Why do Greenies always lie about solar power?

Today's Greenie Lie comes to us from Slashdot, where a  large number of people who ought to know better are having a rapture about solar power in Australia.

Dr. Saul Griffith, the author of "Electrify" and the founder and chief scientist of Rewiring America, Rewiring Australia and Otherlab, writes in a column: I recently moved back here to my home country partly because I believe Australians can show the world how much money households can save through simple climate solutions like rooftop solar. How is it that Australia, a country that historically has been a coal-burning climate pariah, is leading the world on solar? The four-bedroom house we recently bought provides a hint: It came with two rooftop solar systems of 11 kilowatts of combined capacity and a battery with 16 kilowatt-hours of storage. This system should produce more than enough to power my family's home, one electric car and both of our electric bikes with some left over to send back to the grid. Solar is now so prevalent in Australia that over a quarter of households here have rooftop panels, compared with roughly 2.5 percent of American households.

Oh? How interesting. Say on, Dr. Griffith.

Why has America been significantly slower to adopt this solution to high energy costs? The failures are mostly regulatory: local building codes and zoning laws, state rules that govern the grid connection and liability issues. Permitting can take as little as a day in Australia and is done over the web; in the United States permitting and connecting to the grid can take as long as six months. Many customers just give up. America also generally requires a metal conduit around the wiring; in Australia, the connections can be less expensive soft cables, similar to extension cords.

Well, no. Not really.  That business about the "less expensive soft cables similar to extension cords" thing really brings it home. In the USA and Canada, you can't have a multi-kilowatt solar system on a roof without conduit for the wiring. The reason is simple: snow. Also rain, hail, lighting, birds, mice, raccoons, all sorts of things which will make the insulation fail and cause a fire.

I'm not talking about a little puff of smoke here, this is a burn-your-house-down sort of fire. Little known fact, solar panels do not have an "off" switch. If light is hitting them, they are making power. You short them out, they just keep going. 11 kilowatts is going to make for a hell of a fire. I don't want that on my roof in Canada unless the wiring is running through a hefty conduit. So yes, putting that stuff up there is going to cost you and batteries are expensive.

The grid connection is the real issue. The cost of the system is too high to pay out if you can't sell power to the grid. Is there a way to connect millions of small solar generators in a grid that maintains an even voltage and amperage with low line-noise?

Here in Ontario, 15 years ago or so the McGuinty Liberal government offered to pay ~$0.50 per kilowatt hour for solar generated electricity. Lots of farmers and people with big roofs jumped at that and hurried to install solar panels. This was at the same time that the government was busy erecting huge windmills all over Southern Ontario. (I can see one of the damn things from my kitchen window, idle about half the time.) They also de-commissioned and demolished the Nanticoke coal-fired generation station on Lake Erie. (You never saw government contractors move so fast in your life.)

Well, there was a problem with all that. The problem is that the sun doesn't shine and the wind doesn't blow all the time. You have night, you have clouds, and you have calm days. Solar power supplies fluctuate from zero to max output every morning and night. They have an output drop with every cloud. Windmills are the same. Lots of power and then very little, unpredictably, all the time.

Electric power grids don't work like that. There is a very smooth and constant power supply from generation stations, and there is a similarly smooth and constant load from all the houses and businesses connected to it. The load increases and decreases in a predictable way. This can be summarized in one notion: no sudden movements.

Wind and solar are nothing but sudden movements. In principle, you can't just attach a solar generator to the power grid. It will melt the power lines every morning, because sunrise dumped 11 kilowatts-per-household into the already fully-supplied grid. Wires can only take so much electricity before they get hot. If they get hot enough they melt. That's how welding works.

Well, how did the McGuinty Liberals (and the sexy librarian Wynne Liberals) solve this problem? The solution was ingenius, my friends. They just didn't connect the windmills and solar panels to the grid. Ontario Hydro had a "permitting process" which did not begin until you already bought and installed your solar panels. Basically they didn't tell you if you could be connected to the grid or not until after you spent $100k on a system. Then the permit process worked away until after the provincial election, and they told you no. Lots of farmers got screwed. Big time.

The big, giant windmills stood and turned for years before any of them were hooked up. Even then, most of the power was sold to the Americans at a huge loss. Nine billion bucks as of 2014 and still counting They could save a fortune by unplugging those windmills and selling them for scrap.

Did the Ontario Liberal Party know this? Yes, they absolutely did. Every power engineer at Ontario Hydro told them exactly what was going to happen. It wasn't going to work. They did it anyway. For votes and money, one supposes. The long term results so far  are A) manufacturing businesses have fled Ontario, B) we have the most expensive electric power in North America, C) lots of hooked-up Friends of the McGuinty Regime made absurd, obscene amounts of money on this scam and D) the Ontario Liberal Party is no longer a party with standing in the provincial parliament. They have seven (7) seats. Too bad we couldn't have turfed them -before- they fucked over the grid, eh?

And that's the real, actual reason why there are no solar panels on houses in the USA and Canada. They don't pay. Simple as that.

If you live on an island far from electric grid power, then they're feasible. For grid connected houses? Nope. Well, not unless your local grid is so unstable that you have blackouts all the time. Then it might be worth it to add a diesel or propane generator, because it will most definitely be cheaper/easier/better than screwing around with solar panels and batteries.

Given that, why do people like Dr. Saul Griffith keep on lying about it? Probably money, would be my guess. Or possibly they're just stupid. Greenies generally are, in my experience. The type of people who think if you just wish hard enough your wish will come true, and Santa will bring you a pony.

Wish harder, Dr. Griffith.