Posted on 12/30/2021 3:25:49 PM PST by HKMk23
The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) plans to vote on the Proposed Decision for Net Energy Metering, NEM 3, on January 27th, 2022.
WHY you should care: Homeowners with NEM 1 or NEM 2 were told that their terms were grandfathered for 20 years, this will be reduced to 15 years if NEM 3 passes as written on January 27, 2022…
What does this mean to NEM 1 or NEM 2 clients – after 15 years, you will be forced over to NEM 3 and will NO LONGER GET TOU RETAIL CREDIT FOR THE ENERGY YOU PUT BACK ON THE GRID… EVER AGAIN.
PG&E solar credits will plummet to $0.03-$0.05 per kWh, currently at $0.20-$0.25 per kWh. This will reduce your available credit use to afterhours and change the ROI on your initial solar investment.
(Excerpt) Read more at cleansolar.com ...
The utility grid is not a battery. If excess power goes on the grid and not used immediately, it’s wasted.
How does the utility get paid, much less make a profit on the capital and operating costs involved, if they move other people’s power around for free? I could see a slight premium over wholesale, but retail or even close to it, not ‘sustainable’. XD
I’m not sure which net metering agreement we’re on, but we bank kilowatt hours, not dollar values when we generate excess energy and then use them up at night and during the summer to run the air conditioner. Generally speaking it’s not a good idea to install a system that generates much more than you use even prior to any rule changes. We installed a slightly larger system but only because we anticipate purchasing electric vehicles in a few years.
That is exactly right; so everyone who’s factored the economics of solar into the purchase of their new solar-equipped home is REALLY getting shafted.
Talk about portable goalposts...!
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Yup, also
How many asked the life span of those panels ?
And then they become hazardess waste that can only be removed by liscensed hazmat firms.
How much will that cost, and how much will it cost to dispose of them at a liscensed waste disposal site ?
Questions seldom asked.
Talking California that is.
Don’t know about hazardess waste laws in other states.
Never trust a government promise.
My bill has separate generation and delivery rates. My current generation rate is about 4.8¢ and delivery (for the local utility to use their wires) is about 4.2¢. If I had to pay the delivery fee to send solar powered electricity back to the gribd I would only net 0.6¢ per kWh. It would probably make more sense to use batteries to store my power locally.
“How many asked the life span of those panels ?”
I knew I was forgetting to ask something! I have Panasonic 360 watt panels that guarantee 92% at 25 years.
Well sounds like life span is improving then.
What if the company doesn’t exist in 10 years ?
I wish you luck.
Panasonic ?
They will probably be around after our sun runs out of hydrogen.
The incentives have pretty much run out, already.
Recent buyers paid full rate.
But they agreed to do so basis the expectation they would be able to trade power on the grid at out near full rate.
[”Full rate” in CA runs ~$0.23 to ~0.$27 per kWh, and solar Net Metering users are getting compensated only $0.20 to $0.23 per kWh, so they’re already getting “shorted” for their generated power.]
CLEARLY in the form of private solar array owners, the utilities see a piggy bank they think they have a right to tap into.
On an infrastructure level, I don’t disagree that a cost-sharing structure needs to get hammered out.
From the standpoint of trading power for power...NOT so much. ALL of the design, install, and maintenance costs if these generating sources are borne by their owners, so the utilities agreeing to serve them on Net Metering schedules are getting excess energy all day for next to nothing, and billing the neighbors full rate for using it; compensation private generators a substantial portion of full rate is a win at both ends.
NOW, there is this argument: “Well, yeah, but the utility can buy those same kWh from other regional utilities for pennies, so why should small private generated power command a premium?”
So, maybe Utility X can buy power from Utility Y for a paltry $0.03/kWh, and that militates against paying Joe Blow $0.20/kWh for the juice his solar panels add to the local grid.
But then we’re into the question of why Joe Blow’s non-solar neighbors are paying a 700% mark-up for electricity in the first place. Utility Y is billing their customers $0.21 for a product that costs them $0.03, basis their willingness sell it to a peer Utility at that price. Clearly, the utilities trade power at raw cost, whereas retail users are paying a rate that includes all the utility’s overhead costs.
So, here’s where I thing it all leads:
“To what extent are a given utility’s overhead costs validly deductible from the full rate billed per kWh when the generator and the consumer are in the same neighborhood?”
The answer to that question is what should, ultimately, yield a forward Net Metering schedule.
Please carefully read that statement you just wrote. You'll see how absurd it really is. It 'costs' them the full retail rate of electricity for each 'banked' kilowatt you 'sell' them because they are subtracting the full retail rate from your bill. People without solar panels have to pay more to cover for that loss.
The dollar value of the kilowatt hours is the retail rate of the power, so it is indeed dollars to the power company. They are buying power from you at the full retail rate.
“My current generation rate is about 4.8¢ and delivery (for the local utility to use their wires) is about 4.2¢.”
What do your neighbors pay per kWh at full rate?
There are components that can go bad just like anything else. We elected to go with microinverters which convert the 24v to 120v right on the individual solar panels rather than one inverter for the whole system. We have an Enphase brand combiner box (load center) and a solar ready meter which puts the energy directly on the meter rather than the main bus. When you backfeed a main bus you can only add 20%, so on a 200 amp panel, you could only add a 40 amp solar backfeed or de-rate the main breaker.
Where we live there are different rates at different times of day and there are also different tiers where the kilowatt price goes up according to your usage. I’ve seen my neighbors bills jump from a couple hundred to $700 when they start running their air conditioning. The neighbors with swimming pool pumps running 10 hours a day have even higher bills. Where we live, if you want to run the AC, solar is a good investment. It’s probably not in different parts of the country.
When my daytime excess energy goes out to the grid, it feeds a neighbors load, and less current had to flow from the generating plant 100 miles away.
“...they are subtracting the full retail rate from your bill.”
Thank you, but that loss is entirely overshadowed by other, substantive factors.
They are getting new generating capacity to meet growing demand that would otherwise drive eight- or even nine-figure capital expenditure.
Demand is increasing.
The rise of EV’s is accelerating that growth.
New sources are needed, and to the extent those are private, that’s capital outlay the utility won’t need to make.
When new demand is met by new private sources, that’s power that the utility incurs nearly no overhead on; it’s literally going down the block.
Also, as it’s new demand from the growing demand pool, so a shift from net user to net provider isn’t a net loss, it’s a reduced net gain, but only on the front end, as it’s augmented in both reduced pressure for MAJOR capital projects, and a localization of power transport — the power a home’s solar array provides to neighboring consumers travels a couple hundred feet of utility wires; not a couple hundred miles.
The point is, there are savings to the utility that are greatly offsetting.
I look at is as they are borrowing it during the day and paying it back at night. Or borrowing it during the winter and paying it back in summer. We also pay a monthly fee for using their grid.
“How does the utility get paid, much less make a profit on the capital and operating costs involved...”
I pay $400 a year in utility account charges. Even though my solar is enough to power my whole house.
“If I had to pay the delivery fee to send solar powered electricity back to the grid I would only net 0.6¢ per kWh.”
You aren’t sending it very far, your excess only goes as far as your neighbor that doesn’t have solar. So making you pay delivery fees is theft.
You normally pay delivery fee to bring energy 25 miles from power plant, to get it to your neighbors is what 200 feet ??
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