LETTERS: We already subsidize everything, so why not rooftop solar?
Subsidizing solar
Concerning the article in Wednesday’s Review-Journal, “SolarCity quits state after PUC rate vote,” by Sean Whaley:
In the article is a response from Gov. Brian Sandoval, who says, “nonsolar ratepayers are subsidizing rooftop solar consumers.” Really? I have no school-age children, but I subsidize schools. I am not poor, but I subsidize the poor through the Earned Income Tax Credit, food stamps and Medicaid. I am also subsidizing indirectly Telsa Motors and Warren Buffett’s NV Energy. I could go on.
The point is taxpayers are forced to subsidize what the government believes is good and right. Rooftop solar is not only good but the right thing to be getting behind to better our future resource consumption on this planet.
Rooftop panels make far more sense than the “bird fryers” on the border of California or the vast amount of open land being developed at Moapa for solar voltaic. Rooftops offer existing infrastructure with no environmental impact studies needed, no destruction of open space, no dust control permits and no need to develop new transmission lines. Plus, with rooftop the property owner gets a direct benefit.
I am already subsidizing the poor and I see no problem if everyone using the grid is forced to subsidize something that is the right thing to do.
Steven Ginther
Mesquite
Extinct utilities model
Technology cannot be stopped. Utilities must figure out a way to evolve from the current centralized, fossil-fuel business model or go by the way of land lines, typewriters, phone booths, paper mail and, more recently, taxicabs as they fruitlessly try to compete with the technology of Uber and Lyft.
Net metering technology can help utilities if it is structured equitably for both the utility and the customer. For example, all renewable energy generated by a utility customer should not cost that customer anything. Using the grid to store and retrieve excess energy should have a hook-up fee associated with using that infrastructure. Of course, all extra power needed by the customer is charged at the regular price.
This configuration decentralizes renewable power that utilities do not have to create, potentially eliminating the need for additional plants as demand increases. Another thought relating to utilities building more power plants is that they need their own “new” infrastructure and land, all while perpetuating centralization. So why not work with current customers to use their roofs for utility-provided solar panels? With the relatively minor cost of insurance, a current customer probably would be receptive to contributing to environmental correctness while giving utilities long-term contracts.
Utility customers will continue to adapt new technology. The cost of not figuring out a way to work with renewable energy and utility customers is extinction.
Gary Lewey
Las Vegas
Reporter bias
Upon reading the Monday Review-Journal article written by Sean Whaley, “Senior group wants state to join CO2 challenge,” I can only say the editor of this newspaper continues to allow the bias of its journalists to infiltrate the news. This article is a good example.
Upon writing that a senior support group would like the governor and our attorney general to oppose the EPA’s egregious new mandates, which will result in excessively high electricity rates for seniors and the poor, Mr. Whaley questions where the group is getting its facts and states that many residents and groups support the EPA plan, which would, in the opinion of this writer, eliminate cheap energy for the most vulnerable in our society.
As I have written many times before the sale of the Review-Journal, the staff of this publication has interjected their bias and ideology into news they disagree with, and one only needs to read the title of the section where this story is listed, “Political Eye,” to confirm this observation.
Dennis Leffner
Las Vegas
