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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?

#311

Post by pabs3 »

josephcsible wrote: post #298
pabs3 wrote: post #292

Probably switching to transparent pricing is the way to go. Calculate the costs of things ($X/year for maintaining transmission lines and other over Y customers = $Z infra fee) and charge separately for each of them.

This is a good idea, but it would never survive in California, because people would complain that it's regressive. Rich households use more electricity than poor households, but the infrastructure maintenance cost for each is approximately equal, so with your proposal, poor households wouldn't get subsidized by rich ones anymore.

Not necessarily, you can scale each of the fees by income, either of the household or the average income of the suburb/region. Or just introduce subsidies for poor households.

Re: How should net metering affect your electric bill?

#312

Post by novok »

qqqwerty wrote: post #268
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,…

The markets and incentives are pretty screwy right now, but overbuilding solar is probably one of our best strategies at preparing for the future in the current moment. There are a number of reasons for this, in no particular order: Batteries still need to come down in cost before they are economical for residential energy storage. But once they become cost effective, they are fairly easy to add to existing installat…

Solar panels have a ~20 year life and are also getting cheaper as time goes on. Maybe building mounting capacity for them is smart, but it's not necessarily smart to more panels than you will properly use. You can buy more panels later if it actually becomes smart to use them and you have a use case.

Re: How should net metering affect your electric bill?

#314

Post by kelnos »

GravitasFailure wrote: post #272
kelnos wrote: post #267

The annoying thing about this is that, if the new California metering rules do end up passing, I will definitely not be installing solar on my roof, because it will end up either costing more in the long run, or the break-even point will be so far out that it's not worth it to me. Now, as the article says (or at least hints at), maybe there are better things we can do as a society to reduce carbon emissions than have…

California requires[0] new construction to have solar now, so while you might not have to worry about installing it you very well may be stuck with a system if you move. I'm not sure I agree with your assertion that increased solar installs will leave less money for grid infrastructure. With the moves away from gas for heating and cooking and the proliferation of electric cars, it seems that demand for residential po…

> With the moves away from gas for heating and cooking and the proliferation of electric cars, it seems that demand for residential power is only going to go up with solar offsetting it

I see your point with EVs, but the utility (at least here) that provides gas and electric is the same. So a shift from gas to electric for cooking and heating won't really change the amount of money or where it goes (unless electric costs more than gas). Hell, if heating/cooking shifts more toward electric, people could power those off solar, so that shift would be a net negative for the utility's revenue.

I don't think I could give up my gas stove, but if I did get solar at my current place, I would likely replace my hot water heater with an electric one the next time it needs replacing, and run it off the panels. Ditto for the furnace, though those tend to have longer replacement cycles than hot water heaters.

Certainly if everything moves from gas to electric, then the utility can just stop providing gas entirely, and start dismantling that infrastructure, so sure, over a long time, that would save them money. But I honestly can't see that happening, even in a place like CA, for... a century? More? I think any legislature that mandated people replace their gas appliances with electric would get voted out in a heartbeat. Then again, who knows how popular attitudes will change in the coming decades.

Re: How should net metering affect your electric bill?

#315

Post by londons_explore »

twoodfin wrote: post #203
Dave_Rosenthal wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It'd be interesting to know the "true" price of that energy. That is, what the utility would pay you for what you feed back into the grid vs. acquiring that energy from another source. Essentially impossible to calculate given all the regulations and subsidies, but my guess is that it would be quite low relative to your metered rate, and thus the actual "offset" of carbon-based fuels is small.

In the UK, one company gives different buy and sell prices every half hour based on live market rates. [1] You can see that the 'buy back' rate is only about half of the sell rate most of the time.

This is still pretty distorted, because many taxes and distribution fees charged on electricity sold are not refunded on electricity bought back.

[1]: https://www.energy-stats.uk/octopus-agile-outgoing-export-lo...

Re: How should net metering affect your electric bill?

#316

Post by moogly »

ptaipale wrote: post #218
FabHK wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ha, in Germany it's called "Fernwärme", which corresponds nicely to "teleheating" (which Wikipedia lists as an alternative name). It's great, not only does electricity and water magically come from a wall in your basement, but also heat :-) I thought they had abandoned the idea of using heat from a nuclear power plant for district heating in Russia, but apparently that is actually done [1, 2] extensively. Having a pi…

District heating from nuclear used to be a no-no but has recently gained momentum in Finland (as an idea). Build an SMR near the city for electricity, and use the excess heat for district warming (which is needed during most of the year).

It really is a no-brainer when ~40% of the energy produced by a nuclear reactor is currently pumped out as warm water in the ocean (about 10-12ºC warmer than when it was pumped in).

Re: How should net metering affect your electric bill?

#317

Post by moogly »

pabs3 wrote: post #294
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…

Why is it based on breaker/fuse size? Surely the cost should be based on cost of maintenance over the entire grid over the last year divided by the amount of customers using the grid?

Overprovisioning/grid stability.

Re: How should net metering affect your electric bill?

#318

Post by dzhiurgis »

danans wrote: post #310
dzhiurgis wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At some point if not already batteries are cheaper than grid upgrades

Having recently installed a battery, I'd say they are definitely not cheaper. There is no way that residential battery storage can match the cost per kWh of utility scale storage.

$10k or so per house vs digging up endless amount of streets?

Re: How should net metering affect your electric bill?

#319

Post by SilasX »

Arainach wrote: post #101
secabeen wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, this model is common in other utilities in the US (both by water and gas bills are structured this way), with a large meter fee and a consumption charge in line with the resource cost. Electricity could certainly be charged this way (and should), but it would be a huge change in how electricity is billed here, and the PUC would rather just make changes to just the net-metering system rather than open the can of…

I've seen this model, but it seems counterproductive to any environmental goals. For instance, my water infrastructure bill absolutely dwarfs my usage. I could take an hourlong shower every day and barely notice the increase in my bill. It seems like it's sending the wrong message.

Thank you! I thought I was insane for being the only one who noticed this, though on my natural gas bill instead of water. I have a mandatory $16 base charge and $1.50 payment fee on every bill. That's huge relative to the variable part! [1] So, estimating from non-winter months, I could avoid all cooking, laundry, and hot water for showers, and it would save me ... $5/month.

They should amortize the cost of the infra over actual usage, so that incentives are properly aligned -- your bill should mainly depend on how much you use!

[1] Total bill is like $45 for winter, $22 otherwise.

Re: How should net metering affect your electric bill?

#320

Post by SilasX »

Rebelgecko wrote: post #235
Arainach wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen this model, but it seems counterproductive to any environmental goals. For instance, my water infrastructure bill absolutely dwarfs my usage. I could take an hourlong shower every day and barely notice the increase in my bill. It seems like it's sending the wrong message.

The problem we've had where I live, is that when people do a good job reducing water/electricity consumption the utility companies have to either jack up their rates, do layoffs, or go broke because they aren't able to amortize their fixed costs as well.

So? They should be able to adjust to correct for misestimation. That's not a dealbreaker for the idea.
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