Context: In the news today, a story about Nevada raising taxes on solar installations, and installers laying off up to 1,000 people, and moving out of Nevada. The ironic twist delivered oh-so-cleverly by the talking heads in media is that Nevada is SUNNY and should therefore LOVE solar... "oh ho ho ho," they chortle, "isn't it funny that solar sucks, or that Nevada is cutting off their nose to spite their face, etc."
The Stuff: The reason that Nevada is raising taxes on solar is because too many people are using it, so the people who do NOT get paid for their solar panel output are having to foot the bill for the electric grid... which everyone uses, regardless of whether they are on solar power or not.
Which brings up an important point in the media talking points about solar panels on your home: You don't actually store or use that power at all. You are just feeding it backwards down the pipe back to the Utility. (Ok, a vanishingly small portion of people are off-grid and storing their solar panel output. But that ain't you.)
So as we try to wean ourselves off coal/oil, and harness the power of the sun or wind in a widely distributed way, how do we fund the infrastructure we need in place to keep our laptops charged, our dishwashers spitting arc flames, and Sunday Night Football on the 70" curved screen in the den?
Let's think long term. 25, 50, and 100 years out.
Aaaaand... go!
Full disclosure - I own stock in SolarCity and First Solar. I'm a solar booster. I'm all about renewable energy and think that individual power is great.
I've also been following the issue closely enough to know that you've picked the wrong "Stuff."
The issue is this: SolarCity makes money by selling power for A HELL OF A LOT MORE than the power company does. They do this with super-tiny capital expenditures and little-to-no regulation. They also get access to crazy-good financing: SolarCity gets to put a lien on your house when they put panels up. It has been pointed out that SolarCity is effectively a subprime lender.
Now compare and contrast: First Solar doesn't put put panels on houses. They build 250MW at a time. They get to put liens on no one's houses. And they have to sell power at - wait for it - the wholesale rate.
Which would probably be not that big a deal if there weren't a shit ton of money being poured into solar. And it probably wouldn't be a big deal if solar companies weren't having a hard time at the moment. And even then, it probably wouldn't have come to this if Tesla hadn't just received rapacious tax benefits from Nevada.
So this is the part where Nevada's political players get back at Elon Musk, AKA SolarCity, to say "fuck you, we're no longer subsidizing your mortgage company and your battery company.
The problem is individual customers are loath to invest in solar panels for their house because the up-front costs are crazy expensive and every solar player in the market is loath to subsidize solar panels for houses because the efficiencies are much greater for large installations. What we're watching is solar becoming a big enough market that major players are making political plays to protect their markets, nothing more.
What it reveals, effectively, is that SolarCity can't compete on an even playing field with literally every other solar provider. 'cuz you know what? If First Solar got to sell power at the rates SolarCity gets, the citizens of Nevada would run them out of town on a rail.