Janet Albrechtsen Blog | The Australian

What they didn’t tell us as they carried us along in a Billy Graham like religious fervor, was how much it would cost - and where the costs would fall. To have been so honest would have detracted from the “great moral issue” theme. Not to mention lose a few votes. Well, now the rubber is hitting the road. The bills are arriving so hopefully you are setting aside a little extra to cover them. Because they’re going to keep growing and keep coming.

nbbusinessjournal.com - The battle of greenery versus green tech

Complaints are arising from an obscure state law known as the Solar Shade Control Act. It protects homeowners' investments in solar panels, which can cost tens of thousands of dollars. Property owners whose trees block the sun from more than 10 per cent of their neighbours' panels can be fined up to $1,000 a day if they refuse to trim them.

Signed in 1978 by Gov. Jerry Brown, the law was little noticed until this year, when a solar spat ended up in a criminal court in the San Francisco Bay Area.

A judge convicted a Sunnyvale couple of violating the shade law - a criminal infraction on par with a parking ticket - for refusing to trim a stand of redwoods that were causing power losses on their neighbour's solar array.

The couple eventually pruned some branches to avoid the fine, but only after spending $37,000 defending themselves in court.

The criminal prosecution attracted international attention and some "only-in-California" snickers. But with more installed megawatts of solar photovoltaic panels than any other state in the nation, Californians have good reason take their solar seriously.

Just ask Schultz.

A furniture and cabinet maker who uses lots of heavy equipment at his Culver City shop, which is about 10 miles west of downtown Los Angeles, Schultz was fed up with Southern California Edison bills that averaged around $5,000 a month - more than the mortgage on his building.

He decided to go solar. Schultz researched the technology and took classes so that he could install and maintain the panels himself. The cost for the 28.8 kilowatt system after the state rebate was $80,000, Schultz said. That's a hefty sum. But when the system came online in May 2006, it immediately reduced his power bill to zero.

From JunkScience:

Hmm... 28.8kWh for perhaps 6 hours per day by what -- 25 days per month under absolutely ideal conditions? Less than 4400kWh/month then. If that is replacing $5,000/month electric bills this guy must be paying over $1/kWh and that is really expensive juice. According to the EIA, California commercial rate is 12.91 cents kWh while the industrial rate (for which a furniture manufacturer should qualify) is 10.17 cents/kWh. He'd be way better off looking for a different provider because he's apparently being ripped off. If, as simple arithmetic suggests, his electric bill was $5,000 per year then his expensive solar array will certainly not last long enough to see break-even in 40 years time. His statements about his power bill and his array capacity are off by an order of magnitude. Something we often find when people are singing the praises of solar arrays.