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

Re: How should net metering affect your electric bill?

#171

Post by tguvot » Thu, Feb 03, 2022, 6:14 PM UTC

cameldrv wrote: post #126

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.

there is a minimal usage fee, which is essentially connection fee

Re: How should net metering affect your electric bill?

#172

Post by PaulDavisThe1st » Thu, Feb 03, 2022, 6:14 PM UTC

zbrozek wrote: post #164

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People need to be off the grid completely I thought that when I was 16. Now that I'm 58, there is no way in hell I am in favor of every household having energy storage systems sufficient to see them through every night and season of high energy use. I'm all for some level of distributed power generation, and some level of distributed energy storage, but "people need to be off the grid completely" is, IMO, a step to…

I'm 34 and am working towards being grid-independent because the cost exceeds the value.

As I've described here (comment in thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30195830 ), it would be essentially absurd to try to go fully offgrid in our home here near Santa Fe. Note that I define full offgrid as "not burning wood to supplement electricity usage for heat", which may differ from your view.

Re: How should net metering affect your electric bill?

#173

Post by zopa » Thu, Feb 03, 2022, 6:15 PM UTC

bo1024 wrote: post #57

samatman wrote: post #47

I'm not sure where to start with this article. Ok, how about here: there is no necessary connection between costs and prices, at all, and this is why some businesses go broke and others are worth a trillion dollars. Starting completely over with the basic microeconomics correct, there's surely an interesting question about public utilities which are paying prices for electricity which no longer line up with amortizat…

Possibly right but in an ideal world for maximum welfare, prices should signal costs or externalities.

That's a nice emergent feature that happens when you have plenty of competition, low transaction costs, perfect information and so on. Sometimes the real world is close enough to that one that you can pretend prices and costs are the same (although even then, just marginal costs, which doesn't include infrastructure that's already built).

But it shouldn't be even mildly surprising when they diverge; it's certainly not a lie.

Re: How should net metering affect your electric bill?

#174

Post by epistasis » Thu, Feb 03, 2022, 6:15 PM UTC

FabHK wrote: post #163

jeppesen-io wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Question is whether batteries are getting better fast enough. Cost per energy stored might be coming down relatively quickly, but energy density (energy per volume) or specific energy (energy per mass) are improving only very slowly. As a consequence, I think long-range electric passenger jets, for example, are many decades off.

In the context of grid electricity and nuclear, this parameter doesn't matter.

For long-range passenger jets, batteries will likely never be feasible. Aviation will have other solutions.

Re: How should net metering affect your electric bill?

#175

Post by clairity » Thu, Feb 03, 2022, 6:19 PM UTC

tempnow987 wrote: post #96

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…

This is common in the US as well actually. A-10 rates for example in PG&E land have a demand charge - https://www.pge.com/en_US/small-medium-business/your-account... . Basically, based on breaker size. If you have a 400A breaker you might pay $2,000 / month demand charge. Usage might be small (sometimes these loads are spikey). It's not uncommon for folks to then pay more attention to peak load if you pay based on br…

this is a form of two-part pricing[0], which is a compromise between simple (single) pricing and continuous pricing (aka perfect price discrimination) to maximize value capture with minimal complexity.

two-part pricing also tends to make markets (from the demand-side) more rational and efficient, but that's not often the reason it's employed, which is why regulation is often needed (particularly in monopoly markets).

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-part_tariff

Re: How should net metering affect your electric bill?

#176

Post by jmacd » Thu, Feb 03, 2022, 6:19 PM UTC

bonzini wrote: post #141

jmacd wrote: post #41

The (privatized) power utility in Nova Scotia, Canada just this week proposed a fee of $8/kWh for solar power entering the grid. It was met with a pretty ferocious response to the point the government started re-writing the legislation that governs utility regulation. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/premier-vows-to-p... A very large solar industry has been established around these pricing discrepancies. No…

Note that it's $8/kW/month (presumably based on peak kW production); not $8/kWh.

shoot, you are right!

Re: How should net metering affect your electric bill?

#177

Post by sokoloff » Thu, Feb 03, 2022, 6:19 PM UTC

thatfrenchguy wrote: post #149

secabeen wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that's the problem! The cost of the grid is the same whether it delivers you 100kWh or 10,000kWh. The delivery charge should be a fixed monthly charge, based on the size of your meter, not scaled to the number of kWh you consume.

It encourages you to use more electricity though, which is not good.

Encourages you in what way? Your bill is still higher the more energy you consume, just increasing more slowly than if the rates were higher.

Many believe (and I’m inclined to agree) that encouraging a switch from locally burned fossil fuels to electricity is better even if that electricity is currently* generated partially from fossil fuel. The theory is the electric plants could more easily become cleaner than if millions of home need to have their heating equipment upgraded.

The problem where I am is that natural gas is so cheap (though less than previously) that it’s hard to make electric heating competitive.

* no pun intended

Re: How should net metering affect your electric bill?

#178

Post by secabeen » Thu, Feb 03, 2022, 6:20 PM UTC

manquer wrote: post #154

secabeen wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is water scarcity a thing in your area? Perhaps your water is cheap because its readily available in your area. In Chicago, they have so much water in Lake Michigan, most homes don't even have water meters.

Living close to a water source or reservoir doesn’t make conservation less important.It is a intricate system with complex interconnects A lot of places downstream will be using the water from your Lake /Dam /river as their only source. Same reason why in some states like Colarado it is illegal to rain water harvest. Riparian rights and ethics are complex

Fair. I still prefer an honest system that charges a fair, flat rate for the infrastructure, and then a usage charge for usage. If we want to disincentive usage, we can put a tax on the consumption rate; that's certainly better than wrapping up some/all of the infrastructure costs into the consumption rate just to make the latter higher.

Re: How should net metering affect your electric bill?

#179

Post by SamBam » Thu, Feb 03, 2022, 6:21 PM UTC

greendave wrote: post #31

SamBam wrote: post #19

Earlier 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…

But there's a huge difference between actual zero usage and net-zero usage. That's the whole point.

If you're using a generator (or, as another comment said, just use hardly any electricity) then you're not a burden on the system at all (or barely).

If you're "net zero" because you feed the grid your excess power during the day and take away power during the night, you're using all their infrastructure.

In your example, you don't need the grid, so it makes sense not to pay grid overhead (minus arguments about how we still pay for schools with taxes even if we're not using them).

In the solar example you absolutely need the grid. So net metering down to zero is definitely a subsidy. A subsidy I absolutely agree with, but a subsidy none-the-less.

Re: How should net metering affect your electric bill?

#180

Post by secabeen » Thu, Feb 03, 2022, 6:23 PM UTC

thatfrenchguy wrote: post #149

secabeen wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that's the problem! The cost of the grid is the same whether it delivers you 100kWh or 10,000kWh. The delivery charge should be a fixed monthly charge, based on the size of your meter, not scaled to the number of kWh you consume.

It encourages you to use more electricity though, which is not good.

There are ways around that though; you could give a small rebate on the meter fee for low-use customers, to encourage conservation. (My water bill is that way, the full meter charge is around $50/month, but if you use less than 700 Cubic-feet of water a month, the meter fee drops to $30/mo.) Is a little less pure than just charging a fair rate, but seems a reasonable hybrid approach.