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New Mexico Law Seeks Solar on Every Roof, and an EV Charger in Every Garage (pv-magazine-usa.com) 137

Senator William Soules of New Mexico has submitted SB 77 for consideration with the state's legislature. The proposed law, which is currently only a few sentences, proposes that in July of 2023, all newly built homes must be constructed with a solar power system and a plug for electric vehicles. From a report: The law states that for each square foot of heated area, a new home must have at least one watt of solar photovoltaics. Specifications for the electric vehicle charging receptacle were not provided. For homes of 1,900 square feet to 3,000 square feet, the law would require a solar power system of at least 1.9 kWdc to 3.0 kWdc. If we assume that a solar installation costs $3 per watt at the time of construction, the law would add between $5,700 and $9,000 to the price of a new home. However, the effective price of such a system would actually be $3,450 to $5,000, after applying New Mexico's 10% income tax credit and the 30% federal tax credit. The price of electricity in New Mexico is generally lower than most of the country, but the amount of sunlight is above average. As a result, the payback period in the state is likely to fall in the seven to nine year range. New Mexico also has a strong net metering program.
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New Mexico Law Seeks Solar on Every Roof, and an EV Charger in Every Garage

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  • I know for some time, there were concerns from the power companies about end users feeding power back onto the grid. Anyone have any insight into the current state of this? I know I remember hearing "the power grid, at the edge, was designed for flow in one direction only" or something to that effect.

    • by chill ( 34294 )

      No, that isn't a problem. New Mexico supports net metering [solarreviews.com] and is aggressive in solar deployments. Grid-tied systems are required to have automatic disconnects so power doesn't feed back and energize the lines when the grid is down and people are potentially working on the lines. Dedicated sub-panels with manual disconnects would allow you to manually isolate your system from the grid to use it in outage situations without possibly electrocuting people.

    • by groebke ( 313135 )

      This is an easy fix, go to a Grid Zero grid tied inverter with on site storage to move the amount of power going out to be as minimum as possible. This addresses the alleged issues with too many residential solar installations, and minimizes any power purchasing.

      Our Net Metering here is a study in crap, where the local utility pays at lower than the wholesale rate, and forces the net metering customer to wait a calendar year to be paid for any excess from the customer. Then, it is only an account credit, wh

      • What you describe is not "net metering".

      • by sfcat ( 872532 )

        Our Net Metering here is a study in crap, where the local utility pays at lower than the wholesale rate, and forces the net metering customer to wait a calendar year to be paid for any excess from the customer. Then, it is only an account credit, which can be used to offset ones power used, water, gas, wastewater. Also, to prevent any possible return to the net metering customer, the utility does not allow more KWh to be purchased than the total of the 12 months prior to the net metering contract being signed. Basically, they stick it to any rate payer that installs solar PV, and make it work vastly in the utilities favor.

        That is not "net metering". And you are basically upset you are not getting your neighbors to subsidize your PV array. That's what net metering does. It allows folks with a PV array to trade $0.02/kwh power to the utility at 2pm (when it isn't needed) for $0.10/kwh power at 7pm (when it is needed). It isn't fair and don't be surprised when many folks don't support it. Additionally, that money has to come from somewhere and usually it comes from the maintenance budget of the grid itself or from future g

        • by groebke ( 313135 )

          It appears the point may have been to subtle for you. I want to offset as much as possible, however, the utility will only pay me half the wholesale rate ONE YEAR in arrears, and only for credit from the company store, and, oh yeah, they arbitrarily limit how much I can sell them. This is not a screed about me wanting the neighbors to supplement my PV, rather, receiving some remotely equitable treatment, and not being expected to essentially give any excess power generated to the utility for free.

          Do you thi

          • It appears the point may have been to subtle for you. I want to offset as much as possible, however, the utility will only pay me half the wholesale rate ONE YEAR in arrears, and only for credit from the company store, and, oh yeah, they arbitrarily limit how much I can sell them. This is not a screed about me wanting the neighbors to supplement my PV, rather, receiving some remotely equitable treatment, and not being expected to essentially give any excess power generated to the utility for free.

            The grid makes money by selling power. It isn't a "free" battery. Many seem confused by this.

            Imagine what would happen if everyone in southern climate had a modest PV system on their roofs? Everyone would produce more energy than they could consume during the year and as a result they would all expect to get paid for their contributions to the power company?

            Yea and the power company would make those payments with what money? It would pay for the transmission and generation when the sun isn't shining how

            • by groebke ( 313135 )

              ...receiving some remotely equitable treatment, and not being expected to essentially give any excess power generated to the utility for free.

              What is the cost per watt for energy from a power plant that sits idle all sunny day long? Who do you think should foot the bill for that? What seems fair to you?

              Price out the cost of ESS, genset, inverters and more than quadrupling break even PV to go 100% off grid then come back and tell us all about how unfair the power company is being to you.

              No where did I say, "fair," you brought that up. I said, "...remotely equitable treatment..." Clearly, I never said that some costs should not be shouldered by me for the common infrastructure. I did not screed against the monthly interconnect cost, as the common infrastructure does require maintenance.

              An example is I had to have the utility come out many year prior to having any PV's, as our lights would dim when starting the vacuum cleaner, or a significant load like the dryer or range. After they said it

              • No where did I say, "fair," you brought that up. I said, "...remotely equitable treatment..."

                Remotely equitable, fair, potato potato. What's the difference?

                How do you expect anyone to read what you said and not conclude you believe you are being treated unfairly? For example where you compare wholesale rates to your predicament the reader is really supposed to take something other than you believe you are not being treated fairly away from that?

                Clearly, I never said that some costs should not be shouldered by me for the common infrastructure. I did not screed against the monthly interconnect cost, as the common infrastructure does require maintenance.

                This particular screed appears to be getting less credit/$$$ for your solar energy than you believe is fair or equitable or whatever.

                However, I did state, that being paid a significant fraction less than the wholesale price sucked. Then making one wait until a calendar year to square up is ridiculous. And limiting how much one can sell is triple redundant.

                I don't understand wh

        • You know what isnâ(TM)t fair? My kids paying to decommission half a million oil wells after oil companies pumped cash out of the ground with them for decades. Life isnâ(TM)t fair.
    • I know for some time, there were concerns from the power companies about end users feeding power back onto the grid. Anyone have any insight into the current state of this? I know I remember hearing "the power grid, at the edge, was designed for flow in one direction only" or something to that effect.

      There is a crude signaling trick used to control solar. If the grid has too much incoming it will slightly change AC frequency to signal AC coupled inverters to cool their jets.

      This mechanism has been a cause of instability with at least CA and HI requiring tweaks to sensitivity to prevent normal range of frequency drift from making shortages worse or causing oscillations.

  • by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Friday January 27, 2023 @02:34PM (#63245229)
    and somebody else pointed out That there's all these people who started a business in their garage and made millions. And they asked the first guy why he didn't just do that.

    So the guy replied, I don't have a garage.

    With home prices going in the direction they are and companies like Blackstone buying up every house they can get their hands on to rent back to us you're going to have fewer and people who own homes. And companies like Blackstone are happy to keep those homes empty if it means they can charge significantly more for the ones they drop tenants in. They and other companies like them are sitting on a massive inventory of empty houses. Normally high property taxes would make that undesirable, but large property holders have been able to skip paying their taxes and then negotiate low settlements with desperate local governments. This is why large companies like small local governments. They can bully them.

    I guess the point I'm getting at is this magical EV future depends on us owning houses that were not going to be able to afford. when the baby boomers were coming up there was trillions of dollars in government spending to build out cities which led to a huge increase in the number of houses available on the market. The increase was so fast no one company or group of companies could hope to keep up with it and corner of the market on housing.

    Now that the rate of growth is fairly slow and largely limited to luxury housing built for the top 10% it's become perfectly possible to keep people out of the homeownership market in a country that is built with the assumption that people are going to be homeowners and be able to build wealth that way.

    That's pretty much going to shoot down the move to EVs. And it's something we're just not talking about. Our car fleet is going to look like Cuba's. A whole bunch of extremely old cars we're desperately trying to keep running.
    • Don't forget the HOAs!!!! A lot of new housing developments come with HOAs now, and those often times specifically say you can't start a business in your garage. Enjoy!

      • Don't forget the HOAs!!!! A lot of new housing developments come with HOAs now, and those often times specifically say you can't start a business in your garage. Enjoy!

        Thank God I've never had to live somewhere with HOA's.

        They should be made illegal....I'm surprised some lawyer somewhere hasn't figured a way to bring successful suit against them...I mean, you buy land and a house, but can't do what you want with it?

        • HOAs do have their uses but I would never want to live under one's authority again. They are little mini-corporations. What more can I say.

    • I wish I had bought a home sooner rather than renting for so long. The problem is landlords want you on a lease and will increase your rent every time it's up for renewal and you're at their mercy. I finally bought a home and was paying more per month, but I got a lot more and eventually I paid it off. I just checked the last place I rented and I couldn't find an exact answer, but the rent is almost certainly higher than the mortgage that I used to have to pay. That would be a real burden if I still had

    • That is rather unidimensional bogey-man thinking, at best.

      The âoemagicalâ EV future is already here. It will continue to come about as landlords install metered plugs for parking at lampposts and such, as public and work charging becomes more ubiquitous, and yes, as people buy houses - but home ownership is not nearly as common in some parts of Europe as it is in Murika (Switzerland being the obvious example with 75% rental homes) and electric cars are stroll growing rapidly here.

      You can lambast i

  • by NotInKansas ( 5367383 ) on Friday January 27, 2023 @02:38PM (#63245243)
    My state (check the dictionary under backward ) not only doesn't allow feeding solar power back to the grid, it charges a monthly fee if you have off-line solar under the theory that you are taking market away from the subsidized power supplier (also in the dictionary under Huge & Corrupt ).
    • Re: (Score:2, Offtopic)

      From the “don’t tread on me” party no less.

    • Wait, so if you buy some solar panels and a battery to offset they still come after you? Sounds like Big Electric has your state right where it wants it. Pants around your ankles and head between your legs.

  • by bagofbeans ( 567926 ) on Friday January 27, 2023 @02:48PM (#63245259)

    all newly built homes must be constructed with a solar power system and a plug for electric vehicles

    I'd provide a socket, not a plug.

  • by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Friday January 27, 2023 @02:52PM (#63245269)

    And find out what the bare minimum is to comply. Because that's what you'll get. Which will be absolutely useless for those that actually want to use either, who'll then have to replace that, i.e. throw more money away for removing the crap that gets installed to comply with the law instead of just having to pay for having whatever they want installed.

    Such laws always end up achieving the opposite of what they were trying to do.

  • Does NM require solar water heaters on residential properties? If not, why not? It makes a lot more sense than solar panels since it's cheap, low-tech free hot water. Sure, get EV panels in but water heaters should be the priority because it saves an awful lot of electricity if you don't use it to heat water.
    • Believe it or not, NM gets really cold. It is a high desert, which means nights get chilly and winters are colder than you'd expect. Heck, there are ski resorts near the same latitude as San Diego.

      Of all of the states along the south edge of the US*, NM residents would benefit the least.

      Couple that with the cost (source from web site promoting solar water heaters) of $9,000 and you see a lot of resistance.

      * Don't call it a southern state. Several counties are named after Lincoln and Union generals specif

      • Gets cold in Spain too but solar water heaters have been a legal requirement for at least a decade in some autonomous regions. People that have them here love them.
      • How "cold" it is is actually not very relevant.
        You need sun, that is all. Sure: in mid summer with +50C in the sun, the water gets hotter than in mid winter with -10C: but the water gets hot nevertheless!

    • by ahodgson ( 74077 )

      Solar water heaters are not cheap if you live somewhere where it ever gets below freezing. Because now you need a glycol loop and another heat exchanger in the tank

      Way smarter to go solar electric and just put in a heat pump water heater.

  • "For homes of 1,900 square feet to 3,000 square feet," so that's between about 4.25 to nearly 10 times the size of my apartment, and an infinitely large multiple of the zero garaging space I've got at the moment. As for the legal niceties of negotiating use of some of the roof space with the 8 other property owners in the block to actually put some solar panels on - as well as hiring a crane or 4 stories of scaffolding to install it ...

    At population densities like that, no wonder some Americans think that

    • by smithmc ( 451373 )
      I'd bet a lot of people in a sparsely populated place like NM have homes in that size range. Does everything in society have to cater to you personally?
  • by kackle ( 910159 )

    30% federal tax credit

    My wallet hurts again. And aren't the new homeowners financing the extra $9000, over decades?

  • ...or this could be where the Second Civil War starts!
  • a chicken in every pot too?
  • It will be critically important as we move forward with mandated solar installations that we begin to enforce and enhance regulations requiring manufacturers to limit EMI/RFI radiation and spectrum pollution.

    To date manufacturers have a pass on adhering to existing requirements as the FCC turns a blind eye to this growing problem. The problem is the common current generated by inverters that is carried and radiated by every cable in the system.

    Installers have little or no expertise in eliminating this probl

  • It's never made sense why NM and AZ in particular haven't been covered in PVs.
    What we've not seen enough of are systems smart enough to schedule demand for things that need not be done at particular times to take advantage of surpluses. Mixed-use regions will allow some type of factories and services to operate during peak production but buy energy from nearby residences so "the grid" in a larger sense has no role in it.
    Now... all new AND existing big box stores need to cover their roofs and at least portio

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