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The fight over California community solar: ‘It’s everyone vs. utilities’
- tomcar288 3y agowhat really gets me, is when the CPUC proposes plans to punish energy savers by increasing the base billing rate and then reducing the per KW charge. It's the exact opposite of what we need to encourage for reduced power consumption. Also, the ANTI solar campaigns that the CPUC has launched are really egregious. I'm surprised CA would allow such a thing as the new NET 3.0 crap.
- andromeduck 3y agoThey should just charge for power variance or correlation in addition to energy.
- hightrix 3y agoThis is pure regulatory capture. Plain and simple. Look at the proposals of the past few years to see it. These proposals say things like helping under served communities or combating wealth inequality, but similar to “Save the children” bills, the titles rarely have any relevance to the content. Every proposal has been about nothing other than protecting and increasing utility company profits. From my view as a consumer and constituent, the government has failed. The simple fact that we allow for profit companies to manage and profit from essential utilities is ridiculous. That we are allowing these companies to write laws that increase their profits at the expensive of society and the environment is a tragedy. Simply put, sdge, pge, and friends, need to be non profits run by the government. CA state should nationalize these companies and reduce profits to zero while actually promoting roof top solar.
- mh- 3y agoBut CPUC is already appointed by the Governor. And they control the prices. I remember when Gray Davis got recalled. The prevailing opinion was that (dramatically) increasing vehicle registration costs pushed that over the finish line. The fact that they've managed to keep virtually all of the outrage directed at the utility companies is an amazing PR success for the Governor.
- hightrix 3y agoJust so that I'm very clear in my points, my anger and outrage is directly entirely at CPUC. I don't expect companies to have my best interests in mind, but I do expect the government to serve me and not PG&E, SDG&E, etc.. shareholders. Naive as that may be.
- briffle 3y agoThe equipment cost is getting closer and closer to just being able to remove your meter and go on your own. I keep watching them drop, and wonder at what point i'll just pull the trigger. Especially the last year, inverters and 48V batteries are really starting to come down. https://signaturesolar.com/complete-all-in-one-off-grid-solar-kit-kit-e0000 https://signaturesolar.com/complete-all-in-one-off-grid-sola...
- bhewes 3y agoInstall costs I have seen for friends stuff is $.50-$.75 per watt self installed as labor costs are about equal.
- anonuser123456 3y agoGoodluck getting approval to disconnect. Your local municipality can simply force you to be connected.
- bombcar 3y agoLike HOAs this is something to keep an eye on when moving; what required utilities exist (for example, around here you don't even need to connect to sewer and water if you're on the outskirts and have at least an acre).
- toast0 3y agoIf you don't pay your bill, the electric utility will disconnect you. Problem solved ;)
- anonuser123456 3y agoThey are two steps ahead; they can put a lien on the property and charge you interest. Worse… they have no incentive to disconnect you since the connection costs zero and they are guaranteed revenue.
- miguelazo 3y agoThis is actually something that will end up being a ballot proposition in a place like California, and I suspect it will be very popular. Much easier to sell than reforming the CPUC appointments or sunsetting investor owned utilities.
- 7e 3y agoWhy promote roof top solar when grid solar is substantially cheaper? Is it for emergency preparedness?
- mattnewton 3y agoIs grid solar always cheaper? I could see that, I could also see that not being the case in the short term if the power lines need to be replaced (or buried in California because of wildfires). It seems harder to do coordinated actions politically rather than let consumers buy products.
- baggy_trough 3y agoBy "let" you mean "force", correct?
- bombcar 3y agoI don't see how rooftop solar can ever really be "cheaper" than grid, if you allow grid to be "small grid" - e.g., in a local area.
- sbierwagen 3y agoHow many people are connected to "small grids" today in California?
- bombcar 3y agoEveryone is, because the grid is built out of smaller grids. You and some number of your neighbors are connected to a transformer, some number of those transformers are connected to a larger transformer, and so on up the chain until you have an actual large grid.
- sbierwagen 3y agoOkay, but this thread is talking about billing, right? That's the point of talking about costs. How many people in California are paying their electricity bills to a utility that covers just their neighborhood, and nobody else?
- KennyBlanken 3y agoThe 'save the children' crap started decades ago when utilities demanded a lot of extraneous, huge ugly bright scary warning labels, extra disconnect boxes, and so on. The goal was to make it as ugly and expensive as possible to discourage residential installs. Further, an inspection by the local government inspector wasn't sufficient. See, you've also got to get the electric company to inspect the system as well, and they'll demand things not spec'd in the state/national code...or they won't allow the system to be connected. This shit is even going on at the grid level. Our regional electrical grid organization admits that their approval process for grid-scale solar or wind connects can take a decade. They insist that much planning is needed for "reliability."
- dragonwriter 3y ago> actually promoting roof top solar. You mean more than it does by mandating it on all new single- and multi-family dwellings?
- miguelazo 3y agoWow, you really get it-- do you work in the industry?
- hightrix 3y agoThankfully, I do not. I just read too much :)
- Ajedi32 3y ago> increasing the base billing rate and then reducing the per KW charge (Almost) every utility should do this. It more accurately reflects the real cost structure of grid maintenance, which doesn't depend on how much energy you use so much as on your peak usage during peak hours. In a world where home solar installations are common it's especially important, since you don't want people relying on the grid for backup power during period of low sun without paying anything to maintain that infrastructure. That's unsustainable in the long term.
- mikepavone 3y ago> I'm surprised CA would allow such a thing as the new NET 3.0 crap. The CA legislature actually required that a change be made with AB 327. The details were ultimately up to CPUC, but CPUC was attempting to meet the broad goals of the legislature in making this change. Additional power produced during times of peak solar insolation is not very useful to the grid because of all the existing solar and is most useful during the late afternoon and early evening when demand is high but solar output is low. Maintaining the grid costs money independent of the cost of electricity generation and under the old rules solar customers were effectively subsidized by non-solar customers. Since non-solar customers are on average poorer than solar customers (owning your home is generally a per-requisite after all) this amounted to a regressive transfer. EDIT: Fixed wording in sentence about customer cross-subsidy
- doctorpangloss 3y agoThe rates are laundering the costs of paying everyone market rates for their houses burned down in wildfires. I agree that’s really fucking weird but what can I do? If you feel very strongly about politics in California, you know, run for an elected office.
- michael1999 3y agoWhat if the new economics of solar mean that maintaining the wires actually costs more than producing the power? Who should pay more of those costs so that your preferred customer can pay less?
- m463 3y agoI think there should just be a "community solar" delivery conduit. Put solar upstream in place 1, allow it to be removed downstream at place 2. People at place 2 could subscribe to solar from place 1 and get it at cost + a nominal delivery charge.
- ars 3y agoWhy only a nominal charge for deliver? Delivery is the most expensive part of the while thing! In particular reliable delivery - unless you intend for the power to shut off every night.
- m463 3y agoBecause PG&E buys wholesale energy at 2-4c/kwh and distributes it broadly for 28-50c/kwh. why should it cost that much for delivery on the local set of wires?
- Ekaros 3y agoDepending on use it might. Building the infra has fixed costs. Then there is maintenance. The price paid for delivery must cover those costs. More you use something, cheaper per used thing it gets. As cost is amortized over more units.
- nawitus 3y agoSeems like a lot of complexity that can be solved by simple spot pricing for electricity. With spot pricing you can decouple solar and battery storage, as battery owners can make a profit by storing electricity when it's cheap and selling it when it's expensive. Solar power owners can just sell to the grid at market rate.
- spywaregorilla 3y agoWorks great until one day your energy goes up in price by a factor of 10,000.
- lotsofpulp 3y agoIs it possible to set your power to shut off if it breaches a certain price?
- Ajedi32 3y agoYeah this would be the way to go. Intelligent, automatic, prioritized, voluntary, per-household (or even per-device) load shedding with no central planning required.
- ars 3y agoIt's not just possible, it's actually done in practice. You pay a lower rate and allow the utilities to shut off your power during peak demand. Usually people will have two meters - a regular one at full price, and a lower priced one that's connected only to heat pumps. It's marketed as "let us control your thermostat for lower electric rates".
- post_break 3y agoThis was done in Texas. You could get power at pass thru rate. The freeze came and griddy, a pass thru supplier begged everyone to switch because the rates would explode due to market demand pricing. Those who didnt switch got charged thousands because it's straight pass thru pricing. Some who knew how this worked just turned off their breakers or switched to generators. Those who refused complained to the state, and then of course the rest is history. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griddy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griddy
- 762236 3y agoDon't forget that the CA energy market is highly regulated and isn't a free market, so there will always be haggling over anything that reduces the revenue of the utilities (as they don't really get to set prices).
- spywaregorilla 3y agoThis is harder than folks give credit. Folks want to leverage their own solar power for cheap, clean power; but they still want the availability of the grid for those moments when the sun isn't shining and the batteries are dry. The grid is expensive, and these folks are trying to avoid paying their share because the pricing scheme assumes that availability is highly correlated with actual usage. The more self reliance individual customers have, the harder it is for generation plants to stay profitable. Break equilibrium stuff by adding more solar and seeing how it gets sustainably fixed might not be a terrible idea, but it is hard. I don't know anything about the specifics of CA.
- jeffbee 3y agoYeah, the other side of the debate has legitimate points about free riders. This article dismisses them mostly by calling them names like "investor owned".
- miguelazo 3y agoThey are in fact "investor owned". As opposed to municipal utilities, which generally oppose these regressive policies.
- jeffbee 3y agoThat isn't abundantly clear in the article. They don't cite a position paper by any MUDs, and there does not seem to be anything stopping MUDs from having community solar in practice already, as SMUD does.
- miguelazo 3y agoEven if the article doesn't articulate that, if you follow energy policy in California that becomes clear very quickly. Almost no municipal utilities supported revising Net Metering, which ended up reducing the solar energy credits for residential systems by 75%.
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- jeffbee 3y agoI think the most dishonest thing about the boosters of small-scale solar is that we need their long tail of small batteries to cover peak hours in late summer. The large-scale batteries are doing the job perfectly well. The large-scale battery guys have installed way more batteries than whatever community-based, open-source, vehicle-to-grid thing you are imagining. Here's my graph of California's state of charge: https://observablehq.com/@jwb/caiso-state-of-charge https://observablehq.com/@jwb/caiso-state-of-charge