Rate-design wars are the sound of utilities taking residential PV seriously
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Re: Rate-design wars are the sound of utilities taking residential PV seriously
#2Hawaii gives us a glimpse of the future of what solar will look like in the US. They are the hottest solar market in the US due to having the highest electricity rates combined with excellent conditions for solar. The primary utility in Hawaii (HECO), has started denying many permits to homeowners due to grid saturation on many circuits.
Infrastructure investments must now be done by HECO to allow for increased solar adoption - something that may not be in the best interest for the utility.
Re: Rate-design wars are the sound of utilities taking residential PV seriously
#3Interesting, it is getting more "real" to the utilities. It should also be shifting the transmission load around, I don't know if that helps or hurts.
Re: Rate-design wars are the sound of utilities taking residential PV seriously
#4Hawaii gives us a glimpse of the future of what solar will look like in the US. They are the hottest solar market in the US due to having the highest electricity rates combined with excellent conditions for solar. The primary utility in Hawaii (HECO), has started denying many permits to homeowners due to grid saturation on many circuits. Infrastructure investments must now be done by HECO to allow for increased solar…
I'm uninformed, "grid saturation" meaning what?
Re: Rate-design wars are the sound of utilities taking residential PV seriously
#5Hawaii gives us a glimpse of the future of what solar will look like in the US. They are the hottest solar market in the US due to having the highest electricity rates combined with excellent conditions for solar. The primary utility in Hawaii (HECO), has started denying many permits to homeowners due to grid saturation on many circuits. Infrastructure investments must now be done by HECO to allow for increased solar…
I'm uninformed, "grid saturation" meaning what?
I'm not positive, but I might imagine that it's that the solar power generated by that particular grid either equals or exceeds the amount used by it. If there's multiple grids it could be that the residential area is nearly self sustaining during the day, and they don't have the capability to move that generation successfully to the other places that need it because the grid interchanges weren't built with that in mind.
Re: Rate-design wars are the sound of utilities taking residential PV seriously
#6> What makes the policy debate so difficult to resolve is that tariff design is a very indirect way to support residential PV. In Germany, they’ve gone with feed-in tariffs for solar PV instead – a direct subsidy for every kWh of energy coming from your PV system. Much simpler, and allows a reasoned debate on tariff design apart from solar PV policy.
I'm fairly confident this section about Germany is wrong - Germany has feed in tariffs which operate in addition to net metering, not as an alternative. That is certainly the case in the UK, whose system was modelled on Germany's.
Still, the basic point of this post is correct, net metering is an indirect subsidy, but there is an obvious technical solution: using the article's metaphor, to encourage people to eat their own zucchinis, or to use the solar energy on-site rather than automatically exporting it to the grid.
At present, PV systems export generated electricity directly to the grid, separately from the grid-connection used to bring in electricity which is consumed on-site, all of which is imported. Solar could fulfil normal electricity demand, and also be used to charge up storage heaters, or storage a.c. To the utilities, the house would look like any other, except with lower electricity demand.
Re: Rate-design wars are the sound of utilities taking residential PV seriously
#7Dig a 15 meter pit 5 meters across and suspend a 5 meter cube of ferro-concrete on a cable feeding onto a drum above it connected to a gearbox and motor/generator. Attach this to your PV and then relax.
Re: Rate-design wars are the sound of utilities taking residential PV seriously
#8Hilarious.
"they want to further reduce the incremental energy price by implementing a fixed monthly charge on each customer, aimed at covering some of the costs of retail distribution, metering and billing."
That's straight out of the 1975 hippie classic "Ecotopia: The Notebooks and Reports of William Weston" - and is one of the Casus belli California cited when seceding from the union in that book.
Re: Rate-design wars are the sound of utilities taking residential PV seriously
#9Hilarious. "they want to further reduce the incremental energy price by implementing a fixed monthly charge on each customer, aimed at covering some of the costs of retail distribution, metering and billing." That's straight out of the 1975 hippie classic "Ecotopia: The Notebooks and Reports of William Weston" - and is one of the Casus belli California cited when seceding from the union in that book.
Thanks for sharing this book...and the Latin!
Links for both below if anyone else is interested:
Re: Rate-design wars are the sound of utilities taking residential PV seriously
#10Higher fixed monthly charges will only delay the inevitable. In places like Hawaii, it could actually speed it up.
Suppose you were a homeowner with solar panels installed. Right now, you're not paying very little because of net metering. Two years from now, the utility decides you'll need to pay monthly for grid connection.
It might then make sense to just cut the grid connection. Adding panels and batteries is the obvious choice, along with upgrading appliances with more energy efficient ones. Batteries are expensive, though they could be in your electric car.
One step further, if neighbourhoods or condo associations organize in micro-grids, big utilities are again stranded with useless assets.