|
Good points Charlie.
My view is that as a technology, solar should stand on its own and should not be a subsidized. If this crux of the argument is being carbon neutral, then address the other inefficiencies first - don't just throw more energy at the problem
-
Secondly, it's not free electricity. As you've mentioned there is a local subsidy or otherwise. There are no free lunches. When something is promoted with someone else's money - well, that's not my idea of free. Maybe it is for the beneficiary who had some upfront money to satisfy the conditions of said subsidy, but, it's not free.
-
Understandably a utility company may not pay for electricity what they sell it to you for - however - the markup is interesting when one looks at some of the details. For example, in addition to not paying the same for the power as it is sold for, it is my understanding that some of these plans are capped, meaning, you cannot just generate endless amounts of power to be sold back to the power company. Anybody with info on this?
-
Using your example of taxation for producing electricity with a house: do you feel this also applies to wind generation (attached to a house)? How about a diesel generator located in the house? How about an in-house bicycle generator? Are all these in the same basket, or, just the solar?
-
Looking way down the road, when all these things are no longer producing and are not replaced, or a new home owner decides to have the system removed, will the home's value decrease accordingly? Solar landfills come to mind but who knows.
-
On the surface all of this stuff looks pretty good but there are a ton of questions that seemingly don't have answers. If there are no concrete answers then someone may be in for a shocker at some point.
~CrazyJerry
|