California has taken a page from Mao’s book of rule, wittingly or unwittingly. On top of all the crony gimmies to solar, the state has ordered all new homes to have solar panels from 2020 on.
Mao in his fevered imagination thought that he could order a massive increase in iron production by turning peasants into iron workers with their own “backyard smelters”. In like manner, California’s “Great Helmsmen” have similarly declared every homeowner to be a rooftop electricity producer. It all makes so much sense to the mandarins of the Party, Communist (China) or Democratic (Ca.). Details be damned.
Such a detail as economies of scale hasn’t really graced their mind. Instead, visions of millions backyard smelters, or rooftop solar panels, churning out iron, or electricity, excites their fancy.
California’s Great Leap Forward may end up like the last one: a disaster. China’s iron production went up for a brief moment but many other things went down. Ditto for California, just replace solar for iron. One of the things to go down will be home ownership. In a state already suffering from over-inflated home prices, they will be jacked up by a further $8,400 on average. That equates with pricing 444,385 families out of the market.
Whether the number of the negatively impacted is accurate or not, it is an effort to quantify another economic fact of life: the margin. The margin is the place of action in an economy. It defines prosperity and depression by referring to people who are sensitive to price changes. A rise in prices results in a slice of the buying public being cut out.
Want a home to raise your kids? Move to Texas.
It has always mesmerized me how a few hundred thousand rooftop solar panels are supposed to reverse the impact of China’s and India’s many huge dirty-coal plants. Only in the eco-dreamland can solar’s capacity factor of 18% correct for the nearly 60% of coal-fired plants. How’s that to happen?
Do we need any more proof that the term “well-managed” doesn’t apply to one-party states?
Please read the following sources:
https://thehill.com/…/387270-the-problem-with-california-go…
https://www.latimes.com/…/la-fi-solar-mandate-20181214-stor…
https://openei.org/wiki/Definition:Capacity_factor
RogerG