California
Welcome to /c/California, an online haven that brings to life the unrivaled diversity and vibrancy of California! This engaging community offers a virtual exploration of the Golden State, taking you from the stunning Pacific coastline to the rugged Sierra Nevada, and every town, city, and landmark in between. Discover California's world-class wineries, stunning national parks, innovative tech scene, robust agricultural heartland, and culturally diverse metropolises.
Discussions span a wide range of topics—from travel tips and restaurant recommendations to local politics and environmental issues. Whether you're a lifelong resident, a recent transplant, or planning your dream visit, /c/California is your one-stop place to share experiences, ask questions, and celebrate all the things that make California truly unique.
Related Communities:
Nearby Communities:
- California
- Bakersfield, CA
- Bay Area, CA
- Burbank, CA
- Fresno, CA
- Long Beach, CA
- Los Angeles, CA
- Oakland, CA
- San Diego, CA
- San Jose, CA
- San Francisco, CA
- Sacramento, CA
- Santa Clarita, CA
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Home rooftop solar is expensive. California incentives were advantaging the wealthy while the working poor were unable to use them. When these wealthy landowners hooked up the solar they got taxpayer-subsidized deals on, they were reimbursed at the retail rate for the energy they sent back into the grid. This meant power companies had to raise rates that mostly the working poor were paying for electricity.
Reducing the amount of new rooftop solar installs because of fewer incentives that only benefit the wealthy isn't dealing a blow to renewable energy (it's a drop in the bucket of renewable energy). It's dealing a blow to taxpayer-funded inequality.
Solar only makes sense in large arrays. It just doesn't make financial sense, except as a luxury, to install them on homes.
Reducing the incentives for residential solar and battery storage also reduces the resilience of the power grid, something which Puerto Rico in the wake of the last hurricane shows us is vital. Having the efficiency of large solar plants is great when everything is perfect, but if your power is cut due to high winds and dry weather, known as a PSPS, or the power lines are downed by an earthquake, local solar and power storage helps people keep their homes and lives running, and prevents the deaths of the chronically ill, children, and seniors who are most vulnerable to temperature extremes.
Put another way, we should be expanding residential solar and local power storage, and make it more affordable than ever so the people most at risk due to climate change, people too poor to escape it, are provided local power generation from that giant fusion reactor in the sky. Instead, solar becomes more and more out of reach. Also, you can always tell how politicians feel about something. Unlike the Federal government, California doesn’t offer a tax credit for clean energy generation and storage, which aligns perfectly with the profit motives of Governor Newsom’s best friends at PG&E and SCE (over $1MM in campaign donations last I heard).
The majority of people with solar panels on their houses don't have power storage and also have their power turned off during PSPS and other outages.
I'd like to see solar panels and installation provided entirely free of charge to low-income homeowners and landlords of low-income tenants, but with a $68 billion budget deficit, I don't see that happening in California any time soon.