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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?

#281

Post by Syonyk »

fomine3 wrote: post #273
Syonyk wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> E.g. I am heating my garage with an electric heater because it costs me zero. There's very few situations in which pushing electrons through a resistor is the best use of the electrons. Why not build a BOINC farm for the winter or something? You put 1000W through a heater, you get 1000W thermal. You push 1000W through a collection of computers that are old and more or less free, you get... still 1000W thermal, plus…

Heating is not just room temperature. For who prefer radiant heating, resistor heater is easier option. Possibly heat pump based radiant heater is available but temperature is not high as resistor.

I assume one heating their garage on "I have more power than I know what to do with!" resistive heating isn't bothering with radiant heat.

Re: How should net metering affect your electric bill?

#282

Post by KerrAvon »

mediaman wrote: post #118
JaimeThompson wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 conseq…

I don’t understand this attitude at all. Your first “cost“ is like saying there’s an opportunity cost to my purchasing bubble gum and putting it on a shelf because other people can’t chew that bubble gum and I’m not chewing it yet.

Re: How should net metering affect your electric bill?

#283

Post by Taniwha »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #277
throwaway329183 wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The big problem is timing, if your neighbour's solar panels were at peak output in the night and yours in the day, the credit system works.

That's not just a problem with being hooked up to the grid so you can altruistically use less of your own energy and donate the rest to other people. It's also a problem for billing Dave Rosenthal appropriately. Assuming he turns on lights at night, he's not using his own energy. No amount of solar generation will let you use power when the sun isn't shining. So he's not reducing the demand for (say) coal at night. B…

grid batteries do exactly this

Re: How should net metering affect your electric bill?

#284

Post by Wiseacre »

oldsecondhand wrote: post #278
lotsofpulp wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why all subsidies should be in the form of cash. Give poor people cash rather than obfuscate prices, which then results in hampering of market mechanisms and results in inefficient allocation of resources.

The implicit assumption behind such subsidies is that the poor would spend the cash benefit frivolously (booze, entertainment etc.)

Then there should be utility stamps in the way food stamps/SNAP cards exist, not artificially skewing prices.

Re: How should net metering affect your electric bill?

#285

Post by lmm »

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…

> 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.

The New York Times said that their article pointing out that (most) recycling has higher environmental costs than landfill attracted the most complaints of any article for at least 10 years.

My old professor doesn't get invited to climate conferences anymore because he ran some serious research into whether geoengineering approaches were feasible.

There is definitely a large constituency of hair-shirt environmentalism that cares more about how much you're suffering for the sacrifices you're making than about how big an actual effect you're having.

Re: How should net metering affect your electric bill?

#286

Post by hbarka »

The ultimate answer to this is to go self-powered. The sun will never raise its rates, and PV panels+batteries are getting cheaper.

Utilities are not admitting that independent power generators contribute to creating a more resilient grid at no cost to ratepayers/full cost to the homeowner.

Re: How should net metering affect your electric bill?

#287

Post by pphysch »

hbarka wrote: post #286

The ultimate answer to this is to go self-powered. The sun will never raise its rates, and PV panels+batteries are getting cheaper. Utilities are not admitting that independent power generators contribute to creating a more resilient grid at no cost to ratepayers/full cost to the homeowner.

It's certainly increasing the availability of power but I fail to see how it makes a "more resilient grid". Who is gonna fix a power line that goes down?

Re: How should net metering affect your electric bill?

#289

Post by thehappypm »

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,…

Seems like the obvious move is to get an electric car

Re: How should net metering affect your electric bill?

#290

Post by powcontech »

oldsecondhand wrote: post #280
cool_dude85 wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even in a single example such as your electric bill, this is absolutely impossible (or, maybe with a team of statisticians and accountants working on each customer's bill each month, and of course their associated costs). The fact is, the utility does not know how much money you cost them in a given month and it's impossible to say. Some of your electricity is being generated from a plant planned and built 40+ years…

> The fact is, the utility does not know how much money you cost them in a given month and it's impossible to say. Some of your electricity is being generated from a plant planned and built 40+ years ago, long since paid for. There are generators independent from utilities, yet they figured the pricing out somehow.

The pricing is sometimes based on negotiations which consider the cost of alternative sources of power, the operating cost of the plants, and refurbishments and maintenance it will need over the course of the contract term.
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