Quote:
Originally Posted by redpoint5
A coop is a smaller entity, so the negative externalities of any individual solar installation has a greater proportion of impact than a large utility with more customers. With a large utility, costs can be distributed across a larger number of consumers to hide the impact.
Back in the day of mechanical meters, it was possible to do grid-tied guerilla solar. In other words, the utility didn't know and had no way of knowing because the meter simply ran backwards. As long as net consumption was slightly higher than solar production, the net would simply appear to the utility as extremely low electricity consumption.
|
I have seen equipment advertised that uses your house wiring to distribute AC from your solar, but measures the incoming power at your panel to ensure that you don't export to the grid. I think that this is gorilla (sp?) as well.
So you are only reducing your load on the grid, not sending back to the grid (technically). Even when you are exporting to the grid ... you are really exporting to your nieghbors on the same distribution segment (13800V transformer) ... unless you have a very large array I guess.
As for costs, besides the meter ... what costs? The grid does voltage and frequency regulation, has the peaker plants, etc. I must e naive - what does the coop do?