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Solar panels reduced my electric bill in 2022

mattbruenig.com

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Re: Solar panels reduced my electric bill in 2022

#441

Post by hinkley »

secabeen wrote: post #361
hinkley wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you’re missing a different piece of the puzzle here which is that if I pay $10 for the first gallon of water and next to nothing for the next 500, I have an incentive to use more water and not less. I’ve paid for it anyway. When you’re trying to solve public policy problems especially where conservation is concerned the notion of math gets complicated very quickly.

Perhaps, but if we want to dis-incentivize usage as a political policy, we can just increase the usage charge above from "next to nothing". For power, generation costs in California run from $150/MWh to -$150/MWh: https://www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/prices.aspx $0.15/kWh seems like enough to begin the dis-incentivizing of usage, and that can certainly be pushed up more.

So we’re going to reduce the hourly rate and charge a base fee, and then increase the hourly rate back to the old value?

So you’re asking for a regressive rate in electricity.

If your solution to a public policy issue is “why don’t we just” then you don’t understand the issue. I’m just pointing out externalities that you guys aren’t thinking about when shooting the shit about upcharging low income families and allowing the rich to get richer. You are contributing to the problems we complain about.

Re: Solar panels reduced my electric bill in 2022

#442

Post by jjav »

konschubert wrote: post #369
dpierce9 wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Net metering means utilities sell the power your system produces at full price to your neighbor. They pocket the avoided cost of producing and delivering that power (and during price spikes the cost of fuel can be higher than the value of producing power). Net metering does create stranded assets if everyone does it. But not everyone does. Further, the idea that the utility gains NO benefit from net metering is wrong…

Your solar panels tend to produce power at times when power is cheap - because there is so much solar power. When you do net metering, the utility has to pay on top: They have to sell the power that you produce on the spot market, but the price they get for it is less than what they have to pay to you. It's not a scalable approach.

> Your solar panels tend to produce power at times when power is cheap - because there is so much solar power.

But that's not true in how PG&E prices power. The very highest rates start when the day is just past warmest and sunniest (3pm) when there's tons of solar power available to feed into the grid. The cheapest rates start at midnight when solar contribution is obviously zero.

Re: Solar panels reduced my electric bill in 2022

#443

Post by bichiliad »

moffkalast wrote: post #253
isanengineer wrote: post #77

I worked in the solar industry for years and this is a very good summary of the residential install process from the customer side. I’ll also second one of the main points of the author: do NOT get a solar lease. Either finance it through a solar loan or pay cash. A good solar company will not push you into a lease. If they try, talk to someone else.

Why are the leases so problematic? If you don't have the funds nor credit score to finance it, why not just rent out the roof space so to speak? Any return you get from it is better than nothing.

Solar leases are the problematic ones (where you pay a percent of the energy you generated). It sounds like a good deal, but the rates increase yearly and the compounded cost doesn't end up being worth it. The author was cash-flow positive on a fixed-rate lease immediately and it doesn't come with a contract with a 3rd-party provider, although I guess that depends on how much sunlight you have.

Re: Solar panels reduced my electric bill in 2022

#444

Post by jjav »

mdorazio wrote: post #145
hbarka wrote: post #109

Assuming you are grid-tied, the reduction of electric bills is predicated on net metering, where the utility company gives you (ideally) 1-for-1 credit for the electricity you produce. In California, this was called NEM 1.0 and NEM 2.0. Every few years the California utilities lobby the Public Utilities Commission (PUC) to chip away at the NEM program. This year the PUC voted unanimously to cut net energy metering an…

Over the last 8 quarters their average profit margin is a whopping 3.25%. If you think that’s just too high I’m not sure what to tell you. An alternate way to look at the CA rule change is that CA needs more installed storage to shore up the shitty grid, and incentivizing people to install solar alone via net metering isn’t a great idea anymore. Remember that peak power demand is right around and just after sunset.

> Over the last 8 quarters their average profit margin is a whopping 3.25%. If you think that’s just too high I’m not sure what to tell you.

Profit margin is after deducting all expenses. A lot of corrupt spending can be included in expenses to reduce the profit margin at will while still raking in the cash. So yes, that's absurdly high given how they operate.

Re: Solar panels reduced my electric bill in 2022

#445

Post by jjav »

secabeen wrote: post #155
eppp wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because net metering is forcing the utility to purchase power at the retail rate. It doesn't make any sense. It isn't a profit margin issue. There is a massive infrastructure and expense to deliver wholesale power to an individual customer and it has to be recouped. Either you sell back your power at some percent of wholesale or solar installs need to get a corresponding increased delivery fee.

What we need is a fundamental change in electricity billing. The value in a grid connection is in its reliability, availability and demand response (you can demand anything from 1 Amp to 200 Amps at any time, with no notice). The current usage-only billing model is broken. What we should do is pay a large flat monthly fee for the grid connection, then a lower rate for generation/usage, rather than bundling the delive…

> What we should do is pay a large flat monthly fee for the grid connection, then a lower rate for generation/usage, rather than bundling the delivery costs in.

This is the absolutely worst way to bill. It enourages wasteful use and hits very hard the poorest people who can't afford the flat fee.

Re: Solar panels reduced my electric bill in 2022

#446

Post by ulkhf »

KerrAvon wrote: post #139
hbarka wrote: post #109

Assuming you are grid-tied, the reduction of electric bills is predicated on net metering, where the utility company gives you (ideally) 1-for-1 credit for the electricity you produce. In California, this was called NEM 1.0 and NEM 2.0. Every few years the California utilities lobby the Public Utilities Commission (PUC) to chip away at the NEM program. This year the PUC voted unanimously to cut net energy metering an…

If there’s no net-zero metering, aren’t they incentivizing people to be completely disconnected from the grid, or at least not incentivizing them to be connected? (Which is bad for the grid.) Why would I fuck around with the utility at all if I’m installing enough solar/battery to power my needs?

You may be able to afford a night time battery (several hours of power) but there's no way you can afford a winter battery (several months of power).

Re: Solar panels reduced my electric bill in 2022

#447

Post by burnished »

belorn wrote: post #428
burnished wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your analogy introduces factors that aren't present in the system, I dont think you need to use one here. Solar panels arent exactly random for one, pizzas arent fungible for two, and the grid is already composed of many producers and consumers for three.

Energy as a service isn't fungible either. You can not trade energy at one point in time with energy at an other point in time and expect both to have identical value. There are many energy speculators which trade is to determining when prices are low or high, and with good weather predictions its not that difficult to make a accurate guess about the price a few days ahead in time.

How does that make a pizza restaurant a better analogy than just the situation itself?

Re: Solar panels reduced my electric bill in 2022

#448

Post by saltcured »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #371
saltcured wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With PG&E, we have networked meters that report fine-grained usage in order to support the newly standard time-of-use rate plan. It is not an average over a metering period like a month but able to resolve usage at different hours of the day. Even my bill shows peak and off-peak usage as daily bar graphs, and I think I can login to see more fine-grained data at the power company website if I wanted to. But I agree wi…

For home solar power, does your PG&E metering meter "power generated" separately from "power consumed"? I'm not sure if that's what you're saying or not. Do you have details on how home solar is or will be metered in California, with regard to credits for power generated, and if it will be different depending on whether it's "net negative" or not?

I don't have solar. But, I read up on the solar rules changes because I can imagine getting solar later. We're not in a hurry because it will need to be a bigger "electrification" project to make it worthwhile.

With the right kind of grid-tie, you should be able to consume your own solar on-premises and have effectively no grid consumption charges during productive hours. If you had a net excess to supply back to the grid, that net would be credited at the applicable wholesale rate. If your solar was insufficient for your load, your net load on the grid would be billed at the applicable retail rate.

Think of all of this as "instantaneous" net metering. If you want to time shift your production and consumption, you need your own on-premises battery and accept your own charge/discharge efficiency losses. Your 1 kWh of excess solar will end up giving you less than 1 kWh of overnight power due to losses in the converters and battery chemistry. The old net metering rules allowed people to act like the grid was their perfectly efficient battery and consume 1 kWh of nighttime load for 1 kWh of daytime solar excess.

Another proposed rules change was rejected. It would have placed an additional fixed grid connection fee only on solar homes. It was an attempt to add a connection fee for homes that might hit net zero consumption, without restructuring the rest of the non-solar rate plans where the infrastructure costs are tacked onto the marginal energy price.

The other thing to understand about PG&E billing is that some of the new time-of-use rate plans have a "baseline allowance". In a recent bill, we were charged $0.37 or 0.39 for 1 off-peak or peak kWh. But, there is an offset of $0.09 per kWh for the first 281 kWh used in the month. This effectively gives you tiered pricing but without calling it out as such. I don't know why they did this instead of publishing tiered, time-of-use rate schedules.

Re: Solar panels reduced my electric bill in 2022

#449

Post by killjoywashere »

foogazi wrote: post #395
killjoywashere wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We got a house in San Diego near the bottom of the last market (2012) and I was a medical resident at the time with two school age children. The previous owner had installed electric everything (even had to get a larger trunk line run and breaker panel). So our electric bill was a little nuts, randomly hitting tier 3 pricing and landing $350+ electric bills. For a household with negligible marginal income, that was u…

> Even the lease is cheaper than paying PG&E SDG&E provides electricity in San Diego

Hah! Indeed. We moved to Mountain View and that property is now a rental. Point stands.

Re: Solar panels reduced my electric bill in 2022

#450

Post by edmundsauto »

ernestipark wrote: post #28

I have a large 20kw system for an old leaky farmhouse and it provides me about $6k in energy and credits a year. I like thinking about it as a near guaranteed, medium return long term investment that's good for the environment. Each year is roughly 13% returns and I should get that for at least 20 years or so.

This may change - California, for example, just passed an adjustment to the payback prices that will drop them by 75%.
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