General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: The total area of solar panels it would take to power the world, Europe, and Germany [View all]wercal
(1,370 posts)...since they don't have a lot of natural resources on the island. So I'm not surprised solar is competitive there.
Especially when factoring in the 30% federal tax credit for installation, and 35% state tax credit.
Do you understand that? Their power is triple what is normal in cost, and only after having 2/3 of the installation paid for by incentives, is it competitive with more conventional sources.
In my book, that isn't remotely close to cost competitive.
Oh yeah, they also have net metering, by law. I find this offensive and immoral, as a typical rate payer. In case you don't know what that means, solar users get to sell their excess power at the retail rate, vs the wholesale rate.
Think about that - they want to sell their power to the grid. And the power company maintains the lines, repairs them after storms, has redundancy, has fail-safes to prevent overload and underload conditions...all of which cost them money, which is passed on to the rate payer. But Johnny solar owner gets to use those very same lines for FREE, and sell his power back at RETAIL....all because a solar company lobbied enough lawmakers in Hawaii to do such an immoral thing.
If you take away the net metering, the sell back is reduced by around 5 cents a kwh...changes the equation by almost a factor of two.
So lets review. A good citizen of Hawaii gets to:
1. Pay a portion of the federal subsidy
2. Pay a portion of the state subsidy
3. Pay eternally for net metering
but "Nobody is ignoring costs".
Solar isn't there yet. It doesn't even fall into the category of an emerging industry that just needs a few years of government protection, to get off the ground. Its struggles to even meet the test of viability. Add to that - much of the subsidies discussed above are due to expire in 2015.