What if solar got the same subsidies as fossil fuel?

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42. The first thing you have to ask yourself -Why would anyone care?

I mean, the amount someone pays for electricity in Australia, Finland, or Cuba never comes up every time solar is mentioned. Why this constant misdirection about Germany, especially since as I've shown the retail price has little-to-nothing to do with solar itself. At first glance, it doesn't make sense.

But it turns out there's a story and a history behind the predictable claim. The first thing to keep in mind is that the electrical utilities worldwide have fine-tuned the most profitable mix of coal-nuclear-NatGas for their production over the past 50 years. The exact proportions vary from place to place. Second point, nuclear and coal in particular are not very flexible in meeting demand fluctuations.

As a utility you can even out demand with cheap rates, inefficient consumer goods for use after the workday peak, power discounts for night-shifts, stores that stay open all night, Las Vegas. Overproduce and overconsume is the American model.

Then along comes the solar wrench in the gears, lopping off the most profitable daytime peak demand. Anything new is expensive to install, but for solar the marginal rate of daytime production is nil. And you don't need a huge industrial infrastructure to produce it. The utilities' profit model is shot; coal is threatened first, but because nuclear power is the least flexible, it perhaps is threatened the most.

Net effect: Coal consumption per capita in the US is more than double that of Germany and remains above the 1965 level.

The 'expensive German electricity' meme got started in about 2000 when the rate increases were voted to reduce consumption and pay for some unrelated programs, but it really took off in the past five years, primarily among coal-nuclear power utility advocates, reporters, and bloggers. The threat to their utilities profit models has not gone unnoticed.

So when you see it mentioned, you know at a glance who you are dealing with. They mention it, and hope no one will understand why it is high. Mention it enough, and hope people will knee-jerk associate solar with high prices. Mainly, mention it and hope people are distracted.

For what it's worth, German drinking water is also the most expensive in the EU. I'm still waiting for that to be brought up, maybe by someone from W.Va.