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We were looking for some Energy Transition Nice Time to tide you over into the holiday, but the closest thing we could find at first was this New York Times article (sorry, we’re out of gift links) about how Elon Musk’s politics and his enshittification of Twitter seem to be hurting sales of Tesla cars (that and the fact that the company hasn’t had a new design in years). But then we found this Canary Media story about a new Michigan law that prohibits homeowners associations (HOAs) from banning clean energy tech including rooftop solar, heat pumps, EV chargers, and even good old-fashioned clotheslines, the original zero-carbon laundry technology.
The choice was clear: If there’s anything decent people like our readers might hate more than Elon Musk, it’s the petty bastards who often run HOAs like the USS Caine.
The story says that HOA restrictions may have prevented as many as 1.4 million Michiganders from installing home solar, but if you click the link you find that’s actually the total number of residents in the state’s HOA-governed neighborhoods in 2022, so no, not really a survey of people who wanted to install solar but were blocked. C’mon, Canary Media, journalism better. You might just as well say that as many as 1.4 million Michigan residents were prevented from having crapped-out 1978 Ford Granadas up on blocks in their front lawns, which also would have been difficult since fewer than 250,000 of the things were built in that model year, including both coupes and sedans.
Still what with home solar installations being of considerably more utility than even a drivable ‘78 Granada, a bill passed in May and signed by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer last week made Michigan the 29th state (plus the District of Columbia) to get HOAs out of the way of one of the more important clean-energy solutions out there.
The article notes that Michigan currently ranks 26th in the US for solar capacity, and much of that is in utility scale solar farms. But the new legislation may give Michigan’s home-solar business a much-needed kick in the family joules:
HOA policies have significantly limited solar business in Michigan, said John Jevahirian, vice president of operations at solar installer Michigan Solar Solutions. His team is already preparing to call up customers who weren’t able to get rooftop solar when they wanted it — some of whom made it all the way to signing a contract, only to find out at the last minute that their HOA wouldn’t allow it, he said. […]
Jevahirian said he expects the state’s rooftop solar market “will see a swing, a legitimate change in adoption from this.”
Home solar keeps getting more and more affordable, thanks in part to the huge drop in price of the technology itself in the past decade, and also because the Inflation Reduction Act offers generous tax credits of up to 30 percent to homeowners who install rooftop solar — as well as other clean energy tech like storage batteries, EV chargers, heat pumps, induction stoves, and even the home electric panel upgrades that may be needed for all of it. (Unlike the point-of-purchase credits for EVs, though, you can only take advantage of the home energy credits to offset your federal income tax bill, shoot. Congress could fix that!)
The article notes that HOAs can be endlessly creative when it comes to making rooftop solar too much of a hassle to bother with, another problem the law will largely eliminate:
Jevahirian has come across a range of ways HOAs make it more difficult for customers to get solar, including requiring that wires are hidden, metal parts of the installation are painted, and solar panels are arrayed in a perfect square. Those extra steps add expenses, which can be enough to make solar unaffordable for customers.
OK, we can see the point of not allowing loose wires all over the place, or prohibiting solar panels on your dead Granada, but that’s about it.
The new Michigan law means that homeowners in HOAs won’t even have to ask permission to get rooftop solar. HOAs will have to
adopt a solar energy policy explicitly stating any standards — but those standards can’t reduce the electricity production of the system by more than 10 percent or raise the total cost of an installation by more than $1,000.
Wow, sounds like the whole darn state is going wild with solar-powered hippie communes! Just one more example of why Democratic trifectas make states better places to live.
[Canary Media / NYT (sorry, not a gift link)]
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