California will soon require new residential construction to have solar panels.
This is provoked the usual sturm and drang on Twitter.
Every expert that I’ve read has said that the solar panel idea is cost effective but sub-optimal. There are better choices to reduce carbon dioxide emissions in California than mandating residential solar. A professor up at RIT made a very relevant for health policy and health care reform point:
Another group, maybe called “pragmatic gradualists”, are more focused on making progress, and are happy to push on anything that seems to move. This group is less focused on cost-effectiveness and more on political feasibility.
— Eric Hittinger (@ElephantEating) May 11, 2018
I am, by nature and inclination, a gradualist. In baseball terms, I’m move than happy to make a living playing good defense, and hitting for average, mostly singles with the occasional double while generating a good OBP by walking a lot. The optimizers, in baseball terms, are three true outcome players, home runs, strike outs and walks. Much wider variance but in the right situations and environments, they can produce big results fast. The downside is a lot more strike-outs.
Both perspectives are needed. I think one of the more important questions to ask is “How would that actually work…..” as I downplay that question of “What could be….”
So by my nature, I’ll work within or at least nearby existing frameworks while I count on others to see what other frameworks are potentially plausible. I’ll be happy that there is potentially a $1.5 million dollar hemophilia cure potentially coming to market as that is an improvement over a $3.5 million dollar 10 year net present value treatment instead of asking why that cure is so expensive. I have productively spent that past several years thinking and talking about how to tilt the subsidy system in the ACA to get better deals for people. I’ll be thinking about what happens when the underlying morbidity of the 138%-200% FPL risk pool is completely detached from the morbidity of the Silver plan buyers.
All of those are interesting questions that should be asked and probed but they are gradualist questions. And I am more than okay with that, but it is a limitation that I have.
satby
The best dreamers open up space for the practical people to make things better on the way to best. Both are essential to an improvement in anything.
But her emails!!!
What about the group of people that that demands “cost-effective solutions”, but places such a high bar on it that literally nothing ever gets done?
David Anderson
@But her emails!!!: Bullshit artists is what you mean
Kelly
Better is the enemy of good and of done.
But her emails!!!
Bullshit artists can be found on all sides.This is more a of a wolf in sheep’s clothing trying to lead all the other sheep into a a blind canyon.
mad citizen
Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good.
I work in the electric industry but haven’t read any articles on this Cali mandate–only headlines. I was wondering, what if your house is totally shaded by trees? It wouldn’t make any sense to have a solar roof. Anyway, California rates are 2 to 3 times higher than most of the U.S., so lots of things are economical in that environment.
Starfish
I am disappointed in your refusal to be best.
Major Major Major Major
When I was sixteen and fretting over college applications the day before a batch was due, my mom put her hand on my shoulder and told me, “sometimes good enough is good enough. Get some sleep.” I got into the ones I wanted from that batch, with scholarships to boot. I feel like that moment has had a big influence in how I think about things, including politics.
Achrachno
@mad citizen: Since this is for new construction, trees will seldom be an issue.
Kelly
@mad citizen: Current rooftop solar federal tax credits require a site evaluation which we failed due to beautiful big trees on adjacent lots. I suspect this requirement will carry over.
Roger Moore
To go back to the baseball analogy, I think the people who only want to swing for the fences are missing a key component of how the Three True Outcomes strategy works. Yeah, the home runs get the attention, but you can’t hit a grand slam unless the guys ahead of you load the bases. The serious TTO people understand the big scoring play is set up by getting guys on base. There’s no big payoff without a lot of setup, and that means pecking out those smaller victories first.
Roger Moore
@mad citizen:
Under California law, you can force your neighbors to trim their trees if they’re shading your solar panels.
Wapiti
@mad citizen: Given California’s annual wildfire problem (likely to get worse with climate change), my wild guess is that state officials don’t see a need to have new houses built that are entirely shaded by trees. But you raise a fair question. What happens when someone builds a 3-4 story box house on a lot that shadows a house to its north? Or house is down slope on the north side of a hill? I can see lots of ways solar panels would be less optimal on a given lot.
The main driver in California might be an interest in reducing new power plant construction. Here in Seattle the utilities have all sorts of rebates aimed at reducing power use and water consumption, because household efficiencies can reduce the need for new plants.
kindness
Has anyone here been to Hawaii lately? Most buildings have solar panels there. Have for about the last 10 years. In Hawaii, they didn’t mandate it. They just made it so cheap to do it everyone did it. That and Hawaii has to import all it’s fossil fuels might have helped.
@But her emails!!!: Snark or just nuts? What the hell do you mean wolf in sheep’s clothing and blind canyon madness?
Achrachno
@Roger Moore: New construction around here (S CA) never has trees around, except on custom homes. All housing tract construction involves removal of all vegetation on the site including shrubs and herbs, and usually the recontouring of the landscape.
rikyrah
White House: Thanks to Trump, we are now ‘respected,’ ‘feared,’ and ‘loved’
05/14/18 10:00 AM
By Steve Benen
Deputy White House Press Secretary Hogan Gidley has developed something of a reputation for delivering notable quotes. In February, for example, a day after the Justice Department brought criminal charges against Russian operatives who attacked our democracy, Gidley seemed eager to defend the Russians, saying it’s Democrats and American journalists who were actually responsible for creating “chaos.”
It was around this time that the president’s deputy press secretary also described Trump as “a real-life Superman.”
Over the weekend, Gidley presented us with a new gem.
Stronger than what, he didn’t say, though I suppose Gidley probably meant U.S. relationships with “our partners and allies” have improved as compared to the Obama era.
The trouble, of course, is that reality keeps getting in the way.
Roger Moore
@kindness:
I think it means that the people who are always demanding more to the point of undermining potentially successful initiatives are ratfuckers. They don’t want those initiatives to succeed, but rather than attacking them directly they try to get their supporters to overreach to the point of failure.
rikyrah
Despite scandals, DeVos takes steps to help for-profit colleges
05/14/18 09:20 AM—UPDATED 05/14/18 09:23 AM
By Steve Benen
………………………
The New York Times published a striking report along these lines overnight.
This is surprisingly straightforward: in the wake of the Corinthian Colleges fiasco, the Obama administration put together a team that closely scrutinized dubious claims from for-profit colleges, including DeVry.
Then Donald Trump was elected, Betsy DeVos took over the Department of Education, and she tapped a dean from DeVry to lead the group of investigators, among other officials from for-profit schools whom DeVos hired for the cabinet agency.
And wouldn’t you know it, the team that was responsible for protecting students from potential fraud changed course.
rikyrah
In new head-scratcher, Trump goes to bat for Chinese jobs
05/14/18 08:41 AM
By Steve Benen
Donald Trump has taken quite a few steps to make China happy since taking office, but the American president broke new ground over the weekend.
In an unexpected tweet yesterday afternoon, Trump declared, “President Xi of China, and I, are working together to give massive Chinese phone company, ZTE, a way to get back into business, fast. Too many jobs in China lost. Commerce Department has been instructed to get it done!”
So, the Republican is eager to save Chinese jobs? What is Trump talking about?
tony prost
I wonder how much toxic waste and landfill that will generate over the years.
Major Major Major Major
@Roger Moore: that’s how I read it. The people who don’t actually want it to succeed, since their career depends on it failing. See: Obamacare; Obamacare repeal
Milo
Surely there’s a time for both. If you’re down 3 in the ninth inning, playing defense doesn’t make a lot of sense.
But her emails!!!
@kindness: It means some of these people are just ratfuckers. They set an impossibly high bar because they don’t actually want anything to be done and do their best to get honest people to buy into their point of view.
There’s a couple of variants of this, including, but not limited to:
1. The plan isn’t good enough because it doesn’t solve the entire problem in one fell swoop
2. The plan isn’t good enough because it costs something, generally either money, or “freedom”
different-church-lady
A person can actually do both.
Major Major Major Major
@different-church-lady: I believe David has written posts about both even.
The Moar You Know
@mad citizen: You get an exemption.
Suddenly the CA Republicans care VERY MUCH about affordable housing, for the first time ever, in that this bill will apparently get rid of it all. I am somewhat skeptical, in that the cheapest house in my town is now running at about 1.4 million, and the cheapest condo at about $400k. Anyone who can afford this can afford another 20k for solar on the roof. Now, I personally have some issues with the law (the roof is a shitty place to put solar, yeah, you only have to replace panels every 30 years or so but you have to replace the roof every ten to fifteen and what happens to my panel assembly or my roof at that point?) but I don’t think it’s a fundamentally bad idea. And we are all going to need it to power the soon-to-be mandatory air conditioning as it keeps getting palpably hotter here every year.
Amir Khalid
@rikyrah:
The exact opposite of the truth. The US is now not taken seriously, it is now easily manipulated, it is now despised, because of Trump.
Cermet
Cost analysis is complex and rarely looks at all real costs; such as costs associated with AGW – not just to the US but to the world as a whole. If we need to double our military to fight larger and far more fierce wars due to massive population movements and the wars this sparks, than solar mounted roof top units costs are very cheap compared to that future cost. Not that this will really effect AGW in a significant or even modest manner but any mitigation, by the US, can make some difference resulting in long term savings in many areas – one does needs to start somewhere. Has anyone looked at nuclear fission using a safer plant design like Candu? Vastly safer than our US sub based design and uses un-enriched fuel (an added safety benefit.) If one assumes fusion in say fifty years, nuclear (fission) waste is easy to neutralize making really long term storage not necessary at all.
lowtechcyclist
1)Are there better choices that are politically feasible?
2) How does a rooftop solar mandate preclude better alternatives?
dmsilev
@mad citizen: My understanding of the mandate is that there are a variety of exemptions, including for houses built on predominantly shady sites.
Personally, I think that utility-scale solar is a better solution than individual-residence solar (right now, the dominant costs are installation, not of the panels themselves, and installation is a lot cheaper per-kWh for large ground-based arrays), but that pushing residential solar certainly doesn’t hurt.
The more difficult energy challenge, both in California and elsewhere, is transportation, i.e. cars. Electric cars are improving, but they’re still expensive, only available in limited numbers, and can be inconvenient to recharge. More than that, urban housing policies that encourage higher densities and mass transit are a longer-term solution. The politics of that are …complex, however.
Major Major Major Major
@Amir Khalid: we are perhaps feared, but not in the way he thinks.
rikyrah
Trump Admin Poised To Give Rural Whites A Carve-Out On Medicaid Work Rules
By Alice Ollstein | May 14, 2018 6:00 am
As the Trump administration moves aggressively to allow more states to impose mandatory work requirements on their Medicaid programs, several states have come under fire for crafting policies that would in practice shield many rural, white residents from the impact of the new rules.
In the GOP-controlled states of Kentucky, Michigan, and Ohio, waiver proposals would subject hundreds of thousands of Medicaid enrollees to work requirements, threatening to cut off their health insurance if they can’t meet an hours-per-week threshold.
Those waivers include exemptions for the counties with the highest unemployment, which tend to be majority-white, GOP-leaning, and rural. But many low-income people of color who live in high-unemployment urban centers would not qualify, because the wealthier suburbs surrounding those cities pull the overall county unemployment rate below the threshold.
“This is sort of a version of racial redlining where they’re identifying communities where the work requirements will be in full effect and others where they will be left out,” George Washington University health law professor Sara Rosenbaum told TPM. “When that starts to result in racially identifiable areas, that’s where the concern increases.”
………………………………
A Washington Post analysis found that while African Americans make up about 23 percent of Medicaid enrollees in Michigan, they would make up just 1.2 percent of the people eligible for an exemption. Meanwhile, 57 percent of Michigan Medicaid enrollees are white, but white residents would make up 85 percent of the population eligible for an exemption.
Ohio’s Medicaid work requirement proposal — recently submitted for federal approval — is of a similar design, and would have the same disparities between urban residents of color in Cleveland and Columbus and rural white residents in the rest of the state.
rikyrah
Cohen case folds in on itself with unexpected Schneiderman twist
In yet another example of seemingly discrete stories turning out to be connected, the Michael Cohen case took a odd twist to intersect with the Eric Schneiderman abuse story. Joy Reid explains with help from Emily Jane Fox, Vanity Fair senior reporter, and Paul Butler, former federal prosecutor.
May.11.2018
rikyrah
Senators make plan to preserve Mueller’s work if not his job
Heidi Przybyla, NBC News national political reporter, talks with Joy Reid about a new bipartisan plan in the works in the Senate to preserve Robert Mueller’s work, even if Mueller himself can’t be protected from Donald Trump.
rikyrah
John Kelly stirs familiar controversy with rare interview
John Burnett, NPR Southwest correspondent, talks with Joy Reid about his interview with Donald Trump chief of staff John Kelly.
rikyrah
Oligarch Viktor Vekselberg’s Trump ties raise suspicion
Michael Carpenter, former U.S. deputy assistant secretary of defense for Russia, helps Joy Reid untangle the threads that connect Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg to Donald Trump.
lowtechcyclist
@mad citizen:
Then your house already exists, and the mandate doesn’t apply to your house.
And if a house built in 2020 or later is totally shaded by trees – well, that’s probably going to apply to about 0.1% of new construction in California, right? So it makes more sense just to mandate it for all new housing, rather than dither around with exceptions.
jl
CA developers plant trees of a variety big enough or close enough to shade a house? Ha ha. I’ve haven’t seen that in CA Central Valley since long before the housing boom leading up to the bust in 2007-8.
I don’t know the details of the cost-benefit. I view climate change as a slow moving crisis, and the quibbling over a C-B as whether we do the more or less cost-effectiveness stuff first. Sooner or later we will need it all. I had the same thoughts on criticism of development of solar in Germany. So, maybe a little out of sequence? if so, no big deal.
I have to wonder if some people are misinterpreting simple C-B tests and analysis which usually assume a one-shot decision point, and artificially constrained sets of mutually exclusive choices. Show me an analysis of the real option value of competing comprehensive long term programs that will be adequate to mitigate the long term threat of climate change and we’ll talk. In that context, possible that differences in conventional C-B analysis are second order effects.
One thing I did notice from the link in the post and the others it led to was that the only really critical comments came from CA private for-profit utility companies, half of which are notorious crooks. They have been fighting ability of CA to put in flexible solar capacity that they could not control for maximizing their own profits and soaking the rate payers for years. That coincidence will sick in my mind as I read more.
Amir Khalid
The head of Malaysia’s Anti-Corruption Commssion has formally accused Najib of having blocked MACC’s investigation into l’affaire 1MDB. AirAsia CEO Tony Fernandes publicly regrets endorsing Najib in a video Fernandes released before the election. Fernandes says he made the video under political pressure.
trollhattan
I found this take from a UC Davis energy economics guy very weird. He seems worried there are cheaper solar resources and simultaneously concerned there is too much midday solar production. To which I respond 1. so what, the homeowner gets the full benefit of the self-generated electricity so it matters not if some PV farm costs less per watt and 2. just how many houses do you think are built in California, doc? When these graphs begin showing more solar production than demand I’ll promise to start losing sleep due to our overcapacity.
mad citizen
Good replies! I figured there were exemptions, etc. Hearing from the Californian homeowners (my stepson lives in Sacramento) gives me pause to eventually relocate there. But we’ll likely be renters if we move there.
I agree the battle is between customer-owned and utility-scale, and there is/will be both. But I think utility-scale is the way to go–many people don’t want to deal with making their own electricity, unless they are off grid. I heard a new term last week at a conference–“grid defection”.
Jager
I follow a couple who are exploring North and South America in a heavy duty, off road capable (4×6) RV. They have 600 watts of solar panels on the roof. In almost three years on the road, they haven’t plugged into an electrical outlet, winter or summer or run their back up generator. Today you can buy an off-grid solar system that can run a shop with power tools/compressors, etc for less than 25k. Ten years ago I was looking for a back up transmitter site, the closest transformer was about a 1/4 of a mile away, the power company wanted 62k to run power to the site.
Solar works and it scares the shit out of the power companies…
trollhattan
@jl:
Yup. With land having an outsized cost impact on housing in the state lots tend to be tiny and not lend themselves to shade trees. Which is a shame but pretty common.
Amir Khalid
@trollhattan:
Doesn’t the energy from solar panels go into batteries before it goes into the grid?
trollhattan
@Jager:
Yup. Trump slapped a tariff on imported PV panels to slow the drop in prices, but that’s going to continue anyway.
no comment
@David Anderson:
So, what measures do the experts consider optimal? Are solar panels (or some alternate form of clean energy) not part of these recommended measures?
Also, reducing carbon dioxide emissions is only one reason to require solar panels. There are other reasons as well, such as reducing the strain on power plants, and saving money in the long run, even if the starting cost is greater.
Origuy
I’d like to see auto charging stations built into new multi-unit housing. I live in a townhouse with a detached garage. The power to the garages is on a common circuit that also powers the exterior lighting. To add a charger, I’d need to add a second circuit with its own meter to the building electrical system or run a line from my house circuit. I can’t imagine what that would cost me. I’d also need to clean out my garage so that I could actually store a car there, but that’s another matter.
Jager
If I remember the numbers correctly, the construction cost increase was$9500 per home, about $40 a month on a 30 year mortgage. The power saving was $80 a month for a net of 40 dollars a month.
trollhattan
@Amir Khalid:
Generally, homes on the grid feed their excess production back to the grid, effectively turning the meter backward. Few on-grid homes have battery packs, but that will change in the future and simultaneously improve the ability to use solar during the late afternoon-evening peak consumption period.
Roger Moore
@Amir Khalid:
Hardly ever. Grid-scale batteries are very expensive, so nobody wants to use them unless they absolutely have to. There was a big deal about Tesla installing a massive battery bank in Australia, but even that is more useful because it can come on line very rapidly than because it stores a lot of energy. Dealing with the different power delivery characteristics is one of the big challenges of switching to renewable energy.
ETA: I misunderstood your question, thinking it was about utility PV rather than home, but even home solar rarely uses batteries, again because of cost.
kindness
@mad citizen: – While utility scale solar may offer a cheaper cost wrt large solar arrays, the problem, especially here in CA is those arrays need several acres to plop them down on. That open acreage isn’t really available in most of the developed part of the state. You’d have to buy up something that is already there, knock it down and build up the array. That is a problem. Land costs are a problem.
And this isn’t a zero sum question. Adding rooftop solar on suburban houses increases the pool. It may not be cheapest but it makes the whole grid’s electricity cheaper. Let us not make ‘best’ the enemy of damn good.
? Martin
The thing to understand about California’s energy policy is how fucking long horizon it is. The roots of the above policy started in the 1970s with Arthur Rosenfeld who realized that the better approach to solving the energy problem was conservation, not bombing middle eastern countries. From that California has adopted an incredibly incrementalist policy approach, one where every LED light bulb and solar panel matters. It has been about rewriting the incentives of the industry so that all incentives are aligned to a common goal. In California, utility rate increases are based on per-capita reductions in energy usage. In short, if the utility can convince consumers to cut their usage by 10%, they can increase rates by 5%. The utility keeps half, and the consumer keeps half. That of course funds many of the rebate programs in the state, but the real result of the policy is that California hasn’t built a fossil fuel power plant since the 70s, despite growing 3-fold. That’s a LOT of money and environmental harm saved.
This policy is a no-brainer. As Jager notes, it’s ultimately free money for the consumer, but it restructures things in a few important ways:
1) It takes advantage of federal tax credits for solar – a cost that is shifted to the feds (since they fucked us so hard on the tax bill, we’re going to claw a bit of it back).
2) By putting it on the mortgage, you get the lowest interest rate for a solar installation you will find, plus you can deduct the interest on that loan, which you can’t do with an after-build installation.
3) The large developers out here will almost assuredly find more cost-effective ways to install thereby lowering the cost. And they will be such large buyers of panels that will also improve costs, and they will redesign their homes to better integrate the solar.
So Jagers $9500 will almost certainly end up being lower once it hits scale. This isn’t great news for outfits like Solar City, but these homes will simply switch over to solar shingles and call it a day. IIRC conventional shingles are about $12/sq foot, and solar ones are about $20. Here in CA, we rarely go with cheap asphalt shingles, and typically go with something with greater fire resistance. My roof is concrete shingles – last a hundred years, but cost more than $20/sq ft installed because the labor is so fucking high on them. I doubt there are many homes currently built that don’t have roofs that are in the same cost neighborhood as solar shingles.
? Martin
One of the knee-jerk reactions to this is that housing is already expensive in CA, and this will make it more so. That’s completely wrong. The high cost of housing is 100% due to exorbitant land costs due to zoning. If cities would open up more development, particularly mid-density mixed-use development, costs would plummet. The high cost of housing is because we’re building one home for every 10 jobs being added to the state. Construction costs of homes in California is pretty cheap. It’s cheaper to build here than in Minnesota because we don’t build basements, and we don’t need to insulate nearly as much, or to have poor-weather features.
Fair Economist
The biggest miss of the Twitter whiners saying California should have done X instead is that California is a big state with a very capable state government and is more than able to walk and chew gum at the same time. For example, Vox put in a whine that Cali should just build more housing instead – but the state government is already trying to do that with accessory housing, the SB827 proposal, a bill to rezone BART-adjacent properties, and assorted other attempts.
Victor Matheson
@mad citizen: Utility rates are huge issue for the viability of solar. Turns out solar MA is roughly as good a bet economically as solar in AZ because electricity is so expensive in MA (due to difficulties in transporting natural gas, coal, and electricity into the region). So what you lose cloudier, shorter days in Massachusetts, you make up by having the electricity you do generate being so much more valuable than in Arizona.
guachi
If the cost is $9,500 per house and you save $19,000 over 30 years the rate of return on that money is about 5.2%. That’s not outstanding but it’s decent.
Considering it’s probably a safe bet on the money saved compared to investing in something risky, 5.2% is probably worth doing.
Fair Economist
@trollhattan:
One unspoken goal I think that is driving the push is that if solar becomes common enough energy becomes worthless on clear mid-days. There will be more solar than the state needs. This is lethal to the economics of fixed power plants like nuclear and coal (which the state wants to get rid of), and a strong incentive for better storage, which in turn could make the solar even more valuable.
J R in WV
@Major Major Major Major:
Feared and despised in my book, because Trump and everything he thinks and does is so despicable.
WhatsMyNym
Many narrow boaters (canal boats) in England use solar panels to charge their batteries to save running their engines when they are not traveling and not moored at a marina. Since most use propane for heat and cooking, it means the cost of solar in England is low enough for them to make this investment, instead of buying a small generator.
David Anderson
@no comment: I am not an expert, but what I read over the weekend was that either upping the renewable energy content requirement of the entire California power mix or encouraging higher density in already built areas or significantly decreasing the number of internal combustion vehicle miles driven would would lead to bigger CO2 drops for lower total costs.
Industrial solar is cheaper than residential solar.
TenguPhule
@kindness:
Unfortunately our public utility commission in its infinite wisdom, revoked the most popular part of the benefits, the electricity credits generated by excess solar power sent back to the grid.
As a result, new solar panels are drying up and our local solar energy system companies are going out of business or moving to the leasing model, which is bad for customers.
WhatsMyNym
@David Anderson:
Already doing that.
Interesting comment, do you have a link to research? Does that include cost for transmission upgrades, other shared costs? WA state is already having lack of capacity issues for the new wind farms in the Gorge since they want to use the lines that were built for the damns on the Columbia.
Roger Moore
@kindness:
Long-distance power transmission is a solved problem. A lot of our power is already transmitted from out of state, so locating it in a relatively empty part of California isn’t a big deal.
WhatsMyNym
@Roger Moore:
Until you have to pay for it. google “cost of new electricity transmission”
Roger Moore
@Fair Economist:
One other thing that people need to take into account is that a lot of our current consumption patterns are tailored to match production. Right now, for instance, a lot of fossil fuel plants don’t throttle well, so they’re still producing a lot of power in the middle of the night when home- and even a lot of commercial- consumption is lowest, so the utilities offer lower rates then. A lot of time and effort has gone into figuring out how to take advantage of this, e.g. AC systems that cool a lot of water in the middle of the night and then use the chilled water for cooling when power is expensive. One of the ways we’ll adapt to changing power production is to switch consumption patterns to match. So if daytime power is really cheap because that’s when solar is cranking it out, businesses will give up on their fancy stored chilled water systems and go to more conventional AC.
Jager
@TenguPhule: Arizona did the same thing.
stinger
@satby: What a nice comment! And very true.
VeniceRiley
I am a born incremental gradualist. It’s the Bader-Ginsburg way! The Hillary way.
The best thing about rooftop solar, as opposed to power plant installs, is it gets the populace buy-in on cleaner energy. It’s like recycling household waste that way. Now we’ve semi-banned free plastic bags. Everything we can do to keep it serious in the minds of “average man” is a good thing. They’re not going to each research and decide for themselves, and doing it on before-sale homes is a smart idea.
Oh, and ….
Cheaper hydrogen is coming. I can see it in the recent several articles on catalyst research at phys.org
But I wish we had the vehicle install base for hydrogen that we do for electric. I’d love to lease a Mirai.
Jager
When my wife got her Volt, we didn’t spend the money on the high speed charger. If you have an electric car, you contact SoCal Edison and they give you a discount if you charge after 8 pm. We flip the switch at 8, car is charged in the morning by 5am. The Volt costs about 28 a month to charge. In 4 years she has used about 9 tanks of gas and her commute is just under 60 miles round trip. The Volt has a Mountain Mode, when you are going up a steep grade, the generator kicks on and replaces the electric you are using from the battery, when the load comes off at the top of the grade the car goes back to full electric. The trick with the Volt is to keep it under 70mph and keep the windows up, over 70 the battery drops like a rock, when you roll down the windows on the highway you can see the energy usage jump. She drove our old BMW 550 before the Volt and used at minimum a tank of premium a week, usually more. I wish i wasn’t so damn old, I love the future, solar powered house, electric car, divorced from the power company and the oil companies would be great
Bess
@kindness:
Hawaii has very expensive electricity due to relying mainly on imported oil for electricity. That made end-user solar much more attractive.
Australia has very expensive electricity. That’s led to a lot of residential solar and a thriving solar installation industry that has brought the installed price to about $1.50/watt. About half of the best US prices.
With CA’s new regs the solar will be designed in making the cost to run wire and conduit about nothing. Panels will go on as part of the construction process. The electrician will hook up the panels and inverter while they are there hooking up the rest of the electricity system. The numbers of panels and inverters will rise bringing down costs. All of this should bring the cost of installed solar down a lot.
When you see estimates of how much solar will add to the cost of a new house in CA look to see what they are using as a cost per watt number. If it’s not under $2/watt it’s likely wrong. We should be able to get the cost down to $1/watt.
jl
@? Martin: I agree.
And that is why a person has to be careful interpreting conventional Cost-effectiveness and Cost-benefit studies, that assume a now or never decision, given often short term static estimates of costs, and that compare options as mutually exclusive when an optimal program will almost surely say we need to do pretty much everything that meets a long run cost-benefit test.
To give a simple example, some people are in a boat, the pumps are broken, it is rapidly taking on water, and will sink soon if nothing is done. That captain tells some people to run down to the galley and get some pots and pans and kettles and start bailing.Some dickwad says ‘no, it’s more cost-effective to use the pumps.” The captain says he has the mechanic working on the pumps and we are going to need to use everything anyway, so get whatever you can and start bailing. water. The dickwad complains that the captain is irrational and sadly does not understand economic reasoning and all is lost. At least in a boat, the captain can reach for a blunt object and knock out the dickwad and thereby help save the boat.
Fair Economist
@jl: A very appropriate analogy considering that continued CO2 emissions have a non-trivial chance of rendering the world essentially uninhabitable for humans.
Roger Moore
@jl:
When some dickwad says this, you should always assume their real objection is they’re too lazy to bail. It’s something you see again and again. People who want to do nothing will always look for some reason not to do each particular thing while ignoring the big picture, except as the big picture lets them rationalize each individual decision. Either something is too small to solve the problem by itself, or it’s too big and requires too many drastic changes to the economy, or whatever. The real goal is to say no.
? Martin
@David Anderson:
Sort of. You have to realize that you lose 50% of your production to transmission losses. Plus, you need to add in the cost of transmission infrastructure, which is nontrivial and usually considered a sunk cost, when it rarely is. We have massive power backbone going to south county OC because we had a nuclear power plant there, but that’s not where the solar is being installed, so that infrastructure isn’t useful and they need to build out new backbone. If you consider all costs, residential solar is generally cheaper to the consumer, even when you have a battery tossed into the mix.
And Roger’s comment about matching how we consume is important. If you get an EV and work with your utility on putting service in your garage, they’ll very strongly suggest having a power manager on when the vehicle charges so that the utility can signal to your house when they have excess capacity. You get a lower rate if you do that.
daverave
@The Moar You Know:
The cheapest roofing by far is asphalt composition shingles. For at least a few decades there have been varieties that provide 20-40 year protection. Almost every homeowner and developer opts for the 40 year for obvious reasons since most of the cost is in the labor to install. The only roofs that need to be replaced as often as 10-15 years are wood shingles or shakes and they are, fortunately, quite expensive these days as cedar or redwood is a very limited resource. Not to mention the fact that wood shingles burn like the dickens particularly after a couple of years of drying. Not a great roofing material in a state that is always burning. So the lifespan of composition roofing and solar panels sync up quite well.
Roger Moore
@daverave:
For which reason untreated wood roofs are no longer legal in California. IIRC you can still use wood if it’s treated with a fire retardant, but most people who like the look are now using synthetic lookalikes anyway.
trollhattan
We’re at about the solar daytime peak and here’s California’s energy supply:
Renewables–55.6%
Natural gas–13%
Large hydro–8.4%
Imports–13.4%
Nuclear–9.4%
Coal–0.1%
Of renewables:
Solar–74.6%
Wind–11.2%
Geothermal–6.7%
Biomass–2.2%
Biogas–1.7%
Small hydro–3.5%
Batteries–0.1%
Raven Onthill
Here’s the California Energy Commission’s explainer on the energy requirement: http://www.energy.ca.gov/releases/2018_releases/2018-05-09_building_standards_adopted_nr.html.
My general take on this is that there should have been a pilot program first; there are likely to be unexpected consequences. Mandating that housing include fairly complex active systems (there are other requirements as well) is likely to run into some unexpected problems. Maintenance is going to be a problem, for one thing.
Still, I haven’t seen the work that the CEC is basing their decision on. Could have this wrong.
J R in WV
Personal experience:
We had a solar evaluation of our property here in WV, and the contractor called us back to say without cutting lots of trees (which trees are why we are where we are!) there was no way for solar power to pay off here.
But when we built our small house in the AZ mountains, the local power co-op wanted $30,000 to connect our property to the nearest transformer, which we could see close by, but from which they planned to follow a strange and long right of way.
A local AZ solar contractor installed a complete system of panels, batteries and control hardware for less than that cost, then we got a check ($6K) from the power Co-op to cover their savings for not having to build capacity to supply our residence. Then we got a substantial tax benefit for the year the installation was built.
So we saved tens of thousands of dollars, and won’t have a power bill, ever. We will have to replace the batteries eventually, and would need to increase the size of our installation to have A/C in the summer, but we spend summers in WV.