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What this shows is solar is increasingly threatening the electric utility business model. Even without net metering, demand destruction will cause the traditional model to stop working.
What will people do at night?
How many years before this happens in parts of the United States?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm guessing: fewer people buying from the power companies/grid => the fixed costs of these companies are pushed onto the poorer customers, who already couldn't afford much.
Don't they charge a minimum just for keeping the wires connected?
I’ve only ever rented though. Are connection fees something that homeworkers think about?
Possibly we will have to see changes to account for this sort of stuff at a more granular level, as the grid becomes more dynamic. But, that’s a future we should be actively looking to design for, as the energy supply mix is going to change whatever anybody thinks about that. Can’t beat energy falling from the sky, on price…
What this shows is solar is increasingly threatening the electric utility business model. Even without net metering, demand destruction will cause the traditional model to stop working.
Will it? I’m not sure how the utilities structure their prices wrt the actual cost, but they definitely separate the baseline connection cost from usage on bills (at least in the US), so they may not be killed by people using very little power as long as the connection fee actually covers things.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm guessing: fewer people buying from the power companies/grid => the fixed costs of these companies are pushed onto the poorer customers, who already couldn't afford much.
Don't they charge a minimum just for keeping the wires connected?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There’s a business model where distributed solar production and storage is the norm and central grid based generation and delivery is the minority. Such a model is extremely resistant and there’s less system infrastructure necessary. It’s quite feasible to redesign the system around a “distributed first” model.
Where do the massive upgrades to the distribution system required for this kind of setup come from? We simultaneously hate utilities and want them to redesign and pay for a distribution system that was not intended for bidirectional load flow. Our municipal distribution systems are barely adequate. Net metering produces essentially no revenue but imposes a huge load on that infra.
The section "1.1.3 Bringing large savings on grid expansions" [1] has a good explanation.
1. https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/solar-electricity-e...
What this shows is solar is increasingly threatening the electric utility business model. Even without net metering, demand destruction will cause the traditional model to stop working.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm guessing: fewer people buying from the power companies/grid => the fixed costs of these companies are pushed onto the poorer customers, who already couldn't afford much.
Don't they charge a minimum just for keeping the wires connected?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm guessing: fewer people buying from the power companies/grid => the fixed costs of these companies are pushed onto the poorer customers, who already couldn't afford much.
Don't they charge a minimum just for keeping the wires connected?
[1] There is a price for the first 50 units you consume, then a higher price for the next 150 units, etc. Similar system to income taxes.
Also the national grid is notorious for it's frequent blackouts (load-shedding) since the early ’90s. Solar allowed us to have uninterrupted supply in the mornings and longer backups during night.