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How should net metering affect your electric bill?

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Re: How should net metering affect your electric bill?

#181

Post by Dave_Rosenthal »

nostromo wrote: post #166
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,…

> Since I easily generate more electricity that I will ever use (see above for why policies drove us to an installation larger that necessary) my household has no incentive to conserve at all. ... so? You're generating energy from the sun. Feel free to use it all. We don't conserve energy for fun, we conserve it to protect the environment.

You comment makes sense if I was not hooked up to the grid. But I am. So, if my family conserves, that energy we save offsets someone else’s coal-generated energy and helps the environment. But I have zero incentive to so do because of layers of bad policies.

Re: How should net metering affect your electric bill?

#182

Post by lifeisstillgood »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #38
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aside from the obvious problem (which poor people) it is a very interesting idea to remove all subsidies (explicit and implicit). Terrifying but interesting

The obvious problem is solved by making it universal. You do not need to choose which poor people, just make it everyone, and then collect a marginal income tax. Although, I would prefer marginal sales taxes, but that seems technically impossible with current technology. The reason why it is not done is because it would lay bare all the inequities in the system, as well as require higher taxes due to not being able t…

>>> The reason why it is not done is because it would lay bare all the inequities in the system,

Is that a common justification for UBI? I have not heard it but it would be a big reasons for me to support it - any reading you know of?

Re: How should net metering affect your electric bill?

#184

Post by paulmd »

epistasis wrote: post #138
rr808 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Right, but that fixed cost of the grid is entirely determined by the peak capacity needed, not by average usage. And actual usage of that capital often has peak usage much more extreme than a typical 90/10 rule, meaning that the vast majority of that fixed cost is mostly unused. The key to decreasing that peak is the distributed storage that's paired with distributed solar. It allows massive amounts of cost savings,…

Which - to go back to my "the utilities need to be paying fair rates for the infrastructure provided by clients" - if you're going to be putting extra cycles on my battery, you'd better be paying me a decent rate for it. I've always seen the idea thrown out as this abstract "we can use everyone's car as a peaker battery, it's gonna be great!" but if they are gonna pay distributed storage rates like the rates they pay for distributed generation, then fuck no, I'm not letting you wreck my battery for 50 cents a day.

Utilities are gonna charge you 25c a kWh extra for peak demand delivery, and then be paying the actual people delivering it like 1c a kWh, you can book it.

Re: How should net metering affect your electric bill?

#185

Post by appletrotter »

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

Maybe it does sometimes though? Speaking of the great lakes, if you live in the region it doesn’t take you very long to drive out of the watershed for your respective lake. That should be where the bounds of effect end, and that entire region will generally have plenty of water. For example, Ohio has two watersheds, one for the lake up north and another for the Ohio river which takes up 2/3 of the state. Excess water consumption in the lake erie watershed shouldn’t ever hurt the ohio river watershed. Issues with the rivers that feed the ohio river might cause issues, but the point is this: the degrees to which regions are linked in terms of water varies dramatically.

Re: How should net metering affect your electric bill?

#186

Post by thomastu »

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…

> I have not yet been able to find any explicit rules on PG&E's site explaining how time of use and net metering interact. (And for that matter, PG&E goes to nearly excessive length to avoid describing how anything works, what the actual rates and charges are, or generally putting the most useless pablum on their website.)

PGE explains this for retail customers right here: https://www.pge.com/en_US/residential/solar-and-vehicles/gre...

The various rate schedules for the different NEM interconnections are also published and easily found. e.g. for NEM2 - https://www.pge.com/en_US/for-our-business-partners/intercon... (the actual tariff is on the pdf link on the right hand side - https://www.pge.com/tariffs/assets/pdf/tariffbook/ELEC_SCHED...). Each rate will have some text like this which describes what the rate is.

> All rates charged under this schedule will be in accordance with the eligible customer-generator’s PG&E otherwise-applicable metered rate schedule (OAS).

So if you are a PGE customer on the E-TOU-C rate schedule, NEM2 (roughly) credits your excess generation under that schedule. Part of this should hopefully move new home-owners to either install batteries or if that is cost prohibitive, install west-facing panels.

Re: How should net metering affect your electric bill?

#187

Post by m463 »

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.

Punative pricing in california is really a disservice to customers/consumers.

In just about every other business, if you use a lot of something, you get a discount. For california electricity, it's the opposite.

Re: How should net metering affect your electric bill?

#188

Post by rhino369 »

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

>Living close to a water source or reservoir doesn’t make conservation less important.

It doesn't necessarily make conservation less important. But it certainly does in some places like Chicago. They pull water from the same water shed that it eventually flows back into after use. And they control how much water flows from Lake Michigan into the Chicago river (and eventually the Mississippi River) via a damn.

It's probably a bit more complex than that, and creating that system did change the water flow in the Great lakes (but that damage was done 130 years ago). But right now, its essentially free water. In Illinois, all roads (waterways) lead to Rome (the Mississippi).

Re: How should net metering affect your electric bill?

#189

Post by jefftk »

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…

> We're paying $0.30-$0.40 / kwh to PG&E, which pencils out to over $9 / gallon.

No way. An electric car (including charging inefficiency) uses about ~0.3 kWh per mile, so at $0.35/kWh each mile costs you ~$0.10 in electricity. If a gas car gets 35mpg, then for each mile to cost ~$0.10 in fuel, gas would need to cost $3.50 not $9.

How are you getting $9?

Re: How should net metering affect your electric bill?

#190

Post by warble »

Dave_Rosenthal wrote: post #181
nostromo wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Since I easily generate more electricity that I will ever use (see above for why policies drove us to an installation larger that necessary) my household has no incentive to conserve at all. ... so? You're generating energy from the sun. Feel free to use it all. We don't conserve energy for fun, we conserve it to protect the environment.

You comment makes sense if I was not hooked up to the grid. But I am. So, if my family conserves, that energy we save offsets someone else’s coal-generated energy and helps the environment. But I have zero incentive to so do because of layers of bad policies.

Yeah, in the current market you're correct, but we should be concentrating on creating an excess of cheap power (carbon free of course) rather than conserving.
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