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Comment by ndonnellan | Hacker News Reader

This article seems to have a more thorough explanation:

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/is-this-sunny-state-trying-...

snip -----------------------

A little-understood billing mechanism called net metering is at the heart of the Nevada controversy.

Net metering means that residential and commercial solar customers are billed for their “net” energy consumption. They are allowed to send back to the grid the electricity their solar arrays generate when the supply outstrips demand -- such as during daytime hours, in the case of a home -- and take power from the grid when demand may exceed the system’s output -- such as at nighttime when all the lights are on, or during a cloudy spell.

It’s a system usually based on power-bill credits. How that quid-pro-quo works, varies from state to state and from utility to utility. In Nevada, the utility regulators have decided to pay lower, wholesale prices for that surplus power, not the higher, retail prices they had been paying.

California utility regulators evaluated a similar proposal, but decided against major changes. In Hawaii, regulators approved lower net metering rates, but not higher fees for the most part. Arizona and Wisconsin have imposed higher monthly surcharges for solar customers.

More worrying in Nevada’s case, however, is that regulators made no provision to grandfather in existing customers, said Shayle Kann, a senior vice president at GTM Research, a green-energy consulting firm.

-------------- end snip

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Wow, that's a long reach to get to the OP's "de facto ban on rooftop solar".

If we take the OP at face value, then, it seems to be declaring that solar energy is completely impractical, and can't survive without life support.

I realize that other forms of energy generation are all subsidized in various ways, so it's clearly not as serious as my above interpretation, but still, it doesn't speak well of solar.

It's not that simple. Solar is only really practical if it fits into the grid system, otherwise there's no real point. The energy it gives you goes up and down, and not in sync with your own household needs.

So you need something to do with excess capacity. All by itself, units of power aren't all that expensive. But a solar installation is very expensive. You need to amortize the cost of the installation, the people putting it in, the company developing the technology, over around 30 years before it's really worth it.

Even then, normal consumers won't bother unless it's actually making their net energy expenditures lower. So you also need a finance company to come in and finance everything so the consumer isn't coming out of pocket for the installation.

All of this is viable, only so long as the power companies are paying retail rates for excess electricity. There's enough money so everyone gets paid. What this is all about is the power companies are suddenly deciding they want to pay wholesale for excess power. Why should they pay wholesale? They're not buying in wholesale quantities from each consumer.

This sucks enough profit potential from the industry that it makes more sense for them to go elsewhere to put together a workable business model than to stick around and deal with decimated revenues.

The power companies are using their political muscle to stamp out competition. If they were to play fair, then they'd be forced to compete with solar. They don't want to compete, so they're using lobbyists to warp the political process.

> What this is all about is the power companies are suddenly deciding they want to pay wholesale for excess power. Why should they pay wholesale?

The power companies (normally) have enough power to supply everyone; they buy that power at wholesale prices and sell it to the customer at retail prices. So why, if they can always buy power at wholesale prices, should they deliberately pay retail prices instead? Doing so increases their costs, which then potentially raises rates for others.

So, asking power companies to buy power back at retail rates amounts to having power customers pay to subsidize the solar power generated by other power customers.

Looking at it as a subsidy, though, suggests a useful way to bring it about. Many power companies have a program where you can pay extra per kWh for "green" power, paying for the use of wind, solar, geothermal, hydroelectric, and other renewable zero-pollution power sources. Why not use a program like that to allow customers to subsidize solar power if they want to, and use the resulting funds to pay customers higher-than-wholesale rates for solar power?

Instead of subsidizing green power, I think it would make more sense that producers of non-green power would pay for the real cost of their power, including the environmental cost, through a carbon tax for example (also suggested by others, https://twitter.com/paultoo/status/672568359033040896). Because, it's not that we have to do a favor to green producers, but we should make non-green producers pay for the possibly irreversible damage to our planet, and so to us. Ideally we shouldn't allow it, but if we do, let's punish it.

The state already taxes electricity consumption, the same way you pay state taxes per your rate of gasoline consumption.

People that drive 'green' cars are inherently rewarded with paying few taxes at the pump, because they are buying less fuel. Though they may be using the roads and travel infrastructure (which are partially funded by gas taxes) as much as 'non-green' drivers..is this fair for all? Not really, but imagine the fallout of charging Prius drivers more per gallon in order to increase their contribution to the infrastructure that they're using.

In many places, people using solar energy ARE charged more per kilowatt, for the exact scenario above--Increase their contribution to the infrastructure they're using--which is the opposite of what you proposed.

In your proposal to punish the folks that haven't jumped on the solar power band wagon--who receives the benefit$ of their 'punishments'?

> Not really, but imagine the fallout of charging Prius drivers more per gallon in order to increase their contribution to the infrastructure that they're using.

More than one jurisdiction has actually attempted a hybrid/electric surcharge with that exact purported justification: http://abcnews.go.com/Business/nc-lawmakers-propose-50-100-f...

To fund roads use tolls. That's fair for all.

The money collected from the punishments can be used wherever is needed. Maybe to partially fund the roads, thus benefiting users of roads with lower tolls. Maybe to support free health and education, thus benefiting everyone.

"So why, if they can always buy at wholesale prices, should they deliberately pay retail prices instead?"

It is worse. Wholesale prices vary during the day. If you force them to buy at average price at times when wholesale prices are low and sell at average price when they are high. That will cost them money, potentially lots of it (nowadays, wholesale prices can go negative when there is a lot of supply from wind or solar farms)

It's a bit more complicated than that, too. I don't know about NV, but in California the power company never actually buys net power from you. At best you can owe $0, you never get a check from the power company, even if you pump all of your juice to the grid. So it's only paying "retail prices" insofar as it's offsetting the retail prices you're paying for your overnight/cloudy day power. And incidentally, overnight/cloudy days are off-peak times for power cos.

Incorrect.

http://www.cpuc.ca.gov/PUC/energy/DistGen/netsurplus.htm

Only somewhat -- but i can't edit the comment anymore. You carry a credit balance at retail prices but your refund is decimated and paid at wholesale prices.

> your refund is decimated and paid at wholesale prices.

No. It is paid at the same retail rate that consumers pay. However, because the amount paid is low, the retail rate used is tier 0, which is basically a lifeline rate. But it still isn't wholesale.

I don't see a 3 cent rate tier. Do you have a link? http://www.pge.com/en/myhome/saveenergymoney/plans/tiers/ind...

The pay-out on the true-up statement is very clear about the 3.xx cent rate.

You are correct. I was going by what a solar city engineer told me. I should have known better than to take them at their word.

Our first year we didn't go negative so we had a payment to make at the end of the year. Now that I know the return rate is so low I'll try to stay positive, switching some appliances to electric if I have to.

I think it's fair to say that the situation is pretty opaque and confusing. For 2 years I thought we lost our credit balance. I didn't notice the small credit that applied because in effect it only offset about half of our gas bill each January (which, with PG&E is on the same bill for us)

You can get compensated, but doing so is opt-in. You have to fill out a form.

Edit: Ok, this makes more sense to me now. It's really more nuanced. On my rate plan, retail cost for electricity is ~20c. (link below). So as my bill, over the year, accrues a negative balance, that balance reflects a retail rate. For example, on my final true up statement, by balance was -$360. But, my end of year true-up compensation was $72. How is this? First, they deduct their minimum monthly charges of $72 which I have no issue with. If my negative balance doesn't cover that, i owe them cash. But if it does, they then ignore that credit balance, and they use the number of surplus kw/h, multiplied by a wholesale rate of $0.03403, and use that to arrive at what they owe me.

So there's the whole story. They do not refund your credit balance at the end of the year.

Rates: http://www.pge.com/en/myhome/saveenergymoney/plans/tiers/ind...?

Because we are talking about offsetting credits here. In most schemes the power company won't cut you a check, they just run your bill down to zero (assuming you overproduce for the entire year).

By paying wholesale when you have excess yet charging retail when you don't they are effectively charging you _their_ profit margin on _your_ own electricity.

Solar customers already pay the grid maintenance charges. Even if we assumed the utilities were entitled to some compensation for providing this service to solar customers it certainly wouldn't be the spread between wholesale and retail rates.

The people with rooftop solar are providing a subsidy to everyone else, because even at net rates, they're not being fully compensated for the value they provide to the grid.

I realise that might sound "crazy" because lots of well paid PR people are telling you the opposite, but it's true.

What extra value are they bringing the the grid.

Energy production that correlates (in many parts of the world) with peak load from air conditioning. This saves fuel and wear and tear on expensive peaker plants.

The generation is distributed, which saves on distribution and transmission costs.

Planning for expansion is also based on peak loads, which as noted above, solar reduces saving yet more money.

There's some worked examples for Minesota here:

https://www.nrel.gov/tech_deployment/state_local_governments...

Is peaker rate bought off the market interchanges ever more than the retail rate?

An electrical current.

That was the value they are getting compensated at fair market value for. What is the EXTRA value for which they should get above market pricing.

Because if you, as a consumer who can't pay wholesale, take a watt and then put back a watt, are still out some rent money.

> Because if you, as a consumer who can't pay wholesale, take a watt and then put back a watt, are still out some rent money.

And in that same case, the power company is out some infrastructure and maintenance costs.

But either way, you state that as though power grids have some fundamental property that necessitates the same rates for purchase and sale, a property that most other exchanges do not have.

> And in that same case, the power company is out some infrastructure and maintenance costs.

As I understand my bill, PG&E still bills you for that as a separate item.

> But either way, you state that as though power grids have some fundamental property that necessitates the same rates for purchase and sale, a property that most other exchanges do not have.

That property would be "legal monopoly".

That property makes them subject to regulation; it doesn't inherently mean they should pay the same price to buy power as to sell.

Even markets with a legal monopoly have a bid-ask spread.

>Why should they pay wholesale? They're not buying in wholesale quantities from each consumer.

Why should they pay retail? As a consumer thinking about solar, I like that, but it makes no economical sense. What business can afford to buy and sell for the same price? You don't sell a car to the dealership for the price they will sell it for. That would be absurd.

The solar power is inherently less valuable to the grid than the wholesale power it can get from on-demand variable-output plants, or even the wholesale power it gets from always-on baseload power plants.

If they are forced to buy the uncontrollably variable distributed solar energy, it will be at the expense of the peaking plant, and possibly even the baseload plant, if there is a large enough gap between peak solar production and peak energy consumption.

So it should pay, at most, the price it would have otherwise paid from the power plants if distributed small-time solar installations weren't forcing their excess production back onto the grid.

That means paying less than wholesale. So those solar installations end up paying a bit for the service of using the grid a like a storage battery--as they should.

If you're going to demand equal compensation for your solar power as the peaking power plant, you will have to install equipment on your end that allows the grid to control how much power it chooses to buy from you. Otherwise, it's like haggling over the price of a meal that is already eaten.

I don't think they should pay retail either. But a power company is not a normal company, it's a government-supported effectual monopoly. So what they should pay for stuff is going to be by nature more political than economic.

My guess is that they're going to compromise at around 75% of the difference between retail and wholesale. Nobody, except the power companies, really wants to see solar disappear, so the solar side is going to have more political might in this fight.

A discounted rate is certainly reasonable, maybe not wholesale if the goal is to encourage solar. Wholesale rate plus high fees is ridiculous, though. That seems to serve no purpose except to make solar nonviable. That could easily make it more expensive to have solar than not (without even accounting for procurement and installation costs).

The utilities here charge me a connection fee, regardless of my meter.

I get all of my energy from a roof top solar system but to stay on the grid I have to pay a connection fee which in my mind covers transmission costs and infrastructure. Being that it's a utility I can see them charging for that stuff, some how, either by a fee or by arbitrage between wholesale and retail costs, that seems reasonable. It radically changes the value of solar though.

If you can sell energy at wholesale prices what's the argument for restricting your ability to buy it at wholesale? Could you buy it from a different provider and just use the utility to transmit it?

A power company is not a normal business, they are a public utility. They aren't supposed to be making money, they're supposed to be providing a public service.

Actually, the fact that government-regulated private utilities are very reliable and low risk generators of investment returns (people still consume energy during a recession) is the reason they are a cornerstone of many retirement investment funds.

Locally operated municipal utilities, however, are less likely to be turning a profit, at least not one that benefits shareholders.

Edit: clarifications

Who says they can't do both?

The law. Utilities cannot profit on the electricity they sell.

> Why should they pay retail?

Obviously under completely free-market conditions, they wouldn't. But under those conditions, power companies would burn nothing but coal and nobody would have any solar. Coal is really cheap. Retail net metering is society actively meddling with the free market to mitigate a societal ill, and forcing big polluters to subsidize cleaner energy. I don't see a problem with that.

Electricity is covered under something as defined by the government as a "Utility" and thus not a private organization. http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Public+Utiliti...

Allowing flow of power from rooftop solar into the grid isn't free.

The cheapest power to generate is the base load - long running gas, nuclear, coal, whatever. These are plants that take days or weeks to spin up and down and produce the most cost effective, efficient power. Since supply on the grid must exactly meet, always, these efficient plants can only be used to provide the base load - the amount of load below which the grid never drops.

Any power required beyond the base load comes from generation designed to be used periodically. It's not as efficient. There are stages to this too - you can have generators which take hours to come up which are more efficient than those which take minutes.

Residential power generation can cause the base load to drop, and require more peak load generation, increasing the production cost of power.

The power which customers generate must also go through transformers, rectifiers, and all that good stuff to be usable by others, and that equipment isn't free either.

Whether the company buys in wholesale quantities doesn't really matter, since the costs incurred from supporting residential net-metering aren't zero. It makes sense that they pay less for power they buy than what the sell, otherwise, that cost is shifted to someone else.

>> Solar is only really practical if it fits into the grid system, otherwise there's no real point. The energy it gives you goes up and down, and not in sync with your own household needs.

>>So you need something to do with excess capacity.

The simplest solution is to push it onto the grid. With net metering you can get the energy back later at not cost. It's like using the grid as a battery.

The alternative of course is to up the installation cost a bit and install an actual battery system in the home. Much like those available from Juicebox:

http://www.juiceboxsolar.com/home/

So this whole thing about net metering is really just delaying the problem the power companies are experiencing. Hardware prices will continue to fall, and at some point the solar installation plus battery will cost the same as today's installation and the demand will return.

At that point we're likely to see some fees just for connecting to the grid. And after that, we'll see larger batteries and more panels so that people can unplug from the grid completely.

> The simplest solution is to push it onto the grid. With net metering you can get the energy back later at not cost. It's like using the grid as a battery.

That's effectively making the power company pay retail.

Not where I live. It is not in USA, but I imagine the same is true for Nevada.

There is an additional charge for consumers, for 'electric grid distribution' charge. This distorts the symmetry of net metering. The result is that a grid company makes money even at retail prices.

The time of day matters, the cost is usually more when you need it (i.e. in the morning when you are taking a shower and making your coffee and evening when you get home from work and kick on your AC). So putting power on at a low usage time (10 am) is not the same as using at a high usage time (10 pm).

> over around 30 years before it's really worth it

That is ANCIENT Solar Technology. If you care to read this it actually is

Energy payback estimates for rooftop PV systems are 4, 3, 2, and 1 years: 4 years for systems using current multicrystalline-silicon PV modules, 3 years for current thin-film modules, 2 years for anticipated multicrystalline modules, and 1 year for anticipated thin-film modules

http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy04osti/35489.pdf

I think you need to re-research solar technology.

Wait. I have solar and love it. But if your electric bills over a 4 year period do not amount to the install cost of the solar, the technology used is meaningless? And because install costs do not decrease with more efficient tech, and things like the inverters are just as expensive, I certainly cannot pay off my system in 1 year. More like 10 years.

10-ish years are the kind of payback I saw when I looked into it. My electricity bill is about $100/month--so ~$1K/year is about the most I could save if I bought solar panels.

Companies like SolarCity can make the math more complicated. And in all fairness they can probably take advantage of various breaks and subsidies I may not have access to as a consumer. However, it's like a car purchase. I'm skeptical that some lease agreement suddenly makes a purchase sensible that wouldn't be with a straightforward cash on the barrel buy.

Energy costs are a small fraction of installation costs. EX: You had someone walking around on the roof, which cost a lot more than the 200w or so they where burning doing so.

"It's not that simple. Solar is only really practical if it fits into the grid system, otherwise there's no real point. The energy it gives you goes up and down, and not in sync with your own household needs."

Doesn't the Tesla home battery change all of that ? Solar on the roof and one or two Tesla batteries in the house and ... no grid usage whatsoever, correct ?

What would happen if more and more people start using solar along with the net metering? Who would pay for the infrastructure costs?

That's up to Nevada to decide. Won't happen for some number of years, what the world's going to look like then is going to be very different. No problem kicking that can down the road.

Well it seems like they decided it right now. They are splitting up the net meeting costs into infrastructure and production costs and expect those who connected to the grid to contribute to the infrastructure costs.

Which works, until it doesn't. The price of solar will continue downward, the price of batteries will continue downward, and eventually it'll be cheaper to disconnect from the grid regardless. That's what's going on in Hawaii right now. The utility started to push back against users interconnecting their solar panels, so people went entirely off the grid instead.

A few places have plenty of sun throughout the year. Hawaii might be ideal for this. But what about many parts of the US where you deal with winter rains and snow? No battery will be sufficient to store energy in those situations. So the reality is most people will continue to connect to the grid for some time to come and someone has to pay the costs of that infrastructure. However if people manage to be truly self sufficient then that is great and I fully support them.

I don't disagree. In the most sunny areas of the world, people will go off grid if the grid tries to price them out. Those not in sunny locations will be beholden to the utility.

There is generally a separate grid connection fee. This is noticeable if you have a weekend cabin in the woods for example.

From my dominion bill:

Distribution Service 15.73$ followed by "Electricity Supply Svc (ESS)" which is based on usage and then several fees/taxes.

Your phone bill probably does the same thing if your regularly calling other countries your paying a connection fee plus a usage fee.

>It's not that simple. Solar is only really practical if it fits into the grid system, otherwise there's no real point. The energy it gives you goes up and down, and not in sync with your own household needs.

As long as it is always above your household needs it would still be OK, but that's not the case, is it?

> Solar is only really practical if it fits into the grid system, otherwise there's no real point. The energy it gives you goes up and down, and not in sync with your own household needs.

Build a smaller, energy efficient house, get lots of batteries, and stop wasting so much electricity.

You also don't have to go 100% solar all at once. You can get panels and kits off of Amazon or from Home Depot and incrementally add capacity. Actually I believe with current prices and so many individuals out there that you can hire to help do installs now, at this point you should start small and go incremental rather than getting a loan. Otherwise you are wasting money, and just feeding into the racket that solar installers have set up.

Your information is outdated.

Parsing NVenergy's rate tables, it looks like the cheapest retail rate is $0.044/kWh, while the wholesale rate is $0.004/kWh.

I defy you to find a low-margin business that can actually survive a ten-fold reduction of per-sale revenue.

> I realize that other forms of energy generation are all subsidized in various ways, so it's clearly not as serious as my above interpretation, but still, it doesn't speak well of solar.

If solar had even a tenth the subsidies that coal and oil have gotten for the past decades, it'd be on every rooftop by now (especially the nice flat commercial rooftops) and we'd have as many concentrated-solar facilities as coal plants.

Not completely impractical as much as not economically advantageous at this point in time.

You have to invest money to install solar panels; the expectation is that you can make that money back either by saving on running costs or by selling back electricity. If your running costs are projected to be the same (not worse, the same) and selling back is not profitable, then the fixed installation costs make the investment overall unprofitable, and the industry dies.

> can't survive without life support

Unless they have to, power companies are not going to buy your excess solar power from you at all. So yes, regulation is required to prevent monopoly (or oligopoly) providers from abusing their position.

they might -- after all they are buying electricity from other suppliers, so why not from me?

The question is more like, why should I be in a privileged position related to these other suppliers, and why should I be able to freely exchange something cheap (off-peak, unpredictable power) for something expensive (peak, on-demand power)? This is of course assuming that my usage of the grid is fully accounted for in fees, otherwise there is a separate issue there.

Ultimately, since public utilities are not exactly an investor goldmine, this comes down to the question of how much other electricity consumers should spend to subsidize those with solar installations.

The ironic part here is that the Nevada utilities are accelerating their own demise by opposing rooftop solar. In a few short years, batteries will be cheap and plentiful enough that it will be unnecessary to cut deals like these with the utilities in order to have a profitable solar rooftop installation.

By removing the incentive for customers to cooperate with the utilities, the utility companies are further incentivizing the installation of residential battery storage, which will further reduce the utilities' influence down the road.

It's not that simple. A system that is not grid connected will need a lot more than just a battery to make it as reliable as a grid connection. Those 'few short years' are more likely a couple of decades, in other words well over the horizon for the people that are currently trying to squeeze the most profit from those utilities.

Residential battery storage is just one component is a complex chain that needs to be deployed for every house that could be off the grid, it actually side-steps the need for net metering (because you can simply store your own excess). For those use cases the grid functions exactly like a battery, only one with near infinite capacity.

It also serves as a back-up, in case of system failure, extended lack of power from whatever sources you've got and so on. And that function is far harder to engineer around than the mere energy storage and recovery one.

I think the idea isn't that you can go off grid but rather that you can now make use of the excess power that you would have been selling back to the grid during the night and so effectively capture the same residential rates through reduced use.

Sure. But that's effectively the exact same thing as net-metering, only with a lot more fixed costs. And batteries wear out as well. The grid is a lot better for this, unfortunately that requires cooperation of the grid operators and owners.

There is an alternative to this, the equivalent of a credit union but for power where a number of people band together to do their own little grid, but the complexities and dangers involved make this a very difficult thing, especially once you factor in insurance and approval.

I've thought for a long time that a neighborhood 48V DC exchange might be viable. You'll have to pull thick copper of course, but $1/foot for wires is pretty cheap compared to battery prices.

Here in the US the NEC says that anything under 50V isn't really regulated because they don't want to get involved in people's path lighting, phone, ethernet, doorbells, thermostats, garage door opener signaling, etc.

The other thing that will help enable going completely off grid are things like inverter AC units (which draw a continuously small amount of power instead of 5 minutes at 3kw and 10-30 minutes at 0kw) and ice "batteries" to store power instead of lead acid or lithium. Ice batteries never really go bad either, at least not the way chemical batteries do.

You'll want to think long and hard about how you're going to deal with fuses. For the kind of currents that batteries can put out it can be quite expensive to properly fuse things.

50V was a fairly arbitrary voltage deemed to be 'safe', however there are cases known of people dying from 50V and even lower (in particular, one very nasty accident involving a Swiss ham in pre-internet times).

A bus made of thick copper wire would be stolen here pretty much on the day that you installed it (copper theft is on the order of the day).

I'm not convinced of the need to have any of this though, I got my power usage down to the point where a fair sized house ran year round from 16 solar panels and a small windmill. The year that we only had the solar panels we still needed the genset with some regularity but the year the windmill went up we used it only twice (when I was running a 12KW plasma cutter from the battery pack they tended to deplete a bit too quickly...).

Well, so the other thing I'd say is that you're probably not looking to move hundreds of amps. If I could "borrow" 50 amps from one neighbor on each side of my house at 48V that's nearly 5kW but 2x 50 amp fuses are very, very doable and fairly cheap.

I'm not saying this is a panacea BTW, just that it might be easier and cheaper for a few neighbors to band together in this kind of a way than for everyone to overbuild their battery banks. If you can go from needing to have 10kW peak of batteries and can instead get down to 5kW peak since you can borrow peak capacity that means your bank can be half as large.

You probably wouldn't want to use copper anyway. Power lines in the US tend to be aluminum. It's cheaper and lighter, even though it requires a larger gauge.

The problem with aluminum for conduction is that (1) it does not like to be clamped down (it tends to back away from the screw terminals so you will have to re-tighten them or use a different clamping mechanism) and (2) it tends to oxidize so even a slight loss of contact will turn into a much higher resistance on the joint.

Copper doesn't have these draw-backs which is why it is used a lot more on the 'low power' side of things.

But for the transmission lines the reduced weight more than offsets all the other issues, those are very well taken care of connections with resistances in the milli-Ohms, an expensive connector is not an issue when it comes to power infrastructure.

You seem to be doubting the feasibility of micro grids, but people are already doing this with 240 V. Granted, it's harder to steal copper wire that is at 240 V.

> You seem to be doubting the feasibility of micro grids, but people are already doing this with 240 V.

Not doubting them at all. It's just that I have some experience with burying high current / high voltage cabling and keeping such installations safe.

> Granted, it's harder to steal copper wire that is at 240 V.

Just use VMVK, armored version if you can get it. I got a whole pile of it that was left over after a large construction job on a dam in Canada. Paid pennies on the dollar, basically I just paid the copper market price.

Things like that are in the making: http://www.technologyreview.com/news/544471/renewable-energy...

This is not exactly the same at all. That battery provides a valuable service: it allows to exchange off-peak power for on-peak power. If the utility had technology to do that economically, the whole controversy would be much less of an issue.

Customers could keep their grid connection for backup purposes, but it should be rarely needed. Therefore if a customer is acting 99% self-sufficient, the grid operator is going to lose out. And this could happen within years when battery tech becomes cost effective. This change in legislation has just served to shorten that timeline.

Just keeping the grid connection is a major cost.

What cost? It sounds like the parent is possibly suggesting the opposite of a backup power solution: transfer switch where you're in solar mode 99% of the time, and if things break or you need to do work, you switch over to grid power.

I've never lived anywhere where I used zero kWh for the month, so I'm not sure... but I have to imagine the cost would be pretty slow... save for getting such a system setup (transfer switches are common enough with backup generator situations so I can't imagine that portion would be very expensive)

They'll charge a fixed fee just for the hookup, and it can be quite a large percentage if your consumption is minimal.

Fees won't be sustainable if they are higher than what it costs to lease or buy a generator

They are. Small backup gens (ie without autostart/disconnects etc) can be bought for a few hundred bucks. If you don't use them that often, say a few hours a year while your offgrid system is under repair, the cost of operation is extremely small.

If you go with a gas generator make sure you stabilize the gas or it won't work by the time that you need it.

Propane or natural gas are cleaner, and more reliable, than gasoline or diesel.

Cleaner and reliable, but not as utilitarian. NG/LNG rigs aren't as portable, especially if they are tied into a residential gas line. A small gas gen can be moved around by hand, and fed with fuel siphoned out of your car if need be.

Can you recommend a small, single-home capacity natural gas generator?

Any 4 stroke gas generator can be converted to NG.

Generac is pretty good and they have NG/LPG 'native' models.

Isn't it on the order of $10-20/month?

Depends on your location. Here it's more than double that. 'Vastrecht' as it is called for me is about 50 euros right now.

It's one of the more sneaky tricks pulled in order to extract more money from people that have managed to successfully reduce their consumption. After all if you paid just a per KWh and per cubic meter price for electricity and gas then your efforts to conserve energy would pay off much more than with the fixed base cost for the hookup.

Ouch. Does that reflect their actual costs at all, or is it just a money grab?

This was done when the local (municipal) and provincial electricity companies were split into a network and a generating entity. It was supposed to bring more transparency and create a market, in fact it brought a lot of graft and trickery. At a guess the actual costs were a fraction because those companies were already paid for aeons ago (they were public property, and then got privatized so we were allowed to rent back the infrastructure that we already owned...).

Short term thinking at its best.

I live in a small town in the North Cascades of Washington and my "connection fee" is $40 per month while my electric bill varies from $75 to $175 depending on the season.

My god! Might as well go solar and natural gas backup gen at those rates.

I bet natural gas is not available there.

(the not at all rugged township I used to live in had it in their planning documents that there would not be natural gas lines run -- they want to discourage development)

LP tank onsite. Its what most rural folks use for heat when there's no infrastructure available.

http://www.missiongas.com/images/500gallonpropanetank.jpg

Yeah we have a 500 gallon LP tank and use that for (on demand) hot water, backup generator and cooking, but our primary source of heat is in floor electric radiant (floors are concrete slab). We also use a mini split system to compliment the in floor heat and to provide cooling in the summer. And of course we have a wood stove as well. Unfortunately we are in a narrow valley and don't get enough sun to make solar a viable option.

Sure, that's what we used. It ends up being noticeably more costly than natural gas so I think about them as different things (the price is also less stable, this hit Minnesota hard a couple years ago).

Yeah, and it requires a bit of timing to buy correctly. The chart for ND[1] shows the variance of price in a season. Buying when it is really cold is not a great idea. Also, getting the larger tank allowed keeps you from having to do a refill in the middle of the winter.

1) https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=W...

Taxes are the highest cost for electricity (here in NL). Grid costs ~EUR190/year, taxes and govn't surcharges are ~EUR618/year.

I don't know if you still need to pay the taxes if you're not grid connected though?

No, if you're off grid those taxes are not there.

It's my only cost here in cloudy Oregon. I generate around 1.5MWh a year above what I use, so net-metering means I have more credits than I can ever use. But I have to pay $10 a month to be connected, whether or not I am giving away power.

That's impressive, how much solar do you have? (W / Composition of the panels)?

"It's not that simple. A system that is not grid connected will need a lot more than just a battery to make it as reliable as a grid connection. Those 'few short years' are more likely a couple of decades, in other words well over the horizon for the people that are currently trying to squeeze the most profit from those utilities."

How are panels + battery not as reliable ? I think you mean they don't last as long, right ? As in, theoretically you could use up the battery before the sun rises again so it's not as nice as the utility ...

As far as I can tell, panels + battery (properly sized, and admittedly expensive) are all you need. You can just cancel your electric service at that point.

No, it's a matter of coverage. Every year you'll have one stretch of 4 to 7 days without appreciable sun and this tends to deplete your batteries to the point where you will wreck the pack if you don't recharge.

So you install either a wind generator, a genset or both.

> As far as I can tell, panels + battery (properly sized, and admittedly expensive) are all you need.

In some locations this may be true, in most it isn't.

> You can just cancel your electric service at that point.

As soon as you have backup power you can do that anyway.

Can we change the link from the one-sided (and deliberately unclear!) press release to this article or a similar one?

One-sided and unclear, and with a TYPO in the headline!

>> ... no provision to grandfather in existing customers.

I might not like the decision, but I am glad to see they aren't grandfathering in anyone. Grandfathering is a definitive unleveling of the field. People/businesses shouldn't be given special treatment just because they have been around longer than others. I feel for those who made investments and haven't seen them come to fruition, but that's politics. Deal with it at the ballot box.

What is the actual cost to the grid of a solar home which only uses power at night from the grid and maybe delivers some to it during the day?

In any of these anti-solar positions about grid costs I've never seen a factual statement of what it actually costs the power providers.

The same as any other house on the grid.

How much power you typically use and when has almost no impact on how much grid connection costs. All that matters is the peak they must be able to deliver. That is why billing transfer together with consumption makes no sense.

They should be completely split into two bills paid to two different companies like in Finland.

But what are some actual numbers for costs to the grid per household?

I've yet to see any concrete numbers but I see a lot of justification of minimum fees using grid costs as the primary reason.

If these costs are so visible and important, why is it hard to find actual costs? Is it $2k per year per household? $400? $100? Does it match up with some of these $50/mo minimum fees?

Night time peaks are likely far lower, also transmission losses are higher as temperature increases requiring more transmission infrastructure.

The conventional wisdom is that rooftop solar stresses the grid, and therefore net metering at retail prices amounts to a subsidy extracted from the non-solar customers to the benefit of rooftop solar owners.

This, however, is a myth (reinforced at every turn by the incumbent monopolies). Rooftop solar tends to overproduce on the hottest days, which also happens to be the time when the grid is overloaded by air conditioners running at full throttle. In effect, rooftop solar is at maximum production exactly when the grid needs it the most, thus providing very valuable demand smoothing. This greatly benefits utilities, since they don’t have to spend as much on peak-generation capacity.

There is ample evidence that utilities vastly underpay for these benefits [1], while their profits rapidly increase. Three major Nevada casino operators “have expressed vocal criticism of NV Energy for generating huge profits over the past years and not lowering rates for customers of Nevada Power. [...] NV Energy’s profits increased 27.7% in 2014, yet the supplier has not introduced any electricity rates breaks to its customers since it was acquired by Berkshire Hathaway.“ [2]

Over the short term, the incumbents will get their way by flexing their political muscle, but this will only delay the inevitable. Electricity spot prices are at their highest during daytime, while people are at work and their solar generators put power into the grid. Utilities will now pay wholesale for this power, then turn around and sell it to non-solar consumers at the top rate. People return from work as their solar generators become inactive, so they will have to buy power at retail rates. For now, utilities will win both ways.

But what this means is that as storage prices drop, it will be more economical to invest in storage capacity in order to capture the valuable power during the day and use it during the night. This will deny utilities the demand-smoothing services that they currently enjoy, so they will have to increase their capex for peak generation, leading to higher rates for everyone else, which in turn will encourage _more_ customers to install solar and storage, etc. Soon after, people will start disconnecting from the grid altogether; welcome to Uber Energy.

Tectonic plates move slowly, but they rearrange quickly.

[1] http://cleantechnica.com/2015/09/01/review-of-net-metering-s... [2] http://www.casinonewsdaily.com/2015/11/26/major-casino-opera...

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