So how come that rhetoric is only coming out of the US? The rest of the world's distribution networks don't have a problem with residential solar (afaik).
What other countries have meaningful residential solar and haven’t had to deal with the problems? Can you cite anything because I can’t find any good resources online, but AFAICT the US and China are leading the world in solar and it’s possible that the US is leading for residential solar on normalized terms (haven’t checked).
California is probably one of the places in the world with the largest solar residential install and therefore has the most experience with this vs some dark propaganda conspiracy to keep residential solar down? Trust me, residential solar is hugely popular because you basically have free electricity and the government subsidizing the install cost on top + forcing utilities to buy your electricity generation during the day? The political incentives are for more residential solar, not less. The utilities aren’t popular and you can accuse them of shady shit (& they do engage on it), but in this specific instance it does seem more sincere that people are acting because of the threat that residential solar placed to the financial stability of the grid. And no, residential solar doesn’t remove the need for the grid.
4 of the top 5 solar cities in the US are in California. California has stopped with the explicit rebates to fund residential solar and it’s not just because solar prices have dropped - it’s bad policy. Other places are still lagging because they don’t have enough residential solar installed to make it obviously a bad idea. The residential solar market has seen a massive contraction since the state government stopped forcing utilities to subsidize them as much - they’re still subsidizing a bit but they switched from buying back electricity from residential at retail rates & now instead use wholesale which is what they’d pay any other generator (T&D costs are subsidized because the monthly grid hookup rate is still too cheap for these kinds of houses).
We’ve already carried out this experiment. Rooftop solar is a luxury good that doesn’t actually reduce fossil fuel dependence.
Thankfully Spain has learned the lesson of California & is only giving a wholesale rebate on the bill meaning you’ll never make money from rooftop solar:
But that doesn’t change the math that using public funds to incentivize rooftop solar is a populist direction that isn’t actually a good idea for the grid. Once enough rooftop solar is installed, watch the grid in Spain start to struggle financially if they haven’t priced the T&D hookup fee correctly (+ expect that fee to rise over time). All that being said, Spain & Europe are slightly different stories - they have a unified electricity grid I believe which lets them export their surplus. Not sure if that actually works for rooftop solar but may help mediate some of the problems that we have in the US.
So how come that rhetoric is only coming out of the US? The rest of the world's distribution networks don't have a problem with residential solar (afaik).