Solar Is Cannibalizing Coal, and Everything Else, Including Solar

Solar energy comes in two variations, of course, both of which are subsidized to the hilt. There is rooftop (including backyard) solar and commercial solar. The latter is getting a lot of attention today, but rooftop solar has been happening much longer. It has typically enjoyed indirect net metering subsidies from the beginning, although that is now being reined in by numerous governments because it has become unaffordable. Those subsidies have also resulted in a less well-known dark side in that they are resulting in the cannibalization of every other energy source, including commercial solar.

Jo Nova has a post here explaining what’s happening, but let me explain a bit more, using a couple of examples. The first is a chart showing the amount of rooftop solar compared to commercial solar for all of Australia:

Notice how rooftop solar comes in strong at 6 AM and departs at 6 PM, half the day with a peek at Noon. Commercial solar should have the same pattern except that it doesn’t. It never gets above what it is at 9 AM and stays the way 4 PM and declines to zero at 6 PM. The explanation is that subsidized rooftop solar can’t be controlled. It’s pushes energy onto the grid with abandon and there is no way to shut it off. But, too much electricity is really bad for a grid incapable of handling it, so something must give.

That something in the above illustration is commercial utility-scale solar, which is forced down to the 9 AM level by the grid operator because it can and it must. Rooftop solar, in other words, is cannibalizing commercial solar. It’s subsidy versus subsidy in a mad world where both are uneconomic and neither is actually needed, which means the entire system is being financially undermined by all solar. Moreover, commercial solar projects are being made even more uneconomic than they already were.

But, it’s not just commercial solar that’s being cannibalized. The following illustration shows not only solar, but also coal (brown and black) and natural gas:

We see rooftop solar is not just cannibalizing commercial solar. It is also doing the same thing to both coal and gas. Moreover, by doing so, it is now drastically reducing the efficiency of baseload energy sources that matter. Baseload energy cannot be replaced by any form of intermittent and unreliable green energy. It is essential. The intermittent and unreliable stuff isn’t. And, when we put our money into the latter, we undermine the former. That’s both dumb and expensive. We are spending our money subsidizing something that makes no financial sense and that also makes our baseload energy more inefficient and more expensive. It is, in a word, madness.

This is Australia, of course, where the government has gone whole hog on phony climate crisis thinking, just as it did with the COVID debacle. Where we do we stand in the United States? Well, the data is not quite as easily available here as in Australia, but we read this regarding the California situation:

In sunny California, solar panels are everywhere. They sit in dry, desert landscapes in the Central Valley and are scattered over rooftops in Los Angeles's urban center. By last count, the state had nearly 47 gigawatts of solar power installed - enough to power 13.9 million homes and provide over a quarter of the Golden State's electricity.

But now, the state and its grid operator are grappling with a strange reality: There is so much solar on the grid that, on sunny spring days when there's not as much demand, electricity prices go negative. Gigawatts of solar are "curtailed" - essentially, thrown away.

Note that rooftop solar is even eating itself; it’s gotten that bad. Imagine what it’s doing to baseload energy (coal, nuclear, natural gas). It’s cannibalizing everything and California’s electricity rates is the highest among 48 contiguous states and exceeded only by Hawaii nationwide) show it. It is destroying everything, including itself leaving us virtually defenseless as far as energy security is concerned. We can’t abolish rooftop solar subsidies fast enough.

#Solar #UtilityScaleSolar #CommercialSolar #RooftopSolar #Australia #Califiornia