Quote:
Originally Posted by jamesqf
Noy necessarily. Suppose it's noon on a weekday, and nobody's home in those 10 houses. Then they're not going to be using much power, so your solar has to find a market further away.
Now suppose 8 of the other 10 homeowners decide to install solar too...
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You are correct that if the power isn't being used then it could be an issue but even if those 10 houses don't use it all (i am pretty sure they would, my neighbours are not what you would call thrifty with power consumption. Many have security lights on day and night
) then in the surrounding area there are much heavier daytime electricity consumers. Schools, shopping centres, retail outlets.
Compared to what the houses that have solar are able to feed into the grid these few large consumers would easily consume that and more.
Back when i could use Nearmap to get an aerial view, the number of houses in my suburb with solar was less than 10%. Many of those with small 1-1.5kw systems (4-6 panels). If the take up of solar ever reaches 80% then the power consumption versus production may be getting into the same ballpark.
Mind you to motivate that percentage of people to get it installed then the government would have to be paying the entire install bill and adding some sort of additional cash incentive, even then there would be those that complain
.
I think the utilities big problem here is that if too many people feed solar derived power into the grid there aren't enough people willing to pay the 400% price increase the utility wants to sell it at (green electricity). They may have to settle for a 300% price increase and sell it as regular electricity. (Not sure if i got the percentages correct. Solar bought for 8c/kwH, sold as green electricity for 40c/kwH, regular electricity is 33c/kwH)