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SolarCity Will Eliminate Over 550 Job Due to State’s Anti-Rooftop Solar Decision

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Re: SolarCity Will Eliminate Over 550 Job Due to State’s Anti-Rooftop Solar Decision

#191

Post by msandford »

jacquesm wrote: post #102
msandford wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've thought for a long time that a neighborhood 48V DC exchange might be viable. You'll have to pull thick copper of course, but $1/foot for wires is pretty cheap compared to battery prices. Here in the US the NEC says that anything under 50V isn't really regulated because they don't want to get involved in people's path lighting, phone, ethernet, doorbells, thermostats, garage door opener signaling, etc. The other…

You'll want to think long and hard about how you're going to deal with fuses. For the kind of currents that batteries can put out it can be quite expensive to properly fuse things. 50V was a fairly arbitrary voltage deemed to be 'safe', however there are cases known of people dying from 50V and even lower (in particular, one very nasty accident involving a Swiss ham in pre-internet times). A bus made of thick copper…

Well, so the other thing I'd say is that you're probably not looking to move hundreds of amps. If I could "borrow" 50 amps from one neighbor on each side of my house at 48V that's nearly 5kW but 2x 50 amp fuses are very, very doable and fairly cheap.

I'm not saying this is a panacea BTW, just that it might be easier and cheaper for a few neighbors to band together in this kind of a way than for everyone to overbuild their battery banks. If you can go from needing to have 10kW peak of batteries and can instead get down to 5kW peak since you can borrow peak capacity that means your bank can be half as large.

Re: SolarCity Will Eliminate Over 550 Job Due to State’s Anti-Rooftop Solar Decision

#192

Post by digler999 »

rhino369 wrote: post #190
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The people with rooftop solar are providing a subsidy to everyone else, because even at net rates, they're not being fully compensated for the value they provide to the grid. I realise that might sound "crazy" because lots of well paid PR people are telling you the opposite, but it's true.

What extra value are they bringing the the grid.

An electrical current.

Re: SolarCity Will Eliminate Over 550 Job Due to State’s Anti-Rooftop Solar Decision

#193

Post by rhino369 »

ethbro wrote: post #96
inthewoods wrote: post #70

Seems like they need a middle ground - not selling at wholesale prices or full retail. Putting the price at wholesale doesn't take into account the costs for the homeowner (or a 3rd party company like SolarCity) to invest in solar panels. Selling at retail doesn't take into account cost of grid maintenance for the power companies. It also doesn't make a lot of sense to me that they charge higher fees to connect to th…

I don't see where the argument against retail (possibly minus a small amount) comes from. Effectively, they're deleting load from close to the end user from the utility's books. If that load hadn't been deleted, the utility would have charged retail pricing in order to generate it. The small negative adjustment from retail would come from the fact that the utility is still servicing the solar user as a retail user. S…

>If that load hadn't been deleted, the utility would have charged retail pricing in order to generate it.

Sure but they would have only paid to wholesale rate to generate the power.

It's like going to the gas station and trying to sell them gasoline at their retail price. Why would they do that when they buy it at a cheaper price from someone else.

Re: SolarCity Will Eliminate Over 550 Job Due to State’s Anti-Rooftop Solar Decision

#194

Post by fmihaila »

ndonnellan wrote: post #9

This article seems to have a more thorough explanation: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/is-this-sunny-state-trying-... snip ----------------------- A little-understood billing mechanism called net metering is at the heart of the Nevada controversy. Net metering means that residential and commercial solar customers are billed for their “net” energy consumption. They are allowed to send back to the grid the electricit…

The conventional wisdom is that rooftop solar stresses the grid, and therefore net metering at retail prices amounts to a subsidy extracted from the non-solar customers to the benefit of rooftop solar owners.

This, however, is a myth (reinforced at every turn by the incumbent monopolies). Rooftop solar tends to overproduce on the hottest days, which also happens to be the time when the grid is overloaded by air conditioners running at full throttle. In effect, rooftop solar is at maximum production exactly when the grid needs it the most, thus providing very valuable demand smoothing. This greatly benefits utilities, since they don’t have to spend as much on peak-generation capacity.

There is ample evidence that utilities vastly underpay for these benefits [1], while their profits rapidly increase. Three major Nevada casino operators “have expressed vocal criticism of NV Energy for generating huge profits over the past years and not lowering rates for customers of Nevada Power. [...] NV Energy’s profits increased 27.7% in 2014, yet the supplier has not introduced any electricity rates breaks to its customers since it was acquired by Berkshire Hathaway.“ [2]

Over the short term, the incumbents will get their way by flexing their political muscle, but this will only delay the inevitable. Electricity spot prices are at their highest during daytime, while people are at work and their solar generators put power into the grid. Utilities will now pay wholesale for this power, then turn around and sell it to non-solar consumers at the top rate. People return from work as their solar generators become inactive, so they will have to buy power at retail rates. For now, utilities will win both ways.

But what this means is that as storage prices drop, it will be more economical to invest in storage capacity in order to capture the valuable power during the day and use it during the night. This will deny utilities the demand-smoothing services that they currently enjoy, so they will have to increase their capex for peak generation, leading to higher rates for everyone else, which in turn will encourage _more_ customers to install solar and storage, etc. Soon after, people will start disconnecting from the grid altogether; welcome to Uber Energy.

Tectonic plates move slowly, but they rearrange quickly.

[1] http://cleantechnica.com/2015/09/01/review-of-net-metering-s... [2] http://www.casinonewsdaily.com/2015/11/26/major-casino-opera...

Re: SolarCity Will Eliminate Over 550 Job Due to State’s Anti-Rooftop Solar Decision

#195

Post by rhino369 »

DiabloD3 wrote: post #2

So, seeing as how the Governor of Nevada just cost thousands of citizens of his state their job, in an industry that is progressive and required for the survival of that state (and the nation as a whole), why has the state legislature not immediately begun impeachment? Politicians need to be taught that they serve at the pleasure of the people, and when they stop doing what they are told, they will no longer be emplo…

If the people of Nevada would vote on higher electricity rates in exchange for some people getting a subsidy on soar panels, I doubt the subsidy would win.

Re: SolarCity Will Eliminate Over 550 Job Due to State’s Anti-Rooftop Solar Decision

#196

Post by rhino369 »

digler999 wrote: post #192
rhino369 wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What extra value are they bringing the the grid.

An electrical current.

That was the value they are getting compensated at fair market value for. What is the EXTRA value for which they should get above market pricing.

Re: SolarCity Will Eliminate Over 550 Job Due to State’s Anti-Rooftop Solar Decision

#197

Post by xixi77 »

criddell wrote: post #172
CWuestefeld wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, that's a long reach to get to the OP's "de facto ban on rooftop solar". If we take the OP at face value, then, it seems to be declaring that solar energy is completely impractical, and can't survive without life support. I realize that other forms of energy generation are all subsidized in various ways, so it's clearly not as serious as my above interpretation, but still, it doesn't speak well of solar.

> can't survive without life support Unless they have to, power companies are not going to buy your excess solar power from you at all. So yes, regulation is required to prevent monopoly (or oligopoly) providers from abusing their position.

they might -- after all they are buying electricity from other suppliers, so why not from me?

The question is more like, why should I be in a privileged position related to these other suppliers, and why should I be able to freely exchange something cheap (off-peak, unpredictable power) for something expensive (peak, on-demand power)? This is of course assuming that my usage of the grid is fully accounted for in fees, otherwise there is a separate issue there.

Ultimately, since public utilities are not exactly an investor goldmine, this comes down to the question of how much other electricity consumers should spend to subsidize those with solar installations.

Re: SolarCity Will Eliminate Over 550 Job Due to State’s Anti-Rooftop Solar Decision

#198

Post by [deleted] »

amluto wrote: post #178
encoderer wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a bit more complicated than that, too. I don't know about NV, but in California the power company never actually buys net power from you. At best you can owe $0, you never get a check from the power company, even if you pump all of your juice to the grid. So it's only paying "retail prices" insofar as it's offsetting the retail prices you're paying for your overnight/cloudy day power. And incidentally, overnight…

Incorrect. http://www.cpuc.ca.gov/PUC/energy/DistGen/netsurplus.htm

[deleted]

Re: SolarCity Will Eliminate Over 550 Job Due to State’s Anti-Rooftop Solar Decision

#199

Post by xixi77 »

jacquesm wrote: post #32
Symmetry wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the idea isn't that you can go off grid but rather that you can now make use of the excess power that you would have been selling back to the grid during the night and so effectively capture the same residential rates through reduced use.

Sure. But that's effectively the exact same thing as net-metering, only with a lot more fixed costs. And batteries wear out as well. The grid is a lot better for this, unfortunately that requires cooperation of the grid operators and owners. There is an alternative to this, the equivalent of a credit union but for power where a number of people band together to do their own little grid, but the complexities and dange…

This is not exactly the same at all. That battery provides a valuable service: it allows to exchange off-peak power for on-peak power. If the utility had technology to do that economically, the whole controversy would be much less of an issue.

Re: SolarCity Will Eliminate Over 550 Job Due to State’s Anti-Rooftop Solar Decision

#200

Post by jhall1468 »

encoderer wrote: post #145
JoshTriplett wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What this is all about is the power companies are suddenly deciding they want to pay wholesale for excess power. Why should they pay wholesale? The power companies (normally) have enough power to supply everyone; they buy that power at wholesale prices and sell it to the customer at retail prices. So why, if they can always buy power at wholesale prices, should they deliberately pay retail prices instead? Doing so…

It's a bit more complicated than that, too. I don't know about NV, but in California the power company never actually buys net power from you. At best you can owe $0, you never get a check from the power company, even if you pump all of your juice to the grid. So it's only paying "retail prices" insofar as it's offsetting the retail prices you're paying for your overnight/cloudy day power. And incidentally, overnight…

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