There’s a difference between tax breaks and subsidies. I’m not going to bother explaining it, the Internet is your friend, and people who constantly yammer about subsidies for oil companies are clueless fools. Especially when all these “alternative” and supposedly green industries just like solar receive both
NEW JERSEY SOLAR INDUSTRY AT RISK OF COLLAPSE AS SUBSIDIES BEGIN TO ROLL BACK
New Jersey’s solar industry is expected to plummet unless imminent action by regulators is taken, allowing subsidies to continue propping up solar installation sales.
The New Jersey solar market has grown steadily in recent years. With over 99,000 solar installations in place and around 7,000 employees currently working in the field, the state is ranked seventh in the U.S. for its solar development. Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy hopes to see the industry grow even further and signed legislation in May that calls for the state’s renewable portfolio standard to reach 50 percent by 2030.
However, advocates warn the state’s solar industry is on track for total collapse.
“[W]e’re afraid that the market will crash again,†Jeff Tittel, director of the New Jersey Sierra Club, said in a statement on Oct. 17. “If we don’t move forward, we’ll lose more jobs and more opportunities for clean energy. We must work to become a leader once more in solar power.â€
The concern comes as the subsidies that have helped propel solar installation sales in the state are due to wind down.
New Jersey’s Solar Renewable Energy Credit (SREC) program currently incentivizes solar investment by giving panel owners credits for the electricity they produce. Like other solar incentives, however, this program has become controversial as it comes at a great cost to electricity consumers. The price of the credits — currently trading at around $200 — far surpass the cost of projects.
Sadly, instead of spending the People’s Money on research and development to create solar panels that are truly affordable for homeowners that would provide a whole heck of a lot more energy capture than today’s panels, along with viable and low cost storage methods, government is just throwing money towards companies that simply put up panels that aren’t all that much different in solar conversion as they were 50 years ago. And it really keeps everything in the hands of the companies, rather than the private home owners.
If solar is so great, why do we have to pay people to install it? Why do we have to pay companies to install it? Scam.
My son in law just had 24 solar panels installed on his roof. It cost 41,000.00 will take 20 years to pay off and in the meantime he is netting zero dollars. Meaning the panels have replaced his electricity bill which means he is really not taking on added monthly liability.
The problem is they promise you can sell back your electricity to the electric company and make money!!!!
Yeah its not so easy. Yes you can sell it back but they are on track to make 17 Seventeen Dollars for an entire year from the electric company which pays 1.5 cents per kwh to then sell for 17 cents.
So the problem with solar is not that its not now working. Its still tremendously expensive and you are paying for your electricity 20 years in advance. Anyone who thinks they are going to get rich selling electricity to the electric company are in for a surprise.
With that said I think tax breaks for the buyer and subsidies for the manufacturer are in order. As you can see solar works. Its just very expensive. Without the tax breaks and subsidies by his company he was told they would have to charge nearly 65,000.00 for the same set up which admittedly his was rather substantial on a big home and you can get into solar for less.
I am not a huge fan of Electricity companies considering they are a monopoly in every community and pretty much charge you what they feel like. Yes each city or town regulates their prices but with all the green sliding under the table they get what they want. Literally.
So even though Im very conservative I am all for subsidies and tax breaks for wind and solar because I do not like electricity companies who are constantly rising prices because they can. They have NO COMPETITION. SOLAR AND WIND gives them COMPETITION and just might cause them one day in the future to not be so greedy. Ok. Getting off my soap box now.
These panels will be kaput before the 20 years rolls along and will require other/further maintenance during that period on top of everything else. Not viable at all.
They come with a guaranteed 30 year warranty. If they fail they will be replaced including labor. One of the reasons the price is high. Additionally the cost of electricity in this area runs about 250-350 per month. 300×12=3600×20=72,000.00 that does not even include the constantly escalating price of electricity.
Solar is more viable than you think.
One has figure in the cost per Kwh to make a valid comparison not the cost per month.
Also the panels are useless at night and heavily overcast and/or snowy days.
Something to ponder.
Solar power systems use batteries to store sparktricity, and with a well-constructed, sized and maintained solar system, one can easily live completely off the electric power grid.
But that’s just it: solar systems work just fine, thank you very much, for individual residences, for people who know how to, and do, maintain them. When you have neighborhoods full of people who need riding lawnmowers to take care of lawns not even a tenth of an acre, or have to hire people to cut their lawns and clean their gutters and clear a clogged drain, then solar systems suffer.
The Pyrite State is going to mandate solar panel installation on new residential construction after 2020, but in a state where the panels will almost all be on rooftops, how will the Special Snowflakesâ„¢ maintain them? Panels need to be cleaned occasionally to maintain efficiency, and the lack of testosterone among liberals means that they don’t have the guts to climb up on their roofs and do the work.
Years ago, our conservative neighbor (a nice guy, actually), was roofing his own house and fell, fortunately only breaking several bones (destroying his shoulder but not his back or neck). Some Mexicans (nice guys too, they visited our garage sale, and bought a few things, but spoke little English) finished the job for him without hurting themselves. Hard working sonsabitches, too.
Your ‘president’ seems to have a testosterone deficiency, doesn’t he? Manicures, pompadour, spray tan… he’s almost transitioned to a woman. He makes Caitlyn Jenner look like an Olympic decathlon champion.
Do you think he has done anything ‘right-thinking men’ would consider manly (other than attempted rape)?
Yet, the right worships this thrice-married, amoral, foul-mouthed atheist.
Cleaning solar panels is not often necessary. And old men shouldn’t be climbing on their roofs.
I’m an old man, and I climb on my roof! Of course, I’m one of the conservatives who do have testosterone, and thus am still strong and fit even in retirement.
Despite no competition in electric companies, they still manage to deliver electricity to you door at a MUCH lower cost than you can do yourself, by any means. A $60,000 solar system would buy a LOT of electricity at retail price. The only efficient solar use is powering small demand items in areas that are too far from the grid to run a power line, for instance, in orbit.
As I pointed out in an above post the cost of electricity will escalate over the years. The solar panels are a fixed price. In this area the cost for 20 years of electricity is 72,000.00 which does not even take into account the constantly rising price of electricity. I would venture to say the cost will hit a staggering 100,000.00 in 20 years from the electric company compared to 41k for the solar panels with an estimated upkeep of 5k dollars over the lifetime of the panels which come with a 30 year warranty.
It is more viable than you think. But I get it. The left loves it therefore it must be bad. Got it.
The Left loves a lot of things that are just stupid, that doesn’t mean you can’t run the numbers and see for yourself.
1. With solar, the sun doesn’t shine all day, so you need deep dwell batteries to store the electricity. Those batteries cost almost as much as the panels themselves and last about 5 years under constant use. Then need 30% replacement after that, every year.
2. Solar panels themselves start losing efficiency the day they are plugged in. That lost efficiency is cumulative. In 20 years, they will be so inefficient that they will need full replacement, but they will be noticeably not keeping up after only 5 years. A good installation will take this loss into account and sell you extra capacity up front.
3. The electricity cost growth curve that is used by Solar salesmen is vastly different than the historical curve and the curve used by Gas hot water heater salesmen. It’s almost as if they had a profit motive to tell you the most favorable circumstance for their own product.
4. In economics, the universe is not simply a choice between electricity and solar. You could take the money you would spend on Solar and put it into the stock market instead, then deduct from that your monthly electric bill. at the end of 20 years, you would have enough to buy a new solar system, and electricity, and a new house to put it on.
5. It takes more electricity to produce a solar cell from mining to installation and operation, than it will produce during its entire service life. That energy is an economic choice that can be summed up in dollars. It only makes sense to make that choice when the basis for your choice is something other than economic sense: The power line doesn’t go all the way to your secluded light-house island , undersea lab, or orbital hotel, or you will derive a great deal of pleasure smugly telling all your neighbors that you aren’t depending on those evil energy producers anymore, or you can get someone else to pay for it (subsidies).
6. A key loss of power in your solar home is converting DC power (how Solar is made) into AC power (how your appliances use it). You can lose up to 50% of the energy your panels produce just in converting it. The best way around this is to convert your entire house (lights, wiring, HVAC, well pumps) into 24VDC ($$CHA-CHING$$). Electricity from the utility pole doesn’t need to do this because it comes into your house in a usable form.
I won’t bother posting links for all this. The information has been on the internet for decades.
Bottom line: There are a very few circumstances where solar power makes economic sense. Very few. And that has nothing to do with leftist political ideologies.
Only a fool would define subsidy so narrowly as to exclude fossil fuels…
The largest subsidies that fossil fuels have received is NOT their tax breaks (which are substantial) but their pollution where the costs have been put on the backs of society at large. It’s a good scam if you can get it. If you are able to defer your monthly sewer bill by diverting your raw sewage onto your neighbors property, you save your monthly bill. If the local gov’t allows it, isn’t that a subsidy, since you get to keep money your neighbor has to pay?
Even if we take Mr Bodine’s argument seriously — which I most certainly do not — it fails.
Corporations pay no taxes; they simply collect taxes from the eventual end user of their products. If we were to throw billions in taxes and fees on the electric companies, to pay for whatever Mr Bodine sees as the real costs of emissions, those taxes and fees would simply be passed down to the consumers in higher fuel prices and bills. The ‘backs of society at large’ would still be bent by whatever those costs happen to be.
Indeed, being a
socialistprogressive, Mr Bodine should approve of the existing situation. If “the costs have been put on the backs of society at large,” the fact that the top producers already pay far more than their fair share of taxes means that it will be the hardest workers who pay a disproportionate share of those costs. Mr Bodine should be jumping up and clicking the heels of his jackboots over this!Mrs. Delaney makes our point for us, since if they fossil fuel corporations did pass on their responsibility to consumers in the form of higher prices, it would make alternative energy sources competitive with accurately priced fossil fuels. That’s the way real markets should work. It would also make fossil fuel corporations less attractive to savvy investors. Isn’t it fair that the total, real cost should be reflected in the market price so that consumers can make a wise and economic choice? You can’t be in favor of inefficient markets. Can you?
Perhaps your high-school didn’t discuss market efficiencies in Econ class.
She types (but we edited for truthfulness):
As a conservative, you certainly can’t be advocating that part of the cost of fossil fuels should be unfairly put onto the backs of wealthy taxpayers. Can you?
Someone is going to pay for global warming, shouldn’t a conservative want the market to decide? If the real costs of fossil fuels are included in the price, market efficiencies would improve, as alternative energy sources wouldn’t require gov’t subsidies to compete.
Don’t you believe in free markets?
We must always recognize is that conservatives, for all their lip service to free market capitalism, actually favor rigging the system in favor of the wealthy. Always. Never forget.
Mr Bodine wrote:
Which means, of course, everyone would be poorer in real terms. If you have to pay more for energy, whether through higher taxes of higher priced ‘alternative’ energy sources, you still have less money76 for other things in life.
Compensation is related to productivity.
If climate change is real, it will be paid for as people adapt to changed conditions. That’s the way the economy has always worked.
That’s a laugh.
Free market works just fine, J. US emissions aired down due to….the free market via fracking. “Someone is going to pay for global warming..â€. Pay for what? The greening of the earth? Or the things that are supposed to happen but keep getting pushed further into the future?
Little Jeffery, who understands nothing, is going to lecture us on market efficiencies?
Nobody is going to pay for global warming if they’re wise to the scam. And nobody should have to, including the energy companies.
Nobody defines fool like Jeffery.
Sorry J, but that’s not the definition of “subsidyâ€, as you know. It’s the government giving money to a business or individual so as to help make it viable. Renewables obviously fit that definition. And therefore tax breaks are not subsidies-they’re tax breaks. Two different words because two different meanings.
My darling bride (of 39 years, five months and five days) just complained about yet another political commercial saying that the odious Amy McGrath would work with the harridan Nancy Pelosi to kill the coal industry. The ad was correct, but Mrs Pico noted that the coal industry was already dying, which is also true.
So, if the government has to subsidize the solar panel industry, why shouldn’t it also subsidize the coal industry? Oops, we can’t have that, now can we?
If solar panel manufacturers cannot compete, then they should go out of business.
Of course, solar companies are forced to compete on an uneven playing field, as we’ve described before. Natural gas, not Captain McGrath, is killing coal. If coal can’t compete it should go out of business.
Why do you consider Captain McGrath (Marine fighter pilot with over 85 combat missions), married to a another veteran (and a Republican), odious? Just because her politics don’t align with yours? Or because she graduated from the US Naval Academy, or because she has a Master’s Degree from Johns Hopkins University. Or do you agree with tRump that all Dems are odious.
Jeff,
What does combat have to do with the fact that someone can be an idiot? After all, you went high in pharmacy school and don’t know a thing.
And yes, solar companies are on uneven ground with all the money Obama have them, the tax breaks and every thing possible thrown at them to suceed, yet they are still carp and excessive polluters.
Well, of course, they are.
And coal is alive and well. Your brain is what’s dead.
Solar companies got all manner of subsidies from the Choom Gang and still couldn’t compete because they only provide soft energy, of limited value and application.Coal has fired America’s cities.
It ain’t going away.
Retired Lieutenant Colonel, not Captain, McGrath also compared the election of Donald Trump to the September 11th attacks, essentially calling the 55% of Sixth District voters the same as the terrorists, and stated, in a fund-raiser in Massachusetts, of course, “I am further left, I am more progressive, than anyone in the state of Kentucky.” Mrs McGrath has said, publicly, on her campaign website, that she is running to “provide a check against this administration,†meaning, of course, to do everything she can to frustrate the agenda of the President for whom Kentuckians so overwhelmingly voted.
She is odious because she would vote for odious policies. Mrs McGrath, who claims to be Catholic, opposes all government restrictions on abortion. She supports the morally repugnant homosexual rights agenda, and while she won’t be specific on what she supports in gun-friendly Kentucky, she has said that she supports ‘common sense’ restrictions on our Second Amendment rights.
Most importantly, the first vote that any congressman casts is his first one of the session, the one which determines party control of the chamber. Mrs McGrath would give the majority, and the authority to decide what does and does not get considered, to Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic leadership. Even the few moderate Democrats who remain in office — think Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) here — who can be reasonable in their positions on many issues, still wind up casting those first ballots to give power to the repugnant, when they vote for a Democratic organization of the chamber.
Ahem… not so fast.
https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/index.php?page=coal_imports
The squiggly lined graph from eia.gov shows coal use in the US being cut nearly in half over the past 10 years. Sure sounds like it’s dying.
Obviously the accompanying text is beyond your feeble comprehension, little fella.
Daddy’s little girl,
So is the graph incorrect? It appears to clearly show a drop in coal consumption. Do you have a point to make? Now would be the time.
Sorry, little grandson fvcker, the discussion was about the coal industry.
If you only you could read and comprehend.
I guess “Daddy’s little girl” touched a nerve. Whatever on Earth did daddy do to you? This explains a lot. You should talk to someone. Seriously.
You seem to link to content you don’t understand and act as if you’re making a point.
I can explain it to you but I can’t understand it for you.
So what gender has the grandson claimed after all the sexual abuse, little grandpa?
Just curious.
Is there a statute of limitations for sexual abuse of a minor in Missouri?
Does the wifey know?
Jeff,
Several power plants in my area were half finished when Obama and hang came in and withdrew their license as they used coal. So, once again, Obama caused problems for nothing.
10 years is mostly the Choom Gang Administration trying to kill it.
There’s an old essay called How To Lie With Statistics, and little Jeffery thinks nobody read it.
Sweet little Buttercup,
Do you have a point? Maybe you can construct an argument or show some evidence to support your claim.
OK, I will spell it out to you because your brain is incapable of understanding large words.
You’re about as transparent as the Antifa clowns who sent all the dummy “bombs” to prominent Democrats. If you have a graph showing the last 10 years of the coal industry and claim it shows how coal is fading, anyone who remembers it includes 8 years of the Choom Gang trying to destroy it will understand your argument is highly fallacious, not to mention highly risible.
Why does a request for evidence send you Con Boyz into a tizzy?
So the idea of the Clean Power Plan (never enacted) caused the price of coal to drop to the point of making it uneconomic to mine?
In fact, coal-fired plants are closing even as Trump tries to keep them open. Why do you think that is?
dave, do you have a citation to back your claim?
Liar. And I’m the one who’s always demanding of you citations. Of course, you can’t find any that stand without manipulation.
Coal was almost driven out of business, which was the plan.
In fact, coal-fired plants are closing even as Trump tries to keep them open
They are? How many?
Where’s your evidence, other than that hokey graph that mostly shows the Choom Gang’s attempt to close them?
Not even the Rape Gang can save coal. Plants have shut down in 2017 and 2018. It wasn’t President Obama, it was natural gas. Abd economics
This should get you started:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/energyinnovation/2017/12/18/utilities-closed-dozens-of-coal-plants-in-2017-here-are-the-6-most-important/#56dacc9c5aca
https://cleantechnica.com/2017/04/24/us-coal-plant-closures-likely-eliminate-30-million-tonnes-annual-coal-demand/
https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/trump-cant-save-coal
https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/news/energy-environment/2018/02/14/267659/third-texas-coal-plant-closes-since-start-of-2018/
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamestaylor/2018/02/26/closing-coal-power-plants-replacing-with-natural-gas-makes-economic-sense/#290da30f2389
The graph that your buddy supplied shows that coal consumption has been plummeting.
Since the Clean Power Plan was never implemented how do you reason that President Obama made all those plants close, even after the Rape Gang took over?
Much of what Cons believe to be true, is not.
Sweetpea,
Google: coal plants closing 2017, 2018
Here’s just one example, from a conservative no less: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamestaylor/2018/02/26/closing-coal-power-plants-replacing-with-natural-gas-makes-economic-sense/#290da30f2389
He didn’t blame regulations, he pointed to cheap natural gas.
Dozens of plants are closed and closing. Not because of President Obama but because of cheap natural gas. Not even the Rape Gang can save coal, nor should they. It doesn’t make any sense.
The graph was supplied by one of your colluders, not me.
You do realize that the Clean Power Plan was never implemented, right?
As always, little Jeffery needs Mommy to read it to him.
The guy is advocating closing coal plants.
He’s on the side of gas.
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