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Comment by jonstewart | Hacker News Reader

Selling PV electricity back to the grid is almost always many times worse, depending on state incentives, than consuming the electricity. For example, my utility sells electricity to me at 9 cents/KWh, but only buys from me at 2.5 cents, and charged me a fixed monthly fee for the meter to boot.

If the commenter’s house doesn’t have gas, then it doesn’t seem to make sense to install it, and the price differential in the US isn’t as great as in the UK (how’s that Brexit thing working out?).

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Huh. We have a 1:1 credit system here in Washington.

And Massachusetts.

Considering solar owners are all pushing electricity onto the grid at the same time, when it is needed the least, such a system doesn't make sense. There are real costs associated with getting rid of all that unwanted energy.

> when it is needed the least

I don’t think this is true in many areas. In our area, during the summer the neighborhood is running A/C when the sun is at its peak. During the winter, heating. Also the transport loss from a power station is nothing to sneeze at - my understanding is that locally produced power often just results in reduced demand on the larger grid.

I think solar makes sense for most who use air conditioning. That's a load matched pretty closely to the timing of PV generation.

Here in the Sierra foothills, it's been a blazing hot summer. About 90% of our PV generation powered our home air conditioning. We shipped very little energy to the grid on hot days. And it was awesome to have a comfortable environment without sucking grid power on the days when it hit 113°F.

This is an enormous subsidy to residential PV. Electricity wholesalers would love to be able to sell it to the grid at retail prices, like you are. Instead, they sell it for something like a quarter of retail price. This huge subsidy is only sustainable for so long as the PV penetration is low in residential market.

Yes. Even just being able to connect to the grid and only pay for the energy consumed is a subsidy. There is a large fixed cost to provide the connection and guarantee power will be available on it when demanded.

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