Comments on: In the Midwest, community solar aligns with conservative Republican values 2021 Regional Solar Policy Report https://www.solarpowerworldonline.com/2021/11/midwest-community-solar-aligns-with-conservative-republican-values/ Covering the world of solar power technology, development and installation. Fri, 05 Nov 2021 01:49:23 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.2 By: Solarman https://www.solarpowerworldonline.com/2021/11/midwest-community-solar-aligns-with-conservative-republican-values/#comment-117532 Fri, 05 Nov 2021 01:49:23 +0000 https://www.solarpowerworldonline.com/?p=96134#comment-117532 “In Wisconsin, GOP leaders in the state’s House and Senate introduced a community solar-enabling bill; and in Michigan, a Republican and a Democratic representative, who had never before spoken to each other, joined forces to introduce an enabling bill.”

This is not about Party, it is about change and it’s nice to see some news that one doesn’t have to be a Party proper to embrace solar PV, wind generation and BESS from the utility level down to the residential level to make this “change” happen.

““As conservatives, we believe in property rights and we believe that the government shouldn’t be regulating what can and can’t go on the property that we own,” said Tyler Duvelius, director of external affairs for the nonprofit Conservative Energy Network (CEN). “Solar energy has been a tremendous economic boon for farmers and landowners that get it on their land.””

The cost of the technology is coming down and there seems to be some ‘entities’ that are moving into the Agricultural business, selling solar PV for “Agrisolar” installations to using solar PV panels on greenhouse buildings like a transparent roof covering for the farm’s seedling operations.

Pundits of community solar PV and even wind generation might be able to get (EPC) over and above the local utility to use their systems for resiliency during storm or grid fail events. What folks seem to be missing is at the residential level a solar PV system with smart energy storage can be set up to be a resiliency system that allows them power to critical house circuits during storm and grid outage events. As more folks buy into the resiliency system or what can be considered a home micro-grid, they are then insolated from the stupidity of the utility, their expectations of the assured operations of a “regulated monopoly” and the cost to residential ratepayers crammed down their throats fees and charges that raise their electricity rates and with operating modes like “standby reserve” may cost more for electricity they may never receive. The big change here will be if and when energy storage battery packs drop in costs at the ‘installed’ level. Right now a lot of home energy storage systems are around $750/kWh installed. One needs to get down to the $350/kWh installed. Folks can then put more solar PV on their roof or ground racking on their property and larger battery pack systems in the 60kWh to 100kWh range and run their homes the majority of the time on solar PV alone. Grid agnostic, it’s a good thing.

““If you create this energy in a green manner and environmentally friendly, and be competitive and not have to look to the taxpayers to subsidize that creation of the energy, that’s a win-win for everybody. How can you be against that?” Stroebel said.””

Subsidized or unsubsidized, I’m pretty sure there’s a lot of taxpayers out there that don’t get back even a small percentage of their tax dollars spent. It will be subsidy free some day, what I focus on is making the laws fair and easy to apply to get one’s own solar PV system with or without energy storage. The incremental increases in capacity of the solar PV panel, the mass manufacturing available to drop prices precipitously over the last 10 years and the promise that soon one will be able to purchase the tri 25 system of panels, batteries and smart inverter/charger warrantee period. This is a legacy system and something every “adult” now should install on their homes to leave a legacy to the next generation that will own that home some day. What cost does one put on Legacy?

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