By Jo Nova
California was the Land of Solar Panels at the top of the Magic Subsidy Tree but that boom went bust
If solar panels were actually cheap and useful, everyone could have them, they’d pay for themselves, and there would be no point where the panel-party would grind to a halt. But if they were expensive, made something useless, and their product became toxic to the grid itself the government would have to artificially subsidize them to get them onto the grid in the first place, and then pop its own bubble before the bubble popped the grid. And so that time has arrived in California and there is carnage in the market.
The Duck has quacked
In a strange coincidence the Californian government cut the payments for solar-powered-electricity by 75% last year, and sales of solar panels fell to a quarter of what they were a year ago. That’s a “to” not a “by”. One in five solar contractors has already left the market. Careers and businesses — gone.
The new price for solar-powered-electricity is probably slightly closer to the true market value, which is almost zero, or even less for holy-green electricity at noon. The Duck Curve is the shape the daily load curve makes. As more and more solar panels are added to the grid the demand for electricity falls at midday, but stays the same at breakfast and dinner. So the amount of electricity required for the state gradually develops a “belly” at noon, and looks like a duck. As more solar panels are added, the grid ends up with too much electricity at midday, which is such a problem it has to pay someone else to use it. In a real free market, negative wholesale prices at midday should have killed off the solar panel rooftop industry years ago.
by Phred Dvorak, The Wall Street Journal
The Home-Solar Boom Gets a ‘Gut Punch’
The state has installed so many panels that it has a glut of solar power during the day. Last year, California implemented new rules that cut the amount of compensation most rooftop solar owners get for the electricity they send to the grid by 75% or more to manage the oversupply and soaring costs for upgrading the grid.
Residential solar sales have dropped to a quarter of what they were a year ago, and more than a fifth of the state’s solar contractors have been laid off, according to some estimates.
“It was like getting a gut punch,” says Carlos Beccar, marketing director of Fresno-based Energy Concepts, a solar installer that had to lay off more than half its 75 employees after sales plummeted as much as 90% following the new rules.
The journalists spin the solar excuses
At the same time, California’s solar growth is outpacing the ability of its grid to handle it.
It’s not that solar-electricity is a useless toxic byproduct of subsidies, it’s that solar is so good, the grid is not ready for it. In other words, it’s all your fault. You need to pay more for that grid “upgrade”, or storage, or something so the little solar flowers can thrive.
Who knew, the job of the grid was not to supply electricity, but to “absorb” the subsidy farmers:
The state already supplies more than a third of its power with renewables, and it plans to raise that ratio to 60% by 2030. But because the state’s grid can’t absorb all the solar power generated during the day, it ends up throwing increasing amounts of it away or curtailing it.
Get ready, the next step is to corral us into paying more to solve the mess they created:
Part of the rationale behind the state’s new solar billing rules is to encourage households to buy batteries, which can store power for use later.
See how the planned economy works? The subsidies forced useless white elephants onto the grid. The fees to cover the costs were set so the people without solar had to pay the subsidies. So their electricity bills went up until their wallets bled, and they begged to buy solar panels “because electricity costs had risen”. Then the government changed the conditions so that people with solar really needed to buy a battery …
More than 30% of homes in Australia have solar panels installed. In California, in 2019 apparently 44% of homes had solar panels. But as extreme as that is, California is connected to other states in the US, so it can offload the extra electricity, or upload electrical juice from other reliable generators. Australia doesn’t have that option. We have to put the spare electricity in shoe boxes and float it over to Papua New Guinea.
Image by Charlie Wilde from Pixabay
Thanks again Jo for trying to educate your readers but TOXIC global W & S energy is also fraudulent nonsense.
Here’s global primary energy share by source and NOTE W & S only supply 2.13% combined of global energy in 2022. That’s 1.31% from wind and just 0.82% from solar.
So who BELIEVES in the OECD countries WASTING even more TRILLIONS of $ for decades and all for a guaranteed ZERO return?
IOW trillions of $ flushed straight down the DRAIN.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/global-primary-energy-share-inc-biomass
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Simple Simon met a Solar panel salesman,
Going to the fair;
Says Simple Simon to the Solar panel salesman,
“What have you there?”
A business for sale going cheap….
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The missing piece of the puzzle is energy storage. Pumped hydro is one option, generated hydrogen is another. The best bet is batteries, the technology is advancing in leaps and bounds while using less difficult to obtain elements.
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Read the following link and explain to us how pumped hydro will work for a country like the United States. I know you won’t.
https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2011/11/pump-up-the-storage/
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Agree David! Pumped Hydro and Hydrogen are imaginary doctrines of the monied elites. Turnbull, Forrest and Unions to mention just a few desperadoes caring only about protecting investments and retirement programs. They are massive subsidy farmers and tax dodgers. Battery BS a distraction at best!
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Pumped Hydro, umm, seriously.
Last year, Tumut3 generated 19.824TWH of Energy.
Of that total, 5,93TWH was consumed using the pumps to pump the water back up to the upper holding reservoir.
So, that left (around) 13.9TWH delivered to the grid for actual consumption.
The major AEMO grid consumed 207.7TWH.
So this ‘saviour’ for the future of power generation here in Australia delivered 6.7% of total generated power.
The new Snowy pumped Hydro is around the same Nameplate as Tumut 3.
So, just ‘ball parking’ here, that effectively means another five of the equivalent Snowy Hydro (whatever number it is) Plants. (Pumped Hydro will make up just part of the overall renewable ‘mix’ with wind and solar)
Tell me where they are going, how long to construct, oh, and also, how cheap renewable power really is.
Tony.
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come on David, its a great suggestion. Sure for a State that claims to be in perpetual drought there may be challenges. Perhaps great minds in Ca and SA could join forces to propose a waterless pumped hydro project. I hear the technology if going ahead in leaps and bounds.
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Always “on the horizon” but you have no clue how little energy can be contained within electrochemical cells and the large expense compared with the amount of energy stored in coal, oil, gas and within uranium.
Or perhaps you do? Certainly the Elites do. Are you a “useful idiot” or an Elite?
Making us dependent on expensive, diffuse, random energy is part of the Western de-civilisation agenda.
At least your comrades in China will have plenty of cheap reliable energy from coal and will keep being, by far, the world’s biggest CO2 emitter, more than twice the next biggest emitter, the US, and exponentially increasing.
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I usually don’t respond to comments like this, as there’s no real point. No one will change their minds. But here, it says this.
That’s all well and good, but most of the solar power is rooftop. Take that away, and there’s not much else in the way of Industrial wind and solar plants, and that’s what will be used to connect the batteries to, so those batteries can be charged for the battery power to be used at peak times.
The problem with that is that the generated power from industrial wind and solar will be used either to deliver to the grid ….. OR to charge the batteries. You CANNOT do both.
So, just look at last week alone, not just an hour or a day, but a whole week.
Last week, wind generation delivered 316GWH to the grid. That was just 8.1% of all generated power across the whole of the grid. Now, even if ALL of that generated power was used to charge these thought bubble batteries, and that’s a humungous amount of batteries, something nowhere on the Planet exist in that number for one large grid, you have removed that generated power from the grid to be used for ordinary consumption …..to charge the batteries.
To actually make any impact at all, now think of just how much battery installations are needed, with, now, just 8.1% of generated power. And again ….. USE the power OR charge the batteries.
Okay, that 316GWH of generated power was all wind power generated across the whole week. That was at a Capacity Factor (CF) of just 16.5%, and in five and a half years of daily data collection, that’s the lowest CF for a whole week in all that time. So, with a Nameplate of 11409MW, wind only operated at an hourly average power generation of 1881MW.
Now, having just said that, and harking back to what I wrote above ….. use or charge, just what do you do when you have, not an hour, not a day, but a whole week when this is all that can be generated.
AND NOW, with just that in mind, just imagine the scale of batteries which will be needed to cover something like that.
The generated power is needed ABSOLUTELY ….. ALL the time.
Batteries are indeed just a thought bubble from people who have no concept of the scale required.
Tony.
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Using power from a battery is like spending money you don’t have, it has to be repaid… with interest.
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Australia’s annual electrical energy demand is 273,600 GWh (all States) and so to provide just one day of back-up energy storage would require 51 years of output of Tesla Megapacks at current production rate if all production was dediciated to Australia.
California’e electrical energy demand is similar to that of Australia at 259,000 GWh and California would get preference to Australia
https://www.energy-storage.news/tesla-deployed-14-7gwh-of-energy-storage-in-2023/
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So Simon for once will you respond to both David Maddison and Tony from OZ etc and tell us where they are wrong?
And not some silly BS and nonsense, but provide the data to challenge their arguments.
I’m sure you can’t, so prove to us you can?
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Battery technology advancing in leaps and bounds? Then why do batteries cost so much but have such a short lifetime? And exactly which battery technology do you see as the future saviour that will overcome all of the current battery problems, including a propensity to catch fire?
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Sollid state batteries are coming.
Another radical concept noone here has considered is running your appliances and machines when prices are low. Make demand match supply. It seems strange to be complaining about cheap energy.
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“Sollid state batteries are coming.”
Care to let us all know which decade in the future they will arrive, what materials they’ll use, their cost and longevity?
Power engineers and utilities are keen to know those things.
Certainly you’ve got those answers. / sarc.
“Make demand match supply”. Oddly enough, it seems in the recent past, supply matched demand.
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Simon
You write –
“Another radical concept noone here has considered is running your appliances and machines when prices are low. Make demand match supply. It seems strange to be complaining about cheap energy.”
What you describe is called ‘rationing’.
It’s a backwards step for a civilisation.
And it has not been considered because many uses need steady reliable [cheap] power.
If I truly could ‘make demand match supply’, I would feed the entire UK grid – from one bicycle with a dynamo attached, whenever I fancied a little indoor exercise …
Seriously – is that the level of power availability you wish upon the Western world?
Poisoner Putin might wish that – but, you, Simon?
Auto
I should add that I am in favour of consumers making best use of the power they purchase; in the UK, for example, I think insulating dwellings can be helpful – it can cut bills. [Remember all of Great Britain is north of Winnipeg] But it won’t solve the frightening power shortages coming our way if folk like Simon get their way.
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Leaps and bounds? Tell us Simon, the most recent innovation of batteries and it’s date of invention. Tell me also how they’ve gone about solving the hydrogen storage problem? Higher pressure, more cooling or both? Answer that, and you are still left with explaining why the trace gas that boosts my veggie garden yeilds should be limited!
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https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=57360 – Pumped Hydro by professionals
https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkobayashisolomon/2023/12/20/energy-vault-wins-big-with-gravity-storage-in-china/?sh=3e3c87b56c69 Gravity Storage by professionals
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Leaps and bounds? Tell us Simon, the most recent innovation of batteries and it’s date of invention. Tell me also how they’ve gone about solving the hydrogen storage problem? Higher pressure, more cooling or both? Answer that, and you are still left with explaining why the trace gas that boosts my veggie garden yeilds should be limited!
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That will change when the billion dollar taxpayer funding support Australian made solar panels are exported to California.
sarc.
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Newsome needs to get creative, he needs to think of ways to use this lunchtime power, perhaps:
– legislate less efficient appliances for Ca
– develop uphill water pumping projects
– create a new tourist attraction called the The Big Resistor where people could go to see energy consumed.
– use Sally Mcmanus logic and get eveyone to turn on something extra at lunchtime
– encourage hot meals at lunchtime
– wind up the AC in government buldings between 10am and 2pm
and of course be able to reverse all of that when the State runs low on power because “renewables”
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So far all we’ve achieved is more TRILLIONS of $ WASTED over the last 34 years on TOXIC W & S, but is there really a Climate Emergency or stupid Biden’s EXISTENTIAL THREAT?
Willis Eschenbach has provided us with the answer and with regular updates. So far there’s no emergency and he uses proper data and evidence to prove his case.
BTW the latest update was 24 March 2024.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2021/04/25/wheres-the-emergency/
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When the government get involved it all turns to s**t. Why? Because no one in government have ever held a proper job or ran a business no matter how small. And it is not just the politicians who should be despised but the bureaucrats who either don’t know the facts or don’t bother to find out. Then they employ government advisors who are generally uneducated kids with a degree in wokeness from one of our pathetic universities. Keep in mind our pathetic universities rank highly in the world of tertiary education which doesn’t say much for the others does it? When we teach our children cr*p we get cr*p decisions from them as adults.
To paraphrase Jo ‘We have a wonderful country going to waste because those we choose to lead are hopeless”.
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Californiastan is in full self-destruct mode, perhaps even more so than Australia.
They are systematically destroying their dams, some of which are hydroelectric, others as part of the water supply.
The last remaining nuclear power station is due to be shut down in 2025.
There is only one coal plant left.
There are a number of gas power stations left.
They have mandates for “renewables” which must be 50% by 2026 and 100% by 2045.
At the present rate of destruction, open southern borders and failure to enforce basic civilisational laws, the 2045 target won’t be an issue because California will be a brutal Third World enclave burning rare manuscripts from looted libraries for firewood.
The scenario has already been portrayed in Escape from L.A. (1996). It’s called “predictive programming”.
Kurt Russell as “Snake” Pliskin was the hero (of course).
https://youtu.be/o6SWofbYD90
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New California is approaching fast and may well usurp the current band of brigands before the destruction of Old California can be achieved. Well we live in hope!
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These clowns in Californicate seem to think that aircon and swimming pools are their god given right, I wonder how they are going to run them.
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AGAIN let’s ask how WASTING TRILLIONS of $ on TOXIC W & S for decades can help and what is their problem anyway?
Is it SLR?
or Polar Bears?
or the HOT SPOT?
or deaths from extreme weather events?
or the Antarctic peninsula temp increase?
or decrease in Human life expectancy?
or Humans recently suffering from unusual famines?
or child mortality increases over the last 50 years?
or more global deaths from fires and burns?
or increase in global poverty?
or perhaps more poverty and more SLR on island nations?
or more droughts and floods?
or less global literacy today?
or more deaths from heatwaves compared to cold weather deaths?
or ?
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High priests of climate used to rip out beating hearts of sacrifices to offer up to the gods of climate to break droughts or turn off eclipses. Today the High Priests of climate rip the heart out of the truth of climate information and stuff distorted rubbish into minds to create an hysteria of disaster that only the High Priests know how to fix, and so it comes to pass that you must believe as a little child, bow down under control,pay up many trillions of dollars and live a peasants simple existence, all for the greater good of course.
Strange days indeed Mumma!
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This figure, that “30% of Australian households have solar”, is nonsense.
It comes from the usual suspects, who are desperate to create a herd mentality about the Climate Cult and unreliables.
Its source is never disclosed nor verified. There’s literally no proof of this assertion.
I live (unfortunately) in a middle-class, hard-Left, Green electorate chock full of groupthink acolytes of the climate religion, and yes there are some solar panels on houses, but the reality is closer to 5%.
Curious, I tool a long walk and counted nearly twenty streets worth. It was actually below 5%. It’s time to call this climate gaslighting out.
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Where do you live Ardlaw? Here in Perth even in a median suburb sometimes every second house has solar.
This dataset lists the percentage of solar panels in each postcode of Australia.
https://pv-map.apvi.org.au/historical
Sadly we have truly installed all this useless parasitic infrastructure. We see it in the load curves. The duck curve changes each year in Australia and the extra PV shows up there too.
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Solar energy is a wonderful blessing of creation. Plants use it successfully to make good things like food and oxygen from carbon dioxide, nitrogen and minerals in the soil. On the other hand, humans have made a ‘pigs ear’ out of utilizing solar energy for power generation. That’s because of huge opportunity costs, raw materials generated pollution, the time-bomb of defunct product waste, government red and green tape, power company greed for exorbident profit and destruction of the aesthetic environment and productive farmland by megalomaniac renewable energy zealots. Solar energy has become a curse because we want more out of it than is sensible and moral.
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“The Californian government cut the payments for solar-powered-electricity by 75% last year, and sales of solar panels fell to a quarter of what they were a year ago. That’s a “to” not a “by”. ”
A similar thing would happen to ‘unreliables’ if the fat subsidies were pulled.
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Many early RT solar adopters in the US had a option to store surplus generation on the grid.
Basicly a “100% FIT” or a “one for one “ deal where excess kWhs were. Stored on the grid and made available anytime later at no charge !
That was a dream deal,…(. but muchlike Australias $0.64 FIT that was an early attration,… ), i suspect that has also become unavailable, to enable retailers to sell home storage batteries to gulible customers.
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Jo,
Would the architects looking to hand over $ 1 billion to the Cannon-Brooks / Turnbull company to manufacture Solar Panels in Queensland aware of the situations around the western world?? Why is government handing over $1 billion tax dollars to 2 multi millionaires. ( I smell several rats of the Biden species )
Are Turnbull & Co actually involved?
The public at large should be made aware of all the facts, particularly the names of the solar panel company board members. We can then all look forward to a public debate. Haven’t heard too much from the “ Uniparty “ opposing this flawed proposal!
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If it is a “public company”, then its board members will be registered and names available to the public as a result.
But, It needs someone with more time and interest than me to dig them out !
Note :…
“ AGL Energy, Australia’s largest coal generator, and SunDrive, an innovative solar company from Australia, have recently partnered up to explore the possibility of establishing a solar manufacturing facility at the former Liddell coal plant’s site in New South Wales’ Hunter Region.
This collaboration was formalised through a memorandum of understanding, coinciding with the federal government’s unveiled $1 billion Solar Sunshot programme.”…
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“… Are Turnbull & Co actually involved?….
Yes !…
So , prime investors at least !
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Other investors of SunDrive are:
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https://www.smh.com.au/business/companies/agl-and-cannon-brookes-want-to-build-solar-panels-at-former-coal-site-20240328-p5ffvv.html
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I don’t see how solar panel manufacturing in Australia could possibly be remotely competitive with China.
And the idea of building a solar panel manufacturing plant on the site of a destroyed power station is a deliberately engineered insult directee toward the thinking community.
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There has been no planning or costings whatsoever. It’s all a pipe dream with the long suffering Taxpayer ending up with no pipes and a nightmare.
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The Duck Curve for Darwin
Darwin has plenty of roof-top solar panels installed and two solar farms waiting to be connected to the grid.
This is why Darwin is the perfect test case to determine the feasiblity of Chrissy Bowen’s Wet Dream of a “renewables only” electricity system.
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Those Darwin subsidy farms seem like a disaster. I’m not sure of their current status but this article is from April 2023.
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A classic case of ideolgy taking precedence of sound engineering methodology.
Sounds like the Darwin Duck Curve already hit zero on a sunny day at noon so no need for any more solar output to be added and a commitment to pay for solar power that is not needed with no sizable batteries to recharge.
Also what happens during the monsoon season (The wet season) (November – April) when there is plenty of cloud cover?
Tuesday, April 16, 2024 update
Strict rules dictate bidding behaviour and dispatch, which has meant most solar farms have not been able to connect to the grid at all, instead requiring large batteries to manage the flow of energy.
https://reneweconomy.com.au/nt-defence-solar-farm-finally-opens-after-years-long-delay/
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How ridiculous to have no Plan on how to manage all of this from the very start of proceedings. What madness.
I know, I will build a house by building the roof and walls first without first constructing the foundations.
Typical Guv’ment ‘Planning’ (non planning). Cart before the horse and all that.
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Why all these comments and iterations??… “THE DUCK HAS QUACKED” Period!!
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I got out my tiny imaginary violin and giving California a look of total pity, provide musical accompaniment to the State’s whining.
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“Glut in Californian home-solar causes bubble to pop: sales down 75%”
In this situation all that Californians can do is seek help and
_ pray for hail.
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The thing I don’t get is the people who install these solar panel and boast about their lower power bills never mention the initial cost of the installation. They may well save a couple of hundred $$$ over a sunny period but conveniently forget the 20-30 thousand $$$ sitting on the roof. Even based on current low interest rate (5%) would equate to at least $1500/year at least. Those dumb enough to buy on credit are even worse off. Factor in a battery?
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New report finds China accounts for astonishing two thirds of global coal power capacity
China is currently constructing 20 times the amount of coal power capacity compared the rest of the world as it accounts for two-thirds of global supply.
A report by Global Energy Monitor found that China contributed roughly 32 gigawatts (GW) to the growth of net coal capacity last year, which stood at 48.4 GW.
The country also began work on 70.2 GW of new coal-power capacity, which is almost a staggering 20 times more than the rest of the world’s 3.7 GW.
As well as China, other countries increasing their numbers of coal plants included Indonesia, India, Vietnam, Japan, Bangladesh, Pakistan, South Korea, Greece and Zimbabwe.
Globally, coal power capacity grew more in 2023 than any year since 2016, representing a two percent increase.
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I’m not astonished.
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A picture is worth a thousand words.
https://decarbonization.visualcapitalist.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/C02-Emissions-Through-Time_Shareaable12082023-1000×600.jpg
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India will be fast playing catch-up now its population has overtaken China.
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Jo, you’re on fire this last couple of weeks regarding EV / Solar / Wind topics. Keep ’em coming!! All of your articles are well written, well researched with valid references. So, all those rules should qualify to have your articles published in the MSM. Maybe you should give the likes of Andrew Bolt your permission to be copied, but I suppose at the end of the day you would need to be financially rewarded for your skills.
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California is making solid progress toward NutZero;
https://news.yahoo.com/california-loses-house-seat-first-194713136.html
The thing about USA is that there is a choice. There is no choice in Australia. All government are 100% behind the UN agenda. The limited number of politicians who counter the agenda have little influence.
One thing that is now apparent is that rooftops are coming out on top. And rooftops are not garnering the same level of theft as grid scale WDGs.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-02-21/rooftop-solar-cells-in-australia-to-outperform-demand/103489806
With rooftops winning in the WDG space, there is little opportunity to expand grid scale.
So the question is now is whether Dutton can pivot the whole circus to Nuclear in Australia.
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Roof tops provide power at the point closest to the point of usage.
For someone with an acceptance of ongoing inflationary power pricing, the addition of roof top panels requires serious thought. Assuming you own a roof.
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Serious thought and consult a cost accountant.
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A thing about US electoral district numbers is that numbers are based on the total population according to the census and that includes illegals.
So the more illegals a state or district gets, the higher the entitlement for the number of representatives, regardless that illegals theoretically can’t vote.
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Xiaoying You – Updated Apr 13, 2024, 1:49am GMT+10
NET ZERO
What China’s EV buyers’ remorse means for the world
China is the most important country in the world when it comes to the future of electric vehicles: It accounts for about 60% of all global EV sales, its market for EVs is surging, and it is home to the planet’s biggest EV manufacturer.
So a recent survey showing that more than a fifth of battery EV owners in China want their next car to be powered by fossil fuels is understandably raising alarm bells in the industry. Growth in sales of EVs has long been plagued by range anxiety. Enter a new challenge — what EVCIPA, a charging-facility trade body, calls “energy-replenishing anxiety.” In effect, users are concerned about limits to charging infrastructure.
It spotlights one of the major challenges to the energy transition, and raises questions of how Chinese authorities respond. The country is such an EV behemoth that the speed bumps it hits — and the solutions it uses — can serve as valuable lessons for the rest of the world.
Alongside that remarkable growth, however, has been frustration:
The survey from McKinsey China pegged battery EV buyers’ “regret rate” as surging from 3% in 2022 to 22% last year, which its report blamed largely on limited charging infrastructure. Chinese consumers’ “acceptance rate” of new energy vehicles in general also dropped from 68% in 2022 to 62% in 2023, meaning fewer people were looking to buy these vehicles.
Evolving expectations could be partly to blame, Phate Zhang, the founder of the Shanghai-based industry outlet CnEVPost, told me. Early adopters of EVs were often more affluent, curious, and well-researched on the topic. But as the market has ballooned, consumers quickly shifted from trailblazers to more everyday users, who may be less prepared for challenges associated with EVs, he said.
THE VIEW FROM THE US
EV sales in the U.S. increased from about 125,000 in the first quarter of 2021 to 375,000 in the third quarter of 2023, and are projected to rise by 32% this year. But the percentage of shoppers “very likely” to consider buying or leasing an EV for their next vehicle has actually declined for five months in a row, slipping to 22.5% in March, according to Stewart Stropp, executive director of EV Intelligence at J.D. Power, an analytics firm headquartered in Michigan.
Charging issues are, again, the sticking point. “Lack of charging station availability is consistently the number one reason cited each month [by EV rejecters], with other charging-related reasons occupying the other top spots, along with purchase price,” Stropp told me.
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I live in Canada. A local church spent $150k on rooftop solar panels a few years ago. Roughly half of them do not face in the direction of the Sun (South), and for about 4 months of the year they are buried deeply with snow. This is virtue signalling at its finest. The whole thing makes me laugh.
Kudos to the salesman who closed that deal. Well done.
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How about a home water tank that is cooled during the day with solar electric refrigeration and cools the house at night with mains electicity?
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