Customers who save on electric bills could be forced to pay utility lost profits | Hacker News Reader

Customers who save on electric bills could be forced to pay utility lost profits

lailluminator.com

26 pointsDocFeind45 comments

Utilities work like that. You don't just have to pay the marginal cost of the electricity you consume. The entire infrastructure has to be supported by the customers (who else is there?) Which doesn't much depend on demand - the wires or pipes or drains or whatever have to be run to every potential consumer, regardless of their need.

That’s what the standing charge is for.

Or don’t you have that in the US?

We have that in my part of the US, but my utility calls it a "connection fee". It's what you pay just to be connected to the grid, not for the actual electricity you use.

In Australia/Perth we have a "Daily Supply Charge".

We also have one of the higest rates of residential rooftop solar here, you get relatively little payback for exporting in Perth (its hard to get more than about $20/month) but can save quite a bit on what you self-consume during the day.

As a result, this Daily Supply Charge has been steadily going up over the last decade, much more than the per-unit fee. Currently it's $1.13 AUD/day + $0.316/kWh (that's 74c USD/day + $0.21 USD/kWh)

Looking at how cheap LFP batteries are getting and people not getting much for feeding back into the grid from their solar installs I think battery pack sales are about to rocket. Australia is in a very unique situation with a lot of land, big potential for solar and wind.

https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/Dawnice-Outdoor-Cabin...

These charges are quite high compared to most places in the US. I pay somewhere around 11 or 12 cents USD per kWh and around 50 cents per day in a connection fee (in reality, it's 15 per bill and not adjusted for the number of days being billed).

"Under-earning fees" sound like more than just a connection fee. The non-generation portion of a standard bill should cover that. If the homeowner has surplus, you'd expect that to be sold into the grid at some sort of weak wholesale rate, not the retail rate.

The measured rate has some of the overhead in it. That's being revealed by this change. If you don't consume enough to 'pay your share' thru that part of the bill, well, then that bill will have to be increased. Call it what you like; it's paying for infrastructure.

The farce of paying for homeowner generation is something activists (whom I love) came up with, not the utility. It's clearly operating directly against the interests of the group, in as much as it is generally paid in 10X what the 'extra' electricity is worth. So, agreed. it should be some weak wholesale rate if it's anything.

> It's clearly operating directly against the interests of the group

It's operating against the profit margin of the for-profit utility company. It's operating for the interests of the general public as a group, as distributed residential solar has significant societal benefits for resiliency after natural disasters, lower pollution, etc.

The American energy grid is a mess of bad incentives and bad actors, where we get for-profit companies with monopoly control and often their incentives are to lobby politicians for rules and regulations which increase their profits to the detriment of everyone else.

This makes sense because wires and pipes and drains and whatnot are called “profits”

Utilities do not work like that. They do not all charge for lost revenue.

Of course infrastracture costs depends on demand; you have less wear and tear on transformers, turbines etc. I live in the developing world (ex-USSR) and the government punish higher consumption (higher price), as it causes constant shutdown of tranformers due to overheating.

All the more reason to get consumer /residential solar with storage rolled out

Utilities have probably gotten very used and to the regulatory capture that they possess, which is quite strong

The only real competition against utility power is home solar

But at least it's competition

At least where I live, you don't own the power you generate via solar. The public utility does. You have to sell it to them at a discounted rate and then buy it back at the full rate.

Sounds like a great policy if you want to discourage proliferation of solar.

That's not true anywhere unless you're grid tied. In which case if you don't like it why not go off-grid?

I can see where utilities would get laws passed to require connection to the grid.

It's not legal to have independent generation on your property here. It must be grid tied or interlocked. If it's interlocked, you only are allowed to use it temporarily.

Are you sure that independent generation is actually illegal itself, and not just constructively discouraged? Where is this, if you don't mind my asking? I've got a similar situation where the public utility will only pay for solar generation under a two meter "buy all sell all" arrangement. From what I've seen people just don't plan on selling anything back to the grid, and the overproducers get storage batteries.

(As long as some grid tie is required for occupancy permit, this doesn't really address the original comment's point about bona fide competition with the grid. But on the other hand I'd rather have a public utility than be in a victim market of a "private" underregulated monopoly. My connection fee is like $10/mo. Also they built out gigabit fiber, which just works and doesn't require the yearly threaten to cancel dance of Ma Coax.)

I mean, you aren't going to be sent to jail for generating power. All the city can do is condemn your home & evict you from it using the police. If you resist the police, then you are going to jail.

I was not asking the seriousness of the illegality (civil vs criminal), but rather whether independent generation is itself specifically directly illegal or not.

For example, I've heard of places where not being connected to the grid is illegal (revocation of your occupancy permit), with the local utility monopoly then demanding you sign their contract with onerous terms (effectively making those terms de facto private law). Someone could sum up that state of affairs as being "independent generation is prohibited", meanwhile the actual details give much more room for sidestepping.

surely that has to depend on who paid for the panels?

It applies if you want to be connected to the grid for backup power for any reason. If you're connected to the grid, then the grid gets to dictate the terms of that connection.

A workaround is to go fully off grid. A larger workaround is to get a small electrical box hookup on your property for emergency power (thus paying the monthly connection fee), but your home can run off-grid. In the event of a situation where you need the grid power, you can run an extension cord and hopefully plug in the few items you require. For convenience, most people obviously don't go this route and instead abide by the terms of the power company.

Batteries got so cheap recently off-grid is looking better and better.

> It applies if you want to be connected to the grid for backup power for any reason

This is not accurate. You cannot legally reside in a home here without a grid connection. It is a mandatory utility.

The profits aren't just going to pay themselves to shareholders - consumers have to do their part!

Where is here?

It's a government monopoly

This makes perfect sense - employers should also pay workers for the lost income due to improved productivity.

Alternatively, we could lower our productivity to reflect the income. I'm a true capitalist and will evaluate the use of my resources based on my personal profit. There's literally no incentive for me to work harder or more efficiently if there's no payoff.

> no incentive for me to work harder or more efficiently if there's no payoff

Yes? You should be noting if more work or productivity isn't compensated (at your firm or elsewhere). That isn't lowering productivity, it's allocating your time and energy efficiently.

I think this is a great opportunity for Louisiana to socialize their power grid. The same thing happened in California. For profit energy providers raise rates when usage is high, and then raise rates when usage is low. The result is that people just trying to survive are getting power shutoff because they can't afford to even run their refrigerator, much less A/C or heating.

Kind of the same with the gas taxes which EVs avoid. Gas taxes fund road construction.

Why would only motorists pay for roads if everybody benefits from existance of road transport?

> Why would only motorists pay for roads if everybody benefits from existance of road transport?

Not sure the history in the US of road construction funding, but my understanding is that taxes on vehicle fuel funds the majority of road construction.

States are in acting taxes on EVs to make up for a perceived loss.

Fuel taxes are a minority of road funding.

Taxes, including fuel taxes, directly charged to motorists only make up 53% of the cost of road building and maintenance in the US. Motorists are deeply subsidized by general funds. https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/state/states-road-funding...

Good info, thx, but states dont want to lose that 40%

It should be included in taxes on the vehicles themselves which then gets priced into the product (just like fuel is currently).

One major difference between the US and EU for example is road taxes just for owning a car. The US kind of has that with registration, but the costs are too low for all vehicle classes.

In the Netherlands, I pay €22/month for my economy car in a road tax that is separate from fuel taxes. If I drive more, then I'll obviously contribute more in fuel taxes. If I had a bigger car, the cost might be €50 or €100/month for a large box truck that causes considerably more wear and tear, even if it doesn't drive as far as I do on my daily commute in the economy car. Registration is included in this cost. If I deregister my vehicle, I stop paying the tax.

I feel this is a better/fairer arrangement for all parties.

The tax should be based on vehicle weight too. Given two cars with the same fuel efficiency, the heavier one should be paying a higher tax still, cube law proportional. Double the weight? Road tax is 8x.

Especially in the US we need stronger discouragement to buying larger vehicles, and since the damage a vehicle does is proportional to the cube of it's weight, we kind of get two birds with one stone.

Taxing (and not subsidizing) EVs more sounds fantastic to me.

Mostly because motorists are the ones that destroy the roads the most. In addition, the roads are rendered un-usable by pedestrians and other vehicles because they are filled with cars.

I am under the impression that it’s trucks that make the most damage. They also deliver goods and supplies that everyone uses.

Trucks do the most damage per mile. But there are about 10 time as many cars on the road per truck. Also cars have gotten WAY heavier recently making road maintenance a nightmare. Also commercial trucks do pay more in taxes than cars.

Gas taxes only fund about half of road construction because it hasn’t kept pace with inflation. The general fund covers the rest.

I would love to see a road use tax. Pretty much turn every road into a toll road then use the money to fund alternatives to driving. Cars are obscenely expensive compared to public transportation and micro-mobility. Stuff like bicycles, e-bikes, and scooters are way cheaper from an infrastructure perspective.

Gas cars should pay an extra tax too because they are way louder and more polluting than electric cars. I can't take a walk without ear plugs lately because of all the modified exhausts and dying elephants trying to cave my skull in.

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