Fighting Entering a Game You Could Easily Go Into and WIN

Why aren’t the energy companies/providers asking to install solar panels for you on your roof?

Major energy producers across the country are grappling with the pros and cons of residential power customers adding solar panels to their roof tops.  The solar panels connect directly to the grids controlled and maintained by companies like PG&E and Southern California Edison here in California.  The pros include relieving stress from over taxed grids and allowing companies to focus more on their big corporate customers, the cons include losses from those smaller customers that are no longer paying costs to maintain the grid.  So here’s a good question, why are these major energy producers letting upstarts like Solar City and Sun Run make off like bandits in the solar installations and leasing programs?

In It to Win It

It’s seems this simple: you have the names, addresses, and energy consumption information of EVERY resident/customer.  If I was SCE, I’d be leasing solar panels to anyone who wanted them.  Much like some companies are doing now by going to big box retailers like Wal-Mart and installing solar on expansive roofs, energy producers should go to builders of new tracks of homes, and existing neighborhoods and turning them into solar farms.  SCE would still be making all the money off of energy production and sells, while greening the grid and cutting out the middle man.  Instead of paying companies to build huge solar arrays out in the desert that take years to get through EIRs (environmental impact reviews), we can cut the time and costs on these projects in big ways, and spend less on transmission lines.    

Major energy companies have huge resources to be able to buy large quantities of solar panels and receive mass discounts from bulk purchases.  One of the major pros of having residential solar, is having energy produced in exactly the same place it is being used, mitigating any loss of energy in transmission of power that occurs at any energy production facility (nuclear, natural gas, coal, etc.)  Yet again, I don’t understand why energy providers aren’t falling over themselves to enter into residential solar.  There are several legal avenues through property law they could even take advantage of, including granting of easements on roof tops to energy companies.  Perhaps energy profits from residential purchasers will drop as solar costs plummet below any other competitor, but at least energy companies will be making that money and not third parties like Solar City.

The genius behind Solar City and their brethren is that they enter into lease agreements with their customers for 10 years.  That’s guaranteeing you have these customers for 10 years!  Not one time purchasers that fluctuate.  Years of revenue practically guaranteed. 

Don’t Build California High Speed Rail Like We Built the Bay Bridge

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A recent article by the UT San Diego made some good points on the way to its underlying bad thesis that California shouldn’t build the High Speed Rail.  Looking for ANY reason to take a knock at HSR, the UT stated the obvious, that the building of the Bay Bridge that connects Oakland and the East Bay to the city of San Francisco has been a disaster.  What was slated to cost $1.1 Billion and be finished in 2003, is now over $6 Billion and 10 years past due.  Let’s not even get started on the last minute SNAFU that is setting the Bridge back a few more months and several more million dollars.

Absolutely, the Bay Bridge’s new eastern span is a mess.  The one argument that no one is making is “We shouldn’t even be building it”.  There is no doubt that the work horse bridge needed the new span, there is no doubt that the old span is not safe, and there is no doubt that without the bridge all together a serious economic harm would be done to the entire Bay Area.  So all that is left is to attack, and rightfully so, the management and quality control at every step of the construction.  People should lose their jobs, suits should be filed for negligence against contracting corporations for their terrible and dangerous work, and lessons should be learned so as NEVER to be repeated.

Let’s look at every mistake that was made, at every junction on the Bay Bridge and use it as a template for avoiding the same mistakes on HSR.  Let’s FIRE all the people who made those mistakes or should have caught those mistakes and hire new people.  Let’s find new mechanisms for oversight that should have been in place by our state and federal transportation leaders in the process of the Bay Bridge, and use that oversight on HSR. 

No one should be talking about whether or not we should be building HSR (echoes of frustration when we built the Golden Gate and Bay Bridges 75 years ago around the Great Depression, and of hair burning screeching from the start of BART’s construction), because we will look back more than likely and say “good thing we built HSR”.  Could I be wrong?  Sure, and I can admit that.  But the cost of me being wrong after building HSR is far smaller than the repercussions of HSR critics being wrong and not building HSR (i.e. constant gridlock on the I-5 that chokes our air with smog and weakens our environment, infrastructure, and economy).