Show Navigation
Conversation
Notices
-
Way back in the 1970s and 1980s, first the US encouraged large solar and wind generation projects, then cut off the tax subsidies. Most of them were not economical without those subsidies, so this both eliminated new investment in the field for the next 20 years and caused a lot of existing projects to shut down.
In California, we've got "sell your excess power back to the utility company at full retail price" plus tax subsidies for homeowners who put solar photovoltaic generation panels on their properties. (There are some limitations, such as you can't sell back more than you use in a year. Which means you can lower your electricity bill to $0 per year, but the electric utility will never owe you any payment.)
I also notice that none of the popular advertisers talking about putting in solar generation ("rooftop solar") talk about putting in any kind of personally-owned storage (e.g., Tesla powerwall). So if there is an outage during a period when someone's solar panels are not receiving enough light, it affects them just as though they hadn't spent a whole lot of money on solar panels.
(When I was working in Sacramento a few years ago, a co-worker who lived in NorCal had just had rooftop solar and an electric car charging station installed. He realized that he needed storage, so he had a powerwall installed, along with the necessary switching equipment.)
Currently, thanks to the #RU versus #UA war and the related price changes for energy, the various price and tax subsidies are probably not going away any time soon, but they still could go away before people have paid off their equipment investment.
Adding the personally-owned on-site storage makes true "off the [electric power] grid" living possible.
Anyway, my point is, I've been watching #California and #US policies this area (but not closely enough) since the 1980s, and I can see a similar policy change against normal homeowners ahead of us when sufficient solar / wind / geothermal electricity generation comes online to threaten the financial viability of electric utility companies.
-
@simsa04 @administrator My impression at the time is that Manuel Ortega and Las Indias were trying to enable communities and their members to take care of their needs without dependence on big corporations. I seem to remember a strong thread of enabling indigenous communities to remain economically and socially self-sufficient.
I wish I knew why they suddenly stopped their GS related efforts and what happened to their group / organization. ( The https://lasindias.com/ site is definitely not the same kind of postings that I'm familiar with. Hootsuite and Google Analytics are topics that Las Indias would not have touched. My impression, anyway, is that they were trying to free people from such companies, not help the enslavers. )