Who really pays for solar?

I was listening to Clark Howard the other day. He was talking about his electric car and how he’s “freeloading” on the roads. I love Clark and I think he gives great advice, so, it “got me to thinkin’.” Clark and I work for the same company, and I exchanged a couple of emails with him on the subject of who pays for infrastructure for roads as we get away from gasoline and the gasoline tax becomes obsolete. Clark asked his listeners what they think about how to pay for roads. Then we got on the subject of solar.

That exchange made me think about the solar debate in Georgia. Somebody has to provide the infrastructure for power. By law, where Georgia Power or the EMCs serve there has to be infrastructure there whether you use it or not. Whether it’s roads or power, someone has to pay for the infrastructure and, ultimately, it’s going to be you.

Right now, roadways are funded through fuel tax. It’s a social compact of sorts. The more you drive, the more you pay (in fuel tax), but in the end, everyone pays who uses the roads. Then came the electric car.

While cars that use gasoline pay for roadway maintenance, electric vehicles currently avoid covering their impact cost. Not a big dea — for now. Consider this: A recent Pike Research analysis projects there will be more than a million electric vehicles on U.S. roadways by 2018. While this rapidly growing segment of transportation will be pounding potholes and creating other impacts on roadways (along with demand for lane space and lights), electric car drivers will be freeloading on the backs of fuel-tax payers.

So, how does this logic fit into the solar debate we are having in Georgia? How does solar “freeloading” affect energy infrastructure and the growth of solar energy? Similar to the fuel tax, a social compact exists to fund build-out and maintenance of the web of wires that run our modern economy. As with the fuel tax, the more electricity you use the more you pay to “patch the potholes” in the electrical grid, so to speak. That is, until the advent of solar energy.

I will always be the first one to say that individual liberty is the foundation of our republic. However, there are issues requiring common cooperation in areas of the greater good. On a federal level, defense is one of those issues. On a local level, roads and utilities fall into that realm. Install solar panels on your house if you can afford it and there are tax incentives making it something to think about, which we’ll discuss in another column. However, a national debate is developing from California to Georgia as to who will fund our electrical grid as more and more decentralized solar production comes on-line.

Solar users are now freeloading, just like electric cars, by not paying the backup and maintenance costs of the electrical infrastructure. Yet solar users expect, and the law requires, a reliable electricity grid to be there for 80 percent of the year, even if solar panels fail to operate. The key problem with wind and solar is storage for times when you can’t produce enough energy. If a restaurant owner decides he wants to go solar and he can’t store the energy, what happens on a cloudy day at lunch time when his business peaks? The traditional electricity grid is expected to be there and someone has got to pay for that.

Experts on either side will argue the relative risks and benefits of solar generation and solar and other renewables will become a bigger part of the mix. As that happens, these social compacts must evolve as technology advances, be it electric cars or solar panels. If not, the impacts of those that use an infrastructure (roadways or wires) will be freeloading on the backs of the full participants in a given societal compact that makes the infrastructure work and our society function.

We have work to do so let’s not go to our corners; let’s get to the table and work on a solution.

Related articles

• Electrical grid Fee (solarcleanenergy.wordpress.com)
• Energy Innovation: 6 Radical Solar Energy Technologies (theenergycollective.com)
• Rebuilding Electric Power Business Models: The Cost of Disruptive Technology (socialearth.org)