according to the Auduban society strong bi-partisan support for net-metering https://www.audubon.org/news/new-indiana-poll-reveals-strong-bipartisan-support-renewable-energy-0.
The utilities deserve payment for providing and maintaining the grid, and providing power at night, but they ask too much, page 3 of 7 at https://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2022/741/BillText/er/PDF