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Say a power plant is 50 miles away. There's substantial cost running the grid 50 miles, buying the contiguous land, building high voltage towers, the copper, t
by sliken 4y ago
Say a power plant is 50 miles away. There's substantial cost running the grid 50 miles, buying the contiguous land, building high voltage towers, the copper, the maintenance, the substations, etc. Thus the delivery cost is huge and there's a huge difference between retail (consumers) and large scale generators that get paid wholesale.
However if everyone in a neighborhood pays a connection fee to run the local grid, why shouldn't the delivery fee be near zero within the neighborhood. Why should house A get paid wholesale to send power to house B who pays retail? What's the difference between wholesale and retail funding? What's the benefit to society for that difference?
This would all work out financially if the "free battery" included time of use. So during peak solar you might get paid retail price of $0.05 kwh, but at solar minumum power might cost $0.25 per kwh. So you'd have to produce 5 kwh at peak solar to pay for 1 kwh at solar minumum. Thus providing an incentive to build more solar, which results in cheaper power, and provides financial incentives for everyone that makes the grid more robust and produce less carbon.
Getting paid wholesale reduces the incentive to build home solar. If I could get paid $0.25 per kwh I'd likely install wind (if I had the land) or at least batteries, which is exactly what would benefit the grid.
Paying for for distant power generation hurts the world, increases centralization, and increases pollution, transmission losses, wastes land, etc.
- s1artibartfast 4y agoYou need the gird either way. Imagine you have a neighbor and a powerplant miles away. You cant rely on your neighbor so you must build a connection to the plant to supply 100% of your need. Imagine the connection costs $100 a month fixed. The plant sells power for $1/kWh. Why would you ever want to pay your neighbor $10/kWh plus the $100/month for the connection? At the end of the day, nobody wants to buy rooftop solar above wholesale rates. The power company doesn't want to, and the other customers don't want to. It is wasteful greenwashing, like cutting down ten trees to plant one. You could provide 10x more clean power industrially for ever 1kwh produced on rooftops. You could do it with far less pollution and waste. Im fine if people want to do it for their own use, or sell it at wholesale rates. Just dont force me to buy expensive power from your pet project when I can get solar energy from someone else for 10% the price.
- sliken 4y ago> You need the grid either way. True, although potentially a cheaper grid. > Why would you ever want to pay your neighbor $10/kWh plus the $100/month for the connection? $100 seems like a high connection fee, I think it's normally around $25.00. If more people add solar than power is cheaper during the day. Even if you pay retail for it. Sure prices are likely to spike after sunset, you could either shift use, or get a battery. The more people that get batteries the cheaper power will get after sunset. Maybe people with larger lots will start adding wind because it's so profitable. Grid costs, the cost of delivering power should scale with the distance the grid has to carry the power. If a power plant is 500 miles away then use the cost paid should be much less than retail. But if the power sharing is within the same neighborhood (about 1 in 5 houses around me have solar and 1 in 10 have batteries) it should be retail prices since the connection fee covers the local grid.