southern MN | soilnotdirt - 7/28/2026 09:51
Net metering is an incentive to install solar panels, and clearly we still need more solar panels.
That doesn’t change the fact that it is unfair to the other customers of the system.
You have mentioned several side issues which can be this or that, fine.
The issue is when you use electricity you are a retail consumer; when you put energy back into the system you are a wholesale commodity producer.
I can sell my corn for 3-4 bucks a bushel when I harvest it.
I can buy bird/ squirrel/ deer corn from the store for $12 a bushel and day I want to.
I can not go to the store and pick up bagged corn for free, all year long, and then some random day plop the same amount of corn on their shelf and call it even.
I can build my own storeage building and store my corn and clean it and use it any day I want, and figure out what to do with the extra corn all on my own, and I am fine.
But if I’m using the store for inventory control, storage, packaging, etc then I need to sell the corn wholesale and buy it back retail.
That’s just how it works.
It should be the same with electricity.
It’s very costly for an electric company to have standby power for when clouds come across your panels. It’s very costly for them to buy your electricity during an hour there is no need for that electricity. And much more complicated than that, but just the simple concepts.
Back in the 70s energy crisis I was very interested in wind and solar and all that. Passive solar, etc. I might have been called a tree hugger, but I always saw that there had to be a connection to cost, demand, etc. so I understand your side points.
Should we encourage solar as we did ethanol with some incentives? That is fine.
But you have to understand you are creating more cost for others, until those incentives end.
Much as the ethanol industry started. Fortunately ethanol was responsible and sunset their incentives and now offer us cheaper fuel than straight gasoline on their own.
We hope some day Solar would do the same? But for now net metering is a drain on other people, you are getting a free ride at their expense.
Paul |
Solar guys
