121 sats \ 0 replies \ @kepford OP 19 Aug \ parent \ on: The Political Takeover of the Texas Electricity Market econ
I want to add one more caveat. There have been MANY national media stories about California's insane power issues. Newsom telling people to not use power for example. The truth is that in some places we almost never have outages. We also don't have weather that leads to outages but in the past outages due to peak usage were very common. They still happen but they are less widespread. I think this is largely due to the expansion of home solar.
But, the state has peaked in the utility of home solar due to the duck curve. The solar isn't constant in its production of power and it doesn't align well with usage either. So there are times there is to much power being produced and others when there isn't enough. The state used to incentivize solar installation but they have been rolling those programs back. Now the push is for batteries for power storage but the cost is very high. It makes most systems harder to justify economically.
Every house is different. If a household owns EVs it probably does make sense because they would typically be charged at night and your rates in California are insane. You will save a lot if you charge up your home batteries during the day and use them to charge your car at night.
The other darker side of power and solar in California are the programs that the state runs for low income people. We have these companies that go around getting lower income home owners to allow them to install solar on their roofs. Its a complex scheme but basically you stop paying the power company directly and start paying the solar company. You don't own the panels or any of the equipment. But they give you a fixed payment and they pay your power bill. But there are many little caveats to these deals and I believe a lot of people don't know what they are getting into.
Its all so overly complex IMO. Its truly a mess and the incentives are so messed up its hard to talk to people about it without them getting sucked into a mental loop.