Black Dymond House located in Ulster County, NY. It is designed by Kaja Novak with the owners, Luca Mercedes and Eric Soller. Solar installed by Sun of NY Solar. (Courtesy photo)
Jonathan Schroeder
Independence is built on power. Dependency equals slavery.
On my first day on the job as a corporate compliance, financial, and IT auditor, I met with the Director of Internal Audit. She told me that the greatest risk to any entity is not the world’s greatest criminal; the greatest risk is the illusion of control. Over time I found this is true everywhere in life, from the micro to the macro. In an unstable world, the good news is: solar can give you real control, power, and independence. Unfortunately, more than 99% of solar systems in the U.S. are controlled remotely by someone other than the homeowner. This intentionally robs the homeowner of the greatest benefit of solar power: independence.
By 2012 I was the head of internal audit for a NASDAQ traded company in the financial sector. Identifying risks and testing the implementation of controls to manage those risks was my job. Meanwhile, like pretty much everyone in the Western world, my family was dependent on electricity for our food, water, and heat. Hurricane Sandy was on the approach. There was a clear risk that we could lose power. That risk was managed with a whole-house back-up generator. I believed the risk was under control. Sandy knocked out power to millions of people, including us. Our generator started right up. As planned, everything was under control. However, by day five the generator was out of fuel, we lost power and water. By this time, even the gas stations that had their own generators were running out of fuel and shutting down. I was starting to feel uneasy. I called the propane company asking for a refill. It was a local company, we knew the owners by name, everything would be under control, I hoped. The propane company said they were swamped, they needed to serve their big (dollar) customers first, but they would try to get to us. I told them my whole extended family was in the house, and a refill would help the whole lot of us. No luck. By day seven, we still had no fuel and no running water, and I called again. The propane company was more straightforward; they said “we aren’t coming until this is over, find another way.” There we were, in the dark, with no heat, no refrigeration, and no running water, just like the people who did not have a generator. The illusion of control had gotten me. Shame on me.
SolArk 15K Hybrid inverter. Minimalist install by Sun of NY Solar. (Courtesy image)
From my experience and from my work in finance and IT audit, and as a student of history; I do not trust the electric grid. I do not trust a generator. I do not trust cyber security. I do not trust the international bankers or the institutional investors who control our government. I do not trust the system, even the mighty U.S. dollar is doomed to fail. (Maybe those last few require a whole other discussion, but the short version is this. The people at the top of the pyramid are not benevolent wizards. They do not care about the people at the bottom). No one is coming to save you. One thing that I still do trust is that the sun will come up tomorrow.
If the challenge is to “find another way” that I trust to provide my family with independent access to electrical power, access to water, refrigeration and heat, then solar electric is the answer.
This is where things get interesting. I started my solar “audit” and quickly found out that about 95% of solar systems were grid-tied, meaning that when the grid shuts down, so do they. In my opinion, these grid-tied systems miss out on one of the greatest benefits that solar can provide: independence. The other 5% of systems have battery backup, and will provide grid-down power — problem solved.
Not so fast. My inner auditor told me to look closer.
I started my deep dive. Every layer in my stomach started to twist. What I found was a lot more illusion and a lot less control for the battery backed-up, solar-equipped homeowner. I found that more than 99% of battery-backed-up systems have or require an internet connection. The solar industry’s game is this: you can own the panels, inverter, and the batteries, but you cannot own the software that controls “your” system. You can use the software that comes with the inverter for free only if you consent to the terms of the user agreement (which can change at any time). You do not own or control the software that controls your solar system, the software does not serve you. You are a type of subscriber. The homeowner has a user interface, but the system is controlled remotely by someone else. But who?
I looked into who owns the big solar companies. Are they looking out for and serving us? I read the investor statements from the large solar equipment manufacturers who make the equipment that all the local and national solar companies sell to homeowners. A quick check on yahoo!finance shows that the big solar companies and solar equipment manufacturers are owned and controlled by the global “institutional investors” such as BlackRock, Vanguard, State Street Capital, etc. These are the same few companies who, together, own or control every major corporation in America, everything from our food supply to the banks, big oil, big pharma, the weapons manufactures and most of the media. More than money, these asset managers are in the control business. They are building a world of undemocratic centralized control, making populations increasingly dependent on them for everything, while most Americans do not even know that they exist. Their media and marketing assets talk about the greater good, while their other assets build land mines and cluster bombs. I do not trust these people.
Reading the investor statements of the major solar companies shows they all share the same business objective: sign up as many subscribers a fast as possible and control the customers’ battery-backed-up solar systems for the company’s current and future negotiating power and profit. Right now, all over the country, the solar companies are negotiating with the utilities and law makers, laying the ground work to sell power out of their customers’ batteries in the future to “support the grid.” The external control of residential solar systems is largely woven into what is marketed as “grid services,” “solar as a service,” and “VPP” (Virtual Power Plant) technology. In this early stage, homeowners are being offered the choice and incentives to participate. However, they are not offering you the choice to disconnect from their control if you want to run your system autonomously.
It is a fact: If your solar system is connected to the internet, your solar system is under external control. Your batteries can be drained voluntarily, or involuntarily. Your system could be shut off, never to run again, either by the company to which you subscribe or by a hacker.
Solar power is the obvious solution to many of the world’s troubles. Nature bathes us in enough free energy to satisfy all our needs and wants. This power should always be democratized. I will not allow the self-appointed global barons to control my solar system. We can all enjoy the benefits that solar offers, including net-metering and the independence of owning our own clean, endless power supply, 100% under our control. For more reasons than I have had room to discuss here, I recommend you choose a hybrid (or off-grid) solar system that does not require an internet connection. If you already own a grid or internet dependent system, consider converting to a system that you control.
Jonathan Schroeder was a corporate financial and IT auditor before becoming a solar advocate. He founded Sun of New York Solar to promote the understanding of, and solve the problem of, external control of residential solar systems. He specializes in building autonomous, homeowner-controlled hybrid and off-grid solar systems in NY’s Catskills and Hudson Valley areas. See SunofNY.com
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