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Comment by Ekaros | Hacker News Reader

Which to me is funny, when the electricity prices will clearly not rise when there is solar energy production from said panels. But might in other times.

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I think the argument is that on average people are buying heat pumps and EVs faster they are installing solar panels but it’s not completely convincing though, power stations can be added.

Further north where I am solar can only ever be a small component of total electricity generation due to the dark snowy cloudy winter months with close to zero solar generation for weeks on end.

Batteries for load shifting a few hours mitigate that quite a bit and are getting cheaper fast.

The issue for me with batteries is that in the summer I can produce in a day much more than I can use, and in winter I consume a lot and barely produce anything. This is where net metering steps in- I can ‘store’ all of my excess summer consumption in the grid in summer and get credit for it in winter.

A cheaper smaller system right sized for summer consumption with a battery would have my second best option, but for me never showed any potential payback due to the fixed costs of installation and the extra battery costs.

Net metering is of course nice for consumers but it’s not sustainable for the grid operators.

It is for a fraction of consumers- power companies and governments are well aware of that.

Exactly. Not a sustainable/scalable policy.

The point of my original post was that I’ve seen a much greater ROI on my own heatpump than solar, even though I don’t regret the solar installation. I wasn’t making any claims about sustainability/scalability of solar, just showing how it worked for me.

My comment was regarding net metering policy, not solar itself. Solar is great, and even better (for you) if you have net metering. But it’s not sustainable or scalable for utilities to keep offering net metering, and ultimately it creates wrong/distorted market signals: an incentive to generate more electricity when it’s abundant and to use more when it’s scarce.

I have never had a prime time surcharge so I can’t do that trick. Think it’s because my baseload here is nuclear.

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