Solar 📍

While I certainly welcome lower-cost solar panels, and would most certainly include solar power when I own my off-grid homestead, I am deeply concerned about the tens of thousands, and soon to be hundreds of thousands of acres of land being developed for industrial solar farms across the state. Information both on solar farms and smaller, more appropriate uses of solar technology.

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Excessively Complicated and Frustrating | Greentech Media

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My Experience With Community Solar: Excessively Complicated and Frustrating | Greentech Media

Closing the deal and getting my signature on a contract should have been a slam dunk for NRG, one of the largest American energy companies and the developer of the project in my community. Instead, my three-month journey through its sales process turned me from a hot lead into an annoyed non-subscriber with a lower opinion of NRG than I had had when the process began.

The fact that many of the negative aspects of my experience are common across community solar marketing is cause for concern. For community solar to get to a breakout point for growth, developers (and their partners and contractors) should take a fresh approach to marketing and sales that’s focused on transparent education and clarity of information.

Communities forming ‘buyers club’ for clean energy – Times Union

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Commentary: Communities forming ‘buyers club’ for clean energy – Times Union

A CCA is like an electricity "buyers club." By leveraging the purchasing power of tens of thousands of households, a CCA can negotiate for clean electricity at an affordable price. A CCA negotiates the price and generation sources of residents' electricity with a selected supply company, and that supplier becomes the default source of electricity for the households and small businesses in the member municipalities. National Grid continues to deliver and bill for the electricity.  While cost is important, the biggest benefit of forming a CCA is that every household is automatically enrolled in the program (except those in the state's Home Energy Assistance Program). From an environmental perspective, it will have the same impact as if every house and small business were to install solar panels on their roofs overnight. Because electricity accounts for 19 percent of our carbon emissions, a CCA that supplies clean electricity will be enormously beneficial.

CCA gives residents more and better electricity choices. Anyone can opt out of the CCA program at any time and at no cost. Residents can switch to another electricity generation mix within the CCA program (if one is offered), back to National Grid, or to another energy supplier entirely. Residents have all the current supply options plus one or more options within the CCA.

Maybe this is good, maybe it's not. Most of these renewable energy projects would be built without local buy-in, because of the state mandates.  Not sure if it really makes that much of a difference, but I'll have to watch and look to see if it makes sense to continue in the program or opt-out. I certainly have a lot of concerns with those industrial solar farms that are popping up everywhere.

Solar Panels Leave People High And Dry

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Abundant Sun, Yet No Energy: Solar Panels Leave People High And Dry

I am definitely a fan of renewable energy, but I do have a lot of questions about these grid-fed industrial solar facilities I see popping up in the country. I think there is a lot of wishful thinking and not a reality-based discussion of the climate crisis we as a society face. No, we aren't going to be taking our electric cars, powered by industrial solar fields to Walmart, regardless of what we think.

Solar homes sell for more – pv magazine USA

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Solar homes sell for more – pv magazine USA

It seems like you are seeing more and more grid-tied homes with solar in New York, mainly because of the state's policies that make it quite affordable. Solar is also becoming a bigger part of most off-grid cabins and homes in remote locations -- the technology has gotten inexpensive, and it's hard to imagine a future where most buildings don't have solar going forward.