
Rate-design wars are the sound of utilities taking residential PV seriously - MaysonL
http://blogs.berkeley.edu/2013/11/12/rate-design-wars-are-the-sound-of-utilities-taking-residential-pv-seriously/
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danielharan
Higher 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.

~~~
tanzam75
Batteries are _very_ expensive.

It costs $10,000 to buy a battery system large enough to carry your whole
house. And you're cycling the batteries every day, so you'd be lucky to get 10
years use out of them.

Even with the higher fixed charges mentioned in the article, it is still
cheaper to connect to the grid than to buy the batteries.

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URSpider94
I can understand why people are hostile towards utilities for trying to change
their pricing. However, keep in mind that utilities are some of the most
regulated private companies in our economy. Their rates have to be approved by
the government. They are allowed to make a profit, but not a big one. If they
start making losses, then the lights are going to go out ...

For those who have suggested going off the grid, keep in mind that even in
sunny California, we do have a rainy season. I've reviewed my friends'
electric bills with them, and even those with quite large PV installations are
still net consumers through most of the winter. To make it through, you'd
likely need a generator (dirty, loud, expensive).

I think the bigger issue here is that people have made long-term commitments
(20 year lease agreements) to finance solar installations, counting on net
metering and a continual increase in power rates. If the utilities change the
game, you're going to screw over a lot of fairly well-off consumers (vs. the
mean), which doesn't usually go over well.

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hohead
Hawaii 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.

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thuuuomas
I'm uninformed, "grid saturation" meaning what?

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simcop2387
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.

~~~
URSpider94
That's exactly what it is. See presentation here:
[http://www.heco.com/vcmcontent/StaticFiles/pdf/LVM/LVMMECOPu...](http://www.heco.com/vcmcontent/StaticFiles/pdf/LVM/LVMMECOPublicNEW.pdf)

It appears that there are neighborhoods in Hawaii where the PV generation
capacity is approaching the max load of the circuit.

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Brakenshire
> 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.

~~~
sehugg
Sure, PV exports to "the grid", but practically speaking you are reducing the
power requirements for your local area. Since peak demand to the area is
lessened, utilities get to defer infrastructure upgrades, thus saving money.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Until there is enough renewable generation that you're actually reducing or
eliminating their profits on the fixed-cost of generating equipment they have
in play.

I think that's the concern. It was all, "Ha ha look at solar, how cute and
expensive." Now its more, "Its going to eat our lunch." and its only getting
cheaper year by year.

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lsc
Hilarious.

"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.

~~~
jonah
I keep getting notes from SoCal Edison with each bill wanting to tack on fees
for every little thing. New distribution lines, cleaning up their nuclear mess
at San Onofre. In other businesses those are costs of doing business and are
factored into their balance sheet rather than getting directly passed on to
the customer.

~~~
lsc
Just so long as you don't start setting up artillery on the sierra nevadas.

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EEGuy
The IBP (tiered rating) isn't a birthright of utilities, geez. It's a
conservation measure!

Whether I shave off my higher-tiered consumption by changing my thermostat,
changing my lighting or by putting in solar, that lost high-profit consumption
isn't the company's property, it's mine to do something else with.

~~~
URSpider94
I don't think most utilities have a beef with shaving off high-tier
consumption (well, I'm sure they miss the revenue, but they are not stupid
enough to go back on years of telling their customers to conserve).

Their bigger concern is net metering, by which I can sell them solar power
during peak hours at their retail rate of, say, $0.45/kWh and then buy it back
from them at, say, $0.06/kWh at night, or maybe even 6 months later in the
dead of winter.

Not paying for power you didn't use is one thing, but using the power
company's own transmission network to arbitrage its rates with no fee does
seem long-term unsustainable. If the current rates reached their ultimate
conclusion, the power companies would have to make massive, massive
investments in storage systems capable of buffering months worth of demand, as
their net revenues trend towards $0.

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EEGuy
I am a net-metering solar PV owner who's not averse to a reasonable,
independently audited "connection charge".

But I would be adverse to having to pay via a "connection charge" for what
looks to me like a failed uprating of a nuclear plant, if I were I a Southern
California Edison customer.

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moocowduckquack
Dig 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.

~~~
csense
Google says density of concrete is 2400 kg / m^3. Multiply that by 5x5x5 m^3
and you have 300,000 kg of concrete (300 metric tons).

    
    
       m = 300000 kg
       g = 9.8 m/s^2
       h = 10 m
    

The total amount of potential energy you can store is:

    
    
       m * g * h = 29400000 J = 29.4 MJ
    

The more customary unit of energy in electric circles is the kW hr. Converting
a kW hr to joules gives:

    
    
       1 kW hr = 1 kJ hr / s
               = 1000 J hr / s * (60 s / min) * (60 min / hr)
               = 3600000 J
               = 3.6 MJ
    

So the potential energy stored in the parent's system is:

    
    
       29.4 MJ * (kW hr / 3.6 MJ) ~ 8.17 kW hr.
    

Probably needs to be bigger to supply a decent sized household. Not to mention
issues with inefficient conversion of potential energy to electricity,
maintenance, and a backup plan for cloudy days.

~~~
moocowduckquack
Thanks for that, I thought it would give around a couple of days of backup,
however I had completely fudged the numbers somewhere along the line.

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ChuckMcM
Interesting, 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.

