Then why is it so damn expensive. Honestly one of the reasons I can’t wait to own a house is to purchase enough solar panels and batteries to give a huge middle finger to PG&E and go off-grid
Texas does allow consumers to pay market rate for electricity, you may have heard about last winter people getting bills in the several thousands of dollars when prices spiked.
CAISO was 97% renewable for only a moment, not the entire day.
The 3rd was a Sunday, not a peak day.
And the average price for energy for the day was $30.77 (day head) $27.1 (real time) for TH_SP15_GEN-APND (per MWh)
My point being, we pay the market rate, those massive hikes are just built-in over a long period of time.
In fact they never do, especially in this market. Texas producers weren't spending 100x (or whatever) more to produce that electricity, that spike just reflected the amount that customers who "had to keep the lights on" were willing to bear. In fact total utility costs are basically flat. They didn't hire 100x more employees or work 100x more hours to get things running again. They didn't have to build 100x more substations, etc...
And that's why spot pricing is a disaster for consumers. It creates a perverse incentive for producers to reduce supply.
If people WANT this kind of contract I hope that their consent is an informed one. I'm not one to stop people from engaging in their own reckless behavior.
But that's not how it works, because as I mentioned the demand curve is non-linear. When you have 60% power, yet 60.1% of your capacity needs to go to "must keep the lights on" customers, then prices go to infinity (or in practice to the credit/spending limits of those customers making bids).
Only a moron doesn't keep some sort of off-grid combustibles and cold weather gear on hand, even if you live in the most southern edge of our nation. The customer is to blame for paying, not capitalism.
Hospitals do. Street lights do. Network operators do. Just think back to the beginning of the pandemic and how many industries were suddenly discovered to be "essential". You're thinking from the perspective of "can I, personally, suffer a power outage in my own home[1]" and imaginging that "running a civilization" works like that. There are many entities who simply can't stop buying power.
> Only a moron [...]
Please think harder here. It's not remotely as simple as you think it is.
[1] Knowing that you can use your phone to reach effective emergency services in the event of need, of course.
>imaginging that "running a civilization" works like tha
And yet many rich civilizations do run just fine 'like that' and many may consider those civilizations just as good as yours. Your statement is simply ethnocentric arrogant elitism.
>Just think back to the beginning of the pandemic and how many industries were suddenly discovered to be "essential".
You're describing tyrants trying to shut down business. Being 'essential' was simply a chosen word of propaganda as part of a tyrannical process to destroy some people's line of work while favoring others. We are discussing free-market pricing and their interconnection with power disruptions and acts of god.
IIRC, a member of ERCOT who resigned claimed high-ranked state politician(s) pressured the regulator to do set the max price - so it wasn't the independent judgment of the regulator that the system was working; or that this was the solution.
however it should be ... vaguely ... related.
In california it is not. it's easy to pay 40-50 cents/Kwh (~$500/MWh)
Mainly it was one company, Griddy, that sold gullible people variable rate plans.
Griddy was then banned as it failed to provide people power during this time, suggesting their users to switch.
Most Texans are on fixed rate plans via TXU, Reliant, or the many other normal providers.
It was suggested to pass a law preventing variable rate plans that gamble like that, but I'm not sure the state of that.
> [Griddy] does warn customers, however, that the wholesale price is capped by state regulators at $9 a kilowatt-hour. [1]
It's not Griddys fault that Texas doesn't prepare for winter storms that hit the state once per decade. Griddy doesn't produce electricity. Griddy doesn't build power lines. Griddy did however get customers power and thats why many of them were upset about how much the state set the wholesale price at.
[1]: https://www.caller.com/story/news/local/texas/state-bureau/2...
It was a 100 year freeze, not a decade one. Never in my life until then did we have longer than 2 days of snow/ice.
Most of us don't insulate our pipes for that reasoning, though flexpiping is common to help against minor freezing.
Same reason as to why a lot of people don't have A/Cs on the West Coast.
Yeah the grid should have been winterized, but the pricing problem for customers was entirely on Griddy.
I have a question, are you from Texas?
That's rather unspecific. As far as I've seen the risk of 9k/MW always comes up in articles about Griddy (even pre-2021) and even happened to customers prior to 2021. And before the storm they notified customers that they should "switch providers" due to expected high prices.
The 2021 storm could be a 1/100 year but a non-trival winter storm hits Texas every 10 years. Letting pipes burst due to an extreme event can be a valid strategy but just be honest that the plan is that.
If you want to do solar for the environment, fine - I won't fault you - but if you are doing it to save/make money, there are better places to invest.
PG&E: https://seekingalpha.com/article/4441976-formerly-bankrupt-p...
Its been a few years since I did the math, but last time I was quoted about 60K for a complete system - 60K at 5% dividend (NGG at the time), would give me $3K per year, enough to cover my bill.
AT the end of 20-30 years, a solar system will be worth nothing, or almost nothing, whereas I will still own the same stock in the same company hopefully the stock will have appreciated as well), and will still be covering my electric bill.
This of course makes lots of assumptions: I need to invest in company that will still be around for decades, that electric costs don't go thru the roof during that time, and the dividend doesn't go away etc. - but also would have to make assumptions about how long a solar system would last - its impossible for any of us to see out 30 years, but for the time being, I feel like on a purely financial basis, it didn't make sense for me today.
But trust me, I would love to pay one sunk cost today and not have to pay an electric bill for the next 30+ years, if only I could see that far in the future with some certainty.
We have some of the cheapest rates in the US, due to our nuclear, so our state incentives are fairly good to compensate. Nuclear may be discontinued, but given recent events I’m less sure. Either way I think we only have upside on the ROI due to rate changes.
Part of my reason for thinking about solar is that if I'm going to spend 10k on a backup generator it might be far smarter to spend that on solar. For me the invest and pay cycle doesn't address the problem I'm solving. But I absolutely learned something today.
Anyway, if you want to use it as a backup, you'll need to oversize the solar so the battery can get you through power outages on cloudy days.
At that point PG&E will pay you 10-20% market rate for the excess energy you produce on most days. It's much better to dump those electrons into an EV battery than into the grid. My commute costs $4/week in electricity I don't send to PG&E, vs 20x that for the gas for the same commute.
(The EV gets 4.5 miles/kWh, and PG&E pays $0.04 / kWh, or $.008/mile. The old car gets 30mpg. At $5/gallon, that's $0.16/mile)
The punchline: Budget money for an EV for each of your household's commutes when you purchase the solar panels. Regardless if whether you buy panels, consider charging at work, assuming your employer subsidizes it and/or has solar panels.
(Also, check the milage on the EV you want. 3-5 mi/kWh is typical, but they can vary from 1 to 7.)
Solar loan ends up at 175 a month. I got in before the recent ridiculousness around fuel prices. I'm sure I'm net positive at this point but haven't done the precise math.
One addition I'm considering, is some bitcoin/ crypto rigs to take care of excess power during the peaks. Even with my batteries, I produce a lot of extra power and don't get paid spit from the power company, and what I do get I can only use as credit.
https://www.nicehash.com/profitability-calculator/-bitmain-a...
Thing costs ~1.25k, but at ~$10/ day it will pay its self off in a quarter.
https://www.sevarg.net/tag/solar/
From my point of view the nice thing about it is reducing or eliminating recurring expenses.
Once your recurring expenses drop below passive income you are pretty well set.
1. https://www.energysage.com/solar-panels/ca/#:~:text=For%20Ca....
2. https://www.energysage.com/solar-panels/wi/#:~:text=In%20Wis....
3. https://www.energysage.com/solar-panels/wa/#:~:text=In%20Was....
But in CA that site says that their net 20 year savings using solar is 44k-60k. That's insane. Their savings alone is 3 times the cost of our entire electric bill...
Electricity in CA currently averages around 28c/kWh. Your total expenditure depends on a lot of things, including the size of your home and your loads. The average CA home probably spends around $2000/year on electricity, but that varies a lot based on location and lifestyle.
> But in CA that site says that their net 20 year savings using solar is 44k-60k. That's insane. Their savings alone is 3 times the cost of our entire electric bill...
That figure probably assumes increasing electricity prices over the 20 years, which by and large has held true due to both inflation and increasing wildfire liability.
In reality our rate is Basic - $23.15 + All kWh @ $.089. So it would be even cheaper if we used more on a per kWh basis.
https://enphase.com/sites/default/files/2021-10/IQ8SP-DS-000...
Worth nothing that PG&E is working with CA Democrats to try to kill rooftop solar. They want renewables, but only if distributed using their (badly operated and overpriced) grid. [1]
[1] https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2022/02/11/coalition-received-1-...
The Democrats (and Arnold) pushed back hard against the proposed NEM 3 rates that would have killed rooftop solar.
I have nothing nice to say about PG&E.
Where I live, a different regime is being introduced: - a capacity tariff: a base grid charge, calculated based upon quarterly average peak consumption - a feed-in rate: a wholesale rate compensation for injecting self-produced green electricity into the grid (my current rate: 0.064€/kWh) - a retail rate by one's electricity provider (my current rate: .02869€/kWh) - subsidies for installation of solar (up to 300€/kW peak) and storage (up to 30%)
This at least conceptually incentivises both of solar installation and peak shaving. Solar is less ridiculously profitable for me, but still a no-brainer in terms of profitability.
Currently I'm not taking into consideration decreased efficiency because the panels are warrantied for 90.08%+ at 25 years. Also something not taken into account on breakeven/cash positive is the fact that PG&E rates are always on the rise. As of March of this year rates went up 9%. The more rates go up, the faster I break even.
You paid say 50k cash for solar? Put that in SP500 for 6 years. It’s not 50k anymore.
Someone else said it better in a different subthread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31105120
I wish the break even was better further north for me.
- 6.4 kW (16x400W panels), microinverter-based (little to no maintenance expected in 25 years)
- estimated to produce 8,500 kWh in year 1
- the panels are warrantied to produce 86% in year 25. Let's use 80% as a more conservative estimate.
- up front cost: $16,500 after the federal tax incentive
- alternative: paying PG&E $.25/kWh on average (conservative estimate)
To a first approximation, the system would save $2,125 in the first year, or almost 13% of the initial investment. In year 25, we'd expect 6,800 kWh. At the same energy price, it'd be saving 10% of the initial investment. (This doesn't take into account inflation, changes in energy prices, and I'm sure other things. This is all very different if your local utility doesn't offer net metering, too.)
The system breaks even in year 8, similar to what others in this thread have reported. But you can also look at it as a pretty low-risk investment returning 10-13% per year for 25 years. That sounds pretty good to me.
$16,500 returning 10% of the original principle per year isn’t a great investment. 25 years you have $41,000 + 25 yr old solar panels.
$16,500 returning 10% compounding over 25 years gets you $162,000 + the $16,500 principle.
Considering opportunity cost spread evenly over 25 years, those panels cost over $5000 per year.
There are plenty of reasons to go solar, but return on investment is not one of them.
Make those fixes and the numbers are much closer.
>>> x = 0
>>> for y in range(0,30):
... x *= 1.08
... x += 2125
... print(y, x)
...
0 2125.0
1 4420.0
2 6898.6
3 9575.488000000001
4 12466.527040000003
5 15588.849203200003
6 18960.957139456004
7 22602.833710612485
8 26536.060407461486
9 30783.945240058405
10 35371.66085926308
11 40326.39372800413
12 45677.50522624446
13 51456.705644344016
14 57698.24209589154
15 64439.10146356287
16 71719.2295806479
17 79581.76794709972
18 88073.30938286771
19 97244.17413349713
20 107148.70806417691
21 117845.60470931107
22 129398.25308605596
23 141875.11333294044
24 155350.1223995757
25 169903.13219154175
26 185620.3827668651
27 202595.01338821434
28 220927.6144592715
29 240726.82361601325
>>> x = 16500
>>> for y in range(0,30):
... x *= 1.08
... print(y, x)
...
0 17820.0
1 19245.600000000002
2 20785.248000000003
3 22448.067840000003
4 24243.913267200005
5 26183.426328576006
6 28278.100434862088
7 30540.348469651057
8 32983.57634722314
9 35622.26245500099
10 38472.04345140108
11 41549.806927513164
12 44873.79148171422
13 48463.69480025137
14 52340.79038427148
15 56528.0536150132
16 61050.29790421426
17 65934.32173655141
18 71209.06747547553
19 76905.79287351358
20 83058.25630339466
21 89702.91680766625
22 96879.15015227956
23 104629.48216446194
24 112999.8407376189
25 122039.82799662842
26 131803.0142363587
27 142347.25537526738
28 153735.0358052888
29 166033.8386697119> PG&E Corp. put a cost estimate of more than $25 billion Thursday on its effort to plant thousands of miles of power lines underground in an effort to tamp down wildfire risks.
https://www.sacbee.com/news/california/fires/article25824965...
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/01/business/energy-environme...
> PG&E sought bankruptcy protection in January 2019 after accumulating an estimated $30 billion in liability for fires started by its poorly maintained equipment. One of the blazes, the 2018 Camp Fire, killed scores of people and destroyed the town of Paradise.
It wasn’t voluntary, really.
Probably politically infeasible, unfortunately.
I don't know where you live, but if you are in CA, there is a very high chance that you live in a wildland-urban interface zone. About 45% of housing in CA would fall under this category.
These risks aren't limited to people living up in the mountains. A large chunk of the Bay Area is a wildland-urban interface.
All of this to say, preventing wild fires is in everybody's best interest and trying to pass the costs to one group or another will only delay our timeline to address these issues.
Burying power lines is just one part of the solution.
Our problem is people build non-fireproof homes in forests and demand the government mismanage the forest by stopping fires.
I am all for more prescribed burns, but the people in opposition to those burns aren't the people living in the most at-risk areas.
Meanwhile my neighbors 30 miles away are paying half that rate to SMUD. https://www.smud.org/en/Rate-Information/Compare-rates
As a bonus, SMUD doesn't generally kill people and burn down cities.
https://www.pgecorp.com/investors/shareholders/dividend_hist...
SMUD has very strict preventative maintenance procedures for their HV transmission lines, clearing all underbrush from below the 15KV lines almost yearly. We have not had any major incidents involving electrical fires in my lifetime that I am aware of.
I expect it's just probably doable in a really temperate climate like SF, where you can live without running heating or cooling year-round and try to get your other electric usage way down, but anywhere with hot summers or cold winters is going to risk battery depletion.