Musings on Residential Solar

I am a proud early adopter. It’s safe to say, however, there have been times it has led me wildly wrong. Anyone remember the Rio PMP300? I was the customer who actually bought it. Never mind the dozen song capacity or the incomprehensible user interface, I was going to be the first kid on the block to be musically digital from end-to-end. To summarize the experience in a word? Brutal.

Then there was the worst software in the history of computing, ActiveSync. I was the guy who bought the first Windows Phone and subjected myself to the technological equivalent of a colonoscopy just to be the first to have one and sync it with my PC. Blackberries? They were for kids. Windows Phone was a real phone—it said so right there in the name. In a word? Brutal. Just more so.

As I consider residential solar, therefore, I’m wondering—maybe for the first time in my life—if my early adopter shields should be up and whether I should let others pave the solar highway. There is a significant difference in this case: in my earlier, early adopter escapades I could at least be shown up as a rube in the privacy of my own home. There was only my wife providing judgemental looks of disapproval. Or pity, I’m not sure which exactly.

With the consideration of residential solar, however, there is the potential of subjecting myself to a much harsher brand of judgement: that is—yes—that annual select committee enquiry that is the neighbourhood summer barbecue. Because solar panels are so prominent, I am pretty much guaranteed a non-stop string of engagements with the opening number always being the same: “So how is that solar thing working out for you?”

It reminds me of those heady days when satellite TV made its debut. Was I going to be the guy with the eight foot satellite dish which might has well have had the word GEEK painted on it in fluorescent letters? Same thing. “So how’s that satellite thing working out for you?” When I would have told them it was great being able to watch Johnny Carson at 9.30 their expression would scream: “That’s, it? That’s why we’re staring at Apollo Ground Control from across the street?” The argument I made just did not seem that good to them. It really was just a matter of time before the agricultural-sounding feed horn mysteriously disappeared and then the ironically petal-shaped panels started to drop off one by one—love me, love me not—and GEEK became EEK.

So it is with residential solar. I might as well prepare my answers to the barbecue quiz questions—asked, chillingly, with a smile—well in advance to see if they pass the laugh/derision test. Here’s what I have come up with: I can fairly easily be net zero which is to say I can generate as much electricity as my household needs and then some. In my case that was going to be with an array of photovoltaic panels lying flat against, and more-or-less covering the roof of our not-even-close-to-facing-south, two-car garage.

My headline for the barbecue season, therefore, is “I’m a net zero hero. My profligate use of household electricity is no longer a burden to the planet.” That’s the good news. There are, however, a fairly long list of gotchas which I can bury somewhere in the rest of my act particularly if I articulate them using sufficiently undecipherable language and if the music is a little too loud.

First of all, let’s assume away the environmental footprint required to create the solar panels in the first place. When the truth is ugly enough, sometimes you simply have to ignore it. Moving on.

Arbitrarily, my working assumption is that my monthly cost for solar generation should be the same as I am paying for electricity now. Whoa, wait a second, I thought solar-generated electricity was free? Well it is, sort of, but not exactly. The capital cost of the system is fairly high so I would end up putting some cash down on a lease for the life of the system which is in the 20–25 year range. In total, there’s the lost benefit of having cash tied up in the solar asset for that period, plus capital depreciation, plus the lease payment itself. Total those numbers up and adjust things until they are equal to the current electricity bill. Now I know, for sure, what I’m going to be paying for electricity for the life of the panels—the next quarter of a century, give or take.

The slightly deeper analysis, of course, is that if I’m long on electricity and that bet pans out, I’m money ahead. If I’m short on it then I’m going to feel steadily more pain as the years go by. Is electricity going to cost less in the future? Who really knows, but it seems unlikely. Probably more. Is there a pico-scale nuclear reactor out there somewhere which is going to make my solar panels the equivalent of that eight foot satellite dish and make electricity too cheap to meter? Dunno. Maybe.

Next, and with apologies to William F. Gibson for mangling his quote, “the future is already here, it’s just not evenly distributed.” It’s the same but different with electricity—there is as much as anybody could ever want. It’s the distribution, both geographically and in time, that’s the problem.

You see, electricity is the essence of the word ephemeral—it’s here, and not here, all at the same time. When you generate it, you have to either use it immediately, waste it or quickly put it somewhere until you do need it. Often, that’s not when the sun is shining, so you’ll need a big battery. That can be courtesy of our friends at Tesla Motors, for example, or as brought to you by your local electric company through something called net metering. In a manner of speaking, it allows you to treat the utility like said big battery. Blow electrons into the grid when the sun is shining and suck them back out again when its dark. You pay, or get paid, for the net difference between the blowing and the sucking.

But there is a problem: while the utility company may be happy—or at least obliged—to pay you the market rate for an electron, they may not be as happy to have you use the wires they own and for which they have paid handsomely for decades. Don’t think that’s a problem? Ask the rooftop solar industry in Nevada. A recent decision by that state’s Public Utilities Commission pretty much killed them off. The electric company still has to pay for the electron generated by the rooftop solar array, but you don’t get to use the electric company’s wires for free. In other words you will buy electricity from the electric company at one rate but sell it to them at a much different, much lower rate. It’s enough to make the difference between solar making sense, and not, and Nevada is one heck of a sunny state.

Think you can slather every square inch of your suburban property in photovoltaics and power the entire neighbourhood? Not so fast, Edison. You are likely going to run afoul of both residential zoning laws and statutory regulation that allows you to generate only what you need plus a small margin. The electric company, frankly, doesn’t want you and your slick solar panels for competition. They made a long bet on electricity years ago. They are going to want to see that pay off and often have the legislative protection to see that happens.

Also, beware of the folks from the government who identify themselves as such and say they’re here to help. Many governments are just itching to at least greenwash their policies. Using our money to have us build rooftop solar is a really compelling way to do that. It sure does look good on TV. But can those subsidies come and go? Yes, about as fast as the governments promising them. Therefore, it’s hard to reliably work these subsidies into the analysis. Besides, if residential solar such a good idea, then shouldn’t it stand on its own two economic feet?

Finally, I’ve left the best for last and it is based on having a niece and nephews who, along with a lot of other nieces and nephews, will inherit this planet from all of us. It’s that solar just seems like the right thing to do. So long as the economics can stand the impeccable financial review of the summer barbecue, then knowing that for the next quarter of a century I blew more than I sucked, then that is good enough for me.

©2016 Terence C. Gannon

If you prefer, you can listen to this essay as a podcast. Versions of this previously appeared on Medium and LinkedIn on May 26, 2016. I welcome your comments below. Also, if you liked this essay and/or podcast, please share it with your social networks. Thanks so much! (header photo: Members of the UW-Madison Solar Energy Lab with their solar grill, circa 1955. Courtesy UW-Madison Archives.)