Wednesday, May 20, 2015 | 5:34 p.m.
View more of the Sun's opinion section
Gary Musser is right that residents need to understand the truth about net metering to homes with solar panels (Letters, May 13). Sadly, his banking analogy doesn’t help.
He claims “solar owners deposit their excess energy into the grid” and “withdraw” their “deposited” energy when they need it. Not true. NV Energy has no way of banking energy. Some method such as pumped storage or hydrogen production would be needed. Instead, NV Energy must immediately sell all the excess.
He also claims the excess energy is “free” to NV Energy. Not true. The solar owner’s meter simply runs backward, so NV Energy pays the maximum rate and must sell it immediately, since there is no way to store it. But who wants to buy it? If the solar owner doesn’t need it, neither does anyone else. Paying top price for a commodity no one wants doesn’t make business sense, so NV Energy is asking for a limit on the amount it must buy. What’s wrong with that?
In addition to the simple economic problem of net metering, more trouble looms for NV Energy. If it is forced to continue subsidizing all solar installation, how long will it be before the tail (SolarCity, et al.) is wagging the dog?
Join the Discussion:
Check this out for a full explanation of our conversion to the LiveFyre commenting system and instructions on how to sign up for an account.
Full comments policy