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How should net metering affect your electric bill?

climateer.substack.com

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Re: How should net metering affect your electric bill?

#111

Post by Johnny555 »

Large commercial customers typically pay capacity costs -- i.e. if you need 1MW of power, you pay for that 1MW of capacity on top of your actual demand costs.

If they did this with residential customers, it would make residential energy storage (i.e. batteries, but maybe thermal or other storage) more attractive, so instead of paying for a 200A circuit to meet your peak demand, you pay for a 50A circuit to keep your home battery charged and that battery kicks in to meet your peak demand.

And once you have that battery, you may as well add solar as well.

Re: How should net metering affect your electric bill?

#112

Post by throwaway894345 »

guelo wrote: post #68
throwaway894345 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only is the "tax" word problematic, but if you call it "carbon pricing" that irks the people who are reflexively anti-market. And no matter what you call it, the sanctimonious environmentalists will fight it because it minimizes the need for heroic personal sacrifice with respect to preserving the environment (frankly, these personal sacrifices probably aren't significant in the first place--the bulk of pollution…

Environmentalists would absolutely not fight it. They've been begging for a carbon tax for 40 years.

I was specifically referring to the subset of environmentalists who believe that salvation lies in converting everyone to veganism and cycling. But there are a lot of people who style themselves as environmentalists who oppose carbon taxes:

* The "personal responsibility" environmentalists described above

* The "anti-market" environmentalists who assume without evidence that markets necessarily make things worse

* The Green New Deal environmentalists who largely want to use the threat of climate change as political cover for social spending ("climate justice").

The last bullet might be too broad--there might be some GND environmentalists who are sincere, but certainly the overwhelming majority of GND policy and rhetoric seem to be more concerned with social spending than decarbonizing the atmosphere. I think there's a lot of overlap between this group and the prior two groups as well.

Re: How should net metering affect your electric bill?

#114

Post by ohgodplsno »

tempnow987 wrote: post #107

One BIG issue with this article. You are often not allowed to just go off grid and use your own battery as a backup. Does anyone know if they've changed that (zoning / building code / certificate of occupancy) requiring an interconnect with the grid? That is my big issue here. We are getting told how we need to pay for them to build us a bigger / higher power grid. What if I want to go off grid.

Make your own country. Being interconnected with the grid is a net positive, for everyone, you included.

Re: How should net metering affect your electric bill?

#115

Post by pmyteh »

OJFord wrote: post #86
lillecarl wrote: post #51

In Sweden there are 2 separate charges, one for infrastructure and one for consumption. The infrastructure bill scales with how big your breakers/fuses (English) are while consumption scales with how many KWh you've used. You often have a different infra provider and power provider. For someone living in a condo/apt the infra cost is usually higher than consumption while in houses where heating often is powered by so…

Yeah, similarly in the UK we have a 'standing charge' (£/day) in addition to the 'unit charge' (£/kWh) - same provider though. And I can't see why it wouldn't tie up with the reality of the costs. (Competitive downward pressure, and no silly anti-competitive cap as there is on variable £/kWh pricing.) From memory mine's about £6-7pcm.

The cap was never really intended to be a fixed price for electricity: the main purpose was to ensure people with an arbitrary supplier (chosen by previous tenants, or the landlord, say) and who weren't canny enough to notice they were being overcharged and shop around, didn't get ripped off too badly. Lots of people who stayed with the descendant of their old regional electricity board paid over the odds, for example, because consumer inertia meant it was profitable for them not to have competitive prices.

That all electricity prices are now essentially at the cap, so it's also acting as a floor, was not intended or particularly anticipated, I think.

Re: How should net metering affect your electric bill?

#116

Post by triceratops »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #49
__s wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"carbon tax" is trouble to enact because you can't expect to rally support for something with the word tax in its name Then people complain about where will that tax money go. It doesn't matter. The government could burn all the carbon tax money collected (& in fact, this would help against inflation) . The purpose is to fix incentives, not find funding

Not only is the "tax" word problematic, but if you call it "carbon pricing" that irks the people who are reflexively anti-market. And no matter what you call it, the sanctimonious environmentalists will fight it because it minimizes the need for heroic personal sacrifice with respect to preserving the environment (frankly, these personal sacrifices probably aren't significant in the first place--the bulk of pollution…

> the sanctimonious environmentalists will fight it because it minimizes the need for heroic personal sacrifice with respect to preserving the environment

Any evidence for this? IMO "Sanctimonious environmentalists" only care that consumption reduces. Whether that's voluntary or due to being priced out by carbon taxes is irrelevant. If anything doing it voluntarily, before it was ever needed to make your household budget work, would make them feel even holier.

Re: How should net metering affect your electric bill?

#117

Post by aftbit »

JaimeThompson wrote: post #103
Dave_Rosenthal wrote: post #99

I just moved into a new construction house in Colorado with a substantial (23kW) solar installation. It’s been interesting to see how much, in the words of the author, ‘feeding bread to pigs’ I have ended up doing. The solar installation (which is probably larger than optimal) is dictated by the policy for the house to be “net zero”, which in turn is dictated by a policy based on the size of the house. (In practice,…

>To completely disincentivize any actual conservation If you are running off of 100% solar that isn't a net negative impact to the environment to use more power in nearly every case.

Don't forget the embodied energy of the overbuilt solar system!

Re: How should net metering affect your electric bill?

#118

Post by mediaman »

JaimeThompson wrote: post #103
Dave_Rosenthal wrote: post #99

I just moved into a new construction house in Colorado with a substantial (23kW) solar installation. It’s been interesting to see how much, in the words of the author, ‘feeding bread to pigs’ I have ended up doing. The solar installation (which is probably larger than optimal) is dictated by the policy for the house to be “net zero”, which in turn is dictated by a policy based on the size of the house. (In practice,…

>To completely disincentivize any actual conservation If you are running off of 100% solar that isn't a net negative impact to the environment to use more power in nearly every case.

There are two environmental costs to this setup.

The first is that if he weren't frivolously moving electrons through his heater, there would be more to feed to the grid for other people. So there is an opportunity cost of reducing CO2-generating energy production elsewhere.

The second is that he installed a much bigger array than optimal, due to regulatory requirements, and that too has up-front environmental consequence. Since he's burning off that excess electricity rather than feeding it to the grid, there's really no redeeming value to an array that's too big.

Re: How should net metering affect your electric bill?

#119

Post by jeffbee »

tempnow987 wrote: post #107

One BIG issue with this article. You are often not allowed to just go off grid and use your own battery as a backup. Does anyone know if they've changed that (zoning / building code / certificate of occupancy) requiring an interconnect with the grid? That is my big issue here. We are getting told how we need to pay for them to build us a bigger / higher power grid. What if I want to go off grid.

I don't know who told you this but I own a 100% off-the-grid property in Mono County that has solar and battery banks (and a generator).

Re: How should net metering affect your electric bill?

#120

Post by jeffbee »

dangjc wrote: post #97

A huge portion of electric bills are paying for wildfire damage/hardening and for expensive transmission lines. Rooftop solar reduces both, but is not being credited for it in NEM 3.0. When electricity is generated and consumed locally, it doesn't need to be transmitted across huge distances using expensive transmission infrastructure. There's also less wires that can trigger fires. But infra is the only way regulate…

The only reason that sounds bad is because fuel is under-taxed. Gas should be at least $9/gallon.
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