3 ms·

Capital outlay on residential solar for the utility is $0.00. It doesnt get much cheaper than free.

joshjob42 4y ago
Sort of but not really. If you install, say, an 11kW system only our house and this makes enough electricity to meet your average daily use, then during the day your house will be producing more power than it is using at the moment and then in the evening your solar array's output plummets but that's also usually about when demand peaks (except sometimes on very hot summer days). If you're on the grid, the grid operator has to have enough energy production capacity to give you whatever power you need on demand, up to some peak limit. At the highest demand parts of the day and year, they have to resort to weaker plants, basically plants that don't come online except at the highest demand times. They cost a similar amount as any other power generating plant, but only get used 20 or 10 to 5% of the time, which means power from them is phenomenally expensive as their capital costs have to be paid off somehow even though they don't get used much. This is a huge fraction of total costs for a grid operator, and it only gets worse as solar becomes a bigger part of the grid. For every kW of solar, the operator needs ~1kW of natural gas plants sitting around ready to turn on at a moment's notice. In CA during the day usually we have too much power, and our wholesale prices can actually go negative ie they pay people to take generators offline as there's too much being made, and that's because that's peak solar production times. Then in the evening all the solar goes away but if anything demand goes up, so now they have to spin up all these natural gas plants to power people's homes at enormous expense. The way we pay for electricity is by kWh mostly because it's been historically a reasonable enough way to allocate costs and it's easy. But solar is different. Without storage, the entire grid has to be available at all times even though it's getting less use during the day and certain parts of the year. Then net metering means the solar people give the operator electricity it really doesn't want or need during the day and get to cash in their credit during the high demand, extremely expensive parts the day while, on balance, pay ~ nothing for the system on which they are reliant and foist the costs of maintaining the grid onto everyone who is too broke to have solar on their house. So the capital outlay from the grid operator and power plants is ~ identical for a house that has solar but no batteries as compared to one without solar panels at all. But now the solar power person would use net metering so they have to pay basically nothing for the system even though they're radically reliant on it. So, on balance, there really is a very large cost with no real benefit to the utility. People should have to pay for the costs they impose on the grid / everyone else, and that's more or less what this new price structure does. It pays much less in credits during the day when the marginal unit of solar power is basically worthless and adds a per kW of installed solar monthly fee to pay for the capital costs of maintaining the generators those solar customers still need around for when the sun goes down. That's fair! iirc it has some reductions in this latter cost depending on how much storage you have, as is appropriate.

Sort of but not really. If you install, say, an 11kW system only our house and this makes enough electricity to meet your average daily use, then during the day your house will be producing more power than it is using at the moment and then in the evening your solar array's output plummets but that's also usually about when demand peaks (except sometimes on very hot summer days). If you're on the grid, the grid operator has to have enough energy production capacity to give you whatever power you need on demand, up to some peak limit. At the highest demand parts of the day and year, they have to resort to weaker plants, basically plants that don't come online except at the highest demand times. They cost a similar amount as any other power generating plant, but only get used 20 or 10 to 5% of the time, which means power from them is phenomenally expensive as their capital costs have to be paid off somehow even though they don't get used much. This is a huge fraction of total costs for a grid operator, and it only gets worse as solar becomes a bigger part of the grid. For every kW of solar, the operator needs ~1kW of natural gas plants sitting around ready to turn on at a moment's notice. In CA during the day usually we have too much power, and our wholesale prices can actually go negative ie they pay people to take generators offline as there's too much being made, and that's because that's peak solar production times. Then in the evening all the solar goes away but if anything demand goes up, so now they have to spin up all these natural gas plants to power people's homes at enormous expense. The way we pay for electricity is by kWh mostly because it's been historically a reasonable enough way to allocate costs and it's easy. But solar is different. Without storage, the entire grid has to be available at all times even though it's getting less use during the day and certain parts of the year. Then net metering means the solar people give the operator electricity it really doesn't want or need during the day and get to cash in their credit during the high demand, extremely expensive parts the day while, on balance, pay ~ nothing for the system on which they are reliant and foist the costs of maintaining the grid onto everyone who is too broke to have solar on their house. So the capital outlay from the grid operator and power plants is ~ identical for a house that has solar but no batteries as compared to one without solar panels at all. But now the solar power person would use net metering so they have to pay basically nothing for the system even though they're radically reliant on it. So, on balance, there really is a very large cost with no real benefit to the utility. People should have to pay for the costs they impose on the grid / everyone else, and that's more or less what this new price structure does. It pays much less in credits during the day when the marginal unit of solar power is basically worthless and adds a per kW of installed solar monthly fee to pay for the capital costs of maintaining the generators those solar customers still need around for when the sun goes down. That's fair! iirc it has some reductions in this latter cost depending on how much storage you have, as is appropriate.