Discussion on:

Why America needs a feed-in tariff

At this moment in time, in Washington State, a 5.5kw solar panel array costs $25K. Incentives are $.54 per watt reintroduced to the system. (Now, here you go folks. The utility co. charges $0.459 per kw.) Unfortunetally this program ends in 2016. My usage, according to the utility company, averages 3200W/month over the year. So I should be able to install and start making money, right? @ about 2kW sent back into the system, I should make out handsomely. 2000x.54=108. WOW. Because I don't use air conditioning, or a clothes dryer in the summer, my utility bill is somewhere in the $42 to $ 50/month range for the 2 months of summer we have here. Even in the winter, I have a forced air system, No AC, my utility bill has never exceeded $120/month. (I have one of those good sense homes that were built in the '80s.)That means that I would be Warren Buffet soon enough. Still, it would take a lot longer to pay for the array, which I assume is the reason for the incentive along with the feelgood of protecting the planet, than 2016. At my rate it would take 8.5 years to pay for the array. Obviuosly utility rates are going up. My utility has raised the rate 4% this year and is going to raise it again next spring another 4.5%. (I feel for the East coast with it's charges of anywhere from $0.10 to 0.15+/kW.) so, with the expectation that this will be the norm year over year, I don't see how we can be repaid at the $0.54 rate and still have a viable incentive. If it is Federal, then YOU would be paying my way. Unless it is an equal nationwide incentive, I doubt utilities will go into solar whole hog and loose money. The powerbroker market doesn't claim ownership of solar either. We are required to use 15% of our electricity from renewables. (the reason for the rate hike!) Unfortunetally, in their great wisdom of shouldn't we all be equal, our Hydro capacity, which is substantial in the Northwest, was, get this, REMOVED as a renewable resource! WHAT! So we can be in PARITY with the rest of the country. Why should we have a lower rate than the rest of the country? Even though we paid for the build and maintenance for the last 50 years. Which is in the $100 millions. Never forget, when they told us to conserve, and we did, nationwide in the '70s and '80s and '90s, they charged a 'surcharge' of 10+% because we did such a good job. That was NOT an incentive. We did the same with our water. They did the same to us there, too. I have written here before about the solar interest. For jobs, we better get off our as-s and start. Instant economy growth. It really only takes one electrician and three or four guys to install these systems. They are done within a week. Lets get a hundred thousand people working. Once they are installed in 60 to 70% of homes we can start to close some of those nasty coal plants.

A comment should never be longer than the article. Who do you expect to read that?

I did and I sort of get your point but it's as much of a steam of thought, incoherent tangent as is looks like at first glance. I know you may find it thearaputic but please think things out and be consice in the future so you don't look like a crazy person.

"A comment should never be longer than the article. Who do you expect to read that?"

It made sense to me.

My apologies. I fell into the pit of Internet Speak. Of course I shall punctuate from now on.

The numbers are wrong in my diatribe. The per kW @$0.459 is wrong. It should be $0.0459/ kW. My apologies. Solution1

Catch 22 here. No matter what you do, you won't catch up.

...the harder it will be to make rational economic decisions, which I think is the agenda.

Until there is an efficient way to store wind and solar energy, we will have to maintain dual redundant sources, which is what the most of your power bill is in the first place.

Yeah, the Danes bet get to feel good about their carbon footprint, but they certainly don't feel the same about their power bills. This is in spite of the fact that most of their energy (and a fair amount of their wealth) is a result of North Sea oil & gas extraction.

John, I think it's Norway that has the North Sea oil & gas extraction. I'm not aware that Denmark has any of that.

Sorry for the mistake.

That makes paying their electric bills even more painful.

Either way a pint of beer is about 14 bucks because of the taxes to pay for all of the feel good.

"The program has been a stunning success and resulted in a solar industry that grew from under 3,000 jobs to over 25,000 since its launch in April 2010."

Here you go again with your economically-ignorant blather. Are you not aware that just because 25,000 jobs have been created by government intervention does not mean that the result makes any economic sense?

Your whole argument is predicated on the idea that governments must subsidise alternative energy now in order to displace conventional power ahead of when conventional fuel is supposed to run out.

In the UK the feed-in tarriffs and other subsidies have simply resulted in wealth distribution from poor to rich. Only the middle classes and a few landed gents have the capital (or borrowing power) to invest in these wind and solar boondoggles. And, yes, they get paid handsomely out of the taxes of ordinary people. Worse still, the landed gents get even richer out of large scale government-subsidised commercial wind farms.

The whole thing is a rotten scam, supported only because shale gas and nuclear (the obvious options) are (for some irrational reason) discouraged.

You and your ilk make me very, very angry. Fortunately your happy clappy days of alternative mush now appear to be numbered as the truths behind these scams are beginning to be exposed daily in the mainstream media.

The reality is that the numbers don't add up and never will. Please desist before you create more damage.

Hopefully, you're correct - but it's an uphill battle against a "religion of faith" in which logic is not a part of...

No matter how you slice it, a FiT is still just another government-enforced subsidy. By definition, it's not economically efficient nor desirable.

Yes, our power plants are getting old. But they don't need to be replaced with more expensive renewable power when cheaper and abundant energy such as gas and newer generation coal are available. You mentioned that England has high-priced natural gas, but you failed to mention that recently it discovered shale gas in its north that rivals the largest US fields. That will be coming online shortly.

Reaching grid parity means nothing in the overall energy scheme. Sure, it's nice when solar and wind reach "grid parity" -- except that the sun doesn't always shine and the wind doesn't always blow. You still need coal and gas plants to back up renewables, or some form of expensive storage. The problem is that once renewables become more than about 20% of your mix, you wind up having coal and gas plants that sit around idle for much of the time, greatly increasing their capital costs. Lack of compact and cheap storage options for electric also mean that renewables won't allow us to escape our reliance on oil any time soon.

It has not caught on in the U.S. because the voters have a marginally louder voice that the bureaucrats, and they can do simple arithmetic...a skill with which you seem unfamiliar.
Most of your figures and factoids are false. Germany's so-called success with solar is entirely due to the incessant whining of their green party, wielding the club of coalition-breaking over the government, threatening far more important agreements than energy policy. Further, you blithely ignore the carbon footprint of solar and wind power technology manufacture, which far exceeds that of any conventional power plant, per watt of output. Then, too, no wind turbine or solar installation can provide power for a fraction as long as conventional power plants, without repair/replacement costs that nearly equal the original investment. I suspect your prior and, evidently, present involvement in the solar industry introduces an insurmountable bias on your part, and negatively affects your comfort level with taking others' hard-earned money to subsidize your solar hobby. FiT makes about as much sense as the more onerous provisions of Obamacare. What's next, a breathe-in tax?

...that you can throw off responsibility for such blatantly untrue statements as "The new tariff will allow systems to pay themselves off in seven years and throw off free cash for another two decades after that, according to the New York Times." by quoting a third party? Never mind that your buddies in the business fed them that misinformation in the first place. No solar installation lasts twenty-seven years - an overwhelming number of the cells will fail entirely long before then. Those that survive - according to manufacturers' data - will produce at best 60% of the original design output. This does not even take into account the degradation of whatever medium is used to store the power to 'take up the slack' after dark or during cloudy periods.