>I'm a renter, been all my life, I'd be happy to pay more in taxes if it means more solar panels for everyone except me. But I also feel the same about elder care, health care and a bunch of other things, do you feel the same for those things too, or this is specifically about solar or owning vs renting?

There's an alternative, and almost certainly cheaper per watt with cost of scale, where your tax dollars go to a new solar farm instead, something everyone could take advantage of.

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alex_young 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Everyone can take advantage of rooftop solar. The power goes into the grid. This isn’t a zero sum game. We need both.

	▲	JuniperMesos 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		It's not zero sum but different physical layouts of energy generation do have different captial and operating costs. Rooftop solar power goes into the grid but maybe not at the most ideal time and scale for the grid operators, which justifiably affects what price they're willing to pay for that power, which justifiably affects the ROI for homeowners with rooftop solar panels.

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dangjc 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Rooftop solar has lower distribution costs. A solar farm needs new transmission and upgraded capacity distribution lines to get the power from far away to the users. Generating solar right next to your neighbors lets them access your surplus cheap power with existing slack capacity in the distribution lines. Our current monopoly utilities don’t have a mechanism to recognize that value created, and they would prefer to keep building more infrastructure as that’s what increases profits for them.

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embedding-shape 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Why not both? One works better for people not living in cities, and the other one better for high-density areas.

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coryrc 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Because you get far higher ROI for the large-scale installations. In case you weren't familiar, Canada has a lot of other things which need the money than paying 5x per watt to subsidize panels on your roof instead of on the ground.

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embedding-shape 5 hours ago | parent [-]

> Because you get far higher ROI for the large-scale installations.

Right, but as always, ROI is hardly the most important thing in life, there is more considerations than just "makes more money". For example, as someone affected by a day long country-wide electricity outage where essentially the entire country was without electricity and internet for ~14 hours or something, decentralizing energy across the country seems much more important, than optimizing for the highest ROI.

But again, this is highly contextual and depends, I'm not as sure as you that there are absolute answers to these things.

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coryrc 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Grid-tied solar is fragile. If the grid is not nearly-perfect, it won't generate. It will not help society as a whole.

If you personally have battery backup, that helps you personally and you should pay for it, just like you might pay extra to turn up the heat while I keep it lower to save money.

	▲	bluGill 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		In Canada (or the US) the grid is reliable and so you can ignore when it isn't working. This doesn't apply everywhere in the world

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triceratops 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Grid-scale solar installations can be much more decentralized than nuclear or natural gas power plants.

Decentralizing through subsidies at the homeowner level is maybe not the best use of money.

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ApolloFortyNine 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

>One works better for people not living in cities

It's not as if homes outside of cities have their own diesel generators to power their house.

(Since I'm guessing from this line of comments you'll point out the less than 1% of people who actually do do this, maybe it's better to focus only the 99% here).

	▲	embedding-shape 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> It's not as if homes outside of cities have their own diesel generators to power their house. Yeah, no true, I don't understand the point/argument though? More people relying on renewables == long term better for everyone on the planet That includes moving people outside of cities to renewables energy sources, is your point that this isn't so important because they're a small piece of the population usually?

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PaulDavisThe1st 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

What's the difference between a new solar farm and new solar panels on roofs (or the ground) ?

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triceratops 5 hours ago | parent [-]

The solar farm produces more energy per dollar spent. Rooftop solar is expensive. It produces comparatively fewer kw to amortize the fixed costs over - permitting, getting up on the roof etc.

If a country has abundant land and expensive labor, the money is probably best spent improving grid transmission capacity and otherwise getting the f- out of the way of utility-scale renewables. Places like Pakistan, which is going through a rooftop solar boom, are arguably the opposite - scarce land in the cities, but cheap labor to get up on roofs.

Happy to hear any analyses to the contrary and update my knowledge accordingly.

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PaulDavisThe1st 5 hours ago | parent [-]

OK, so rooftop solar is a higher <currency-unit>/kW solar farm. That's one argument against it.

On the other hand, it is also distributed which from some perspectives is a benefit, and is also do-able with very little planning and grid extension. So that's one argument for it.

How things come out on balance depends a bit on what you value and how you imagine the future.

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triceratops 4 hours ago | parent [-]

The generation is distributed. That only benefits the people who have panels on their rooftops. If we want them to share the excess with others during a power outage it requires further grid investment.

I think homeowners should install solar panels and batteries where it makes economic sense. If there's money left over after funding utility-scale solar then it should be used for EV incentives and/or funding electrified mass transit. The whole point is to electrify everything rapidly and reduce carbon emissions.

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margalabargala 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

You absolutely do not want them sharing the excess with neighbors during a power outage, this is how you get dead linemen.

Solar panel grid tied inverters generally will refuse to function if there's no external power coming in.

The benefit from the distributed generation means that if your local area has large loads added you don't necessarily need to upgrade the HVDC lines from the power plant to accommodate.

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bluGill 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

This is not as big a problem as it sounds - you cannot provides enough power for you neighbors and so your breakers (fuses) will cut power long before the lineman gets there.

though linemen are trained that they are working on a live line unless they have personally shorted it out. There are many other ways a seemingly dead line can be live so they don't take a chance.

	▲	PaulDavisThe1st 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> This is not as big a problem as it sounds - you cannot provides enough power for you neighbors and so your breakers (fuses) will cut power long before the lineman gets there. The load side (your neighbors) cannot pull more power than is being generated. My 7kW array can generate 7kW and no more. No breakers will trip in a hypothetical scenario where my inverter fails to shut down during an outage, and my neighbors are trying to drawing 10kW.

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triceratops 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Upvoted.

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direwolf20 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Solar farms don't work during power outages either. When the power isn't out, you get to use the power from your neighbor's solar panel.