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Price out a off-grid solar installation with enough battery to realistically provide power 24x7x365 and the price is 3x per kWh over the life of the system over

by slv77 5y ago

Price out a off-grid solar installation with enough battery to realistically provide power 24x7x365 and the price is 3x per kWh over the life of the system over retail power rates. Rooftop solar owners with grid connections are essentially getting infinite battery backups for free. Net-metering with no grid connection fees were a subsidy put in place in the 70’s to encourage solar adoption but it will soon hit a tipping point where electrical rates will need to rise as more people “opt-in” to the subsidy. As rates rise more people will opt-in to the subsidy causing rates to rise further eventually entering a death spiral. More installed solar means that the demand curve in a region is going to be more volatile which means that more peaker plants will need to be built operating at lower capacity. This will mean higher electricity costs during high demand times when the sun doesn’t shine. Homeowners are currently getting paid retail rates for power during times when the market rate for power is zero. To counter this rooftop solar owners are going to need to pay for the cost of their backup power and/or receive market rates for their power.

jjk166 5y ago
The grid isn't storing the excess power from rooftop solar, that electricity is being consumed by others on the grid at that moment in time. Your neighbors are paying you, via the electric company, for the power you are providing them. When the sun isn't shining, rooftop solar owners are paying the same price as everybody else to have that power generated. Yes, as more and more power is generated by solar there will naturally be a shift from baseload to peaker plants, and peakers have higher costs per kwh than baseload, but you are generating a lot fewer kwh with those peaker plants, so overall cost is still low. Net-metering also has benefits like reducing the strain on the distribution system and decreased losses due to transmission, which actually makes the system a net gain for all parties. Power companies complaining about net-metering is just nefarious accounting. If they stop net-metering, they still get all the benefits - they can still sell your excess electricity to your neighbors, their maintenance costs still go down - but they don't have to compensate rooftop solar owners with account credits anymore, so they can have their cake and eat it too. It's wealth transfer from middle class households to monopolistic corporations that directly discourages emission reduction.
- slv77 5y ago
  From the perspective of the homeowner there is no functional difference between net-metering with a grid tie-in and oversized panels with battery capacity. In either case the light switch will work at night but net-metering comes at zero cost and the other is cost prohibitive. From the neighbor’s perspective who is paying for the grid the rooftop solar is just another power company. A commercial solar provider is offering to sell solar power at average costs of $0.06 per KWH while the solar rooftop owner is offering to sell it at multiples of wholesale. In addition the rooftop solar owner wants long term guaranteed price contracts to deliver power to the grid whenever it is convenient. Nobody would agree to that arrangement. Rooftop solar owners are currently heavily subsidized and if they weren’t they’d just disconnect from the grid and it wouldn’t be a debate.
  - jjk166 5y ago
    There's also no functional difference between net metering and having a farm of a million hamsters spinning little wheels to turn little generators. In either case the light switch will work at night, but one is obviously cost prohibitive. But the difference between the cost of paying your electric company and the cost of powering your house with hamsters is not a subsidy, no one is giving you that money, you have not become richer by some amount, you've merely not pursued an uneconomical option. Using solar power during the day and paying for gas at night is more economical than using stored solar power at night, so that's what people do. The rooftop owner is offering to sell electricity for exactly the same rate that their neighbors are purchasing it at. When you buy electricity from the electric company, they are doing the work of going to the wholesaler, making the contract to get some basic amount of capacity, setting up all the distribution infrastructure to get it from the wholesaler to you, etc. That is value added, and the retail rate is marked up accordingly. When rooftop owners pump electricity into the grid, the electric company isn't doing any work, they're not adding any value, they don't profit directly from the affair but they have no reason to. They do, nevertheless, save money on reduced maintenance expenses. Everyone in this scenario is coming out ahead, but no one is subsidizing anyone else. Everyone is better off simply for the more efficient utilization of resources. The rooftop owners aren't paying to burn gas during the day, the electric company isn't paying to pump large amounts of power where they don't need to, and non-rooftop owners are buying power that is in lower demand. Win-win-win.

by slv77 5y ago

jjk166 5y ago

The grid isn't storing the excess power from rooftop solar, that electricity is being consumed by others on the grid at that moment in time. Your neighbors are paying you, via the electric company, for the power you are providing them. When the sun isn't shining, rooftop solar owners are paying the same price as everybody else to have that power generated. Yes, as more and more power is generated by solar there will naturally be a shift from baseload to peaker plants, and peakers have higher costs per kwh than baseload, but you are generating a lot fewer kwh with those peaker plants, so overall cost is still low. Net-metering also has benefits like reducing the strain on the distribution system and decreased losses due to transmission, which actually makes the system a net gain for all parties. Power companies complaining about net-metering is just nefarious accounting. If they stop net-metering, they still get all the benefits - they can still sell your excess electricity to your neighbors, their maintenance costs still go down - but they don't have to compensate rooftop solar owners with account credits anymore, so they can have their cake and eat it too. It's wealth transfer from middle class households to monopolistic corporations that directly discourages emission reduction.

slv77 5y ago
From the perspective of the homeowner there is no functional difference between net-metering with a grid tie-in and oversized panels with battery capacity. In either case the light switch will work at night but net-metering comes at zero cost and the other is cost prohibitive. From the neighbor’s perspective who is paying for the grid the rooftop solar is just another power company. A commercial solar provider is offering to sell solar power at average costs of $0.06 per KWH while the solar rooftop owner is offering to sell it at multiples of wholesale. In addition the rooftop solar owner wants long term guaranteed price contracts to deliver power to the grid whenever it is convenient. Nobody would agree to that arrangement. Rooftop solar owners are currently heavily subsidized and if they weren’t they’d just disconnect from the grid and it wouldn’t be a debate.
- jjk166 5y ago
  There's also no functional difference between net metering and having a farm of a million hamsters spinning little wheels to turn little generators. In either case the light switch will work at night, but one is obviously cost prohibitive. But the difference between the cost of paying your electric company and the cost of powering your house with hamsters is not a subsidy, no one is giving you that money, you have not become richer by some amount, you've merely not pursued an uneconomical option. Using solar power during the day and paying for gas at night is more economical than using stored solar power at night, so that's what people do. The rooftop owner is offering to sell electricity for exactly the same rate that their neighbors are purchasing it at. When you buy electricity from the electric company, they are doing the work of going to the wholesaler, making the contract to get some basic amount of capacity, setting up all the distribution infrastructure to get it from the wholesaler to you, etc. That is value added, and the retail rate is marked up accordingly. When rooftop owners pump electricity into the grid, the electric company isn't doing any work, they're not adding any value, they don't profit directly from the affair but they have no reason to. They do, nevertheless, save money on reduced maintenance expenses. Everyone in this scenario is coming out ahead, but no one is subsidizing anyone else. Everyone is better off simply for the more efficient utilization of resources. The rooftop owners aren't paying to burn gas during the day, the electric company isn't paying to pump large amounts of power where they don't need to, and non-rooftop owners are buying power that is in lower demand. Win-win-win.