NET METERING
The concept is your own solar power system puts excess power into the grid when you make it and you use grid power when you need it. The grid becomes your power bank, your battery. At the end of the year you pay the Net difference. Let me assure you no one is making money with a solar power system, on the contrary they have some of the most expensive power you can imagine. Subsidized by everyone else because its paid for at full retail.
The problem in Nelson with our own clean green hydro dam making the cheapest and cleanest power for 2c and bringing the city a profit for 10c paying our bills, solar has no value.
What really happens is we lose the profit from selling 2c power for 10 cents and let clean green water power flow over the dam while we subsidize your fantasy paying full retail for your "green" power.
Nelson hydro sells excess power if there is a buyer. During spring freshet through high lake levels in August when our dam makes its best power, so does everyone else. Spot wholesale prices on the Northwest Pacific grid probably less than a penny. NH sells to BCHydro, getting .07c/kWh.
On a sunny summer day from about 11 till 3 when solar power is made nobody needs it.
In fact Nelson might purchase excess power from Fortis on summer nights, or certainly winter when no solar power worth mentioning is made. The Nelson solar garden from September through March might make enough power for 2 average homes. Less than half a home from November till February.
10 Tons of solar panels plus all supporting structure covering a soccer field, costing likely $300,000 or more.
Looks like $150,000 per home, power for maybe 20 years. Nakusp just put a microhydro system on their city water intake for $150,000, making power for 30 to 40 homes for the next century or more.
The problem in Nelson with our own clean green hydro dam making the cheapest and cleanest power for 2c and bringing the city a profit for 10c paying our bills, solar has no value.
What really happens is we lose the profit from selling 2c power for 10 cents and let clean green water power flow over the dam while we subsidize your fantasy paying full retail for your "green" power.
Nelson hydro sells excess power if there is a buyer. During spring freshet through high lake levels in August when our dam makes its best power, so does everyone else. Spot wholesale prices on the Northwest Pacific grid probably less than a penny. NH sells to BCHydro, getting .07c/kWh.
On a sunny summer day from about 11 till 3 when solar power is made nobody needs it.
In fact Nelson might purchase excess power from Fortis on summer nights, or certainly winter when no solar power worth mentioning is made. The Nelson solar garden from September through March might make enough power for 2 average homes. Less than half a home from November till February.
10 Tons of solar panels plus all supporting structure covering a soccer field, costing likely $300,000 or more.
Looks like $150,000 per home, power for maybe 20 years. Nakusp just put a microhydro system on their city water intake for $150,000, making power for 30 to 40 homes for the next century or more.
