Residential Solar -The Issues

My Editor tells me I am stirring the pot with this series, let’s see what kind of stew we make. The stories are bountiful of individuals with $700-800 energy bills, mostly electric. Just search the subject on YouTube or TikTok and your feed will quickly be flooded by residential customers crying WTF is going on! Our resident energy expert Mr. Global is ever the purveyor of doom and gloom about how energy prices will put us on the streets if you would like a local sample. I dropped a piece a couple weeks ago, “Shopping for a Better Electric Energy Rate - How To” with the intent of helping those that could, shop for a better rate. BUT, some utilities are seriously raising their Transmission and Distribution costs, there is no way for a consumer to escape those. Mr. Global seems certain this is the new utility fad to get your money, and it is coming to a utility near you. I am less certain it will spread everywhere, but it is certainly an issue where it is going on. Time will tell if Matt is right!

Now $1000 electric bills are nothing new if you get your power from a California IOU and live in the heat of the Central Valley, it has been that way for many years. That’s why swamp coolers are so common in California, they avoid the high energy of HVAC. This is also why residential solar is so common in California, it has nothing to do with saving the environment, and everything to do with saving the budget.

This brings us to this conversation. You don’t live in California, but you are suddenly faced with California sized utility bills. What can you do? Well, you can do a lot of things that sacrifice your own comfort. Swamp coolers work fair in dry California, but they flat don’t work in humid Louisiana. At what point does the almighty dollar win and residential solar become the escape. Let’s be clear I am NOT A FAN of this conversation, but people matter more than politics to me. To start off with, in this piece let’s talk about the issues and problems with residential solar.

First and foremost are the renewable evangelists that still believe that we can build enough wind and solar with enough batteries to do away with every other form of power generation on the planet. I remember making a comment on LinkedIn that we could not “battery’ our way out this mess. I got a reply from Zach Shahan, CEO of Clean Technica that sure we could, we just needed to use EV batteries. Steve Hanley, one of Clean Technica’s writers, is here writing Steve’s Substack, as well as many others who firmly hold to the belief in the solar/wind only power system. It’s a nice thought, but besides the gob smacking cost, the land use problems, and the raw materials problem with building such a system, technically, it simply won’t work. Yes small, carefully managed microgrids can function, but in a modern high energy society, the technical demands on an electric interconnection are too great for wind/solar/batteries to provide the support needed. As soon as you start to explain why to a true believer, they clap their hands on their ears and say, “I can’t hear you”. So why are these passionate believers such an issue? Because their loud arguments make it very difficult to have reasonable conversations about how to actually deploy residential solar. Any attempt at regulation, control, or responsible energy policy is met with a firestorm of protest. It makes it nearly impossible for reasonable heads to prevail, and unfortunately, it is usually those trying to extract money that win.

The fact that renewable energy is a hot political topic also makes reasonable discussions difficult at best. Politicians seeking an opportunity to pander votes and stick it to the opposition rarely produces good policy from either side.

The net-metering policies that have a guaranteed return on energy for a set contract period were always a bad idea. They were well intentioned but quickly got out of hand. This is especially true in the lease to own contractors that have become so common. A lease to own solar system benefits only the installer. The homeowner gets limited benefit over the lease period, while the installer collects the bulk of the profit in the net metering contract. At the end of the lease the homeowner receives a substandard solar system at the end of its life. Unfortunately, these contractors make up the bulk of the door-to-door sales and often prey on people in difficult financial circumstances. It’s a racket. Net metering itself is entirely unfair because it requires those without solar to subsidize those with solar. Even when the price for excess energy is set at the wholesale supplementary energy price, it lets solar owners use the power system as a battery at the expense of other utility customers. All of this has angered many in the public and smeared the overall appeal of solar power. Hopefully this practice will come to an end soon.

Still as Robert Bryce reported in his piece “Americans Like Solar & Natural Gas. Big Wind? Not So Much”. Voters still chose Solar as #1 and Natural Gas as #2 as reported by Robert. So, there is still significant interest.

Other issues with wide use of residential solar are not necessarily in the homeowner's control, but you should still consider them.

1. Fault ride through, will your solar system stay online if there is a sudden swing in the conditions on the electric power system. This could be caused by a fault close into the substation on an adjacent feeder that dips voltage, or capacitor switching that causes momentary voltage spikes. Regardless, these are things that an inverter should ride through.

2. Inverter switching causing large, short cycle load swings on distribution feeders. This is part of the fault ride through, by suddenly turning off, and then turning back on as a group, inverters play havoc with the utility’s ability to maintain correct voltage on a feeder. Despite statements by solar advocates, this is not a “utility problem”. If you sell equipment connected to the power system you need to take responsibility for helping resolve the issues that equipment creates.

3. Lack of utility control. This one is a hot one because there is always a concern the utility will simply shut your system down to make some money. With some IOUs, I am not convinced that concern isn’t legitimate. However, for safety reasons, and for system stability reasons, having the ability for the utility to remove energy feeding into the power system is very important. Suffice it to say, if the control was available, real-time transparency of when it is being used, and why is a must.

I won’t venture into the social or political debate about the right or the wrong of wind/solar/battery systems. With a short search here and Substack you can find arguments both ways to keep you reading for days. As usual I try to stick to the technical side of things and leave the politics out. In the next piece, I’ll talk about some ways to make residential solar a fair deal across the board for those who have it and those who don’t. Let me know your thoughts, comments are always welcome.