Nevada state government decided to cut back on the goodies offered to the home solar cell freeloaders. About time, and NH ought to follow suit. The current deal offers to buy all the electricity the home owner produces, at full retail rate, for ever. Home owners use their sales earning to pay their electric bills. Since solar cells produce no electricity after sunset, all solar cell owners are connected to the regular electric grid and use utility provided juice to keep their lights on, their TV's playing, and their oil burners burning. Up here a practical sized home solar panel can reduce the home owner's electric bill to zero in the summer, and make a worthwhile dent in it in the winter.
Net result, solar cell owners get a free ride from the ordinary rate payers. The cost of providing grid power is mostly in paying off the generators, the transmission lines, the local wires and poles. The utility workers spend most of their time fixing stuff that storms tear down. Very little money goes to fuel. Compared to paying off the enormous loans that built the system, the cost of fuel is negligible. All the home solar cells do for the utility is save a little bit of fuel. The utility still has to build and maintain a physical plant big enough to serve all the customers at night and on cloudy days. Home solar cells don't save the utility a nickel when it comes to their major costs.
Which is why all solar installations require subsidy from rate payers and tax payers.
Anyhow, the two solar cell companies operating in Nevada are crying and threatening to hold their breath (actually to stop selling solar in Nevada).
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