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

Re: How should net metering affect your electric bill?

#191

Post by bick_nyers » Thu, Feb 03, 2022, 7:08 PM UTC

woodruffw wrote: post #17

vehemenz wrote: post #6

If 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.

As far as I can tell, only Florida makes it actually illegal to disconnect from the power grid[1]. It seems to be legal in every other state, subject to doing paperwork. [1]: https://off-grid-home.com/is-it-legal-to-disconnect-your-hom...

What if I just didn't pay my bill and the utility company disconnected me from the power grid? Would I be subject to fines and jail time? Absurd, but hey, that sure sounds like Florida.

Edit: If you follow the link in the article, it sounds like this was all because of disconnecting the water hookup and has nothing to do with solar power?

Re: How should net metering affect your electric bill?

#192

Post by ketzo » Thu, Feb 03, 2022, 7:14 PM UTC

m463 wrote: post #187

cameldrv wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's a matter of tradeoffs. California electric companies – and PG&E in particular – desperately need to decrease load during fire season so that they have more flexibility in the grid. It's important for them to try and disincentivize power usage pretty much however they can.

Plus, using less power is better for the environment.

Re: How should net metering affect your electric bill?

#193

Post by cool_dude85 » Thu, Feb 03, 2022, 7:15 PM UTC

secabeen wrote: post #155

brohee wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not true at all, as people use more electricity, aggregate usage gets higher and the grid eventually needs beefier interconnections, beefier transformers... The delivery charge would actually be fairer based on peak usage, as it has more relevance to the sizing of the grid.

> That's not true at all, as people use more electricity, aggregate usage gets higher and the grid eventually needs beefier interconnections, beefier transformers... To a degree, but not in a linear fashion to the amount of power delivered, and certainly not on a unit-power delivery basis. >The delivery charge would actually be fairer based on peak usage, as it has more relevance to the sizing of the grid. Very true,…

Even demand charges often do a bad job of matching utility costs. If I run a church and my peak demand is consistently reached at 11 AM on Sunday morning, guess what, I'm way overpaying relative to my cost to the utility.

The problem with high meter charges (or charging based on panel amperage/etc.) is that it doesn't do a good job matching utility costs either. Let's say I have a 2-story house and split it into a duplex. I add a second panel on the top floor and live on the bottom. Did my second panel double costs for the utility? Absolutely not. If I build a carriage house in my backyard with a 200 amp panel, does it cost the same to the utility as if I put a 200 amp panel on my new house in my far-off exurb? Absolutely not.

That's not to get into the distributional effects of these kinds of changes. Any kind of base-rate increase will absolutely hammer the poor in order to save lots for suburb mcmansions. This may be economically more efficient, but good luck selling it.

Re: How should net metering affect your electric bill?

#194

Post by cool_dude85 » Thu, Feb 03, 2022, 7:17 PM UTC

sokoloff wrote: post #177

thatfrenchguy wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It encourages you in the sense that the marginal cost of turning your heat up to 75 in the winter instead of 70 is much lower, or that buying a 4000 sq. ft. house will not come with as big an increase on your monthly costs as it does now.

Re: How should net metering affect your electric bill?

#195

Post by bick_nyers » Thu, Feb 03, 2022, 7:18 PM UTC

ohgodplsno wrote: post #114

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.

If the law is going to mandate staying connected to the grid (subject to any maintenance fees the utility company desires, independent of usage), then those grid maintenance fees should be moved to tax dollars.

Re: How should net metering affect your electric bill?

#196

Post by cool_dude85 » Thu, Feb 03, 2022, 7:19 PM UTC

m463 wrote: post #187

cameldrv wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's a disservice to the high-usage customers, who want to offload their environmental costs onto their grandkids and/or countries less equipped to deal with climate change. Soak 'em, I say.

Re: How should net metering affect your electric bill?

#197

Post by tempnow987 » Thu, Feb 03, 2022, 7:21 PM UTC

jeffbee wrote: post #119

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).

Fantastic! Then I have no complaints. The grid is a great resource, IF you are using it, then you should pay for it. And mid-day solar (when PG&E curtails their own solar) does not have same value of power at 6PM - so they need to fix that for sure, which will result in more local battery demand (a good thing).

Re: How should net metering affect your electric bill?

#198

Post by stormbrew » Thu, Feb 03, 2022, 7:21 PM UTC

dahfizz wrote: post #110

guelo wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Doesn't that ruin the incentive structure? Your cash payments are higher when carbon use is higher.

In this kind of scheme, you don't get what you paid back as cash, you get something more like a dividend of the revenues (possibly just as a non-refundable income tax rebate or something, or as a dividend check given to all adults, depending on the particulars of your region's tax aversions).

So you're actually incentivized to consume less, because you get more out of it if your tax payments are less than your dividend.

Obviously there might be some perverse incentives to like.. causing a global increase in emissions while keeping your own small somehow but those are probably hard to significantly profit from.

Re: How should net metering affect your electric bill?

#199

Post by stormbrew » Thu, Feb 03, 2022, 7:24 PM UTC

hardtke wrote: post #122

guelo wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 subsi…

> Canada promised to do that and the proposal was still wildly unpopular and abandoned. I've concluded that any consumer impacting carbon tax cannot work in a democratic system.

We have a carbon tax in Canada and it's probably not going away any time soon (it is, in fact, scheduled to continue going up), so I'm not sure what you mean here. The provinces can do a rebate/dividend if they want and/or run their own system designed that way but I'm not sure if any have.

I'm not sure if your first statement is just saying we abandoned a rebate, but your last statement implies you think any consumer carbon pricing is impossible regardless of that, while your example says otherwise.

Re: How should net metering affect your electric bill?

#200

Post by jillesvangurp » Thu, Feb 03, 2022, 7:27 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…

Yes, it gets better when you consider that homeowners that are putting solar on their roof are essentially providing large amounts of power to energy companies without these companies having to actually spend on infrastructure. It's home owners who bear the financial burden for that as well as the risk.

It gets even better if you consider many people are also installing batteries or plugging cars with vehicle to grid functionality (like the new Ford pickup truck is capable of as well as several other EVs).

A lot of houses with solar and batteries enables the creation of virtual power plants that can supply many GW of power to the grid during peak hours. So, when demand is highest, they can sell power at the most lucrative rates straight from batteries that were charged for free during the day. And they don't even have to buy the batteries or the panels. All they need to do is give a cut of the profits to the home owners.

Basically, the way the EV market is developing, there are going to be many millions of large capacity batteries on wheels plugged into the grid at any time. All power companies have to do is find a way to tap into all that power. Even discharging them a little bit collectively creates a lot of power.

E.g. supplying half a KWH over the course of an evening barely moves the needle on a car. Most EVs have something like 40-50KWH of battery. So we're talking a percent or so. They'd be trickling out electricity at a low rate of something like e.g. 500W or even less. Times a two million plugged in cars is about 1 GW of capacity. Do that for an hour and you get 1GWH of power at the cost of very slightly draining the batteries on a few million cars. That's just car batteries. Many home owners also have batteries installed into their houses, and solar on the roof to charge them. And many of those setups are net producers for large parts of the year.

A gas plant costs about 1000$/MWH to operate. Possibly a bit more lately due to the high gas prices lately. So, 1GWH of power is about 1M $ in cost. That's worth paying something to home owners. Most of them are happy to just have the KWH slashed from their monthly bills. The rest is basically pure profit. Any GWH of gas they don't have to burn adds to their profits. Power companies are spending billions on expensive grid batteries to lower that cost.