How should net metering affect your electric bill? • Hacker News Board

Re: How should net metering affect your electric bill?

#121

Post by beerandt » Thu, Feb 03, 2022, 5:30 PM UTC

PaulHoule wrote: post #70

Right, the claim that renewables are cheaper than nuclear and other alternatives are a half-truth. It's true that renewables can be highly affordable when the sun is shining but when the wind is blowing but the reason why they work with the current grid is that natural gas is highly available and cheap and the capital cost of gas turbine generators (very similar to jet aircraft engines) is very low. Hydroelectric can…

It's this, but it's also more direct and indirect regulation.

For example:

Natural gas compressors now need to be electrically powered instead of NG powered. Added cost, but doesn't reduce total gas burned.

Oil companies are forced to do things like build equipment that captures 100% of vented gasses (instead of burning them off), even when the embedded cost of manufacturing said equipment exceeds any gains. Ie, it creates more emissions than it will ever capture. But still raises the price of oil.

Some of the Texas power plants last year could only generate at the power levels that maximized efficiency (or minimized certain emissions) instead of at maximum output. Asking for an emergency authorization to produce at 100% was granted by the feds, but only at a minimum market price of $1500/MW. (Typically ~$30, with normal extremes ranging from maybe $20-150.)

CAFE standards are essentially quotas that increase the cost of regular ice vehicles in order to subsidize green, hybrid, and electric vehicles.

And perhaps the most direct influence on oil prices is preventing auctions for new federal mineral leases, limiting exploration and extraction of o&g offshore and on federal lands.

Re: How should net metering affect your electric bill?

#122

Post by hardtke » Thu, Feb 03, 2022, 5:30 PM UTC

guelo wrote: post #64

__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

Giving the carbon tax revenue back to people as cash payments could help politically.

Canada promised to do that and the proposal was still wildly unpopular and abandoned. If you've build your life around no carbon tax (e.g. you live far from work and need to drive) you will personally suffer from such a change and will vocally lobby against the change. We end up with things like the Yellow Vest movement in France or the political instability that happens when any government tries to reduce fuel subsidies. It seems that voters are more sensitive to the price of gas than any other issue and any political party that causes the price of gas to go up gets voted out of office. Paul Krugman wrote a post recently showing that US consumers' inflation expectation exactly tracks the price of gas. I've concluded that any consumer impacting carbon tax cannot work in a democratic system. We need subsidies (both explicit and hidden) to reduce our carbon emissions.

Re: How should net metering affect your electric bill?

#123

Post by jeppesen-io » Thu, Feb 03, 2022, 5:35 PM UTC

epistasis wrote: post #108

PaulHoule wrote: post #70

Right, the claim that renewables are cheaper than nuclear and other alternatives are a half-truth. It's true that renewables can be highly affordable when the sun is shining but when the wind is blowing but the reason why they work with the current grid is that natural gas is highly available and cheap and the capital cost of gas turbine generators (very similar to jet aircraft engines) is very low. Hydroelectric can…

> they are still orders of magnitude too expensive This isn't right as of today, stored energy charged by solar is about $0.20/kWh ($200/MWh) which is within spitting distance of the cost of new nuclear. And when you average this cost with the cost of solar/wind delivered directly, it's a huge cost winner. https://www.lazard.com/media/451566/lazards-levelized-cost-o... This is just the cost today, batteries are dropp…

Thank you for saying this. I find in technical circles, like HN, it's often underappreciated how dramatically solar, wind and stored energy are becoming cheaper year by year while production capacity continues to grow

Re: How should net metering affect your electric bill?

#124

Post by rr808 » Thu, Feb 03, 2022, 5:35 PM UTC

paulmd wrote: post #95

epistasis wrote: post #42

One 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…

> The reason is that by having distributed solar and storage, you can massively reduce other fixed cost parts of the grid as they age out. The article also completely ignores the concept that distributed generation can actually reduce infrastructure needs. If you're generating the power at the "last mile" and sending it to your neighbor, that power doesn't travel through a substation, it doesn't travel through long t…

> If you're generating the power at the "last mile" and sending it to your neighbor, that power doesn't travel through a substation, it doesn't travel through long transmission lines that need to be maintained, it's just generated (roughly) where it needs to be, saving you a lot of infrastructure. So it certainly seems "fair" to offset that infrastructure cost at least somewhat - you are providing value to the utility in terms of infrastructure they don't have to build themselves.

This is true if you're not connected to the grid. However if you use power on those cold winter cloudy days you need all that infrastructure still. The difference is when you used the grid's power every day that cost was spread over the year. If you only use grid power 20 days a year that grid infrastructure is very inefficient and costly.

Net metering is an anachronism. You should pay and receive the current spot price which is near zero on Spring/Fall sunny days and super high in Summer evenings and Winter nights.

Re: How should net metering affect your electric bill?

#125

Post by hunterb123 » Thu, Feb 03, 2022, 5:35 PM UTC

Bilal_io wrote: post #105

junon wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You also pay for power you don't even use, from other power providers, in the case of extreme crisis, it seems. I've never lived there but from the outside Texas's power situation seems broken at best.

That's accurate. We're in constant fear of losing power whenever there is a freeze warning (we're on that today and tomorrow at least), rain or heat. That's all thanks to the greedy for-profit system enabled by "conservative" politicians.

That's not really accurate. I've lost power 4 times total in 30 years here. Usually big Texas thunderstorms, never heat.

The 100 year winter freeze I lost power for two days, that was the longest ever.

Haven't lost power since then, didn't lose power for a couple years before that.

We have the cheapest rates because of the way distribution and providers are setup.

The problem with big user bills were SV companies like Griddy tricking people into buying variable rate electricity, something we made illegal since then.

Re: How should net metering affect your electric bill?

#126

Post by cameldrv » Thu, Feb 03, 2022, 5:37 PM UTC

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…

It seems like what is getting lost here is that the reason PG&E only charges for usage and not a fixed connection fee is that that's what the state wanted. They wanted heavy users to pay a disproportionate share of costs to encourage lower usage. In fact, they even put in a "climate credit", which is a fixed rebate users get that effectively makes the connection fee be negative.

Re: How should net metering affect your electric bill?

#127

Post by throwaway894345 » Thu, Feb 03, 2022, 5:37 PM UTC

triceratops wrote: post #116

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…

> 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 bu…

It's pretty much a tautology--I'm defining "sanctimonious environmentalist" as one who makes showy personal sacrifices for esteem. If emissions decrease because manufacturing processes become more efficient, then their sacrifices were for naught and the lifestyle they've been pushing on others becomes irrelevant (or decreases in relevance).

Re: How should net metering affect your electric bill?

#128

Post by rr808 » Thu, Feb 03, 2022, 5:39 PM UTC

bonzini wrote: post #84

irrational wrote: post #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 pane…

If everyone had panels, the kWh price for daytime usage would be $0 or close to zero. Everybody would still pay almost fully for nighttime usage, while daytime usage and production would not have any impact on the bill. Either the fixed part of the bill or the nighttime price would grow as needed to cover the actual cost of the grid and the cost of energy on cloudy days. Either way, the new pricing would stimulate th…

> If everyone had panels, the kWh price for daytime usage would be $0 or close to zero. Everybody would still pay almost fully for nighttime usage, while daytime usage and production would not have any impact on the bill.

Right - but this is different that everyone expects it to work. People expect to sell power to the grid when the sun shines, then get the same power from the grid at night and offset them to be net zero cost. It is not sustainable pricing.

Re: How should net metering affect your electric bill?

#129

Post by andi999 » Thu, Feb 03, 2022, 5:39 PM UTC

jrockway wrote: post #90

emeraldd wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Had to look up `district heating` ... that's a not a common thing in the US.. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_heating

It's a thing in the US. If you're ever walking around Manhattan and see steam coming out of a traffic cone, that's the side effect of district heating (groundwater hitting the very hot steam pipes and vaporizing).

Which should not happen, I mean do you not insulate the pipes?

Re: How should net metering affect your electric bill?

#130

Post by paulmd » Thu, Feb 03, 2022, 5:39 PM UTC

rr808 wrote: post #124

paulmd wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The reason is that by having distributed solar and storage, you can massively reduce other fixed cost parts of the grid as they age out. The article also completely ignores the concept that distributed generation can actually reduce infrastructure needs. If you're generating the power at the "last mile" and sending it to your neighbor, that power doesn't travel through a substation, it doesn't travel through long t…

> If you're generating the power at the "last mile" and sending it to your neighbor, that power doesn't travel through a substation, it doesn't travel through long transmission lines that need to be maintained, it's just generated (roughly) where it needs to be, saving you a lot of infrastructure. So it certainly seems "fair" to offset that infrastructure cost at least somewhat - you are providing value to the utilit…

> This is true if you're not connected to the grid. However if you use power on those cold winter cloudy days you need all that infrastructure still.

Cold winter days don't represent peak consumption for the grid, there is no capacity being built specifically for cold winter days. In contrast there is capacity being built to offset everyone turning on the A/C during summer heatwaves, and solar has high power output during those periods.

Your argument is specifically called out as being a misuse of the "duck curve" concept.

> Common misconceptions

> One misconception related to the duck curve is that solar photovoltaic power does not help supply peak demand and therefore cannot replace other power plants. For example, in California, solar output is low at 7 pm when daily demand usually peaks.[19] This fact leads some to believe that solar power cannot reduce the need for other power plants, as they will still be needed at 7 pm when solar power output is low. However, California's annual demand peaks usually occur around 3 pm to 5 pm,[20] when solar power output is still substantial.[19] The reason that California's annual peak tends to be earlier than the daily peak is that California's annual peak usually occurs on hot days with large air conditioning loads, which tend to run more during midday.[21] As a result, solar power does in fact help supply peak demand and therefore can substitute for other sources of power.