Comment by xenadu02 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by xenadu02 | Hacker News Reader

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Except the ACC calculation used in CA is absolute nonsense and deliberately uses monthly averaging so you don't get a fair cut.

Utilities always want to have their cake and eat it too. They want to pay you almost nothing for power sent to the grid ($0.02) that only considers generation using the most optimistic figures. Then during the worst summer peak times when the spot price for power hits $0.20, $0.50, or even $1.00/kWh you don't get to reap any of that benefit. Thanks to the averaging you still get paid $0.02 and PG&E saves $0.96.

If utilities want "fairness" then let them pay the spot price in realtime or to the average of the nearest 15 minutes on a daily basis. Then I could choose to drain my batteries when the spot price hits ultra high marks which makes it worth my while, incentivizes storage, and helps grid stability.

This also means you pay for distribution on inbound power but don't get credit on outbound. Even though that saves the utility a little bit on distribution that seems fair. If utilities want to get paid for maintaining grid access then let an independent entity run those numbers and bill it accurately. I don't mind paying a grid access charge if it weren't pulled out of PG&E's ass as a backdoor attempt to kill solar.

I agree that making them buy power back at the full retail rate is not sustainable but NEM3 in CA (and the upcoming income-based monthly fixed charge) are nothing but utility scams.

Last but not least as a matter of public policy I strongly believe encouraging energy independence is a social good. In emergency situations having a few neighbors with enough solar+batteries to keep the lights on is a good for society as a whole. We are in that situation and plan to run a cell phone charging station in our driveway if it ever happened that the grid was down for more than a few hours (eg earthquake/storm/grid collapse). Having an EV also means if we are careful we can charge the car enough to make short or medium trips every few days. Not being beholden to gas tanker trucks or utility operators is great IMHO. I just need to add Starlink for backup internet :)

Wholesale rates never go to $1/kwh. Why should you get paid more than what PG&E pays its suppliers?

As for why a monthly average is used, I don’t know but there could be legitimate reasons (eg smart meters weren’t built to measure the reverse direction and maybe the software isn’t properly certified or something)

> In emergency situations having a few neighbors with enough solar+batteries to keep the lights on is a good for society as a whole

In a rich neighborhood this works really well. Most people benefit from a stable and highly functioning grid. It’s also cheaper than a bunch of poorly planned adhoc solar and battery capacity randomly scattered about.

> Having an EV also means if we are careful we can charge the car enough to make short or medium trips every few days. Not being beholden to gas tanker trucks or utility operators is great IMHO. I just need to add Starlink for backup internet :)

Again, you’re describing your privileged situation and acting like society would benefit from making your personal situation better.

If everyone had an EV and solar, their solar capacity would need to first be overbuilt to accommodate that addition. But solar capacity sizing today is a mix of how much your current pre-EV usage constrained by the panel efficiency multiplied by available rooftop space. Most people don’t live in single unit dwellings either and rooftop solar for an apartment complex isn’t going to provide all the necessary power.

So yeah, I’m on pg&e’s side here. It’s their grid. They’re being forced to take electricity generation from residential but if they weren’t being forced by regulators they should be free to just say no to capacity being fed from anyone but official suppliers. Otherwise you’re selling into their grid without actually paying for access (+ the utilities didn’t factor in rooftop solar when building out the generation for the grid). You can’t have things both ways and rooftop solar in California is 100% a massive subsidy being provided to the privileged people adding that capacity.

> In emergency situations having a few neighbors with enough solar+batteries to keep the lights on is a good for society as a whole

In what world is the grid down but your personal solar + battery installation is keeping the lights on for the entire neighborhood without using said grid?

> Wholesale rates never go to $1/kwh. Why should you get paid more than what PG&E pays its suppliers?

I believe CASIO's spot price cap on generation is in fact $1/kwh. This is only ever reached on a handful of peak summer days and only for a a few hours at most.

> In a rich neighborhood this works really well.

Solar is not exclusively a rich neighbor hood thing... well it certainly is now with NEM3 since the economics are broken.

> Most people don’t live in single unit dwellings either

Well you'll be pleased to know the utilities have colluded to make shared solar for apartments/condos un-economic too so everyone can get screwed.

>So yeah, I’m on pg&e’s side here. It’s their grid.

PG&E can't exist without eminent domain forcing private property owners to give away space for power poles and buried lines. They also enjoy both a monopoly and guaranteed profit! The regulator by law ensures that they get to recover all costs no matter what those are.

I'm not saying utilities shouldn't get paid to build and maintain the grid. I'm also not saying they shouldn't get paid something to maintain extra generating capacity.

I'm saying the hand-wringing about how rooftop solar owners are all rich leeches hurting the utilities and low-income people is a bunch of utility-created BS to justify screwing everyone over for higher utility company profits.

Arbitrage is how utilities make money. Forecasting, signing contracts, making hedges. Figuring out what average price to charge consumers to even out the fact that electricity is dirt-cheap at 3am and outrageously expensive on the hottest summer days at 3pm. They can and do understand the impact of solar. Solar lowers their profits so they want to kill it. Was CA NEM2 unreasonable to the utility? Yes. Is NEM3 a good compromise? Absolutely not. Is charging customers a fixed monthly charge based on their income a reasonable or even fair thing to do? Hell no.

> In what world is the grid down but your personal solar + battery installation is keeping the lights on for the entire neighborhood without using said grid?

That's not what I mean. I'm not saying every home would be able to run this way, just that it is a good thing in a disaster if some homes here and there are able to supply their own power. It means there is somewhere in the neighborhood that can power a fridge/freezer to save food or handle sensitive medications. Where neighbors can go to charge cell phones. If you've never lived in a hurricane-prone area you may not understand how much of a lifeline it is for someone on the block to have a generator or solar+battery.

I mean EV the same way: if someone on the block has an EV and solar then they can assist their neighbors... eg driving to a water/food distribution point even when gasoline supply is cut off for a few weeks. Or drive to a pharmacy to pickup critical medication.

Hopefully you never find yourself in such a situation but from a public policy POV having that kind of distributed self-sufficiency capability (paid for by individuals on their own) is a good thing.

Residential solar is primarily really for single family homes and similar types of residences. Within populated areas of California (which is where most energy consumption is going to be in California) it is 100% a richer area. Sure, those kinds of homes are also common in the suburbs but the suburbs where that’s affordable are where there’s significantly fewer people living. I don’t know the setup in other places but any big metropolitan area is probably going to look similar and that’s where most of the energy demand and resultant CO2 emissions are coming from.

You don’t see solar on high rises because this kind of strategy does not work.

As for emergency disaster response, historically this entailed the government having designated shelter places with disaster supplies (eg diesel generators, large amount of food stores, cots to sleep people, etc). This would typically be things like schools and sports arenas because of how much emergency shelter could be provided. I don’t see how adhoc disaster preparedness where you rely on some neighbors thinking ahead for everyone else is better than a strategic plan intentionally meant to cover everybody. It’s a nice perk if you’re lucky, but I’d rather make sure that centralized planning can actually help everyone. Btw this wasn’t because the local government was competent - if I recall correctly there were federal and state laws requiring cities be able to handle such emergencies. I’m not sure if we’ve gotten worse at them that you’re now concerned, but generally I have seen pretty good disaster response mechanisms.

I was specifically referencing shared-billing scenarios which was just getting under way but has basically been knee-capped by the CPUC.

The idea was that a homeowner's association (for condo owners) or apartment building owner could install solar panels connected to a designated meter. Then they could associate other resident meters to be the recipients of credits generated by the designated meter. The utility would distribute the credits in the configured proportions.

This would allow condo owners to collectively buy solar panels for the whole complex. Or allow an apartment building owner to let renters buy "shares" of the panels to offset their own usage, or offer it for "free" as a feature eg "we have solar panels that lower your electric bill for free, rent here"*.

None of that matters now though, they've made it not economically viable to do.

* All features of an apartment are paid for in rent, absolutely nothing is really free. Anything an apartment offers for free just means "I'm paying for it in my rent as long as I live here".

Thank you. I can't believe how much FUD is out there from IOU (investor owned utilities) lobbyists that the general populace has accepted uncritically as fact. We need to encourage distributed generation by policy for so many reasons, not the least of which is a reduced need for transmission and land use.

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