If I'm being honest, I got solar just because its neat. Its wild being able to just use the power of the sun to power stuff. What a time to be alive!
But, it does also pay for itself, and it also paid for my big NG generator with the tax credit
I'm fascinated by solar and EV's, and technology in general. It's not there yet.
In some areas close to the equator where electricity is expensive (Hawaii), solar probably pays for itself. Their days are roughly the same length year round, and the weather is fairly even.
I make 1/5th the electricity in winter as summer. That means I would have to build 5x more solar to cover my winter demand as in summer. I'm going to break even on the cost to install solar in 10 years only because of the 3 subsidies (other people's money).
I've got a pretty good high-level grasp of the Texas grid failure. The major failure point of most emergencies is artificially shielding individuals from their choice to act adversely in an emergency. If energy is in high demand and there's little of it, individuals should be exposed to the real price. Instead of people consuming it as rapidly as possible to hoard it because the price doesn't change, they should be conserving it because the price is high.
As a tangent, electricity supply has to match demand nearly perfectly every millisecond. Produce more than demanded, and you've got to waste it into the ground or risk frying stuff and causing fires. Produce less, and you strain the grid with a brown-out. Electricity is only valuable when it's needed. The reason why a lightning bolt isn't valuable is because it's not delivered where it's needed, in the exact amount needed. How do you grab the energy in a lightning bolt and distribute it as needed is the engineering problem of all unreliable energy sources. Just because a lightning bolt is free energy doesn't mean you want it.
