Item — HN Reader

Have always said community solar programs are the way to do residential solar. In those programs, you pay for and own off-site solar panels, then the energy they produce is credited to your electric bill.

They end up installed at commercial locations ideal for solar: often on covered parking, in fields, or on industrial roofs. Easier to repair, they can do larger panels, no issues with your roof line or roof condition.

4 comments

My electricity comes from a cooperative. You have to own at least 1 share in order to become a customer (250eur/share). They sell power at very competitive rates, are powered entirely by renewables owned by their customers, and they actively encourage energy savings. Most years they pay a dividend of around 5% of the share price, which essentially lowers my actual electricity price some more.

10/10 would recommend.

Now imagine if we create a separate company that invests in infrastructure and sells energy to willing buyers who don't have to deal with this. We could call it an energy company.

The difference is in motive. You want to have a cheap energy bill, the energy company wants to make a profit that grows every quarter. Those two goals are eternally at odds.

We could make it so profit wasn’t the prime motivator, instead it’s main motive would be to provide a public good. We would call it a public utility.

Now imagine this hypothetical "energy company" has the community over a barrel with no viable alternatives, and uses their monopoly to jack up power rates and screw the community.

I'm a member of one which has worked well: https://www.edinburghsolar.coop/

And a member of a wind farm project (Ripple Energy) which went bankrupt. So like all small investment schemes, I guess you need to keep a close eye on their financials.

That sounds a bit pointless to me. The benefit of putting solar on your house is that your house uses electricity, and transmitting electricity is not actually free.

If you just care about the overall transition to solar (which you should!) then you can pay for green tariffs and invest in existing solar energy companies or ETFs.

The panels on my roof go straight to the energy company anyways. You need to add batteries to use it yourself.

Only the surplus goes straight to the energy company. If you're consuming any energy and producing it from solar you'll use your own solar first, even without batteries.

Which is maybe 10-20% for most people without batteries. Better than nothing, but not great.