SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
from the what-sunny-state-will-be-next dept.
The Center for American Progress reports
Solar power could soon be flourishing [in] the Sunshine State. [On October 22,] the Florida Supreme Court approved [PDF] an initiative for the 2016 ballot that would allow Floridians to vote to reduce the state's restrictions on rooftop solar power.
Although solar is growing exponentially nationwide, it has not thrived in Florida. Florida is one of a handful of states that prohibit residents from purchasing electricity from a source other than an electric utility. This has locked out third-party solar rooftop companies, such as SolarCity and SunRun, which install rooftop solar panels on a customer's property at no cost and sell solar-generated power to that customer at a reduced electric rate.
As ThinkProgress previously reported, a coalition of solar advocates called Floridians for Solar Choice has been leading the effort to change this policy by pursuing a ballot initiative to permit third-party financing for rooftop solar by private companies. To get the initiative on the ballot, Florida required the coalition to first collect 68,314 voter signatures and then have the initiative language approved by the state Supreme Court.
On [October 22], the ballot initiative cleared this major hurdle when the Florida Supreme Court approved the "Solar Choice Amendment" for the November 2016 ballot. Advocates now have to collect the requisite 683,149 signatures to ensure the initiative goes on the ballot. It will then have to pass with 60 percent of the vote in 2016.
[...] In 2008, the Florida [Public Service Commission--the state body responsible for regulating electricity--]released a report saying that rooftop solar alone had the potential to generate nearly 100 times [the current 530 MW derived from renewables in Florida]. [PDF]
Meanwhile, "public servant" Pam Bondi, Florida's Attorney General, continues to fight on multiple fronts to block renewables.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Saturday October 24 2015, @03:41PM
They come to my house, they install the solar panels, then I have to buy the electricity from them? Really? Why didn't I just buy the freaking panels, install them myself (or pay someone more qualified than I to install them) - that way I would have FREE (or nearly free) electricity for as long as the panels last.
Doing things this way, I might as well continue to pay the electric company for my juice. In effect, I'll be paying for the solar panels forever. At least if I went to the bank to borrow the money for the panels, I only get a little bit raped. In two, five, or ten years, the panels are paid off, and I begin to enjoy free electricity!!
(Score: 3, Informative) by compro01 on Saturday October 24 2015, @03:44PM
Because you can't afford the cost of the solar panels and such up front and can't get a loan.
(Score: 3, Informative) by mmcmonster on Saturday October 24 2015, @04:28PM
Exactly.
The outlay on a solar setup maybe $20k or more. If you have that much to spare (or can get the home equity loan to cover it), then fantastic. It's definitely worth it rather than going to Solar City route.
But most people can't tie up that much money for a decade to recoup the outlay.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Hyperturtle on Saturday October 24 2015, @05:52PM
And this is why those with money are able to keep their money, invest their money, and otherwise, gain the benefits of having their money.
The poor get to lease what the rich get to own, and thus control.
Of course. I fool myself about of lot of things I think I control, too, but this is a pretty clear cut case of who owns what and how the economies related to it work.
I agree with Runaway, though--I would want to own them even if the payback takes a long time. I am patient, if not wealthy enough to exercise such patience.
(Score: 2) by mmcmonster on Saturday October 24 2015, @06:18PM
And this is why those with money are able to keep their money, invest their money, and otherwise, gain the benefits of having their money.
But what I am describing isn't control. It's human nature.
It's human nature to avoid the large initial outlay for a benefit you'll get a decade in the future (deferred pleasure).
Those that want to buy the solar panels outright are welcome to do so under current Florida law (apparently). It's the "lease with option to buy" which is outlawed.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by frojack on Saturday October 24 2015, @08:00PM
No, its not lease with option to buy that is outlawed. That would be perfectly ok in Florida if the contract was written that way.
If they sold you the equipment on an installment plan, that would be fine too.
But these companies are selling electricity by the KWH.
Electricity is just dangerous enough that its sale and distribution is regulated in every single state in the union, and every Canadian province.
Some of these companies have developed a way to end-run just about all regulation other than the Electrical Code.
Florida law only allows a few utilities such as Florida Power & Light, Duke Energy and Tampa Electric to sell power directly to consumers. If a solar power generator wants to get into the state market, it must first sell to one of those utilities. This applies to wind turbines, private generation plants, and also commercial solar farms. They all have to sell to the grid operators rather than directly to consumers.
There are several big-companies in this Install-on-your-roof-for-free business in many states. They aren't selling solar systems, they are selling Electricity by the KWH. The homeowner never owns the equipment. The power never flows over the grid. (In most cases the houses still need or have a grid inter-tie.)
The state is trying to prevent these companies from doing business in Florida with that business model. Probably at the behest of the large gird operators.
But you shouldn't assume all of the lobbying against the state regulations is "grass roots" either. There is a lot going on behind the scenes here.
Companies like SunSolar [sunsolarus.com] are pretty circumspect about how and who you pay for your electricity, and what happens when you decide to sell your home.
And abuses of this model [newsmax.com] are common. [dailycaller.com]
Removing the prohibition of this business model had better come with some consumer protection or there will be a lot of pissed off customers down the line.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 26 2015, @02:01AM
This is one scam that Florida doesn't currently have. Good. Let's keep it that way.
The law should change in just a few ways for solar. First, providing a bit of fairness, retail electrical bills need to split the grid maintenance costs out. Everybody hooked up to the grid should be paying that, and it shouldn't depend on power usage. Power usage should be billed separately. Second, homeowner associations should have no ability to restrict solar. Florida does at least keep them from 100% banning solar, but really they should have no say at all.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Phoenix666 on Saturday October 24 2015, @07:28PM
$20K? Not necessarily. Installation costs are falling swiftly, which has become the higher cost barrier than the panels themselves. The panels you can get wholesale [wholesalesolar.com] at ~$1/watt. The site I linked to has pallets of 20 Astronergy 315W panels for $5670. My family uses below 300kwh/month, so I'd need 8-9 panels in NYC, which has an insolation (calculated hours of maximum solar production per day) of 4. In NYC we pay ConEd $0.35/kwh, or $1260/yr. That would put our break-even at 2 years if we installed the panels ourselves, or 4-5 years if we pay someone to do it. The panels are rated to last 30 years. So that's a savings of $31,500 over the lifetime of the panels, assuming grid electricity costs stayed constant (though they've been growing something like 10%/yr for the last decade).
And people get loans that size to renovate their bathrooms, buy trucks and lots of other stuff all the time. Why wouldn't you do something that would save you that much money? Plus, as demand destruction accelerates and the utilities jack up their rates even more to maintain their margins, you won't get stuck holding the bag. If you switch to an EV, too, then you'll be 100% energy independent.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Saturday October 24 2015, @08:14PM
Exactly.
The installed cost is falling every day, and locking yourself into a long term payment plan by the KWH seems sort of silly at this time.
Even if you assume a 20 year fixed KWH price from one of these "Your-Roof, Our-System" operators you still are locked into a price in a falling price market.
And if someone else owns the equipment on your house, that means your title to your house is encumbered. You may well find you have to pay off
the system just to sell your house [newsmax.com].
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 24 2015, @09:01PM
> you still are locked into a price in a falling price market.
lolwut?
At best residential fees for centralized power never drop more than a few percent even when oil prices have halved. Factor in inflation and the fixed price solar contract is the one with a falling price, not the utility.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 24 2015, @09:51PM
Except you'd never see those falling prices because you'd be locked into paying whatever price was determined when the contract was signed. Are you really so naive that you think they'd let anybody sign a contract that wouldn't have the falling prices increase their profit margin?
(Score: 2) by frojack on Saturday October 24 2015, @11:14PM
The price of solar is falling daily.
But if you sign a contract with one of these "Your Roof, Our Power" solar companies you will never see that drop.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 26 2015, @04:38AM
> The price of solar is falling daily.
> But if you sign a contract with one of these "Your Roof, Our Power" solar companies you will never see that drop.
Duh! Same thing if you bought it outright too. Come on man...
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Sunday October 25 2015, @12:30PM
No doubt the solar installer business gets big discounts. Perhaps because they are also the manufacturer, they can obtain solar panels at or near cost. Their labor is much cheaper too, especially if they engage in a little wage theft. If the homeowners go the ownership route they have to pay a big, and probably excessive markup.
It's like home security. All these security businesses are eager give equipment away (free installation!) as long as they get you hooked on the monthly monitoring plan. But try to find a different deal, where you do the monitoring, no need for a service, and you have to hunt. They all also try to convince you that self-monitoring is a huge burden, does not work, etc. As if it is so hard for an open door or window notification to be texted or tweeted to you when it happens, and then you can take a look through your security cameras and decide whether to call 911.
(Score: 2) by Hyperturtle on Saturday October 24 2015, @04:03PM
That's it, we're marking you as a communist. Daring to use outsourced engineering and assembly to enrich your own profit and realize your own value potential? That's... downright unAmerican!
(Score: 3, Informative) by tftp on Saturday October 24 2015, @04:30PM
In two, five, or ten years, the panels are paid off, and I begin to enjoy free electricity!!
It's nowhere that good. Typically solar panels are paid off after 10-20 years. Two or five years are unheard of. Chances are that you will either sell the house by then, or they fail. The inverter can easily fail, being a complicated piece of power electronics, and then you are set back by another 5 years. You are replacing the "pay as you go" plan of the utility company with an investment up front and a very low ROI. You might be better off just investing the $50K and using the income to pay for power :-)
In this aspect it is not that insane to just allow a 3rd company to use space on your property that you aren't using, and derive some small profit from it. Most of the profit will go to the company... but they paid for the PV, and you only rent them an otherwise worthless space.
(Score: 2) by davester666 on Saturday October 24 2015, @07:49PM
You are doing the usual comparison of apples to oranges.
On average, you can expect to 'profit' similarly to the third party. They aren't doing this for a 5% yearly ROI, particularly with power prices increasing.
As for selling the house, it's not like "oh, you installed it, now it's worth 40% less".
Like anything, there is some risk that the investment doesn't work out. But if it were THAT likely to happen, the third party wouldn't do it either, because, duh, they also have the same risk.
(Score: 1) by tftp on Saturday October 24 2015, @08:38PM
On average, you can expect to 'profit' similarly to the third party. They aren't doing this for a 5% yearly ROI, particularly with power prices increasing.
They have a business model that is different from one of the homeowner. Note that at least in CA you cannot produce extra power, feed it into the grid, and expect to get anything but a small bag of peanuts in the end of the year. Generator facilities are paid just a couple cents per kWh, whereas the consumer pays anywhere from 11 to 30 cents per kWh, not counting the grid connection fees and such, that are a static overhead.
Their business model involves selling the generated energy to you, the homeowner. This deal bypasses the grid and goes around the "generator-consumer" arrangements. You'd get the same deal if you buy and install your own PV, of course. But there are differences between you and them, and those are important ones. For example:
I'm sure there are many more. For example, we all know about the "mail-in refunds" that are so popular in stores. You pay more today, and a couple months later you get a refund check. One would think where is the profit? Is it really that valuable to hold someone's $20 for 2 months, and handle all this paper, and pay for checks and stamps? Well, the business *is* profitable. I, personally, cannot tell why that is exactly. I only know that it's not dead, no matter how I wish it to be true.
Similarly, I never signed any deals with such solar companies. I do have my own PV panels, and I paid for their installation; so I know how that model works. Perhaps someone who entertained the idea of signing up with these guy can tell what is good or bad about their offer. I am sure that there are small details in the contract that force the homeowner to consume a certain amount of power per month - otherwise the company becomes a generator and gets nothing. Here is one article [scientificamerican.com]. It says, in part:
When Pegler explained the zero-dollar option, we Mussers looked at one another in surprise. It sounded like a real letdown. In return for letting SunRun install and maintain the array, my brother and sister-in-law would save 10% on their electric bill. Ten percent? That's it? To be more precise, they'd commit to buying all the expected array production at a rate of 16.5 cents per kilowatt-hour, versus the utility rate of about 18.5 cents. As my brother later confessed to me, "It's not really that exciting."
The article also mentions government subsidies that the company keeps - and this may even allow it to install the PV for free, or for a very low cost, if it does not need to hire a specialized contractor that wants their own share of the pie. In any case, even if your own PV system will only pay for itself in 10 years, the system that you allow to be installed on your roof will never pay for itself - you will be paying for the power for 20 years (a typical figure, as it seems,) and then you will be given an option to buy the system for whatever price the company picks!
But for most people it's OK anyhow. The homeowner will save a few cents per kWh, and he doesn't really care about what's on his roof, as long as it doesn't leak. The solar company pockets all the government subsidies, and it receives fees for the generated power that do not go anymore to the utility. The key to success here is the access to the cheapest PV panels, inverters, and installation labor that one can find. If they can do it... it's not one of the worst deals known to man.
(Score: 3, Informative) by frojack on Saturday October 24 2015, @08:46PM
And when you try to sell your house, you find the solar company filed a lean against it, and you have to pay off the full installation costs, or pay a removal fee.
Contracts are not necessarily transferable.
The more you read about this scheme, the more you begin to think Florida may have been right to ban it.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 24 2015, @07:59PM
In two, five, or ten years, the panels are paid off, and I begin to enjoy free electricity!!
It's nowhere that good. Typically solar panels are paid off after 10-20 years. Two or five years are unheard of. Chances are that you will either sell the house by then, or they fail. The inverter can easily fail, being a complicated piece of power electronics, and then you are set back by another 5 years.
And then there is lightening, hail, bears on the roof, frisbee damage, photon redirection, trolls on the internet, and power company shills to be considered. Solar power is just too dangerous and risky. And what will you do with the left-over waste? Yucca Mountain hasn't been built, and there is no long-term solution to solar power waste storage.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Saturday October 24 2015, @05:00PM
That concept is nothing new in capitalism: Whoever controls the means of production has the ability to extract profit from it without doing anything else. It's no different from an absentee investor in a manufacturing plant who gets more money from the production of whatever they're manufacturing than anybody who actually works on the assembly line.
As for why you would consider taking such a deal:
1. The cost of the electricity from the solar array is lower than the cost of electricity from the power grid.
2. In some versions of the contract, once you've paid for a certain number of years or a certain number of kwH, you're out of the contract period and all the equipment is yours to do with as you please.
3. It's one piece of reducing your own dependence on foreign oil.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 3, Informative) by frojack on Saturday October 24 2015, @07:02PM
Other reasons:
4) maintenance is fully covered by the vendor, even storm damage
5) You don't have to know anything about electricity, batteries, charging, solar cells, or climbing on roofs
6) negotiating leverage with the power grid for inter-ties
7) potential to gang roof tops in housing subdivisions to achieve economies of scale
NOTE: Florida does not ban solar panels. There are thousands of installations of homeowner installed solar. (Although even a cursory look with google maps satellite view reveals a gazillion additional roofs that could support solar but don't).
This story is about a particular prohibition of a business model of large-corporate solar companies installing and owning panels on people's roofs, and selling power back to the homeowner. This business model does provide an alternate funding method, but in the end, it is a profit making venture.
While its a bit odd to see gewg_ rushing to the defense of large corporations, there are no unmanageable flaws in this model. But there are pitfalls.
The state is not completely in the wrong to want to regulate this business model, (although banning it outright seems a little heavy handed). There are plenty of avenues for abuse in this business model, such as abandonment, refusing to maintain, jacking up the price after install, unsafe systems, violation of electrical codes, un-clean title to the property complicating sales, etc.
And, as you mention, there should be a buy-out option at the home-owner's discretion at any time on a reasonable sliding scale.
These things should be regulated, and somebody or some agency should be watching these companies. Ad hoc regulation by title laws, electrical code, construction code, business licensing, consumer watchdog, and electrical grid agencies is full of opportunity for loop holes, finger pointing, fraud, and abuse.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 25 2015, @01:08AM
its a bit odd to see gewg_ rushing to the defense of large corporations
Hey, I don't want to be -completely- predictable.
That would be boring.
...and I do hate waste, so all that unused sunlight bugs me.
...and there's Mother Earth to think about WRT substituting for fossil fuels.
Not the ideal, but movement in a better direction.
-- gewg_