ive heard alot of blah blah from some sections of the right on how solar is a joke and cant replace oil.
reality however is chugging along nicely and maybe ill get to remove some parasitic rent seekers from my life after all
while its true that heavy industry cant work on solar thats not my problem, my problem is powering a few light bulbs and whitegoods and in australia that works just fine on solar and within 10 years the return on investment makes it cheaper than the government utility.
anyone who can put the 20 grand up front is currently doing so and its causing much angst to the socialist ones and the capitalists who think i should be subsidizing their industry
http://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2013/10 ... ce-spiral/
The electricity ‘death spiral’ is raising considerable angst. Residential demand for power appears to be declining. This has led to higher prices to cover fixed network costs. The Australian Energy Market Commission (AEMC) has highlighted the relationship between embedded generation (such as home solar systems) and network pricing in its Strategic Priorities.
So what is the ‘death spiral’?
The idea is simple. The cost of the electricity network – the wires and poles that bring power to our homes and workplaces – is pretty much fixed. It depends on peak demand, not on the everyday electricity load. The network is built to meet a specified level of reliability so that our power doesn’t go out (too often) on exceptionally hot days in the middle of summer when we all turn on our air conditioning. So most of the time the network costs are just a fixed cost of delivering electricity that doesn’t depend on the amount of electricity that consumers buy.
However, to pay for the network, consumers pay a charge based on electricity consumption. Roughly speaking, network charges are set by taking the fixed cost of the electricity network and dividing by the predicted quantity of power that consumers will buy. This gives a per kilowatt hour (kWh) network charge. As individuals, if we use more electricity we pay more of the network cost. If we use less electricity, we pay less. At the end of the process the network owner gets about the same amount of money, but who pays that money varies with consumption.
Unfortunately, turning fixed costs into variable charges can lead to nasty outcomes. And that is what is happening in electricity.
If consumers have no alternative but to use the electricity network to buy power and power demand is insensitive to price, then there is not too much harm. The variable network charges push up the cost of every kWh we consume but we can’t avoid the payment and, with insensitive demand, we don’t react too strongly to the higher price.
These are the traditional assumptions for electricity pricing. However, the development of rooftop solar power (photovoltaic or PV systems) and more energy efficient buildings and appliances, means these assumptions are wrong.
When consumers install PV systems, their demand for traditional electricity falls. These consumers reduce the amount they ‘use’ the network. But the fixed network costs do not change. So these fixed costs are spread over a smaller volume of electricity. And this means that the price of that electricity has to rise for everyone else.
Of course the rise in price encourages more consumers to adopt power-saving technologies and to install PV systems. So these consumers also reduce their consumption of traditional power. But the network costs are still fixed. So the price of electricity has to rise for everyone else.