Energy Utilities Trying To Stifle Growth of Solar Power 488
An anonymous reader writes: Incremental improvements have been slowly but surely pushing solar power toward mainstream viability for a few decades now. It's getting to the point where the established utilities are worried about the financial hit they're likely to take — and they're working to prevent it. "These solar households are now buying less and less electricity, but the utilities still have to manage the costs of connecting them to the grid. Indeed, a new study from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory argues that this trend could put utilities in dire financial straits. If rooftop solar were to grab 10 percent of the market over the next decade, utility earnings could decline as much as 41 percent." The utilities are throwing their weight behind political groups seeking to end subsidies for solar and make "net metering" policies go away. Studies suggest that if solar adoption continues growing at its current rate, incumbents will be forced to raise their prices, which will only persuade more people to switch to solar (PDF).
Fine. Legislate for externalities. (Score:5, Insightful)
There's a long tradition of regulating electrical utilities -- their new-plant construction, their service build-out, and most especially their rates. If connecting single-household solar installations and buying back power from them is imposing an undue burden, and they can prove this, adjust the tariffs accordingly.
But you shouldn't quash an entire emerging industry just to protect an old and established one. Unfortunately, that seems to be one of the main duties of legislatures.
Externalities: (Score:2)
Externalities are a bill to which any amount may be assigned.
Re: (Score:2)
That's like saying, "Anyone can say anything, so that means everything is BS except what I say".
I can't tell. Do you not believe that there can be costs in a product or service that are not reflected in its price because they are passed along to others? Or were you just offering us all a Zen koan?
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It's like saying, "prove it".
I await the first court cases showing harm caused by these fairy tales.
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I'll agree that it's either that, or something different.
Re:Fine. Legislate for externalities. (Score:5, Interesting)
This. I have no problem at all if they want to split my bill into two parts, a fixed cost for just being hooked up and an incremental cost for generating the electricity I consume, as long as the two costs are calculated sanely. The proper fix is to adjust the tariffs to reflect the growing reality of universal connection without universal consumption.
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That's how my bill in Texas works with Green Mountain Energy; I pay an X base fee for infrastructure etc and then Y rate per KWh, which is broken in to three rate tiers,
below 450KWh/mo (second cheapest),
451-900KWh/mo (the cheapest)
and 900+KWh/mo (most expensive)
I'm not on any special solar plan (nor do I have the generating capability), that's just how they've broken down my bill for the last Z years.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
This. I have no problem at all if they want to split my bill into two parts, a fixed cost for just being hooked up and an incremental cost for generating the electricity I consume, as long as the two costs are calculated sanely. The proper fix is to adjust the tariffs to reflect the growing reality of universal connection without universal consumption.
That's what my electric utility already does. I do have a slight problem with this:
"But you shouldn't quash an entire emerging industry just to protect an old and established one."
Nobody is quashing an emerging industry. What they're saying is that they don't want to have to buy electricity from everybody.
Forcing them to buy electricity was a bone thrown to the solar energy, as are the various tax incentives for installing solar. I actually want to install solar myself, badly, but I would prefer this to
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You see, if you are a utility, sometimes you have to PAY if you want to send electricity to the grid.
I've heard of this but I don't understand it. Surely there is something you can do with it. Heat water, run a pump backwards, etc..
and if you still can't find anything to do with it, why not just create a pretty light show or melt some rock. Even if you do have
excess electricity because you can't slow down production, it makes no sense that you could figure out a free way to disipate it.
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Houses existed before electricity and they still do today.
Ask the Amish.
I tried, but no one is answering the phone.
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Sure, anyone connected to the grid is likely to be drawing power from it at some point. But the point that has the energy companies up in arms is that over the course of a month, some people will not be net consumers, and the current billing system is not designed to handle that in a realistic fashion.
Depending on local ordinances... (Score:3, Informative)
You may not be *ABLE* to go off-grid. I talked to some people a while back who had waited on installing Solar until they moved out of the county because the local ordinances required them to have a grid tie system since one of the city ordinances required all houses to have electrical, gas and plumbing services to them, regardless of if they had an alternative and closed loop system to provide the same services locally.
As such they had to move 30-50 miles out of town to get to an area which didn't have such
Re: (Score:3)
That's the economic miracle of privatisation. Sell off voter-owned infrastructure to foreign owned cartels who then bribe politicians with donations.
Thanks, Jeff Kennett. :(
Re:Fine. Legislate for externalities. (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem the utilities have here is that solar is dropping so fast in cost that it's now cost effective on a 10 year ROI to install. You can put panels on your roof with a loan right now where the monthly loan cost will be cheaper than the cost of the electricity it offsets. That's true right now in almost every state in the union. The utilities see this and see a death spiral because their entire business is built around making money generating power from dirty central hydrocarbon based power plants.
So the power companies do the natural thing, they try to get tariffs raised on the solar panels to make them more expensive and halt the installations. But the problem is the panel prices are dropping so fast that anything they do is just going to be temporary. The problem with chasing the "raise the cost of solar" method of competing is that at some point those increased costs make homeowner owned storage viable. Because of the screwing around with Tariffs that happened in Hawaii they now have a booming power storage market and people are beginning to disconnect from the grid entirely.
The power companies are scared that they'll sell less power to customers with solar panels and make less money (which will hit their dividends badly) but what they should really be worried about is customers disconnecting from the grid entirely. Every customer that disconnects from the grid raises the fixed cost transfer to everyone else, which raises power prices and makes solar more attractive. You end up with a self feeding harmonics that starts a slide into a situation that doesn't just destroy the power companies dividend but destroys the company all together.
The companies need to be evolving to be that backup power supply. They need to be shifting generation strategy and bringing online storage so they can displace the gaps so customers don't do it themselves. That's their future business, moving power around and storing it for use when the sun isn't shining. It's going to mean smaller companies and less revenue but that's better than no company at all. Forward looking states realize that the games the companies are playing with the solar tariffs right now are just that games, these states are mandating the companies invest in renewables and storage so they are ready for the change. The states without foresight are allowing the companies to put a big tariff on solar customers thereby driving them towards disconnecting from the grid entirely.
I think centrally managed storage and distribution is better than everyone running their own storage array. These companies are public utilities, that is government granted monopolies that the taxpayer has control over. We should be encouraging solar installation and investing in the grid changes necessary to support it because no matter what the solar is coming. The costs are dropping rapidly and have reached the mass acceptance pricing. Solar is already cheaper without any subsidies than nuclear power. In a few years it's going to be cheaper than coal with the subsidies and within the decade it'll be cheaper than coal without. If we don't make the changes to the grid right now we won't be ready for that colossal shift in generation and everyone will be installing their own backup systems and disconnecting from the grid (which is going to hurt the poor and those living in apartments very hard). I'd be willing to bet that by 2050 half of the homes in the US will have solar arrays on the roof and solar will comprise nearly 50% of the generation capacity.
I wouldn't be investing long term in residential power companies with heavy carbon assets right now.
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That sounds simple in theory. In reality? You're just blowing smoke - because online storage in the capacities required simply doesn't exist. Pumped storage in a few places, maybe, in a decade or two when the utilities finally convince the regulatory bodies to let them sell the bonds... and after four
Stick it when the sun don't shine (Score:5, Funny)
That's [the electric power distribution companies'] future business, moving power around and storing it for use when the sun isn't shining.
"Are you generating more solar power than you can use? We'll give you somewhere to stick it when the sun don't shine." That'll go over nicely. :p
correction (Score:2)
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I agree that's true--if you live in the part of the world where there is enough sunny days to justify its initial expense. The southwestern USA--including California--belongs in this category, along with areas around the Mediterranean Sea, much of the Middle East, and several other places.
In other parts of the world, long, cold winters and/or long rainy seasons could cut down on its usefulness. Indeed, in Japan, only the western half of Honshu, Shikoku and Kyushu have enough sunny days to justify large-scal
Re:Fine. Legislate for externalities. (Score:4, Insightful)
"Indeed, in Japan, only the western half of Honshu, Shikoku and Kyushu have enough sunny days to justify large-scale rooftop solar installations."
Which is why one of the largest solar plants opened near Sendai in northern Honshu a couple years back? What conditions are profitable depend on the technology you use, and the cost of production. And as solar cost decreases and efficiency increases more locations will be realistic.
Re:Fine. Legislate for externalities. (Score:5, Insightful)
you said "These companies are public utilities, that is government granted monopolies that the taxpayer has control over."
Here is the problem in my (USA) area- ... they get it! The public is ignored. We once had a strong consumer advocate to counter the powerful utility lobby, but they have been emasculated. The utility is owned by a for-profit company with great resources. They can manipulate the media as well as elected and unelected officials. The taxpayer has no control over them.
The government and the profit-seeking utility are in collusion. The utility wants a rate increase
Roads are built by government (taxpayers); utilities should be run by government (taxpayers) including water, power, communications and internet. These alliances with profit making companies who have the means to manipulate government cost everyone dearly.
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They will move to a different charging model (Score:5, Insightful)
If the amount of money made from the actual electricity falls too far then the cost will be transferred to a network connection costs.
This is already the case in Australia where the cost per kw/h is predominately made up but the cost of the distribution network rather than the generation costs.
You may see an increase in people disconnecting from the grid all together but I would suggest that will remain a fringe component for the foreseeable future. Battery costs are too high and most people's electricity consumption is very lumpy meaning they need a lot of storage. Finally people will pay for the security of mains power.
In Australia you tend to see a feed-in tariff - ie the electricity you put into the grid is priced. For a while this was heavily subsidised meaning the feed in rate could be more than double the buy rate. Which skewed the market terribly, basically the people who could afford solar systems were funded by renters and those that couldn't.
Now the feed in rates are a commercial competition between the various energy retailers.
In the end someone has to provide the wires, transformers and sub-stations. Those don't care where the power comes from. If it cannot be paid for by the generators it will be paid for by the consumer directly.
Re:They will move to a different charging model (Score:4, Informative)
Posting to myself for additional information.
In Queensland the breakdown in a typical bill is
21% Generation
24% Retail
3% Green Schemes
8% Solar costs
48% Network
Source - http://www.dews.qld.gov.au/ene... [qld.gov.au]
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A third option: run an extension cord to the neighbour's house and pay them a monthly rate, thereby evening out the connection cost across several neighbours.
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That only works if this usage is the fringe case - as soon as it becomes the norm the price will go to 3x. It has to. The asset must be maintained.
Re:They will move to a different charging model (Score:4)
If the amount of money made from the actual electricity falls too far then the cost will be transferred to a network connection costs.
It doesn't really matter how the accounting is done, utilities are going to have to charge more for power as they sell less of it, because their fixed costs are such a large proportion of their total costs. Fixed costs account for anywhere from 75 to 100% of plant costs: http://www.eia.gov/forecasts/c... [eia.gov] (the data in table 1 appear to mean "fuel cost" when they say "variable cost").
The utilities model is based on the notion that you can recover your capital costs (and more) over the lifetime of the plant. The rapid rise of solar in particular is putting that at risk, and utilities are caught between a rock and a hard place. They can fight by keeping power costs low, and lose, or they can fight by raising their power costs--however they want to do the accounting--and also lose.
Personally, I hope they raise the costs. It will make low-carbon alternatives like wind and solar more attractive.
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Not quite a surcharge for solar where I live but they separate grid tie in from usage for me. It's part of the deregulation BS where you can pick your supplier. I don't use enough to make moving beneficial so I stay with the original provider. They show the grid tie in, the current costs of the market rates and ad .02 or something like that. Not around a bill right now, but it increases my monthly bill about $15 when they did it a few years ago as apposed to before.
Now a neighbor wanted to do the net meteri
The obvious solution will meet fierce resistance (Score:3)
Pay solar at wholesale rates, or, make grid interconnect a separate fee, and charge them for that. Solar advocates, of course, can't stand the idea they should actually have to pay for the delivery of goods and services, even if it costs them a measely five bucks a month [energyandpolicy.org].
I would be willing to bet that the apportioned capital cost of power plants, maintenance, and distribution alone would amount to a third of a typical power bill.
Re:The obvious solution will meet fierce resistanc (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't know if you've been following this story, but the efforts of the energy companies to thwart any development in renewables has gone a heck of a lot further than a $5 monthly surcharge.
In Oklahoma, Wisconsin and other states, they are requesting special taxes on solar panels. They don't even care if the money goes to them, they just want solar users penalized. Yes, this is about more than just the economics of energy. There is malicious intent.
Re:The obvious solution will meet fierce resistanc (Score:5, Insightful)
Grid interconnects already appear as a separate fee in most places. Perhaps not at its fair market value, but go fuck a goat if you think I'll pay over a dollar per KW for my occasional nighttime use.
Solar advocates, of course, can't stand the idea they should actually have to pay for the delivery of goods and services, even if it costs them a measely five bucks a month
Try $14, for me. And yeah, I consider that fair. Ending net metering and charging me when they resell my peak-demand production for 10x what they pay me for it? Yeah, I can afford batteries, can they afford every other house going off-grid?
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And the problem with this is? (Score:3)
I fail to see a problem with local/green energy production. Power distribution infrastructure is terribly vulnerable, horribly inefficient, and more often than not attached to a chimney.
Too many industries have the philosophy of "if it's broke, don't fix it." It's time to develop and employ 21st century technology, join up or stand aside. There's no reason power companies can switch their business model up a bit and adapt. Perhaps add SolarCity [solarcity.com] style businesses to their portfolio.
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Solar city still uses conventional grid when solar panels do not provide enough electricity. All they are is an installation and maintenance company for conventional net zero solar panels.
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Simple, the problem is that utility companies that have wallowed in the comfort of being a monopoly for basically their entire lives now have a competitor nipping at their profits, and they will do anything and everything within their power to eliminate them.
I'll let you decide which part of that statement is the problem...
net metering != solar and 10% needs new physics (Score:5, Interesting)
Electric companies don't like being forced to pay far above their normal cost for something they have to throw away by shunting it to ground. That's net metering, when done on a large scale. The light outside might LOOK ten times brighter than the lighting inside Walmart, but it's actually 10,000 times brighter. Your eyes are very good at seeing in a wide range of light - from candlelight to full sun, a million times brighter. They do so by using a logarithmic, rather than linear, scale for brightness. For the same reason, although the noon sun may APPEAR to be only twice as bright as the sun at 9:00 AM, it's actually much, much brighter. Virtually all of the solar electric is generated when the sun is bright, from about 10:00-2:00.
What that means is that if most people had solar panels, from 10:00-2:00 they could generate as much power as they use the rest of the day. Their electric bill under net metering would be zero. However, the power company still has to provide power to them the other 20 hours per day - for free. See how that could be a problem for the utility, having to provide power for everyone, but nobody has to pay for it?
The utility can't give them back the power generated ten hours earlier, because there is no effective way to store power at utility scale. I know someone who heard a stock tip about some cool new company with magic storage will want to argue with me on that, but I've looked into all of the options and nome of them work at scale. You can try to argue with me, but I'll make you look very, very foolish when I apply some arithmetic to your idea.
Net metering is survivable if only 1% of people do it, because their neighbors can use their noon power. If everyone is doing net metering, you need a magic free energy source the other 20 hours per day. If you decide that solar electric implies net metering, you only end up proving solar electric to be impractical, because net metering absolutely, positively cannot ever possibly work for more than a small fraction of the population.
On a related note, if your argument for solar power assumes that solar means solar electric, you're probably shooting yourself in the foot too. There are several varieties of solar power that work well. Solar water heaters are a no-brainer. Solar electric is probably the silliest approach that anyone seriously suggests, as shown by the trillions of dollars we've wasted on utter fail so far.
net metering != solar and 10% needs new physics (Score:3)
In LA, with a southern-facing, steeply pitched roof, my power generation today peaked at 3PM and ran within 95% of peak from 1PM to 5PM, falling off sharply at 5PM. This is just slightly ahead of the air-conditioning peak demand, which creates the peak for the utility. LA could probably withstand a lot more than 10% on net-metering, simply because solar and air-conditioning demand are so closely aligned. (They would be even more aligned if air conditioners were set to over-cool houses during peak solar g
choose 4 hours by direction (Score:4, Insightful)
I said most of the power is in a four-hour period. Your numbers match that, you just pointed your panels into the afternoon sun. You'd get more power, earlier in the day, by pointing them more upward. You might prefer less power later. Of course what time that is also shifts by an hour based on daylight savings time.
You can (and probably do) also buy a system that is incapable of converting all of the peak power. In that case, your power generation will flatline not because the amount of sunlight remained steady, but because your system was incapable of converting. all of the brightest sun - you get only got 3PM power out of 1:00PM light, even though the 1:00PM light was much brighter.
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Nice to see *informed* input!
I would argue that the problem is the flat rate pricing of $/KWH. A KWH produced at 1 AM has far less value than one produced at 7:00 PM. Why are we charging them the same? Much of the issue you mention would largely vanish if electricity prices were negotiated more frequently. EG: hourly or 15 minute increments. If there really is a surplus of power between 10:00-2:00, as you state, then the price during that time of day would be low to accommodate. This would create an incenti
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That's an interesting point. From a pure kWh point of view facing them a bit to the east gets you better numbers since the crisp morning air is clearer than the late afternoon haze.
If you have batteries it becomes a balance between storage losses in the morning versus irradiation losses in the afternoon.
GP completely ignores the daily demand curve, especiall
good thought. Most getting smart meters anyway (Score:3)
That's a heck of an idea. Many places already have smart meters, or will soon.
It could certainly work like you said- noontime power would be very inexpensive if a lot of people had solar. Of course, that means the economics of buying solar panels would change significantly since the buyback would reflect actual costs. You'd choose between buying your noon electricity cheaply from the power company (from your neighbors, indirectly) or selling noon power at a low rate. Solar electric systems would prob
Re:net metering != solar and 10% needs new physics (Score:4, Informative)
Sure, I'll argue the point. Perhaps your friend was referring to Aquion, the company scaling up to mass-produce saltwater batteries that they claim will be as cheap as lead-acid while lasting 10x as long and not minding being deep-cycled. So let's run the numbers, shall we? /kWh/cycle. And since power cycling presumably happens daily with solar we can replace "cycle" with "day" /kWh/day
A quick search gave me the following base numbers:
an average deep-cycle lead-acid battery price as $120/kWh and will last about 600 cycles, so about $0.20
Aquion claims 10x the battery life at the same price point, so that makes it $0.02
The average US home uses ~11,000kWh/year, or about 30kWh per day. We could argue whether the actual number should be lower (there is some power consumption during the day after all, especially during the summer when air conditioning runs rampant) or higher (you need buffering for extended overcast periods, assuming your grid isn't efficiently cross-connected between regions), but that's a good first estimate.
So: 30kWh * $0.02 /kWh/day = $0.60 per day just for the power buffering, or $18 per month. Not nothing, but an eminently survivable expense.
they claim the will (Score:2)
"the company scaling up to build ... they claim"
For fifty years people have been claiming their company is just about to start making some magical new energy stuff. My uncle claims he's Napoleon. Call me when it happens. Fyi, if it costs $20,000 to make something, and the government (taxpayers) pays $15,000 of that through subsidies, that's still a cost of $20,000. We all can't subsidize ourselves for thousands of dollars per month.
Re:they claim the will (Score:4, Insightful)
My friend who works in solar is taking the claims seriously - they're selling the things now at very competitive prices, but the current micro-factory has low volume and (I think) a bit higher cost - as is to be expected without economies of scale. Meanwhile the new large factory is not yet operational. And my other numbers were all conservative.
First off, what crazy tangent are you going off on? Who said anything about subsidies? Let the power companies take out loans to buy the suckers and amortize the costs - they do it every time they build out any infrastructure. It's business as usual, and they may as well be investing in long-term solutions rather than building more coal-fired power plants.
As for not all being able to finance $20,000 - isn't that part of the point of having "the grid" provide the storage? That is Aquions primary target market. You don't seem to be considering the incredible benefits power buffering brings to the power companies themselves, even without net metering. Currently they need to maintain a whole fleet of generators to be able to handle peak load, which sit wastefully idle the vast majority of the time - and they're having to build out ever more generating capacity as demand steadily increases, with new construction generally needing all sorts of expensive emissions control system, etc. Or they could buy batteries and run the existing generating capacity on a more regular basis leaving the batteries to handle the peak. Then as carbon-power gets phased out (which is looking inevitable in the long term) they'll already have the infrastructure and experience in place to handle the shift to a more variable power source. This is stuff that a smart power company should be paying attention to - it's likely to be far far less disruptive to the existing players if they start implementing incremental upgrades now than if they wait until some new company with a proven track record come in offering the local governments to build all new infrastructure from the ground up for half the price it would cost to upgrade your equipment. Start bringing the retrofit costs down now in the course of normal business.
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Your analysis depends on two assumptions. First, that at the daily peak the amount of solar produced exceeds the total demand for electricity. That's actually quite likely to happen in the long term in certain locations -- sunny, densely developed residential neighborhoods for example -- but not in others -- in a neighborhood that has a steel mill. Maybe in the short term in a few places if the adoption of rooftop solar accelerates even more.
One of the ways to alleviate this would be to improve the distr
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"What that means is that if most people had solar panels, from 10:00-2:00 they could generate as much power as they use the rest of the day. Their electric bill under net metering would be zero. However, the power company still has to provide power to them the other 20 hours per day - for free. See how that could be a problem for the utility, having to provide power for everyone, but nobody has to pay for it?"
well, your post was fairly good, except the part about 4 hours a day. from my link set the day to t
they are going to hate me even more than that (Score:2)
And the problem is? (Score:2)
Studies suggest that if solar adoption continues growing at its current rate, incumbents will be forced to raise their prices, which will only persuade more people to switch to solar.
Which means the subsidies are effective and successful, and we should have more of them.
Oh, wait. I thought I lived in a sane country for a second there.
Costs! (Score:3)
"These solar households are now buying less and less electricity, but the utilities still have to manage the costs of connecting them to the grid."
The pro-solar folks think the utilities should pay this cost, instead of the people who actually incur that cost? Do tell.
If the power companies didn't have to worry about connecting all of that moderately-erratic power to the grid, they could easily "build down" over the next decade or two - and chop lots of unprofitable customers from their systems. They could dump pretty much all of the rural customers, and wouldn't have to worry about capacity expansion in the near future. They could even shut down a lot of older power plants that are low performers, profit-wise, instead of having to fight the government to build new plants while trying to keep the old ones running.
If government wants to get involved... (Score:3)
Perverting the market through solar panel adoption subsidies is not a good solution. They should instead allow the true cost of solar and other power sources be reflected in the price, by only taxing and subsidizing to account for positive and negative externalities. If the government wants to promote solar, it should be pumping money into green energy research to help make solar power (and other green technologies) cheaper faster. It should not be subsidizing the purchase of current expensive and inefficient technologies. It should be facilitating the development of future technologies that are actually cheap and efficient (without subsidies).
In fact, if the government owned the patents for these new technologies, it would have the power to lease them royalty free, further spreading their use. We want these technologies to be cheap, and we want people all over the world using them and improving them. Funneling profits to certain private corporations through subsidies is not the best way to achieve this goal.
You raise? Call, mofo! (Score:2)
Your time on this planet as profitable private entities has come to an end. Rejoice! You had a good run. But it has ended.
If you succeed in eliminating net metering... Honestly, I bought a $20k solar installation; do you really think I'll put up with your bullshit instead of spending another $5k on batteries and going totally off-grid, costing you even your scammy $14/month "connection charge"?
Think about this long and hard, boys. Right now, you get peak-usage power from me
Re:You raise? Call, mofo! (Score:4, Informative)
do you really think I'll put up with your bullshit instead of spending another $5k on batteries and going totally off-grid, costing you even your scammy $14/month "connection charge"?
Hmm. $5,000 up-front in order save $14/month? Those batteries will pay for themselves in only 29 years, yay! Or rather, they would pay for themselves if they lasted that long, which they definitely won't.
So yes, the power company really does think you'll put up with their bullshit -- or at least, that most people will.
The Last Customer (Score:2)
Distribution and Generation are split (Score:2)
Why would the power companies care as long as they have a viable business model?
Six of this, half a dozen of that... (Score:2)
The infrastructure costs can be itemized in the bill, or amortized in the rate.
The major power company has to pay for the wires and cables of the grid in your community: why should the minor ones get to use the grid for free? The small-time (homeowner) power suppliers are making money; their connection to the grid should be charged to them. That the big power companies are asking for a fair apportionment of costs is not surprising.
I don't have any sympathy to small power producers who want a free ride....
They're Against More Than That (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not just solar. It's everything that doesn't conform to their production methods. If they're primarlity coal fired, they're against everything that isn't coal. If thei're oil fired, they're against everything that isn't oil. Etc etc etc. They should be going with Liquid-fluoride thorium reactors. They're adverse to anything that isn't what they're already doing. But China and India are going with thorium reactors.
Re: (Score:2)
The only thing is that we may start to see a trend of going away from burning coal to generate electricity--the air pollution problems from coal burning will end this practice in the next 50-70 years. What will likely happen is in the short to medium term, we'll see a switch to burning natural gas (which has a tiny fraction of the air pollution and is cheap to install emission controls) and in the longer term eventually switch to a new generation of nuclear power plants that are extremely safe to run and us
So, yeah, there's a business model ... (Score:2)
... scuttle the ship.
Failure of Imagination; Utilities Could Sell Solar (Score:3)
This is simply a failure of imagination.
Utilities are in the business of sinking money into power generating and distribution capability, amortized over decades against customers' utility payments.
Nothing is preventing the utility company from building solar thermal or solar pv facilities for the purpose of selling the power. Nothing is preventing the utility company from purchasing rooftop pv systems and reselling them to homeowners, along with skilled installation.
Instead, they want to coast on coal plants and grid they built out, much of it long ago - and keep slamming your checks.
Some limits are understandable, but... (Score:2)
I can understand some limits, home/business owners back feeding power onto the power grid could under limited circumstances cause some issues and where they are allowed to back feed forcing utilities to pay more than they would for wholesale electricity sounds a bit much. But complaining that people aren't using enough electricity is ludicrous, the strain on utilities during the mid-day was one of the pushes for peak metering. One of the biggest causes of those higher loads are AC systems, which are used
Yuppers (Score:2)
Yuppers! Our local "coop" electric utility is just like this. They tried hard to kill of net metering in the legislature. When they lost they announced it as a victory - fantastic spin. They keep raising our electric rates although we already pay some of the highest rates in the country. They have a monopoly and they abuse it. The times are a changing though... Soon we'll all be able to generate our own power and we need far less power because machinery is becoming more efficient. On our farm I've been desi
Econ 101 (Score:2)
Things will absolutely go crazy the moment some company makes a cheap hybrid plugin electric car. Up until now you can get like 100,000 free miles of gasoline for what you'll save by not buying one. Once there is an economical reason to get one, everyone will want one. They'll use grid electricity at first, but then realize the benefit of having solar panels at their homes, and peop
Then Remove All Subsidies (Score:2)
An article at Forbes [forbes.com] reports that coal increases health care costs by 19 to 45 cents a kwh. Oil increases the costs by 8 to 19 c/kwh, and natural gas by 1 to 2 c/kwh. Then there's the estimated cost of climate change [nas.edu], assuming we beat it. (Yes, I trust a near-unanimous group of subject matter experts. Heck, I bet those 97% would really like to be wrong, so we wouldn't need to do something about the issue.
Time to kill MR burns (Score:2)
He has gone to far this time.
Re:Survival (Score:4, Interesting)
This strategy is untenable in the long term - as battery technology grows better and cheaper thanks to the likes of Tesla, they will eventually drive consumers off-grid entirely with these punishment tactics, losing any chance of making money from them.
First there will need to be a minor revolt against codes requiring electrical service as a condition of human occupancy.
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I'm convinced we will see houses with electrical service that are not attached to the grid. In our lifetime.
Re:Survival (Score:5, Informative)
My solution is to take some things of the grid. My outdoor lighting has been the first to go, soon to be followed by the swimming pool, finally followed by the workshop. Things considered "temporary" can be easily disconnected from the grid without violating code or running afoul of the banks.
When I move here in a few years I'll try for 100% disconnected. If I don't move I'll be paid off in 10 more years and can pull the plug.
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I found this pretty quickly. It seems like local officials are using overbroad interpretations of codes to keep people from disconnecting from the grid. I don't know how widespread it is.
http://reason.com/blog/2014/02... [reason.com]
Pardon my linking to Reason Magazine. I don't like to use them as a news source because they're kind of unhinged over there. But they have the most thorough coverage of this story that I've found. If you want a more balanced sou
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Why? If you have a solar power system installed then you have electrical service - code requirements met. Unless the code specifically requires that you be connected to the electrical utility grid there's no problem.
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Unless the code specifically requires that you be connected to the electrical utility grid there's no problem.
That's just the thing. Some codes do specifically require a grid connection. Building codes and accompanying occupancy permits are a perfect example of small government at work. They vary from county to county, and can even be contradictory. Of course they can't contradict state or federal codes, but they don't have to match each other. Some counties seem to take positive delight in piling on additional restrictions, on top of state codes. For the property values, of course.
So yes, there does have to
Amish (Score:2)
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Why batteries? Spin up a buried flywheel in a vacuum. Motor/generators for converting between mechanical and electrical energy can be close to 90% efficient.
Re:Survival (Score:5, Insightful)
Why batteries? Spin up a buried flywheel in a vacuum.
Because flywheels aren't actually all that energy dense, even after quite a few years of development. To store more energy, you want bigger radius, more mass, or higher speed. There are material limits to all of those things. Push any of those criteria too far and you end up with a flywheel that has a distressing tendency to self-disassemble. Catastrophically.
Oddly enough, as difficult as it is, the materials science of figuring out more efficient ways to store electrical energy by moving ions around is still easier than the materials science of keeping spinning-very-fast things in one piece.
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The energy density of gasoline is 100 X better than current batteries, so why even bring this up? The interesting number is cost of energy storage, Pumped hydro is cheaper than flywheels or batteries (and has terrible energy density) but is the best current choice for storing lots of energy.
Re:Survival (Score:5, Informative)
Actually Tesla is really the wrong kind of battery - they are designed for high wattage (dis)charge, low mass, and low volume. None of which is relevant to your average home solar power system, and all of which come at the cost of considerable design compromises. Lithium batteries have short lifespans unless you're only using a fraction of their capacity, high environmental toxicity, and are extremely expensive. A more interesting contender is Aquion who are building a factory to build power-grid oriented saltwater batteries that are fairly nontoxic, don't mind being deep cycled, and are currently about the same price as lead acid (the cheapest rechargeable batteries available) while having 10x the projected working life (so effectively 1/10 the annual cost of lead acid). Sure they're every bit as heavy as lead-acid batteries while being even larger, but that's not really relevant to a stationary application.
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Wouldn't housing associations and streets be better off with something like Bloom energy fuel cells? This plus solar seem to be the way to go.
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Lithium batteries have short lifespans unless you're only using a fraction of their capacity, high environmental toxicity, and are extremely expensive.
In regards to lifespan to cycling, you are thinking of lead acid batteries, lithium batteries can be deep cycled all the time. When your phone gets to a few percent battery life, it is being deep cycled pretty heavily.
There does need to be some kind of undervoltage protection, because if drained under 3v batteries can be damaged, however by that point well over 99% of all the energy the battery has has been expended. I'd hardly call that "light cycling".
Modern quality lithiums can be deep cycled somewhere b
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Maybe some utilities are scared.
Around here, they account for under 0.1% of all generation, and cause all sorts of problems. I suppose it's nice if you live in a part of the world where you get lots of sunshine or something, but you start approaching the northern latitudes and all bets are off. Wind farms are the big thing up here(ontario), and we only pay a "mere upto 0.83c/kwh" for them to generate power.
A blue trip slip for an eight-cent fare (Score:4, Insightful)
This story was posted a couple of days ago:
http://tech.slashdot.org/story... [slashdot.org]
Yes, which is rediscussion of even older topic [26-Dec-2013] Utilities Fight Back Against Solar Energy [slashdot.org] Well... if stories can be redished then I can recup hiccup my own muckraking comment [slashdot.org] from it [evil laugh] Where will it end??
---cut here---
SO to summarize every /. solar energy thread...
THE MANY: why don't [greedy, evil] utilities just build smart grids and [benevolent] governments just enforce buy-back at retail? Or [to make up for perceived greediness] more than retail? Plus [free money] incentives for home owners in Pleasantville [no multifamily unit or slum dwellings need apply] to buy the stuff. And [one in a hundred thousand, owns own house free and clear, grossing $70+k/yr] solar home owner says, but it works for me.
THE FEW: Grid already running near peak capacity because it was never built out for surplus, it was built as needed. Energy costs for base load generation plants is volatile and variable. Capital spent on new base load generation NOT re-designing and re-building infrastructure in Your Little Neighborhood.
THE MANY: but solar and wind generate during [daytime not night, never mind Winter] peak hours and so will we once the government gives us free money to buy all this great solar stuff so it's all good and when this [unlikely miracle] happens those base load plants can just bug off. While we're operational that is. We'll stay connected to the grid for old time's sake and to sell our power to the [evil] power company. Storage batteries will come along and will solve everything. For a day at least.
THE FEW: Who's willing to run some the odds that a geographically dispersed network of solar/wind hipsters each feeding a little bit into the grid is sure to keep it stable and keep this 24x7 factory running? What are the odds of a cascading domino failure triggered by the first untoward event, where the hipsters and tiny federally-subsidized hipster companies will drop off the grid quickly, like flies, to satisfy their own local needs?
THE MANY: Fuck the factory, and fuck those other grid people who do not embrace small scale or personal power solutions. They're probably wasting loads of energy anyway.
THE FEW: Okay, imagine trying to light a sports stadium with ten million tiny Christmas tree bulbs. The kind wired in series where whole sections go dark when one bulb fails. Now imagine that on the supply side, with a truly incomprehensible number of possible points of failure in place, instead of the historically reliable method of a few, professionally maintained gigawatt plants that generate baseload energy 24x7...
THE MANY: Sounds great! It would probably be good for the planet too.
THE FEW: [double facepalm] Troll us into oblivion why don't you.
___
Obligatory bump to the Thorium Alliance [youtube.com] and my own letters on energy,
To The Honorable James M. Inhofe, United States Senate [scribd.com]
To whom it may concern, Halliburton Corporate [scribd.com]
Re:A blue trip slip for an eight-cent fare (Score:5, Insightful)
That kind of argument can go both ways. When one single power line goes out, whole neighborhoods go without power. If the average household had a solar array with a Tesla (or other battery powered car plugged in), it could keep on running whether or not there were major interruptions in the power grid.
Your analogy of lighting a stadium with a bunch of shitty Christmas Tree bulbs makes no sense here.. especially if the stadium was covered in solar panels with a battery storage unit.
You're basically trying to argue that a centralized power grid is better than a decentralized power grid.. It certainly isn't going that direction in computing (depending on how you view the cloud).
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Re:A blue trip slip for an eight-cent fare (Score:5, Informative)
And [one in a hundred thousand, owns own house free and clear, grossing $70+k/yr] solar home owner says, but it works for me
A million homes in Australia have solar panels on their roofs as of right now. That's about one home in ten. Workers, pensioners, the unemployed, everyone - rich or poor, all benefiting from free energy. The installation pays for itself in five years, and comes with a twenty five year warranty. You Americans need to crawl out from under the dead hand of capitalism and join the free world.
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Take away the government subsidies on solar purchase & installation and this problem doesn't even exist. Our government has backed an expensive and inefficient renewable energy tech - that's the only reason we're even having this conversation.
And while we're on the subject, and since /. seems to have become the new Tesla marketing platform, when is the free lunch going to end for EV owners w.r.t. road maintenance being funded by taxes on gasoline? It'll be interesting once we hit that balancing point
Re:So? (Score:5, Informative)
It'll be interesting once we hit that balancing point of there being enough EV cars on the road today that gov't wakes up and restructures road funding so that every pays their fair share
If we do end up with a system involving paying a fair share, it would need to involve the weight of the vehicle, in which case the share of the cost by cars, electric or not, would be quite small considering the nonlinear effects on a road by heavier vehicles. Alternatively, one could just realize that many government fees are not about proportionately recovering costs, but influencing certain behaviors that have a variety of costs and benefits elsewhere.
Re:So? (Score:5, Interesting)
The missing revenue is small, under $100 per year (12k miles per year for a 30 mpg car is 400 gallons of gas at $0.18/gal of tax for a total of $72). As an EV owner I would be happy to pay my fare share. I do not want a GPS tracker in my car, and would prefer either a flat fee per year or to have my odometer checked every couple years. Hell I want my taxes raised to properly fund schools too, there is an excess of dumbasses in this country.
EV's that charge at work combined with solar is a great combo, but it would be nice to see some of the Smart Grid fantasies come to reality so that I could just set my car to be charged by 7 AM and 5 PM and it would smartly play nice with the grid to charge when the sun is shining, the wind was blowing, or the dams are full. We are still a ways from the point where solar will fill in the afternoon peak daytime hours and EV's more than plug the night time trough in base usage, but those days are likely closer than we think.
Re:So? (Score:4, Insightful)
I want my taxes raised to properly fund schools too, there is an excess of dumbasses in this country.
I'm all for paying for good education. But, I'm also against government waste. If you can show areas where the monies spent would provide an educational ROI, I'd jump on that bandwagon.
Data published by the U.S. Department of Education in its annual Digest of Education Statistics shows that per student expenditures are high across the country and they have continued to rise.
$553 billion was spent on public education in 2006-2007. This figure represents 4.2 percent of GDP.
An average of $9,266/pupil is spent in American public schools.
Of the $71.7 billion spent by the Federal government on elementary and secondary education programs in 2007, $39.2 billion was spent on K-12 education. Of this amount 67% was spent on Special Education and Education for the Disadvantaged programs.
Between 1994 and 2004, average per-pupil expenditures have increased by 23.5% when adjusted for inflation.
Between 1984 and 2004, real expenditures per pupil increased by 49%.
Between 1970 and 2005 per pupil expenditures increased three times from $311/pupil to $971/pupil.
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I laugh at your supposition that private owners care about their customers, the priorities of colleges and universities in the US explain quite clearly where their priorities lay..
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You never use your companies electricity to charge a phone? to go to a non work website?
You fail to take into account the change in pay. You didn't take into account ANY OTHER PERK.
Re:So? (Score:5, Insightful)
Take away the government subsidies on solar purchase & installation and this problem doesn't even exist.
Take away the USA's $70 billion + fossil fuel subsidies at the same time. And drop a few of the wars they're fighting to ensure supply while you're at it.
Let me know if they'll save enough to put some cheap rooftop solar in.
Re:So? (Score:5, Informative)
Did you expect that factories and ships all ran on pixie dust?! China is putting their money where their mouth is, but conversions take time.
China is building out there solar very rapidly, more than doubling their capacity each year for the last 5 years (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_in_China). Oil and coal should be conserved for the things that solar and wind suck at, such as cargo ships. Predictable commutes of 30 miles are a travesty to waste gasoline on.
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This will happen just as soon as it happens for gasoline cars as well: Roadway stresses are many times greater for heavy-duty vehicles such as semis as they are for standard cars, yet they pay a tiny fraction of the cost of the wear and tear they contribute to the roadway.
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No free lunch for Tesla.
In California, there are annual vehicle license fees which go a long way towards paying for roads, etc.
Here's the cost to register a Tesla. The sales tax is only paid once but the other fees are annual.
Current Registration: 43.00
Current California Highway Patrol: 24.00
Current Vehicle License Fee: 651.00
Current Auto Theft DUI Crime Deterrence Program: 1.00
Current Air Quality Management District 6.00
Alt Fuel/Tech Reg Fee: 3.00
Use/Sales Tax: 7,500.00
Total Registration Fees: 730.
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No politician is salivating to track out cars. That's just a nightmare on every front.
Law Enforcement is a different ball of wax. Not that it matters.
Just tax electricity.
Everyone benefits from the highway system and roads.
It's simple, removes tracking.
Also, gas taxes pay for 50% of roads. .0019 cents for kw.
75, billion out of about 150 billion
in 2011 America used 4 TKw.
So that would be a tax of
Hell, make it a penny and 100% for roads, and a good mass transit system.
Re:So? (Score:5, Informative)
Because there isn't really a good pie yet, they take far too long to pay off and can be dangerous to air traffic and wild life if they are A. in the wrong place, or B. installed incorrectly.
Oh, and if they don't have overspec'd components, they can cause a phenonom called "flicker" which is destructive of delicate electronics like your fridge, washing machine, A/C, and computer.
- Pilots have sunglasses.
- Wildlife have no problems with a flat piece of silicon that doesn't move. (Cars kill them by the millions though).
- And your electric circuit should have a fuse and other safety features that prevent fluctuations in the power.
How many of you trolls are volunteers, and how many are paid to troll by the coal/oil/gas lobbyists? This is just another scare tactic, just like everybody is now convinced that wind turbines kill birds, when in fact it is cats that kill birds.
Now move along, there is really nothing to see here.
Re:So? (Score:5, Interesting)
> Because there isn't really a good pie yet, they take far too long to pay off and can be
> dangerous to air traffic and wild life if they are A. in the wrong place, or B. installed incorrectly.
Note the conflation of a single location on the planet with every system everywhere.
> Oh, and if they don't have over spec'd components, they can cause a phenonom called "flicker"
> which is destructive of delicate electronics like your fridge, washing machine, A/C, and computer
Offgrid PV systems are far *less* susceptible to flicker than the grid. Which shouldn't be surprising given that off grid PV systems are essentially a very large UPS.
Expect more AC posts like this, the power companies are paying green washers to come up with moronic arguments so people in the same tribe can re-post them thinking they actually make sense and won't look like a tool in the process:
http://matter2energy.wordpress.com/2014/04/30/wont-anyone-think-of-the-seniors/
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Expect more AC posts like this, the power companies are paying green washers to come up with moronic arguments so people in the same tribe can re-post them thinking they actually make sense and won't look like a tool in the process:
Really. "The power companies" are paying people to blog against solar? So a company like, say, Duke Power posts a job opening somewhere and interviews candidates:
"So, we are interested in hiring somebody with excellent blogging skills."
"Oh, sure, if you observe my pale and past
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