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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 15th, 2023

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  • I work for a private solar developer in NYS, and I can see that the state regulators are either asleep at the wheel or intentionally complacent with allowing private utilities to let our electric infrastructure rot so they can keep collecting profits off of ratepayers. We have some of the worst utilities in the country and state is currently suppressing a grassroots effort to oust RG&E, who is the worst of the worst. In general though their refusal to modernize their grid is grinding the goal of 70% renewable by 2030 to a quick halt.

    I had really hoped that getting NYPA behind the building of renewables would make them a heavyweight that could take the utilities to task for their failures, it’s infuriating that they’ve fallen to more regulatory capture.


  • I’m an engineer who designs solar array for a living, here’s how the math breaks down in fairly typical round numbers.

    The all-in cost is around $2-3k per kilowatt (thats equipment, installation, permitting, utility approvals, etc), so a 5kW system (pretty typical residential size) would cost $10-15k. Each kilowatt produces about 1000-1500 kWh every year (depending on your latitude and how much sun your roof gets), so if your electric company charges you $0.10 per kWh, that 5kW system will generate $500-750 worth of energy annually. Without incentives it would pay itself off in 20 or 30 years, but if your state has good solar incentives that can be much shorter, if you pay a lot more for electricity it pays itself off sooner as well.


  • Most places where this can be done, it is already being done. The low hanging fruit for pumped hydro was all picked decades ago, and at great cost to the ecosystems it destroyed in the process - turns out that drowning thousands of acres in massive man-made lakes had a bit of an impact on the plants and animals that lived there.

    Not saying that the benefits weren’t worth the cost, that’s a whole different debate. But there’s little to no opportunity to scale this energy storage tech beyond it’s current footprint.