I'd prefer subsidizing distributed roof solar over a whole new corporate power grid subsidy, but the opportunity for Victor David Hanson to write a lot of ranting op-eds as his neighbors unmetered water guzzling walnut farms go solar should be entertaining.
Utility scale solar can replace water intensive crops if the economics pencil out, and once operational, utility solar keeps those parcels as solar for at least 20-25 years. Agrivoltaics are of course a thing, but the ag that pairs with solar in those cases is much less water intensive.
Because PG&E is paying for a ton of infrastructure, and you're not.
PG&E is also carrying on a lot of legacy generation capability. They'd love to replace it all with renewables and storage (and peaker plants), but it takes time and money. So for the moment they're selling more-expensive power.
When they're all done they'll be providing power cheaper than your home solar setup, even with their additional requirements (like paying for rural electrification). But that's some time off.
> When they're all done they'll be providing power cheaper than your home solar setup, even with their additional requirements
Really? Could you cite a source with some numbers? On my PG&E bill, the cost of power generation is about 44%, the remaining extra requirements (transmission/distribution, billing, legal compliance, etc.) are the other 56%. Based on that I extrapolated to thinking that the long term future of electricity is to remove the grid because the cost of moving power around exceeds the cost of generating it, but that extrapolation makes for a big assumption. I'd love to see an analysis if you know of one?
Utility-scale solar is two thirds cheaper than rooftop [1]. In 2021, transmission and distribution was 7% of American electric utilities' operating expenses, production 40% [2].
That does still leave 53% in other overhead, and it must be awfully tempting to leave that behind and just cut yourself off from the grid entirely.
That's kinda dicey, since it leaves you without recourse if you get a few days of no sun, unless you've got truly ginormous battery packs. The grid overhead is unfortunate, but it's a great backup that has to be funded even if you rarely use it.
Perhaps some of that overhead can be reduced by more renewables. It does seem awfully high to have more than half of the costs be unrelated to power.
Fossil fuel in a generator completely solves that problem. Looking at my usage for last year, I would've needed to burn about 20 gallons of gasoline to cover my solar shortfall. All of it was in two tranches during atmospheric river events. If my full solar array was up, it would have been zero gallons.
And I already have the generator and the fuel because PG&E uptime is bad and forces me to maintain parallel infrastructure anyway. Once income-based connection charges go live, there's no reason for me to stay connected to the grid at all.
The article is specifically about California, so looking at PG&E, SDG&E and SCE is appropriate. They all have eye-watering prices for electricity. For example, PG&E's default residential plan rates range from $0.41 to $0.54 per KWh.
