The California Senate Energy, Utilities and Communications Committee has unanimously voted 14-0 in favour of a bill for balcony solar.
Hmm… i wonder if this could be used with a place that already has solar. Reading the bill doesn’t seem to preclude this.
Back in 2019 I installed a 4000W solar panel system for my Mom. Things were going OK as each year she got paid a few bucks for the extra power. Now the bitch company SDGE has figured out a way to make my mom pay $200 dollars a year for her own solar power!!!
Fuck you so much SDGE! You fucking assholes! I hope your power lines accidentally cost you another 4 billion one day. Again, fuck you. Not your workers, just the assholes at the top making money illegally form retirees. Assholes!
Sounds like the solution is to set up her house with battery storage and go fully off grid or make the utility company an auxillary power source. She’s clearly producing more than she’s using.
They figured out a way to even charge you for this!!
If my house is off grid, I am not paying anyone to use my own electricity. They can ask all they want.
Where are you located generally?
San Antonio, TX
That’s a big difference here vs other areas, I’ve found. CPS Energy delivers a shitty product, but does their best to be reasonable with their customers (as long as you’re not a business). But, for example, scope an outlet on the same grid as Northstar Mall, but not at Northstar, during peak hours, and you’ll be lucky to find a reading above 100V.
If you call CPS Energy to complain that they broke some of your sensitive electronics from irregular power levels, they’ll often credit your account, and possibly set up some new equipment in your neighborhood, or even directly to your house. Source: I casually mentioned a mild nuisance to a CPS Energy operator while I had a permit pulled for a new breaker box install, and suddenly had more wires running to the pole in my back alley, a larger transformer, and more robust wires running to my house.
In many other places where grids are more robust by default, the general sentiment appears to be, “fuck you, we charge more because we offer more, and any issues are probably your own fault. Unless they’re not your fault, in which case, it’s a contractor’s fault.” When I lived in NJ, if I had power issues at the house where I was a tenant and called PSE&G, they’d say, “sorry, we don’t have any reports of issues in your area, try checking your breakers.” If I instead polled my neighbors and reported other affected addresses, or identified the issue by walking around the neighborhood, then PSE&G would be a lot more likely to say that they’ll send a truck out to look into the problem.
Anyway, the point is that we 210ers have the luxury of saying, “if I feel it’s unreasonable, then I’m gonna say something and they’re gonna be reasonable.” In other lands across the country, energy companies will gladly steamroll you before ever considering how reasonable their policies are.
Ah OK yeah that sounds good. In San Diego, you basically have to pay off any utility debt. Like paying for your slave debt to be a free man. You pay for the removal of installed hardware. Once there’s no SDGE hardware you can be free. But you also will get taxed for making and storing energy. SDGE made it their priority to go fuck with what solar panels people are allowed to install and for how long they are allowed to have them. They dictate how the inverters are supposed to work and what brand. So if you’re out of their utility you’ll have to come back to spec before they let you back in. You can’t just disconnect your system temporarily while you make repairs.
Just like a U.S. State government to ‘let’ people do something. They take credit as though they themselves are installing these solar panels, rather than ceasing to prohibit them.
Think it through. You don’t need permission to do this. But you do need the government to tell your landlord that he can’t prohibit it.
This bill isn’t allowing something, it’s stopping someone from telling you you can’t.
From the proposed law:
A portable solar generation device is exempt from all interconnection requirements imposed by state law, the commission, electrical corporation rules, or local publicly owned electric utility rules, including, but not limited to, any requirement to enter into an interconnection agreement.
https://calmatters.digitaldemocracy.org/bills/ca_202520260sb868
There is nothing in the bill that would prevent a landlord from prohibiting balcony solar. I have also never heard of a landlord banning balcony solar; and do not see why they would.
There is also nothing in the bill about banning HOAs from banning balcony solar; and I could absolutely imagine them doing so.
That is a very good clarification, and clearly does not specify the conclusion that I jumped to, that landlords (like apartment managers) could not prohibit them. Like HOAs, I could absolutely see them prohibiting them for ascetic or “safety” reasons.
A portable solar generation device is exempt from all interconnection requirements imposed by state law, the commission, electrical corporation rules, or local publicly owned electric utility rules, including, but not limited to, any requirement to enter into an interconnection agreement.
You’ll likely point to the “imposed by state law” verbiage which is a fair point. I’m not aware of any current state laws prohibiting it, but I could be mistaken. But I read something much more to my point: “exempt from all interconnection requirements imposed by… electrical corporation rules, or local publicly owned electric utility rules.” I continue to read this not as permission from the government to do something, but rather protection by the government from private entities stopping you.
I had assumed what you had assumed, and what you had assumed is true in the country where I live. The problem over here is the landlords.
Of course the power companies don’t have to try to do anything because the landlords are currently blocking it all, so that’s not to say the power companies have good intentions, it’s just that we don’t know.
Electrical utilities are a highly regulated monopoly. They are about as close to being a part of the government that any non governmental agency could be.
Just really have to be right, no matter what, huh?
What? It says right in the article (and I did five minutes to confirm) that it is very difficult to connect a solar panel to your house due to regulations about safety. Sometimes there is a requirement to hook up to the power grid.
I’m not going to say research is always better that ‘thinking it through’, but dont give me this shit you pulled out of your ass.
There is plug-in solar now. Just plug it in to a standard outlet, and the energy flows through the system.
Not difficult.
I know you’ve got an anti-American hard-on, but I promise you don’t currently need any government permission to use one of these. If you own your own house, you don’t need to clear it with anyone. If you don’t, if the building owner does not allow it this legislation would override.
For example, building owners and HOA sometimes don’t want to allow satellite dish installation onto the building, but there is a law saying they cannot prohibit it. Same thing.
I mean the article covers the connection issue.
would allow people in California to install small systems of up to 1,200 watts (AC) to a building’s electrical system and exempt them from requiring to interconnect the small systems to the electrical distribution system.
It’s trivial to connect solar to the power grid.
You call the power company. The end. Though depending on the state it may not be worth it.
Many people don’t bother, and just use solar to power certain things.
Anyone have any recommendations? Not really seeing anything on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/balcony-solar-panel/s?k=balcony+solar+panel
My recommendation is to never buy anything on amazon. Hope this helps!
My understanding is that Craftstrom will ship anywhere in the U.S… Bright Saver is another company. It looks like they’ve started shipping across California.
edit: Note on that Bright Saver link. They say that it’s plug-in solar, but only for people who want to extend their existing solar array and keep their NEM 2.0 status. I’m guessing that once this bill is signed, Bright Saver will start selling these as regular plug-in solar.
If all else fails, look for “grid tie microinverter” and pair with a suitably-sized solar panel. That’s more or less what I did for my first project.
They are so far only legal in utah, but some people are using ecoflow ultra.
Here is an example video of an install there:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tSnYETHGpIU
You just need the micro inverter and panels for this to work, but adding the battery lets them do a little hack in utah where you actually have 2000kw of power, 1200w active into the house, 800w active into the battery. Utahs law says only 1200w at a time into the house circuits, so the video setup follows it to the letter while scooting around it by storing 800w of production for later.
Thanks for sharing! I hadn’t heard of that workaround.
Yeah that battery pack specially will only output 1200w, so even if you have more going in, it wont “break the law.”
Its engineered to comply with Utah law, and looks like other states too.
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