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I think this post confuses net metering with feed-in laws. With net metering, if a customer generates more energy than they consume, the utility does not cut t

I think this post confuses net metering with feed-in laws. With net metering, if a customer generates more energy than they consume, the utility does not cut them a check at the end of the month, it only offsets their use, possibly with limited rollover. On average, the customer only consumed their own energy and the utility got some for free as well. I would also point out that with solar this free excess is directly helpful to utilities because it happens in the middle of the day when summer energy use peaks. This allows the utility to have less base load capacity which saves everyone money. Feed-in laws require utilities to buy all power fed to the grid at retail rates. They generally don't exist in the US but Germany grew a lot of its renewable capacity that way.

conradev 1y ago
> It only offsets their use This is exactly the problem. During the day when solar energy is plentiful, the homes don’t use energy – great! But at night, they do, and it costs the power company a lot more money to serve this power at night than they are saving during the day. > I would also point out that with solar this free excess is directly helpful to utilities because it happens in the middle of the day when summer energy use peaks It is not. Peak load happens in California in the summer, yes, but the moment the Sun goes down. Not during the day. If the houses have batteries for load shifting, then yes, distributed generation is helpful for peak load. But not without. Feed-in tariffs in Germany were a huge “gift to the world” [1] and instrumental to the solar industry. But not sustainable :P 1 - https://gregnemet.net/book/ch5 https://gregnemet.net/book/ch5