Not many people are talking about home solar but its a real problem. Its nice to have your own solar power and then use the grid only when you need it. However that means you need idle power plants and transmission 90% of the year just for those cold un-sunny days. If power prices are regulated its a mugs game.
I see bans on home solar coming. Maybe if you can disconnect from the grid with batteries it solves the problem too - but those people would be suffering right now.
If you downvote me please tell me what is wrong and if you have ideas on how to solve the problem.
I think the point that was trying to be made is that wide-spread deployment of residential solar isn't a panacea.
You still need to provide sufficient grid capacity to serve the customers when there is no sun. And you have to pay for that standby grid capacity whether you are using it or not. That isn't a problem when the residential solar is a tiny percentage of the customer base but it is a problem with wide-spread deployment.
The same problem exists at the grid-level as you ramp up grid-scale wind/solar -- that doesn't mean you can decommission the other generating capacity and so total cost of the grid goes up, not down.
You only have to shut off if you don't have the ability to disconnect yourself from the grid. Automatic switches are fairly expensive ($500-2k), so unless you also have battery storage, you generally opt out to save money.
People aren't talking about it because it's something like 0.2% of summer energy production in TX, a sunny state, so a very far off problem compared to pretty much any other power related issue or concern to solve for.
I see bans on home solar coming. Maybe if you can disconnect from the grid with batteries it solves the problem too - but those people would be suffering right now.
If you downvote me please tell me what is wrong and if you have ideas on how to solve the problem.