

The Koch Attack on Solar Energy - sasvari
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/27/opinion/sunday/the-koch-attack-on-solar-energy.html

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asharpe
While by no means trying to defend what the Koch's and their ilk are trying to
achieve, there is a real underlying econmoic issue at play.

Simply put, transmission networks (aka the grid) were never built with thought
that local residential providers would input into said grid. While this sounds
trivial, when you add a significant new input into the infrastructure
especially local end points that are only one-way flows, serious investment is
required to ensure this continues to work (ie no blackouts).

Similarly, solar supply is not consistent and scheduled. The system is built
for coal to provide a strong baseline where peaks are met by on demand
providers (typically gas). This is significantly more expensive than coal. The
flip side is that a coal plant can require 6-12 hours to 'warm up'. That the
cost of supplying electricity with unscheduled solar is not a fallacy.

I, for one, completely agree and demand that solar should be part of the mix
(and can end up being a replacement for coal). That should be the long term
goal. Legislatures should be working towards that. Unfortunately, as in most
public policy issues today, this is an incredibly complex and difficult area
to make progress and will require more detailed analysis and hard decisions.
This is the opening that the Koch's are using and will require more commitment
to push them back.

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waps
There is a problem in what the market will do if this is allowed to proceed.
The TLDR is simple : if solar power buildouts are allowed to proceed the way
they've been going, we will lose grid power entirely. Why ? Market forces. The
problem ? Believe it or not, a lot of people can't install solar panels
(apartments, "the poor", factories that need way more power than solar can
ever provide, ...). Furthermore people with solar panels still need grid
power. So grid power is a necessity in the solar era just as it was before.
But look at the economics of grid power in the solar space.

First, let's look at a solar power plant. Before it's built it will sign long-
term power delivery contracts for, let's say 50-80% of it's capacity. That's
what finances the construction. This means 50-80% of the power generation
capacity never enters the market at all, and powers, say, an apple datacenter,
and never anything else. Not good for electricity producers, but impact is
limited. Then there's the rest. They may sign a few more contracts, but really
the majority overflow capacity is going to the spot market. What happens on
the spot market ?

Well : marginal cost of producing available electricity for a solar power
plant = nil, zero, nada. Now wait, why not maintenance ? Well, solar panels
need maintenance whether or not they're in use, since weather is responsible
for most of the damage. There's going to be some amount, but ... it's more or
less zero (and has been calculated into those construction contracts anyway).
This means when solar panels are working (ie. the day, when industrial
customers use electricity), grid power's price is going towards zero. Great,
right ? Well ...

Now of course during the night you can't buy solar power at any price. So you
have to buy them from traditional power plants. At what price ? Well since
these plants can't quickly shut down (meaning they have a few hours where they
have to compete with solar power's 0 price) it's going to be a factor > 1,
because you need to pay for the fact that they have to destroy electricity
during the day. For coal and nuclear it's going to be at least 3-4 (since they
can't shut down or even throttle back at all, that was never designed into
most of the existing plants, they were designed baseload generators). 3-4 ?
Yes, given lots of solar, you can expect power to be available in most places
for ~16 hours.

So calculate. If you buy power during the night, it costs the utility 3x the
price it does now to provide that power (once for the power you actually use,
twice for the power they need to destroy during the daytime when they can't
compete with solar).

So if solar power is allowed to work the market without interference, then
here's the result : during the day (ie. when people don't generally need it if
they have a job), electricity is effectively free. During the night it will
cost 5x the current day price or more (in some locales 20x has been observed
due to a few factors), and due to an inverse Jevon's paradox, this will lead
to existing plants closing, meaning after sufficient time passes, no power
will be available at all during the night.

There is the additional problem that utilities' contracts generally do not
allow for unlimited price difference between day and night. So, on those
contracts, electricity prices would have to double or triple due to the
presence of solar elsewhere on the market ... Do we want that ? I'd say no.
Even where you do have separate pricing for day/night, would you really want
to pay 20x more during the night ? I'm thinking, again, no you don't.

And most people don't have a choice, not having the money do install solar
panels (yes, most, look at average income in America, cost of solar panels +
installation and you'll see it's more than 50%. If you allow the market to
force people to work with batteries, it's going to be worse).

These taxes are being introduced to prevent that from happening. Is that
unreasonable ? No (in my humble opinion). They have to get a whole lot bigger
to have the desired effect (stable 24h power at a reasonable price). I would
expect these taxes to get a whole lot bigger, and for people to start taxing
solar panels whether or not they're grid connected.

I'm not necessarily putting forth a position for or against these taxes, but
if you're not looking from a strictly individualist point of view (with the
individual quite rich ...) there is a very good case to be made here. The
extreme interpretation is that without government interference, solar power
will take grid electricity away from the poor, due to a 5x or larger price
increase.

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vampirechicken
They have found the perverse solution to the innovators dilemma. Having seen
the new market developing, and having decided on its inevitability, instead of
joining it, they're fighting it legislatively. I would love to hear Clay
Christiansen's take on this.

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icegreentea
I don't like the Koch brothers. And decentralized solar will surely become a
large part of any future energy plan.

That said, this article is also pretty unfair to the utilities. They're
totally not just pulling the implementation costs of decentralized solar
production out of their asses. It's a real thing. The swing towards
decentralization, without the increase in decentralized energy storage means
utilities still have to keep significant amount of plants sitting around to
deal with solar irregularities. Maybe the costs are exaggerated, but they're
surely there.

And their arguments are largely sound. If there is a cost to decentralizing,
you have a choice of how to spread that cost around. Tautologically, if you do
not place that cost completely on the backs of those decentralizing, then you
are increasing the burden on those not participating.

Now, it's clearly a complicated topic. There is potential for net system
savings given a large scale move towards decentralization. But there's also
easily a potential for net system increases. And honestly, nearly none of us
are equipped to actually answer that question, unless you happen to work in
the industry. And given the complex profiles of North American utilities
across the continent, it's not even a given that what holds for one location
will hold for another.

So, that was rather long winded, but the point is that yes, there are
shenanigans going on. But decentralized solar isn't all sunshine and
lollipops, and adding some sort of surcharge/fee/tax on feeding back into the
network may be the right course of action.

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iterationx
Koch Brothers are behind every liberal conspiracy theory.

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Codhisattva
How about a Kickstarter for buying coal plants and turning them off.

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manicdee
I'd prefer to put my money behind replacing coal plants with solar. Such as
subsidies to solar suppliers for installing and running their plant, at least
equivalent in scale to the subsidies offered to coal power plants through fuel
rebates, special zoning to reduce land taxes, low rent for digging up the coal
in the first place, and many more.

~~~
Codhisattva
Exactly. The first step for replacement is decommissioning existing coal
plants.

As there's no (or little) political will to do this, the private sector (and
specifically those that recognize the problem) can act directly.

And since it's the 21st century, it seems like Kickstarter is the way the
private sector can do it.

