Posted on 05/05/2014 7:09:45 AM PDT by The Working Man
Utility customers who want to install rooftop solar panels or small wind turbines could face extra charges on their bills after legislation passed the Oklahoma House of Representatives on Monday.
Senate Bill 1456 passed 83-5 after no debate in the House. It passed the Senate last month and now heads to Gov. Mary Fallin for her approval.
The bill was supported by the state’s major electric utilities, but drew opposition from solar advocates, environmentalists and others. It sets up a process at the Oklahoma Corporation Commission to establish a separate customer class and monthly surcharge for distributed generation such as rooftop solar or small wind turbines.
Customers who already have those systems installed wouldn’t be affected by the bill. It also wouldn’t apply to electric cooperatives, which aren’t regulated by the Corporation Commission. The new tariffs for distributed generation would start by the end of 2015.
(Excerpt) Read more at newsok.com ...
Many of us over the years have talked about the unintended consequences of any Government Mandated or encouraged action. And once again we have been proven right. Come up with a way of saving money, reducing consumption and you will have to pay more later on to make up for what you were conserving on.
Doesn’t this only affect those who sell back to the grid?
What if you just forego the pennies that you would get for overproduction?
Signed by the Governor into law April 22, 2014
http://www.climatecentral.org/news/oklahoma-solar-surcharge-bill-becomes-law-17335
Right or Left ... our governments are neither of the People nor by the People. Your land is not yours. Your life is not yours. Our governments are wholly owned subsidiaries of ,,, well, various entities. Left, Right ... throw them out until we get real Patriots in there. It is WAY past time to stop falling for the rhetoric. We have become a Nation of bumper-sticker readers.
I’m not sure, in some locales you are not permitted to have solar unless it is co=generation and goes onto the grid. In other you can have a stand-alone or a separate system that uses additional wiring that doesn’t connect to the wires connected to the Electric power Company.
Well-said BUMP!
As I’ve aged, I’ve put away childish beliefs. One of them was that ANY government is benign. Thing is, every single “powerful” government ever to come into existence was championed by powerful people. You don’t get there by pussyfooting around.
Now, you may have the interests of the people at heart, but you have a plan, and if any of them start doing things that contradict the goals of your plan, well, they are the enemy. And you got where you did by dealing with your enemy better than they dealt with you.
There is a reason the streets in downtown Seattle are not a nice clean grid. It has to do with power struggles. As long as what you are doing is not impacting “their” plans, you can go forward, uninhindered. But when you, or enough of you, do something that will have a tangible impact, you will get pushback. Constitutional or otherwise.
It is literally how the world has worked since Adam and Ever stepped out of the garden, and the way it will work until Christ returns. The “nice” government, wherever it may sprout, is a facade.
“Senate Bill 1456 passed 83-5 after no debate.... The bill was supported by the state’s major electric utilities,”
The same okies will be against gubmint intrusion, I am sure.
It only concerns customers who wish to sell energy back to the utility, and covers the costs here-to-for assumed by the utility (and customers) to provide the safeguards and connections to do this. It's fairly complicated, selling DC current to an AC grid.
ever = Eve
“It’s fairly complicated, selling DC current to an AC grid. “
You use a grid-tied inverter and net metering.
If it’s a grid-connected solar panel system, spinning your meter backwards during the day but using grid power at night, otherwise known as “net metering,” is there a surcharge, or is this specifically directed at solar generation selling excess electricity generated into the grid?
I’ve had some interest in solar for years, but several factors have kept me from doing anything. First and foremost was cost but that’s coming down. Second would be reliability which is still an issue, and solar panel manufacturers have tended to come and go, making any warranty a sort of dicey proposition.
Ideally I’d want to be able to use it as backup, but regulations in this state at least preclude any sort of battery storage in a grid-tied system, it would have to be off grid for that. So, I’ve been looking at maybe a Morton building with two bays and a finished office area that would be solar, plus a well pump. That would create livable space in any extended power outage.
There are solar arrays with batteries build on trailers, intended to be used for backup like a generator, hooked up to a transfer panel, but the cost would be wasted most of the time, I’d want as much return as possible since it’s still pretty expensive.
Sorry I'm not following that. Elaborate please.
Overproduction is not permitted for residential net metering in NC, as I understand it. “Net zero” is the best you can achieve, meaning the cost of electricity used overnight is completely offset by excess solar generated during the day. There is a separate set of rules for production of electricity to sell back to the utility as well as a different rate.
Roads veering around in downtown areas are usually more due to property lines than geographic necessity. Powerful individuals could and did fight attempts to run roads through their properties. For instance, in a city near me, the original interstate highway that runs through downtown has a sharp curving bridge, off of which many vehicles have flown over the decades until it was revamped a decade or two ago. Such accidents seemed to be a weekly feature on the local evening news, I recall one poor lady whose car was hanging by the rear tires on the guardrail, freaking out, stuck there for hours with news cameras rolling. That curve was there due to the influence of a prominent doctor.
We are doing off grid at our cabin because its basically going to be for when there isn’t any electricity. I expect that to happen sooner rather than later. At that point there isn’t going to be anybody talking about the electric rules anymore. :-)
Look at downtown Seattle on google maps. It’s like three sections of the city merge there with sections of streets going off in weird angles, not a nice 90 degree thing. Most major cities have something like this going on. The Denny’s, Yesler’s, etc. fought over how this would come together and this is what they were left with.
I used to sell commercial real estate in downtown Seattle and got a ton of history. Like the fact that Sam Israel, who owned most of downtown Seattle, lived in a shack by Soap Lake (eastern washington) and drove around in a beater Datsun pickup. I guess his hero was Howard Hughes, in more ways than one...
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha !
How DARE you use the State Gummint's sunshine!!
I have no idea how this works. I understand that the actual power lines carry thousands of volts that has to be stepped down by transformers before it's fed to a group of homes. But the mystery is, how do you take a few amps of current at 110-120 volts and squirt it back into the mains? I guess it's a second transformer? Do the wheels on the meter spin both ways, or are they required to alter it or add a separate meter?
More importantly, who pays for the provision, installation and maintenance of these additions? I assumed the power company assumed some of that expense, perhaps are required to by controlling political entities. Since this costs them more, and knowing they are bound to pass that cost along to customers, it was reasonable that the beneficiaries pay more. Is this understanding accurate?
The customer has always paid for ALL the equipment and maintenance of a private "solar" system, at least in California.
I believe that the additional gummint "charges" are the gummint's to keep, although the rationale is that the distribution system the individual solar ties into is owned and maintained by the local electrical power provider, whether private solar systems are tied onto it on not!
When the government's involved, nothing makes sense.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.