this post was submitted on 22 Aug 2024
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It's stupid, yes, but there is a reason. The electric company pays to maintain the infrastructure. They trim trees and fix downed lines, and they pay for it by selling you energy.
Now, if you don't buy energy, you aren't using the lines. That's acceptable, because they know you might buy energy in the future, so maintenance is still worth the investment. But if you're selling energy bsck to the grid, you're using the infrastructure and they have to pay you for running your meter backwards. Even paying you a reduced rate for the energy you produce is a losing proposition for them.
Also, bribery is legal, and energy providers have a lot of money. They can afford to buy politicians, so if there's a way they can make it illegal to lose money, then they will. And they have.
It's a bit worse than that, even. If there are too many people sending too much energy back to the grid, the grid can get overcharged and blow up. So energy companies have to dump the excess power somewhere to keep the grid stable.
There are a lot of potential solutions to this problem. (Before anyone says Bitcoin fixes this, no it doesn't.) unfortunately, energy companies are currently taking the laziest and least efficient solution - pay business owners to run their factories uselessly in order to drain excess power from the grid, and pass the cost on to consumers.