Lol, yeah, no. Mandatory subsidies (direct or in the form of mandatory purchase of solar power from small installations) completely screwed the electricity market. Remove those and the price will sky rocket to where such a gimmick should be.
I would hardly call solar power a "gimmick" I think a lot of people's perceptions are damaged by green scams like "solar roadways." I have a solar install myself and some months I don't even have a power bill due I have a credit.
It may make sense for an individual who profits from market regulation that mandates that electricity distributors must buy your electricity. If it was up to the market to determine the price you would be paying your distributor to take it off your hands. In the big scheme of things solar is a gimmick. It delivers energy unpredictably and unreliably, you cannot plan or predict the output and every single kWh from solars has to be backed up by conventional sources for those "rare" moments when the sun goes down every day.
The credits I get from my utility company (government operated as most are) are so small they barely make a dent in the bill, I just don't use power from them and in fact I would hazard a guess I could disconnect if local regulation did not mandate that I had to be physically connected to power. Funnily enough when we had a tornado play hopscotch throughout the neighborhood people were pretty happy with my "gimmick" considering I was the only person with power and by extension AC and refrigeration, you do realize these things called "batteries" exist right?
It's great when your individual circumstances allow for it and in some cases it may make sense. Now you do realize that these things called apartments exist and that a half of the world's population has no roof space or land to put any solar panels on, right? And that there are geographic regions that only get few hours of weak sunshine at best during winter months, where there is this new thing called snow that covers the panels during winter days making them produce nothing; in contrast there are regions where the effectivity of solar panels goes down because they don't work well in high temperatures etc. Consider all of that and the vast majority of world's population has no space or no use case for solar panels. And we have not even touched on the subject of the capacity and stability of the power grid which is a whole new can of worms.
Here's an amazing factoid that you might not know, no one is suggesting solar works for everyone. Just because you live in an apartment complex and may not be able to benefit yourself does not mean it's a gimmick, that's like saying nuclear power is a gimmick because you don't get your power from nuclear. Oh and by the way, I am a huge supporter of nuclear, but solar offers a great supplement to nuclear fission and potentially fusion in the future. I also like hydropower, but I guess that's a scam/gimmick too because not everyone can use it!
The difference is that nuclear *can* serve everybody, is stable, predictable etc. Solar is none of that which makes it a gimmick for the few lucky ones for whom the circumstances allow it.
Yeah just ignore that pesky nuclear waste issue and the fact that nuclear plants need external power sources to function (and get pretty dangerous should they lose said external power source). Do you actually think the sun just never shines anywhere except a few square miles of the planet or something, that my one plot of land is the only place that gets sun? Are you also the type of person that knee jerks when they see a Tesla parked at Walmart?
Nuclear produces very little waste and even though its long-term storage is a sensitive subject it's actually quite trivial (dig a hole, put fuel in the hole, cover). A running nuclear power plant does not require external sources, it has its own backups.
Of course that the sun shines in most places. But as I explained, folks in cities have no space for them and people in northern regions barely get few hours of sunshine for like 6 months, which means they must have conventional sources in full capacity anyway and any solar production is a gimmick on top of it.
I don't go to Walmart. I live in Europe which gives me the unique ability (compared to burgers, anyway) to consider more than my own lucky circumstances.
> I don't go to Walmart. I live in Europe which gives me the unique ability (compared to burgers, anyway) to consider more than my own lucky circumstances.
Ok well Aldi or what's it called? Asda.
I like solar but I don't understand enough about the energy needed to create the panels vs. the energy those panels will generate over time. Also, I remember there were issues with storing excess power and compensating for weather being what weather is along with that whole "nighttime" thing.
There needs to be capicitor batteries, they need to be made out non-poisonous, abundant materials, and they need a lifespan long enough to make them worthwhile.
Crack those things and I'll say it's a workable technology.
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