Make your own power plant?

 Is it possible to create your own power plant?  Simply buying some land,
some solar panels, connecting to the gride, and having the utility company
pay you for the electricity?

I assume this doesn't make economic sense quite yet, but (a) is it possible
and (b) what are the variables that have to change for it to make economic
sense?

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Thanks.

  Lester Long wrote:

In theory, sure. In practice, you'll have a lot of regulatory hoops to
jump through and how you would go about it is likely to depend on how
much energy you intend to sell to the utility, how you finance the
plant, where you build it, and so on, but it has been done with other
energy technologies so I can't see why it couldn't be done with PV.


That depends on where you're trying to sell the energy and how you
define "economic sense." In broad strokes, if you're talking cost parity
with natural gas turbines and other sources typically used to meet peak
demand, reducing the installed cost of a PV system by a factor of 1.5 to
2 will probably do the trick; if you're talking parity with the average
price of a kWh, you need to reduce the cost by about a factor of three;
and if you're talking parity with baseload generation sources like coal
you probably need to reduce the cost by a factor of 8 to 10.

Most likely, reducing system costs will require greatly reduced PV
module prices and significantly reduced installation costs.

 
Interesting.  That seems to mean that there's a discontinuous relationship
between (a) putting up some panels for one's own house, and (b) putting up
some/many panels for others.  Ideally, prices will adjust such that
individuals and small businesses (and all private enterprise) can invest in
power, just as they invest in stocks, bonds, etc.



A factor of 2.0 doesn't intimidate me so much, given that we're still in the
"leech" stage of renewables.  A factor of 10 might take a while, though.  :)

 NRG wrote:

Certainly. It's private endeavor versus commercial endeavor. Each is
subject to a completely different set of laws, regulations, and
economics. It's like the difference between setting up a lemonade stand
and setting up a lemonade factory.


How would that differ from buying debt or equity in a power company?

 
I see them as very similar, although that's probably because I don't really
know the law regarding RE.  Is there a limit to the amount of energy a
private consumer can sell back to the utility?



Power companies may not use RE, and then you are buying a share of the
actual grid.