Shaved Monkey wrote:You dont need to put panels on your roof to have solar, if you cant because of heritage listing or shade or orientation,surely there will be a time when wallmart super markets gas stations warehouses or any other company that has lots of roof space will have panels on their roofs you can buy power from.
The other solution is community owned wind turbines
Or neighbors like Baha.
Once extra panels are cheap enough (or durable glass tiles that function as panels), it will make sense for ordinary folks in sunny areas to put more than enough panels on their roofs and sell excess power once their batteries are full enough. Or sell excess power when the forecast is good and rates are high enough to make it worth it.
If you have a competitive market, and people have enough batteries, this puts a HUGE dent in the centralized, expensive, power utility market. This is a key part of Tony Seba's argument for the coming S-curve in solar power adoption for home-owners.
A big caveat here is getting to where people with solar will be confident they'll be consistently allowed to sell power at a reasonable price (re a fair market), and that politicians/utilities won't be allowed to screw over solar owners with regulations, like they have recently in Nevada. When the rules can be changed after the fact and people with supposedly contractually guaranteed rates are totally screwed over -- other people notice. Some kind of counter-regulations or standards need to be in place to prevent such nonsense.
So I think this will take a fair amount of time to play out, because a critical mass must be achieved. However, people won't want to invest (as much) in the income potential of excess solar, without confidence that the market won't be interfered with by crooked utilities and the politicians they buy.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... any-nevada