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All it is is MUSK pumping and dumping stock. It worked, he hyped up share price 20% and I got in on it and made a quick buck of vapor. I love taking suckers money.
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MSEE, PE -
I think the article is too dismissive of the rate structure trends that could eventually make a battery like Tesla's feasible for peak shaving. The author also seems overly confident that net metering is here to stay in the US. It's certainly being nibbled at here in Arizona and it's generally unpopular with utilities everywhere.Comment
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Net metering can't persist. For solar to grow big it has to be properly priced. But I do think the early adapters deserve to recoup the premium they paid for expensive solar equipment.
Continuing net metering long term turns into a regressive tax. Falling solar and battery prices essentially guarantee that storage will eventually work almost everywhere. The only way storage doesn't work long term is falling electric prices.
It seems like almost everything written recently on batteries is either too positive or too pessimistic. Run the numbers. Look at the cost trends.Comment
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I agree with you on Net metering going away. IMO it is too soon to answer the question if (once all rebates go away) will it be economical for a homeowner to install a solar pv system and/or battery backup?.
If I was a gambler I would say Solar will continue to grow but more from the POCO's and giant 3rd party investors and less with homeowners. That also includes energy storage systems. The big installers will be the Utilities since they can afford the up front cost.
In the future if prices fall enough a homeowner may be able to justify a battery system but only if they are being charged very high kWh rates from the POCO. Or if the homeowner has money to burn and doesn't care about any payback then they could install a battery system.
One factor that can affect the battery decision will be how the EPA's new rules affect fossil fuel generation and how much the POCO's will pass down the increase in cost to their customers. Then we may all be in the same boat as CA and HI.Comment
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I'd suggest the price of each (POCO supplied power and R.E. supplied power) will tend toward the other in some fashion over time. Regression toward the mean. Price evolution as a consequence of (social) entropy.
A long way of saying each will sell to the market.
At some point, like most every similar business situations, the two will realize that tacit, quiet, soft cooperation is more profitable for both at the expense of the users of their respective products.
It's just business.Comment
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Bingo, aka Market. The market always decides and never makes a mistake. The market is self correcting. Always has been and always will be. Currently the goberment is trying to make a market, a false market with Tax Subsidies and Net Metering. Truth be told Net Metering is a tax, a hidden tax imposed on rate payers in the form of artificially increased electric rate payers paid by the working class and poor. It is hidden in your electric bill.
Take away the incentives and Net Metering and the solar market collapses.MSEE, PEComment
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I don't know if solar will collapse, but I bet solar will get a lot cheaper from the vendor. I'd also think that any downward pressure R.E. may have put on POCO prices to users will be less and therefore, any POCO commodity price movement will tend to be more upward than downward. IMO, that's just more of - the market that is self correcting and never makes a mistake, which I believe is largely true.
As for government intervention, My experience is the market finds ways to account for that, sort of like a speed bump on the highway of profit. The market is impacted some as a response to it's environment as that environment is affected by government, but the market's response will probably be in the same general direction, just maybe not as bee line or as profitable as it might have been without the intervention. In the end, the market will tend toward preserving/increasing it's profitability, probably by the easiest (combination of) means as dictated by social entropy, which may well mean increasing prices, which may allow R.E. prices to increase, which may cause use to drop, and all prices to go down, etc., etc. etc.
All of this is part of why a simple strategy of just using less seems best for me. The impact of price fluctuations is less, it's quieter around my house and the bills are lower. Now, if I could just stop the solar peddler phone calls and door/door canvassers......Comment
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Why would RE prices, being technology rather than fuel based, rise?
What trend do you expect in smartphones? Maybe worse price/performance in two years?
The most recent lowest utility scale solar bid is $.06/kwh without rebates. Wind is less expensive in good locations. How could those prices increase in the future?Comment
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What makes you think panels are not based on fuel cost. It takes a boat load of energy to make a solar panel. Most of the silicon used to make solar panels comes from the scrap semi-conductor market, so fuel prices are not included in the process and pricing. The price will have to be a multiple of the source fuel.MSEE, PEComment
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How so? Panel prices have already bottomed out.
Keep in mind a Electric Utility is not a Free Market. It is regulated and regulators put mandates on utilities like forcing them to pay retail prices for the product they make and sell. There is no other market I know of where that is done. Utilities if given the choice would not buy at retail prices, no biz does that as it is insane, they buy at market spot pricing which is wholesale by the lowest bidder. If someone wants to build a wind or solar farm at their own expense/risk, and compete, then OK that is free market. Lowest bidder wins.
If you stop and pay attention to what is being said, utilities are exposing the truth being hidden. When goberment mandates Net Metering on a utility, the goberment allows the utility to pass those losses onto the customer in the form of higher electric rates.
Utilities do get some benefit with higher profit margins, and throwing their hands up not building generation capacity. They know in the end the public is going to demand more generation, and when that happens, goberment will relax the energy and environmental policies to get out of the way making it feasible again. Until then utilities just enjoy the ride paying higher dividends to share holders. All you have to do is listen.MSEE, PEComment
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[QUOTE=Sunking;155862][QUOTE=donald;155850]Why would RE prices, being technology rather than fuel based, rise?You make RE technology with energy from RE technology. What is at first a low EROI improves exponentially with time.
Huge amount of manual labor was needed at first to produce fossil fuels. Later energy from fossil fuels was the primary mover of fossil fuel growth.
Both RE technology and fuel based energy "bootstrap" growth. Both are forms solar derived energy.Comment
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