Hacker News Reader

Comment by vladslav | Hacker News Reader

> This proposal would reduce total bills for the working class.

I sure hope so, but I still doubt whether it will happen. I'm sorry for my ignorance on the topic, and I need to research it more. But it is counter-intuitive to me.

We pay much more than the rest of the country already. We are the utility's source of revenue. We should get a fair price if we generate enough electricity through solar and other means by switching to market rates.

Why can't they just adjust the expense for those who generate electricity? Or directly lower the incentive by removing tax cuts and credits since the widespread adoption is ongoing anyway. I am still trying to understand why I have to share costs with wealthy people without clear benefits.

View on HN

> I am still trying to understand why I have to share costs with wealthy people without clear benefits.

You aren’t sharing costs with wealthy people.

The proposal is to split rates into fixed connection costs and variable electricity costs, rather than, as the status quo does, lumping it all into the latter and setting rates high enough that on average the connection costs are covered by the surplus of the per-kW charges.

The effect of the status quo is that net metering over-rewards net-metered distributed generators (which was a plus to drive adoption, but no longer needed an excess incentive because of widespread adoption and a construction mandate) but it also creates an artificial disincentive to moving residential natural gas use to cleaner electric and against moving gasoline vehicle use to cleaner BEVs.

Dropping the per-kW rates and separating out the connection charge deals with that problem.

> Why can't they just adjust the expense for those who generate electricity? Or directly lower the incentive by removing tax cuts and credits since the widespread adoption is ongoing anyway.

Because distributed generation is only part of the issue, and that doesn’t deal with the disincentived to electrification of current fossil fuel use created by the currently-inflated per-kWh charge.

> We should get a fair price if we generate enough electricity through solar and other means by switching to market rates.

proposal asks you to pay not for electricity, but for maintaining grid infra, which they keep for you even you don't utilize it much. Cut yourself from the grid and you will pay nothing.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com