I'm shocked by how easily electricity prices are easy to find yet no one knows what theirs is! Example: https://utility.report
How should net metering affect your electric bill?
71–80 of 332 posts
Re: How should net metering affect your electric bill?
#72Honestly, this feels like a bit of a red herring. The net metering issue is getting more airtime lately, but it isn't nearly as big of an issue as the proposed connectivity fee that is only targeted at solar customers and based on the nameplate capacity of solar. That fee is directly designed to capture the benefits of solar for the utility and has little to do with real costs to the grid.
This is exactly right. Now that PG&E has built a sizable solar installation base, the NEM3.0 move is to make sure they can capture more profit. Their plan for passing NEM3.0 seems to be to cry and moan about how they're being taken advantage of by individuals who paid $30k to install solar panels on their homes.
When your business model is getting a guaranteed ~10% return on equity, you’re going to fight hard to not give up your cash cow.
https://dms.psc.sc.gov/Attachments/Matter/5f64b1b3-d2bc-4b20...
Re: How should net metering affect your electric bill?
#73One thing that's missing from this is that with current California net metering, for new solar customers, you can't dump a kWh on the grid at noon and then swap it for one at 7pm at the top of the duck curve. New plans are all time-of-use rated, meaning that you can only swap kWh within the same time of use band. At least, that's how it's been explained to me, I have not yet been able to find any explicit rules on PG…
For each kwh you feed to the grid you get a credit for the value of that kWh during that time. Say off-peak is $.20 and peak is $.40 (this is an exaggeration but makes the math easy). You would need to feed 2 kWh to the grid during off peak to cover 1 kWh drawn from the grid during peak usage. On top of this there are non-by passable charges for every kWh drawn from the grid regardless of any credits on your account.
Re: How should net metering affect your electric bill?
#74ctrl+f "missing money" no hits.
A lot of this is actually a very well explored problem in electricity markets, particularly at the wholesale level, and part of why, e.g., capacity markets exist in most deregulated market sin the US (outside of Texas). I know this post is focused on retail, and net metering, but this concept extends pretty broadly across electricity generation and sales.
For a little more explanation on the capacity market side of things I'll quote from the Independent Market Monitor for NYISO, ERCOT, MISO, and ISO-NE in a FERC filing from last year (disclaimer, I used to work there)[0]:
The purpose of the capacity market is to satisfy resource adequacy requirements. Because an efficient energy-only market would generally sustain a long-term capacity level far below the planning requirements of the Eastern RTOs, additional revenues are needed to sustain capacity levels to satisfy these requirements. The capacity markets, therefore, set prices that reflect the marginal cost of satisfying these planning requirements and provide the “missing money”. This marginal cost or “missing money” in the long-run is equal to the cost of investment minus the operating revenues from the sale of energy, ancillary services, etc.
If resources are under-compensated for energy and ancillary services, it will tend to increase the missing money and raise capacity prices. Importantly, if flexible resources are systematically under-compensated, it will inefficiently shift revenues into the capacity market and shift incentives in favor of investment with less flexible characteristics. For this reason, we have repeatedly sought to promote energy and ancillary services market reforms that will reduce the need for out-of-market actions to maintain reliability, which while necessary in the short-term, are particularly harmful to incentives for investment in flexible resources.
[0] https://www.potomaceconomics.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/...
Re: How should net metering affect your electric bill?
#75Honestly, this feels like a bit of a red herring. The net metering issue is getting more airtime lately, but it isn't nearly as big of an issue as the proposed connectivity fee that is only targeted at solar customers and based on the nameplate capacity of solar. That fee is directly designed to capture the benefits of solar for the utility and has little to do with real costs to the grid.
This is exactly right. Now that PG&E has built a sizable solar installation base, the NEM3.0 move is to make sure they can capture more profit. Their plan for passing NEM3.0 seems to be to cry and moan about how they're being taken advantage of by individuals who paid $30k to install solar panels on their homes.
People need to be off the grid completely and when that happens what will these power companies do? If we ever get the affordable battery system that are always just around the corner that will allow this to happen. I look forward to the day. Our electric company has been raising rates and the system is not fair. It is tiered so the more you use the more you pay in hopes to reduce usage. Fair enough. But in my house we have 5 adults and 4 children. We have the same tier as someone with 1 adult and no children. So even though we are more environmentally friendly and our heat heats 9 people, our lights provide light for 9 people, because we use more electricity in other areas like showers we always end up at the higher tier paying a lot for electric even though on a per individual basis we use less electricity. I unfortunately am in Canada and the solar power just isn’t efficient enough here to make it worth while.
Re: How should net metering affect your electric bill?
#76If some states weren't captured by utility monopolies, then solar users would be legally allowed to disconnect from the power grid, potentially solving the first issue. It's amazing to me that this is illegal anywhere.
I mean - if you aren't using any power - the base charge is usually less than $10/m. This doesn't seem like an absurd amount of money to have power when your system inevitably goes down for a time. Additionally - if you want to sell your house - you're going to lose a fortune taking it off the grid. It wouldn't qualify for most financing. It's not worth saving $10/m for almost any rational/economic person.
California had proposed a rule (NEM 3.0) that would add a grid access charge for solar, which is reasonable. However, the cost for the average solar install would be $50+/month.
Re: How should net metering affect your electric bill?
#77> If a house on average generates as much as it uses, the electric bill will be zero. (In practice there’s a minimum monthly fee, but it’s pretty low.)
This was the case in the last house I lived in. The solar panels generated enough power that there was never an electric bill other than the $12 fee to be hooked into the grid. And this was in cloudy, rainy Oregon.
I did think about this scenario. If everyone had panels like that house, how could PGE make any money?
Note: we lived in that house for about 10 years before installing panels, so we knew the average monthly electric bill. We paid for the panels with a loan and the monthly loan payment was lower than any of our monthly payments during the previous 10 years. It was cheaper to get panels and pay the loan than to pay the monthly electric bill without panels.
Re: How should net metering affect your electric bill?
#78I only want solar/wind/etc if I can be off grid.
I can understand why it can be necessary, but why is being off-grid desirable? Having solar/wind/etc is great, but a grid connection gives you a bail-out in case things go south, e.g. an outrageously hot and windless summer night might create a demand that cannot be handled by your battery (if any).
Well, if grid connected, then it wouldn't make sense to have a battery that is basically never used. Plus, you pay a fee just to be connected. If building a new house, I would rather save on the expensive hook-up cost.
In the event of installing a system, I would want it to be sized appropriately and have proper design of the rest of the system. Better insulation, passive heating and cooling strategies, as well as a geothermal heat pump would all be good improvements. Arguably, those would the best to focus on before implementing solar due to the increased efficiency, reducing the necessary battery size, etc. Some of these my not be easy or practical with existing houses, but many are.
Ideally I would like a solar/hydro setup, but that would require a property with a water source.
Re: How should net metering affect your electric bill?
#79Rooftop solar was always form of green subsidy: you get the same flat price for energy you dump into the network as the price the utility charges you. But what you put in at random times of your own choosing is much, much less valuable than a guaranteed power feed at any hour or season. At times it might have negative value, the power you put in costs the utility money. That simply cannot scale.
The only way I can see the two prices equal is if you provide power in the network on request from the utility, at specific time intervals from your own storage. But then you wouldn't need a power utility.
Re: How should net metering affect your electric bill?
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It's quite an overt and deliberate subsidy to foster solar power technology I'd say that the issue the author is addressing is that it is not so overt. Sure, if you meditate on it it becomes clear it's a subsidy, but I think the vast majority of the people who take advantage of it simply think "I produce as much as a use, so of course my bill should be zero."
Well, if my net usage from the grid were to drop to zero, without solar (say because I used a gas generator or whatnot), I’d basically be paying the utility zero too (modulo some small connection fees). The utility still wouldn’t save on any of its fixed costs though. What net metering with solar does is simply make this option much more practical. The straightforward solution would be to fund major infrastructure co…
Or to put in a smaller scale and not require adding your own generation, are you stealing from an electricity company's fixed costs if you turn all your applicances off when you go on holiday, or if you have a holiday home which is only occupied 25% of the year? I think the answer is clearly not.