14 ms·

Assuming you are grid-tied, the reduction of electric bills is predicated on net metering, where the utility company gives you (ideally) 1-for-1 credit for the

by hbarka 4y ago

Assuming you are grid-tied, the reduction of electric bills is predicated on net metering, where the utility company gives you (ideally) 1-for-1 credit for the electricity you produce. In California, this was called NEM 1.0 and NEM 2.0. Every few years the California utilities lobby the Public Utilities Commission (PUC) to chip away at the NEM program. This year the PUC voted unanimously to cut net energy metering and any new solar owner will fall under the NEM 3.0 rules. Net energy metering is essentially dead in California. In addition there are additional fixed fees customers have to pay. This will disincentivize solar-only installation. If you want fair compensation of what you generate you’ll have to store it and pay yourself. PG&E will find a way to keep their profit margin. https://www.npr.org/2022/12/15/1142927418/california-plans-to-cut-incentives-for-home-solar-worrying-environmentalists https://www.npr.org/2022/12/15/1142927418/california-plans-t...

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
AlexandrB 4y ago
Was the California grid always private or was it run by the state government at one point? To me it makes no sense to privatize services where no competition is possible. You just end up with perverse incentives to do stuff like the above.
- beembeem 4y ago
  A few data points as the picture is murky and mixed: The wider "grid" is managed by CAISO - the independent system operator. LA's utility is municipally run, in contrast to the big 3 IOUs in the state - PGE, SDGE, SCE. SDGE had a 50 year exclusive franchise agreement with the city of San Diego that recently renewed under slightly different terms. Notably, and I'm paraphrasing: the city has the option after 10 years to terminate under certain conditions. [1] Enron lobbied for, contributed to, and profited off of utility deregulation over 20 years ago. [2] [1] https://www.kpbs.org/news/midday-edition/2020/07/27/sdges-50-year-contract-san-diego-expires-january-s https://www.kpbs.org/news/midday-edition/2020/07/27/sdges-50... [2] https://www.consumerwatchdog.org/newsrelease/lesson-enron-electricity-deregulation-disaster https://www.consumerwatchdog.org/newsrelease/lesson-enron-el...
- boulos 4y ago
  In the US, a lot of the electrical grids were corporations (e.g., Con Edison on the East Coast is from Thomas Edison's company). I'd never looked it up before, but the predecessor to PG&E in San Francisco was the San Francisco Gas Company [1]. Of course, in 1896 an Edison company merged with the derivative of the original San Francisco Gas, to become San Francisco Gas and Electric. By 1905, that merged with something else to become PG&E. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Gas_and_Electric_Company#San_Francisco_Gas_and_Electric https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Gas_and_Electric_Compa...
- lwf 4y ago
  The vast minority of utilities in the United States, by number of customers served, are investor-owned; publicly-owned and co-operative utilities only cover 50m people.[1] Theoretically, the grid is supervised by the California Public Utilities Commission, which has wide latitude to set standards and regulations for PG&E and others. The Public Utility Code is the highest law in the state of California[2], so IMHO a large part of the blame for PG&E's failures fall on CPUC's failed oversight[3][4] [1]: https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=40913 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=40913 [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Public_Utilities_Commission#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Public_Utilities_Co... [3]: http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/CPUC-head-Michael-Peevey-to-step-down-5812009.php http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/CPUC-head-Michael-Peev... [4]: https://www.nbcbayarea.com/investigations/pge-probation-lifted/3094194/ https://www.nbcbayarea.com/investigations/pge-probation-lift...
eppp 4y ago
Because net metering is forcing the utility to purchase power at the retail rate. It doesn't make any sense. It isn't a profit margin issue. There is a massive infrastructure and expense to deliver wholesale power to an individual customer and it has to be recouped. Either you sell back your power at some percent of wholesale or solar installs need to get a corresponding increased delivery fee.
- oso2k 4y ago
  No (potential) customer is required to make any company profitable.
  - eppp 4y ago
    And should a company be forced to subsidize a customer?
    - AtlasBarfed 4y ago
      When the company is a utility with a built in monopoly, with legal access to shared resources like land for transmission cables, and is the easiest path to executing policy as important as decarbonization? Yes, if it helps the implementation of the policy. Our entire power system lacks proper carbon taxation. So I won't cry over minor things like power companies making a bit less money when the effect is a major avenue to mitigating carbon emissions. Arguably incenting the grid to switch over from coal/natural gas to wind/solar/storage is more important, but lets try multiple approaches and not stop what is working.
    - oso2k 4y ago
      When said company is government subsidized said customer who is also a tax payer, yes. These companies use tax dollars for infrastructure investment and maintenance, at least here in CA.
      - maxerickson 4y ago
        Those investments theoretically benefit all of their customers. The question is whether specific customers should benefit more than others, when the activity they are doing probably adds costs for the others. The "supply" value of the electricity being generated is going to vary widely, it's not at all obvious that fixing it at the average cost of supplying residential electricity is going to benefit everyone buying the electricity (which as the volume of electricity involved becomes larger sort of becomes a requirement).
shostack 4y ago
Would a good tl;Dr summary of things in CA be that if you didn't need solar before and got grandfathered, it doesn't make sense to get solar now? How does that work with new homes being required to have solar installed? Is it just a net giant win for pg&e?
- HDThoreaun 4y ago
  You need a battery to efficiently use your solar. Why should pg&e be forced to buy at an inflated retail rate when they can get wholesale electricity for 70% less?
ufo 4y ago
Does that also apply if you're not sending surplus energy back into the grid?
KerrAvon 4y ago
If there’s no net-zero metering, aren’t they incentivizing people to be completely disconnected from the grid, or at least not incentivizing them to be connected? (Which is bad for the grid.) Why would I fuck around with the utility at all if I’m installing enough solar/battery to power my needs?
- danans 4y ago
  > Why would I fuck around with the utility at all if I’m installing enough solar/battery to power my needs? What will you do when it has been raining/cloudy for weeks straight like it has recently in California? For this period, wind has dramatically outproduced solar [1]. Even in the summer/fall, when there was severe wildfire smoke in the area, my solar+battery barely produced anything. Sure, you can set up a propane generator (very expensive at the size needed for a full house backup), but then you are dependent on the propane-distribution grid. The dirty secret of "no-sacrifice off-grid" lifestyles is how much they are dependent on propane for heating and electricity. Also, the grid's up-time is going to be better than your home battery setup up-time both because it is constantly maintained and it has access to a greater diversity of energy sources (wind, nuclear, fossil, large-scale storage) that are firmer than anything you can attach to your house. The fact is that modern living standards (cars, TVs, comfortable temperatures) require a much larger amount of energy and energy-availability than most people can produce on their properties with solar. The additional energy has to be imported somehow, either from the electric grid or as liquid or gaseous fuels. 1. See Renewables Trend at http://www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/supply.html http://www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/supply.html
- ulkhf 4y ago
  You may be able to afford a night time battery (several hours of power) but there's no way you can afford a winter battery (several months of power).
- tehlike 4y ago
  because very likely you won't have enough solar/battery to power your needs...
- rsync 4y ago
praxulus 4y ago
Net metering just doesn't make sense though. Everyone who wants to rely on the grid for power availability ought to pay for grid upkeep costs. Net metering would make sense if it came on top of a baseline "connectivity fee" that covered grid maintenance, but that's not the current policy, would likely be politically infeasible, and would hurt rooftop solar customers financially anyway. Subsidizing solar is a perfectly good policy choice, but net metering is ultimately an unsustainable way to implement it.
- _ea1k 4y ago
  I tend to agree, but the fixed $/kw monthly fees that utilities want is just about the dumbest possible alternative.
- K0balt 4y ago
  Isn’t there a base charge though? In my home town it’s around 25 dollars a month just to be hooked up whether you use anything or not. What would seem logical to me would be a base charge, they net meter you to zero, but then you sell power at the wholesaler rate. If that wipes out your connect charge you still have them the value that they would have paid for the power you made. Maybe the base charge would have to be higher for net metered houses, it might have some subsidy built into it based on expectations of selling power to the client.
  - HDThoreaun 4y ago
    The thing is that grid upkeep costs increase when people are selling power back. Who should have to pay for those increased fixed costs? Net metering means everyone pays.
- mcv 4y ago
  Even then, solar panels produce electricity when demand is low and supply is high. In the evening, demand goes up and solar panels produce a lot less.
- umvi 4y ago
  In Idaho at least, you do have to pay a monthly infrastructure fee even if you are using net metering.
mdorazio 4y ago
Over the last 8 quarters their average profit margin is a whopping 3.25%. If you think that’s just too high I’m not sure what to tell you. An alternate way to look at the CA rule change is that CA needs more installed storage to shore up the shitty grid, and incentivizing people to install solar alone via net metering isn’t a great idea anymore. Remember that peak power demand is right around and just after sunset.
- jjav 4y ago
  > Over the last 8 quarters their average profit margin is a whopping 3.25%. If you think that’s just too high I’m not sure what to tell you. Profit margin is after deducting all expenses. A lot of corrupt spending can be included in expenses to reduce the profit margin at will while still raking in the cash. So yes, that's absurdly high given how they operate.
- PointyFluff 4y ago
  [dead]
- mertd 4y ago
  Does that include all deferred maintenance they had to do after the massive wildfires?
  - ketralnis 4y ago
    And payouts for the various ongoing wrongful death law lawsuits
- ericmay 4y ago
  > Over the last 8 quarters their average profit margin is a whopping 3.25% This is the trade-off you take when you become a quasi-government company. You get a low, but nearly guaranteed profit. Executives still get their bonuses, employees get paid, etc. If they want more variable rates of return then they can drop the public protections and go full private like any other regular company.
  - 4y ago
colechristensen 4y ago
It's a nice incentive, but you shouldn't need to be paid the retail rate for solar when selling it back to the utility. Especially when the retail rate is from PG&E and contains a lot of non-paying-for-electricity things like covering past liabilities for wildfires. And you can perfectly well size your solar appropriately so that you aren't net-positive pushing electricity back to the grid at all (or only a little).
Analemma_ 4y ago
Net metering is a regressive tax on the poor, because when rich people get solar panels and sell back to the grid at retail prices, the utility has to raise rates on everyone else to pay their large fixed costs. It may have been a good idea at one point when residential solar was so rare as to be effectively nonexistent, but now it has to be abandoned.
- mrguyorama 4y ago
  In my state, generation is still pretty "regulated" and the cost of generation is a separate line item on my bill, technically from a different company, from distribution. There's no reason at all I shouldn't be paid the same price per kWh for generation.
  - eppp 4y ago
    That depends what "generation" includes. It probably also includes the transmission and stepping up and all of the equipment to deliver it to the distributor. If you are grid tied, you are still using that system as a backup at minimum and should contribute to its upkeep. Therefore you should be paid accordingly. I don't think there is much objection to paying for solar excess at the bulk rate.
    - anikom15 4y ago
      Transmission falls under distribution charges, not generation.
opo 4y ago
Consumer rooftop solar is the most expensive way ever thought of to provide electrical power. Money is fungible. A dollar tied up in building a one-off consumer solar installation is exactly a dollar unavailable for building out utility grade solar which can be done at a fraction of the cost. With net metering, wealthier home owners are essentially paid the retail rate for the electricity they sell to the grid which causes higher electricity bills for those who can't afford to put panels on their roof - sort of a reverse Robinhood scheme. I recall reading that with net-metering, non-solar households in CA pay an estimated extra $115 to $245 per year to cover the subsidies given to their wealthier neighbors.
- UncleEntity 4y ago
  > Money is fungible. A dollar tied up in building a one-off consumer solar installation is exactly a dollar unavailable for building out utility grade solar which can be done at a fraction of the cost. This makes the false assumption that those “fungible” dollars are somehow earmarked for solar and the homeowners wouldn’t just spend them on some other, non-solar, goods.
  - opo 4y ago
    No, I am not making that assumption in any way. I might not have been clear enough. I am saying that it is incredibly wasteful for the government to directly subsidize consumer solar when installed and then later forcing less wealthy consumers to subsidize their wealthier neighbors. If the government wants to encourage the development of solar power, those subsidies should have gone to encouraging grid based solar which costs a small fraction of the cost of one off consumer solar panel installations. A dollar tied up in building a one-off consumer solar installation is exactly a dollar unavailable for building out utility grade solar.
notJim 4y ago
This incentivizes storage and time-shifting usage to solar peak times, which seem to be needed in California. Does anyone know if there are pricing signals to help with that? For example, if I (as a power-plant operator or whatever) found a way to sell electricity right as the sun is going down, am I rewarded for that? As an individual with a solar install, I think this also encourages people to use the energy they produce directly, which also seems beneficial. For example, if your house is well-insulated, you can probably pre-cool it a few degrees while your solar is producing so that you don't need as much cooling during the peak times. If you can be home during the day time, you could set your car to only charge during peak times.
- danans 4y ago
  > This incentivizes storage and time-shifting usage to solar peak times, which seem to be needed in California. Does anyone know if there are pricing signals to help with that? For example, if I (as a power-plant operator or whatever) found a way to sell electricity right as the sun is going down, am I rewarded for that? NEM3.0 incentivizes exactly that. It prices exported electricity at the avoided cost rate. During the late summer and early fall, between 7-9PM that can be more than $1/kWh, or 3x the average NEM2.0 rate [1]. Of course to maximize that rate you need to store energy and sell it back at the optimal time. The average rate with NEM3.0, however, is much lower. 1. https://www.cpuc.ca.gov/-/media/cpuc-website/divisions/energy-division/documents/demand-side-management/acc-models-latest-version/2022-acc-documentation-v1a.pdf https://www.cpuc.ca.gov/-/media/cpuc-website/divisions/energ...
figers 4y ago
There is also the savings from the solar your house produces and uses directly instead of pulling from the grid at the price per kWh.
brk 4y ago
No, you'd don't need net metering to make it viable. In a typical grid-tied system, the setup is such that any demand is fulfilled first by solar capacity, and second from the grid. If your array can fulfill 100% (or more) of your demand, then you pull nothing from the grid. If you don't have a net metering arrangement and you regularly produce more than 100% of your local demand, then your options are to simply throw away the excess, or use a battery system to store it for later use. If you have a net metering agreement, then the grid acts like a giant battery, which may or may not have input and output fees (think of it very roughly like Amazon S3 pricing). Ideally you have a 1:1 arrangement, where you can feed energy into the grid for free, and pull back up to whatever you supplied at parity pricing (eg: for free). But, there is no reason a utility company has to offer that arrangement, they could charge you some fee to supply energy if they wanted, and they could charge you some fee to pull energy back. For the most part, the most cost effective solar systems will supply about 75-80% of your average monthly demand. It almost never a good investment to overbuild your solar system on the premise of making money off of net metering, as the rate you are paid for production is essentially a wholesale price, making you a micro power plant, which is not a very profitable business. Covering the bulk of your energy usage with your own solar supply, and then pulling a minimum amount of power from the grid to fill the gaps will tend to keep you at the best supply pricing tier.
- 0cf8612b2e1e 4y ago
  >… the most cost effective solar systems will supply about 75-80% of your average monthly demand I am not so sure that is true. Seemingly a large percentage of new installation costs are fixed (paperwork, labor, inverters, etc) with only a smaller portion for the panels themselves. For a minor incremental cost, you can fully provision your house.

by hbarka 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

AlexandrB 4y ago

Was the California grid always private or was it run by the state government at one point? To me it makes no sense to privatize services where no competition is possible. You just end up with perverse incentives to do stuff like the above.

beembeem 4y ago
A few data points as the picture is murky and mixed: The wider "grid" is managed by CAISO - the independent system operator. LA's utility is municipally run, in contrast to the big 3 IOUs in the state - PGE, SDGE, SCE. SDGE had a 50 year exclusive franchise agreement with the city of San Diego that recently renewed under slightly different terms. Notably, and I'm paraphrasing: the city has the option after 10 years to terminate under certain conditions. [1] Enron lobbied for, contributed to, and profited off of utility deregulation over 20 years ago. [2] [1] https://www.kpbs.org/news/midday-edition/2020/07/27/sdges-50-year-contract-san-diego-expires-january-s https://www.kpbs.org/news/midday-edition/2020/07/27/sdges-50... [2] https://www.consumerwatchdog.org/newsrelease/lesson-enron-electricity-deregulation-disaster https://www.consumerwatchdog.org/newsrelease/lesson-enron-el...
boulos 4y ago
In the US, a lot of the electrical grids were corporations (e.g., Con Edison on the East Coast is from Thomas Edison's company). I'd never looked it up before, but the predecessor to PG&E in San Francisco was the San Francisco Gas Company [1]. Of course, in 1896 an Edison company merged with the derivative of the original San Francisco Gas, to become San Francisco Gas and Electric. By 1905, that merged with something else to become PG&E. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Gas_and_Electric_Company#San_Francisco_Gas_and_Electric https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Gas_and_Electric_Compa...
lwf 4y ago
The vast minority of utilities in the United States, by number of customers served, are investor-owned; publicly-owned and co-operative utilities only cover 50m people.[1] Theoretically, the grid is supervised by the California Public Utilities Commission, which has wide latitude to set standards and regulations for PG&E and others. The Public Utility Code is the highest law in the state of California[2], so IMHO a large part of the blame for PG&E's failures fall on CPUC's failed oversight[3][4] [1]: https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=40913 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=40913 [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Public_Utilities_Commission#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Public_Utilities_Co... [3]: http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/CPUC-head-Michael-Peevey-to-step-down-5812009.php http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/CPUC-head-Michael-Peev... [4]: https://www.nbcbayarea.com/investigations/pge-probation-lifted/3094194/ https://www.nbcbayarea.com/investigations/pge-probation-lift...

eppp 4y ago

Because net metering is forcing the utility to purchase power at the retail rate. It doesn't make any sense. It isn't a profit margin issue. There is a massive infrastructure and expense to deliver wholesale power to an individual customer and it has to be recouped. Either you sell back your power at some percent of wholesale or solar installs need to get a corresponding increased delivery fee.

oso2k 4y ago
No (potential) customer is required to make any company profitable.
- eppp 4y ago
  And should a company be forced to subsidize a customer?
  - AtlasBarfed 4y ago
    When the company is a utility with a built in monopoly, with legal access to shared resources like land for transmission cables, and is the easiest path to executing policy as important as decarbonization? Yes, if it helps the implementation of the policy. Our entire power system lacks proper carbon taxation. So I won't cry over minor things like power companies making a bit less money when the effect is a major avenue to mitigating carbon emissions. Arguably incenting the grid to switch over from coal/natural gas to wind/solar/storage is more important, but lets try multiple approaches and not stop what is working.
  - oso2k 4y ago
    When said company is government subsidized said customer who is also a tax payer, yes. These companies use tax dollars for infrastructure investment and maintenance, at least here in CA.
    - maxerickson 4y ago
      Those investments theoretically benefit all of their customers. The question is whether specific customers should benefit more than others, when the activity they are doing probably adds costs for the others. The "supply" value of the electricity being generated is going to vary widely, it's not at all obvious that fixing it at the average cost of supplying residential electricity is going to benefit everyone buying the electricity (which as the volume of electricity involved becomes larger sort of becomes a requirement).

shostack 4y ago

Would a good tl;Dr summary of things in CA be that if you didn't need solar before and got grandfathered, it doesn't make sense to get solar now? How does that work with new homes being required to have solar installed? Is it just a net giant win for pg&e?

HDThoreaun 4y ago
You need a battery to efficiently use your solar. Why should pg&e be forced to buy at an inflated retail rate when they can get wholesale electricity for 70% less?

ufo 4y ago

Does that also apply if you're not sending surplus energy back into the grid?

KerrAvon 4y ago

If there’s no net-zero metering, aren’t they incentivizing people to be completely disconnected from the grid, or at least not incentivizing them to be connected? (Which is bad for the grid.) Why would I fuck around with the utility at all if I’m installing enough solar/battery to power my needs?

danans 4y ago
> Why would I fuck around with the utility at all if I’m installing enough solar/battery to power my needs? What will you do when it has been raining/cloudy for weeks straight like it has recently in California? For this period, wind has dramatically outproduced solar [1]. Even in the summer/fall, when there was severe wildfire smoke in the area, my solar+battery barely produced anything. Sure, you can set up a propane generator (very expensive at the size needed for a full house backup), but then you are dependent on the propane-distribution grid. The dirty secret of "no-sacrifice off-grid" lifestyles is how much they are dependent on propane for heating and electricity. Also, the grid's up-time is going to be better than your home battery setup up-time both because it is constantly maintained and it has access to a greater diversity of energy sources (wind, nuclear, fossil, large-scale storage) that are firmer than anything you can attach to your house. The fact is that modern living standards (cars, TVs, comfortable temperatures) require a much larger amount of energy and energy-availability than most people can produce on their properties with solar. The additional energy has to be imported somehow, either from the electric grid or as liquid or gaseous fuels. 1. See Renewables Trend at http://www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/supply.html http://www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/supply.html
ulkhf 4y ago
You may be able to afford a night time battery (several hours of power) but there's no way you can afford a winter battery (several months of power).
tehlike 4y ago
because very likely you won't have enough solar/battery to power your needs...
rsync 4y ago

praxulus 4y ago

Net metering just doesn't make sense though. Everyone who wants to rely on the grid for power availability ought to pay for grid upkeep costs. Net metering would make sense if it came on top of a baseline "connectivity fee" that covered grid maintenance, but that's not the current policy, would likely be politically infeasible, and would hurt rooftop solar customers financially anyway. Subsidizing solar is a perfectly good policy choice, but net metering is ultimately an unsustainable way to implement it.

_ea1k 4y ago
I tend to agree, but the fixed $/kw monthly fees that utilities want is just about the dumbest possible alternative.
K0balt 4y ago
Isn’t there a base charge though? In my home town it’s around 25 dollars a month just to be hooked up whether you use anything or not. What would seem logical to me would be a base charge, they net meter you to zero, but then you sell power at the wholesaler rate. If that wipes out your connect charge you still have them the value that they would have paid for the power you made. Maybe the base charge would have to be higher for net metered houses, it might have some subsidy built into it based on expectations of selling power to the client.
- HDThoreaun 4y ago
  The thing is that grid upkeep costs increase when people are selling power back. Who should have to pay for those increased fixed costs? Net metering means everyone pays.
mcv 4y ago
Even then, solar panels produce electricity when demand is low and supply is high. In the evening, demand goes up and solar panels produce a lot less.
umvi 4y ago
In Idaho at least, you do have to pay a monthly infrastructure fee even if you are using net metering.

mdorazio 4y ago

Over the last 8 quarters their average profit margin is a whopping 3.25%. If you think that’s just too high I’m not sure what to tell you. An alternate way to look at the CA rule change is that CA needs more installed storage to shore up the shitty grid, and incentivizing people to install solar alone via net metering isn’t a great idea anymore. Remember that peak power demand is right around and just after sunset.

jjav 4y ago
> Over the last 8 quarters their average profit margin is a whopping 3.25%. If you think that’s just too high I’m not sure what to tell you. Profit margin is after deducting all expenses. A lot of corrupt spending can be included in expenses to reduce the profit margin at will while still raking in the cash. So yes, that's absurdly high given how they operate.
PointyFluff 4y ago
[dead]
mertd 4y ago
Does that include all deferred maintenance they had to do after the massive wildfires?
- ketralnis 4y ago
  And payouts for the various ongoing wrongful death law lawsuits
ericmay 4y ago
> Over the last 8 quarters their average profit margin is a whopping 3.25% This is the trade-off you take when you become a quasi-government company. You get a low, but nearly guaranteed profit. Executives still get their bonuses, employees get paid, etc. If they want more variable rates of return then they can drop the public protections and go full private like any other regular company.
- 4y ago

colechristensen 4y ago

It's a nice incentive, but you shouldn't need to be paid the retail rate for solar when selling it back to the utility. Especially when the retail rate is from PG&E and contains a lot of non-paying-for-electricity things like covering past liabilities for wildfires. And you can perfectly well size your solar appropriately so that you aren't net-positive pushing electricity back to the grid at all (or only a little).

Analemma_ 4y ago

Net metering is a regressive tax on the poor, because when rich people get solar panels and sell back to the grid at retail prices, the utility has to raise rates on everyone else to pay their large fixed costs. It may have been a good idea at one point when residential solar was so rare as to be effectively nonexistent, but now it has to be abandoned.

mrguyorama 4y ago
In my state, generation is still pretty "regulated" and the cost of generation is a separate line item on my bill, technically from a different company, from distribution. There's no reason at all I shouldn't be paid the same price per kWh for generation.
- eppp 4y ago
  That depends what "generation" includes. It probably also includes the transmission and stepping up and all of the equipment to deliver it to the distributor. If you are grid tied, you are still using that system as a backup at minimum and should contribute to its upkeep. Therefore you should be paid accordingly. I don't think there is much objection to paying for solar excess at the bulk rate.
  - anikom15 4y ago
    Transmission falls under distribution charges, not generation.

opo 4y ago

Consumer rooftop solar is the most expensive way ever thought of to provide electrical power. Money is fungible. A dollar tied up in building a one-off consumer solar installation is exactly a dollar unavailable for building out utility grade solar which can be done at a fraction of the cost. With net metering, wealthier home owners are essentially paid the retail rate for the electricity they sell to the grid which causes higher electricity bills for those who can't afford to put panels on their roof - sort of a reverse Robinhood scheme. I recall reading that with net-metering, non-solar households in CA pay an estimated extra $115 to $245 per year to cover the subsidies given to their wealthier neighbors.

UncleEntity 4y ago
> Money is fungible. A dollar tied up in building a one-off consumer solar installation is exactly a dollar unavailable for building out utility grade solar which can be done at a fraction of the cost. This makes the false assumption that those “fungible” dollars are somehow earmarked for solar and the homeowners wouldn’t just spend them on some other, non-solar, goods.
- opo 4y ago
  No, I am not making that assumption in any way. I might not have been clear enough. I am saying that it is incredibly wasteful for the government to directly subsidize consumer solar when installed and then later forcing less wealthy consumers to subsidize their wealthier neighbors. If the government wants to encourage the development of solar power, those subsidies should have gone to encouraging grid based solar which costs a small fraction of the cost of one off consumer solar panel installations. A dollar tied up in building a one-off consumer solar installation is exactly a dollar unavailable for building out utility grade solar.

notJim 4y ago

This incentivizes storage and time-shifting usage to solar peak times, which seem to be needed in California. Does anyone know if there are pricing signals to help with that? For example, if I (as a power-plant operator or whatever) found a way to sell electricity right as the sun is going down, am I rewarded for that? As an individual with a solar install, I think this also encourages people to use the energy they produce directly, which also seems beneficial. For example, if your house is well-insulated, you can probably pre-cool it a few degrees while your solar is producing so that you don't need as much cooling during the peak times. If you can be home during the day time, you could set your car to only charge during peak times.

danans 4y ago
> This incentivizes storage and time-shifting usage to solar peak times, which seem to be needed in California. Does anyone know if there are pricing signals to help with that? For example, if I (as a power-plant operator or whatever) found a way to sell electricity right as the sun is going down, am I rewarded for that? NEM3.0 incentivizes exactly that. It prices exported electricity at the avoided cost rate. During the late summer and early fall, between 7-9PM that can be more than $1/kWh, or 3x the average NEM2.0 rate [1]. Of course to maximize that rate you need to store energy and sell it back at the optimal time. The average rate with NEM3.0, however, is much lower. 1. https://www.cpuc.ca.gov/-/media/cpuc-website/divisions/energy-division/documents/demand-side-management/acc-models-latest-version/2022-acc-documentation-v1a.pdf https://www.cpuc.ca.gov/-/media/cpuc-website/divisions/energ...

figers 4y ago

There is also the savings from the solar your house produces and uses directly instead of pulling from the grid at the price per kWh.

brk 4y ago

No, you'd don't need net metering to make it viable. In a typical grid-tied system, the setup is such that any demand is fulfilled first by solar capacity, and second from the grid. If your array can fulfill 100% (or more) of your demand, then you pull nothing from the grid. If you don't have a net metering arrangement and you regularly produce more than 100% of your local demand, then your options are to simply throw away the excess, or use a battery system to store it for later use. If you have a net metering agreement, then the grid acts like a giant battery, which may or may not have input and output fees (think of it very roughly like Amazon S3 pricing). Ideally you have a 1:1 arrangement, where you can feed energy into the grid for free, and pull back up to whatever you supplied at parity pricing (eg: for free). But, there is no reason a utility company has to offer that arrangement, they could charge you some fee to supply energy if they wanted, and they could charge you some fee to pull energy back. For the most part, the most cost effective solar systems will supply about 75-80% of your average monthly demand. It almost never a good investment to overbuild your solar system on the premise of making money off of net metering, as the rate you are paid for production is essentially a wholesale price, making you a micro power plant, which is not a very profitable business. Covering the bulk of your energy usage with your own solar supply, and then pulling a minimum amount of power from the grid to fill the gaps will tend to keep you at the best supply pricing tier.

0cf8612b2e1e 4y ago
>… the most cost effective solar systems will supply about 75-80% of your average monthly demand I am not so sure that is true. Seemingly a large percentage of new installation costs are fixed (paperwork, labor, inverters, etc) with only a smaller portion for the panels themselves. For a minor incremental cost, you can fully provision your house.