Clean Energy for Your Home

Renewable energy sources or clean energy sources, like solar and wind, are a good thing for those that want to go off the grid. Whether it's a cabin in the woods or you as an individual don't want to be at the mercy of power companies. However, solar and wind energy are inherently unreliable. The sun doesn't always shine and the wind doesn't always blow.

For those that install solar panels or windmills at their homes and stay connected to the electric companies for backup there are some problems. Not problems for those that install the solar panels or windmills so much as problems for the rest of us. To examine the problems, let's look at some of the assumptions of clean energy:

Clean energy reduces the need for power companies to build additional conventional power plants.

False. Electric power is based on a supply and demand. Not over the long term but instantaneously. Sometimes the weather is great for clean energy and everything goes well. When the weather turns against clean energy, most of us expect our provider to continue providing power for us. The power company has to maintain the ability to produce power to satisfy the potential installed demand, or something close to it.

It might be suggested that simply more clean energy capacity is needed. If the clean energy systems aren't producing power, they aren't producing power and still can't be counted on no matter what the installed capacity.

Clean energy reduces the cost of electricity.

False. The price you pay on your electricity bill is not just for the electricity itself but also for the delivery. We don't go down to a store and buy this week's supply of electricity like it were a grocery item. It's always delivered and a large portion of your electricity bill goes to paying for the infrastructure that delivers the electricity.

If we can't reduce the number of conventional power plants due to the unreliability of clean energy and we have to maintain the infrastructure to have the electricity delivered, how is the costs of electricity going to be reduced? Actually, adding clean energy probably requires more people to maintain the infrastructure because of the movement from a centralized source of electricity to a distribution of smaller clean energy producers. More people equates to higher cost.

Installing clean energy can eliminate my electricity bill.

True. It can eliminate the electricity bill for the owner of the clean energy installation. Almost every state have some has some system requiring electric utilities to buy energy from clean energy sources. Most of them require the utility to purchase the excess energy back at the regular retail rate in the form of energy credits. These energy credits are then used to purchase electricity for the owner when their clean energy system isn't producing enough to meet their demand. So no electricity bill for the owner. This is called net metering where the owner of the clean energy installation only pays for the net amount of electricity used. The owner still has to pay for any maintenance or repairs on their clean energy installation.

What about their neighbors? The cost of maintaining the infrastructure is shared among everyone connected the electric grid, except for those with clean energy systems paying their electricity bill. Over time, the electric utility gets permission to adjust power rates upward shifting the clean energy owners portion of maintaining the grid over to their neighbors. What we end up with is a system that rewards more affluent people, those who can afford to install clean energy, and punishes less affluent people, those that can't afford them.

If you want to learn more, here are a few articles to read:
Net Metering 101
Net metering for home solar panels
Time is up for solar subsidies pushed by the elite, anti-coal activists