All Forum Posts by: Steve K.

 Nobodies defensive, it’s sad your opinion is formed with false or outdated information, that’s all.

Of course the degradation factor is taken into account when we do energy forecasts. It's less than 1% on avg., high quality panels less than .5%. 

I have never cleaned my panels nor do many of my 1,000's of customers (only the really anal ones, or the large scale bank-owned ones required to do so by investors). All of these systems are producing better than forecasted, dirty or meticulously cared for, basically same end result. If there's a dust storm or something, they can easily be cleaned or you can just wait for it to rain like I do. If you clean them daily you might make a few extra pennies a day. Or if you think it's necessary, as some managers of large scale arrays lead us to believe (mostly to justify their position "managing" and array with no moving parts, or to appease investors who have little solar knowledge and just like to have something to point out and think it's important), then paying some guys to run around with spray bottles and squeegees for a few hours isn't going to be a deal breaker on a multimillion dollar system. Soiling is a non-issue in my experience. In areas with heavy dust like the Mojave or the Gobi where the largest solar arrays are, cleaning them is a teeny tiny expense compared to the many millions of dollars worth of electricity those large arrays produce. 

Yes, the recent tariffs increased the cost of imported panels by 30%, and the same president signed off on extending the 30% tax credit. So now we mark them up 30% and then down 30%. Makes sense to me... free market! Interesting fact: both policies were signed into law by the party of "less government"; the 30% tax credit in 2005, extended in 2017, and the 30% tariff in 2017. Less government achieved by more government? Energy subsidies are extremely complex, and solar isn't unique in that regard. If you look into subsidies for any form of energy it's migraine-inducing. Despite the tariffs panel prices have dropped by 75% since 2009 and will continue to drop as they are increasingly mass produced. 

Current prices have been more than economical for renewables in CA for quite some time that's why almost all new generation is coming from solar and wind. 

@Andrew Smith you beat me AGAIN! And you even had more updated info than me... I stand corrected, nuclear is down to 9% of the CA energy mix, I'll have to update my number of 14% from a few years ago. It's quickly on its way to zero. 

Whatever question is being asked about energy, nuclear is never the answer. How did we forget to account for the cost of managing the nuclear waste for literally 100,000 years? Taxes pay for that, and if we don't protect it, it can be made into dirty bombs. Great idea indeed but solar "doesn't make sense".... ok. 

California's population is growing consistently by 300-400,000 people each year over the last 10 years. Some residents are leaving, but more are moving in. They definitely don't have a problem with a "mass exodus", if anything the opposite is true, they're struggling with ways to accommodate their growing population. That's why it makes sense to include a power plant with every new home. Build a new roof, power the home with that roof. 

Financially solar panels make a ton of sense. There's an upfront cost but over time the power they produce is far less expensive than traditional energy sources. 

Solar panels don't last very long? That's utter hogwash. Down the street from me is NREL, where they test new technology. They have an array consisting of solar panels from the 70's and guess what? Still producing power. Why would we recycle them when they still generate valuable electricity? Modern solar panels are even better, they come with 20-25 year warranties, degrade less than 1% per year, and will still be producing valuable electricity in 30-40 years at least. If you want to "recycle" some panels, just bring them over my house, I'll plug them in and sell the electricity.

Also not sure what "toxic metals" you think solar panels are made of. They're made mostly of silicon which is the eighth most common element in the universe that is non toxic and easily recycled. The embodied energy in a solar panel, the amount of energy it took to produce it including mining the aluminum for the frame, all the materials in it, assembly, shipping and everything, is offset by the production from the panel in 1-4 years, so they pay for themselves in terms of energy return on energy invested many times over during their useful life, that's why they make so much sense environmentally. 

"Actually, isnt CA almost exclusively nuclear power anyway right now?"

 Nope. Currently about 14% of CA energy comes from Nuclear, compared to 19% from solar. California is not big on nuclear. They’re shutting down the last remaining nuclear plant and not building new ones. Fukushima was the last nail in the coffin for nuclear. We realized having these facilities was too much liability, especially next to the ocean and on top of major fault lines. Side note: Did you know there’s a nuclear plant in NJ that's the same dangerous design (Mark 1 by GE, 1960's technology that we've known was faulty since 1972) as Fukushima? The biggest job maker in nuclear currently is the decommissioning industry. It takes over ten years and costs billions of dollars to take these things apart. Guess who pays for that? Taxes. Meanwhile people think recycling solar panels is a problem SMH.

@Cody Furman Just serve notices, every time. That should be enough of a reminder, and starts the clock ticking. I’ve spoken to tenants about it like you mentioned; explained calmly and as kindly as possible that a judge will evict them and a sheriff will come remove them if they don’t pay, that it’s hard living with an eviction on your record, that I have my own payments I have to make to the bank and the bank doesn’t have a heart either, that they’ll lose their security deposit because I’ll keep that for unpaid rent and go after them for additional monies if they cause damage, etc. Didn’t help at all in my experience. The moment it becomes real is when the judge asks them, “Will you be out by tonight, or do I have to send a sheriff to forcibly evict you.” That’s when they get it. To answer your question though I don’t know if it’s illegal, but you definitely want to avoid doing anything that could be viewed as threatening and anything in writing can be used against you. I don’t think it hurts to have a calm polite conversation if you have a good working relationship with a good tenant, one last attempt to find out what’s really going on. But be careful and I wouldn’t send a formal letter or an email, that’s what the notice is for. Anything additional after the notice is kind of like a triple dare. Nobody that double double dares is serious. As others have said your landlord tenant handbook is your manual. Definitely don’t text a message that Bruno is on his way to their house and he’s coming for their kneecaps. Good luck!

@Christopher Lombardi Says the guy from New Jersey. Haven’t you guys been in danger of defaulting on your massive debt for years? What is it up to now, $150B? I just read today everybody is dumping NJ bonds, again. It seems like every week the S&P is downgrading New Jersey. But yeah CA sure has it rough.

 That’s crazy Andrew, we should just keep digging up fossils and burning them until we completely smoke  ourselves out. Because, you know, market forces and windmills and China.

 Agreed. If somebody perfects the Mr. Fusion Home Energy Reactor coupled with a flux capacitor I can use to power my DeLorean, I'm all for it.  

 Lead paint, asbestos... technically bans not mandates, but related in that govt. stepped in to protect the public from harmful building practices. Lead paint was a great paint, but it gives people brain damage. Asbestos was a great fire retardant, but causes lung cancer and mesothelioma.  

Central power plants powered by fossil fuels or nuclear were the best way we had to power a lot of homes, so we built a lot of them and wired all our houses up to them. As it turns out, emissions from fossil fuel plants causes increased rates of lung cancer and shortens life expectancy. Nuclear is not a viable option because in 60 years of using it we still haven't solved the waste issue, plus govt. has to insure them since no private insurance company would be dumb enough to seeing how disasters are extremely expensive not to mention catastrophically costly in terms of human lives, so nuclear is dead. Fossil fuels get more expensive as they become more rare so the government has to spend more money subsidizing them to keep our economy afloat since we depend on them. Now we're retiring those old power plants, not building many new ones, and for lack of any better solutions to move on to, solar and wind are getting increased adoption.

Wind is already cheaper and solar is on track to be cheaper than legacy fuels in a few short years (even with legacy fuels keeping their subsidies while renewables lose theirs), so makes economic sense even health issues aside but especially considering those external issues among others. Market evolution. It's already happening, CA is just pushing the issue to speed things up further. 

Builders will have to pivot just like when we had to stop using lead paint and asbestos, or car manufacturer's had to start putting catalytic converters and seat belts in every car, or any number of other examples of things the govt. forced us into that was for the public good. I'm sure there was pushback on all of those changes too, as they made things more expensive initially and people had to adjust. Yet in hindsight I hope we all agree society is better off thanks to those changes, and would have been better off had we made those adjustments sooner. 

Sure, it's annoying to have to be forced into using solar. But I believe in 20 years we'll look back and ask ourselves, "Why didn't we make that switch sooner?"  That's all CA is trying to do. 

Yup you nailed it with the tragedy of the commons. I so wish you hadn't compared solar to ethanol though, that was such a disaster and I really hope we're not going down that path, and doubt we are.