Zwy
Emperor Of Solar
I wasn't interested in grid tie, it would have cost me as much for grid tie here and I have a much larger system. My brother has a 17.5Kw wind generator and he is grid tie. He has to carry a special liability policy in order to be grid tied. So not only does he have a minimum charge of $1.75/day for the grid connection, for the privilege of storing power on the grid he pays for a high priced insurance policy. He has to net meter with a 500Kwh bank, anything over the utility gets for free. He locks his tower down once his bank hits 500Kwh. The utility doesn't pay at true up either, you give the utility whatever is in the bank at true up. Originally he was paid $0.10/Kwh for any excess production but as wind and solar became adopted more here, that all went away. I know several farmers who put in an array, only to have the rules changed after a few years and the utility is getting free power.
For 5Mwh of power here, I would get paid nothing for it. They just put up 66 wind towers within 12 miles of me and some as close as 2 miles. They don't need the little guy. They will force everyone to give them the excess for free. https://diysolarforum.com/threads/using-excess-solar-to-heat-house.35995/post-899576 The first paragraph explains exactly what is occurring.
Ben and James see it and are correct. Why would I go thru the hassle of grid tie here, not have backup power when grid goes down and I invest my money in something and not only give away what it produces for free, but have the rules change after I put it in and it is now worthless?
The math is this. Utility companies will force you to give what you produce to them either free or with very little compensation. Meanwhile one needs to look at NEM 3.0 paying $0.02/Kwh for your input and you buy it back when you need it at $0.40 to $0.50/Kwh. The math is they profit $0.38 to $0.48/Kwh off your money you spent on the system. If you don't think it won't happen in your area, you are sadly mistaken. My utility is raising the per Kwh cost by 20% in preparation for the exact same scenario. They will drop net metering here next, true up already died. The only way net metering stays alive is if the government increases the renewable energy requirements on utilities but it might even be too late for that.
I took a little trip (about 4 hours one way) Wednesday to pick up a used wood boiler to heat my house in the dead of winter. (That's for another thread about energy costs). Along the way I saw some very large solar farms that hadn't been there the last time I passed thru and also more wind farms recently constructed. If you haven't figured it out yet, people like Al Gore (who says he invented the internet
) have investments and formed companies that will profit from the adoption of green energy while pushing for legislation to force the general public to adopt green energy with huge taxpayer subsidies. It's all a big money grab. The government goes along because of a few reasons, it keeps the economy moving, no different than building the interstate highway system, before that rail, the adoption of the Web and those excesses, the housing boom of the 2000's, the shale oil and gas boom, and now green energy. The other reason is those with inside knowledge of what legislation, rules and regulations that will be passed and enforced have positioned themselves to profit from it.
