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Power

Are California's Utilities Undermining Rooftop Solar Installations? (sandiegouniontribune.com) 255

California now has one million solar roofs, representing about 14% of all renewable power generated in the state. But solar advocates "said the milestone has come despite escalating efforts by utilities to undermine rooftop solar installations," according to the San Diego Union-Tribune.

"They said those attacks include everything from hefty fees on ratepayers to calling for dramatic cuts to the credits residents receive for generating energy from the sun." "We will seek sensible solutions that continue to encourage solar power but don't adversely affect working families who can't afford solar systems," said SDG&E spokesman Wes Jones. Advocates have said that utilities are exaggerating the challenges that rooftop solar creates and downplaying the value it adds to the overall system. "They trot out this cost-shifting argument that looks on the face of it like they care about equity, but really the opposite is true," said Dave Rosenfeld, executive director of the Solar Rights Alliance, a new consumer rights group funded by ratepayers and rooftop solar companies. "If you do the numbers right, solar is contributing to a reduction in the cost of operating the electricity grid now and in the future..."

Power providers specifically argued that homeowners with solar panels weren't paying their fair share of the costs associated with building, maintaining and operating the state's extensive energy grid as well as fees associated with state-mandated energy efficiency and other programs. Over the last century, the price tag of expanding the state's electrical infrastructure to service remote communities and hook up to new power plants has largely been socialized, spread evenly over the customer base through rate increases approved by the utilities commission. All of those costs get baked into electric bills, but because the net metering program credits rooftop solar at the retail rate, rather than the wholesale rate, utilities say folks with solar panels have been getting something of a free ride. Utility officials have said that as a result they have had to shift those costs onto customers without solar. "Through the existing net energy metering policy, rooftop solar customers are subsidized by customers without solar rooftops," said Ari Vanrenen, spokesman for PG&E....

Advocates of rooftop solar strongly disagreed with this assessment. They said the technology, especially when paired with batteries, will eventually bring down the cost of electricity for everyone -- specifically by reducing the need for costly upgrades to the power grid. They argued that investor-owned utilities oppose rooftop solar because it will eventually curb the growth model that companies have long used to reward shareholders and pay out large salaries. SDG&E and others have an incentive to build solar out in the desert because it requires building long power lines, which are then used to justify rate hikes, said Bill Powers, a prominent electrical engineering consultant and consumer advocate.

The article also points out that some California utilities have raised their minimum bill -- with one specifically saying they were doing it to target solar customers, and another launching a new $65-a-month fee on any customer who installs solar panels.
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Are California's Utilities Undermining Rooftop Solar Installations?

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  • For sure they are (Score:5, Informative)

    by paravis ( 4999401 ) on Sunday December 15, 2019 @07:37PM (#59522486)
    And to boot, they just changed peak hours to 4-9p, which pretty much eliminates the benefits solar does ... but to think they are going to use âoeworking class familiesâ as an excuse? These jerks charge separately for the generation and delivery charges. They are full of it, and we are sick of getting bent over the kitchen sink for them.
    • by paravis ( 4999401 )
      Also, not sure why they even act like it is acceptable, but their profits are NOT my responsibility!
      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Dunbal ( 464142 ) *
        But you need to pay your "fair share".
      • by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Sunday December 15, 2019 @09:15PM (#59522742)

        but their profits are NOT my responsibility!

        Ultimately, it is your responsibility.

        PG&E has applied for bankruptcy. If the system is not restructured so they can make a reasonable profit, the alternative is to break them up into regional utilties (which will likely be even more inefficient) or to turn them into municipal utilities ... which isn't a bad idea since power generation is once area where socialism actually has a pretty good track record (except for Chernobyl).

        California's transmission infrastructure has suffered from decades of under-investment. It will be difficult to kick the can down the road yet again. When the bill comes due, guess who will pay? (Hint: you).

        • by Local ID10T ( 790134 ) <ID10T.L.USER@gmail.com> on Sunday December 15, 2019 @09:31PM (#59522770) Homepage

          California's transmission infrastructure has suffered from decades of under-investment. It will be difficult to kick the can down the road yet again. When the bill comes due, guess who will pay? (Hint: you).

          California citizens have already paid for the infrastructure improvements and maintenance... several times over. The executives and directors of PG&E chose to misappropriate these funds by allocating them to executive salaries/bonuses and shareholder dividends instead. This misappropriation of funds has resulted in billions of dollars in damage and the loss of many lives.

          If the infrastructure is necessary as a public good, then it should be nationalized and run by the state. The corporation should pay a corporate death penalty for it's mismanagement, not be assured future profits.

          • by Chas ( 5144 ) on Monday December 16, 2019 @03:44AM (#59523464) Homepage Journal

            "California citizens have already paid"

            Since when has this EVER mattered in California? The land of multi-million dollar porta-potties, and multi-billion dollar high speed rail boondoggles.

            If PG&E goes tits-up and hands everything over to the state, how're you going to argue?

            You're essentially locked in.

          • The same incompetence in utilities oversight (Public Utilities Commission) that allowed (and or drove) PG&E to it's current state will be given more power and authority if a state takeover occurs. Somehow I doubt the situation would improve.
            California governance is terrible. Everything flows from that.

        • PG&E is not the only utility doing this in the state though.

        • by gl4ss ( 559668 ) on Sunday December 15, 2019 @11:33PM (#59523066) Homepage Journal

          utility monopolies should be state driven.

          for obvious reasons. like the reasons are really, really, reaaally obvious.

          like not overcharging and moving all the money to bahamas while skipping maintenance and using bankruptcy protection to keep going is one good reason. second is that you can't have natural competition anyhow so why bother with acting like privatization of the resource would work out well, because it will not. it will have higher costs and an incentive to cost more to the consumer than it costs to keep maintained if it is privatized.

          the problem with californias network is not at all that californians would not have been paying reasonably high rates for the electricity.

          • I'm torn between "state owned" and just extremely well regulated, which would include profit caps, rate hike approvals and mandatory safety and infrastructure investment.

            The latter is what we have here, and I think it provides just enough profit incentive that you gain some efficiencies you wouldn't gain with a state owned monopoly where there was no incentive for seeking efficiencies.

            I'd be game for something like a state owned, but self-contained electric utility that was allowed some level of profit to b

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by nonBORG ( 5254161 )
      You are an expert on costs of generation and delivery of electricity are you, or just a whiner who wants everything for free. It costs money and so they charge you. You want free power disconnect from the grid.
      • by saloomy ( 2817221 ) on Sunday December 15, 2019 @09:17PM (#59522748)
        When you generate more than you need, you offset the transportation costs because (as was written in the f*cking summary) moving power from the desert or a power station to where it is needed causes a ton of inefficiencies (since we don't yet have a room-temperature superconductor).

        You generate power closer to the consumer (the business around the block), and the power company no longer has to generate 1/3 of its power to overcome the power line resistance. So, you should get the delivered rate. Thats what you pay, thats what you get back. They charge other consumers more than they charge you anyway. Perhaps there is a middle-ground where if you are positive overall, they give you back 1/2 or something, but you shouldn't pay retail to consume, and then wholesale to produce when in the middle of your billing cycle.
        • You also lose me with "fair share". Who decides what's fair? If you use 1/10th the power of your neighbor, should you really pay more than 1/10 what he does? How about "relative share"?
          • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

            by nonBORG ( 5254161 )
            It is easy, just a cost of connection to the grid charged per day and a cost per unit of power used. The cost per unit should be different at different times of day based on the total system load at that time which can be approximated (it is called time of use.)
          • Who decides what's fair?

            Usually that would be mathematics.

        • by blindseer ( 891256 ) <blindseerNO@SPAMearthlink.net> on Monday December 16, 2019 @03:46AM (#59523468)

          You generate power closer to the consumer (the business around the block), and the power company no longer has to generate 1/3 of its power to overcome the power line resistance.

          Power line losses would never get that high. Well, never say never, but that is far from anything common or routine.

          So, you should get the delivered rate. Thats what you pay, thats what you get back.

          If the law requires net metering then the utility is forced to buy power at a rate far higher than they'd pay to buy it from some power plant. This raises costs for the utility and therefore raises prices paid by the customer. This difference between what they pay the power plant and what they charge the customer is how they pay for the wires, wages, and profits. If they can't make up for their costs, and still make a profit, then maybe the people running this might decide they'd make more money shutting it all down and take up acting as background characters in Hollywood.

          Here's my take on this, the homeowner should be just tickled if the utility is willing to pay anything for the power a homeowner feeds to the grid.

          • by Hodr ( 219920 )

            If the law requires net metering then the utility is forced to buy power at a rate far higher than they'd pay to buy it from some power plant. This raises costs for the utility and therefore raises prices paid by the customer.

            This seems disingenuous at best, but more likely an outright lie.

            Every KWH produced by a customer under a net metering agreement is one that the utility resells for full rate and did NOT have to purchase from the power company. So unless the customer is dumping power into a system that already has surplus power it is dumping, there is no cost.

            And the company is not due profits on power it didn't sell.

            As for line maintenance and CEO bonuses, there are surcharges for that. That's why my $45 of electricity u

          • Power line losses would never get that high. Well, never say never, but that is far from anything common or routine.

            No, not 1/3rd, but currently about 2% of power in the states is lost due to transmission, and another 4% due to distribution. 6% isn't a third, but it isn't negligible either.

        • You generate power closer to the consumer (the business around the block), and the power company no longer has to generate 1/3 of its power to overcome the power line resistance. So, you should get the delivered rate. Thats what you pay, thats what you get back

          Okay ignoring the fact that you don't lose 1/3rd in transmission you are looking only at the variable costs. Not the fixed costs which continue to amortise regardless if you are pulling power over the line or not. That $2m transformer is a $2m transformer on the balance sheet regardless if I am pushing a few MVA over it or if it is sitting idle and getting rusty. That $2m transformer's useful life decreases and will need replacing regardless if you use it or not (because at night you want the lights to stay

    • Re:For sure they are (Score:5, Interesting)

      by jroysdon ( 201893 ) on Sunday December 15, 2019 @09:08PM (#59522728)

      Peak usage is the most costly to product. I work for a small local government utility. We have a power plant with two generators that are used 2-3 times per year. That's it. It's only economical (both pure dollars and EPA carbon credit trading) when we're maxed out during the hottest summer days. Every once in a a cooler summer we won't even use both units.

      The other choice is we just do rolling black-outs. So we maintain a expensive power plant just to cover those 2-3 times a year, because our customers expect reliable service, and because of so many other constraints California has put on us.

      Time of use billing is one way to get customers to shift their usage voluntarily (or not, but then they pay for closer to what it is costing to produce at that point). Do it when things aren't at their peak and the power is more readily available.

      • Re:For sure they are (Score:5, Interesting)

        by ras ( 84108 ) <russell+slashdot@org.stuart@id@au> on Monday December 16, 2019 @06:12AM (#59523708) Homepage

        As the other poster said, the alternative for 2 to 3 hours a couple of times a year is batteries. But batteries on their own aren't enough.

        Here in Australia the electricity company isn't required to pay any fixed amount for your feed in. In other words we already have what your utilities are asking for, and people here are whinging about, and saying it will hurt solar, yet Australia has the highest rates of roof top solar in the world. In one state looks like roof top solar will hit 50% of all generation at peak times in the not too distant future.

        I can only speculate as to why, but one effect is training. If you get less for power you sell than power you buy, surprise surprise people shift their power consumption. They switch on their air-conditioning and use those timers on washing machines, dish washers and ovens to shift their power consumption to when their solar is generating, which of course means they aren't using it during peak hours.

        Somewhat more amazingly, if you arrange things in a certain way, the price the utility pays for your power is almost the same as the price they charge you - and they do it voluntarily. (They do it by both increasing the price they pay while reducing what they charge.) The "certain way" is of course you pay many times the going rate during peak hours. If you do use heavily during peak hours you will lose badly, but if you install a smallish battery (say, 4kW hr) then you can easily guarantee you won't use any power during the peak period.

        Why does this happen? Because in Australia the generators can't sell directly to you - they must sell to retailers. The retailers are essentially useless middle men, or at least they would be if they didn't compete amongst themselves. One of their major costs is the price of power during those peak days you mentioned. Unlike your typical consumer who is contracted to a single supplier for a year or so, they buy power in 5 minute intervals and they can buy it off anyone - including interstate and their own customers with batteries.

        It's amazing what a healthy market will do. As electricity ends towards a natural monopolies you only get a healthy market with strong government regulation, but people don't call Australia a nanny state for no reason.

    • And to boot, they just changed peak hours to 4-9p,

      Errr that's because peak hours *are* 4-9pm precisely due to solar reducing load during the rest of the day. Google "duck curve".

  • by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Sunday December 15, 2019 @07:45PM (#59522508)
    with a bunch of old people sitting around a table talking about something scary. No mention of what it was, just that there was something terrible and it needed to be stopped.

    The advert ended with a "Vote No On Proposition such and such" which as it turned out was a law meant to ban "net metering" where the local utility had to pay you for the power your solar fed back into the grid.

    The law passed with a healthy majority.

    This is what's wrong with this country. This was literally the Old Glory Robot Insurance ad come to life and given flesh; and it worked.

    This is why I want mandatory voting. I don't trust old people. Your brain goes in your old age and you become susceptible for all sorts of tricks like this. Not everybody, but enough to win elections in a system where it's mostly old folks voting. Young folks shouldn't be allowed to shirk their civic duty. As an added bonus you can't do voter suppression when voting's mandatory.
    • by Dunbal ( 464142 ) *

      Your brain goes in your old age

      Not necessarily true.

    • by Solandri ( 704621 ) on Sunday December 15, 2019 @09:22PM (#59522756)

      The advert ended with a "Vote No On Proposition such and such" which as it turned out was a law meant to ban "net metering" where the local utility had to pay you for the power your solar fed back into the grid.

      The power companies are right on this one. Your power bill is not just for electricity. it's (cost of generating electricity) + (cost of maintaining and upgrading the distribution grid). Because electricity used to flow only one way, the utilities just rolled both costs into a single per kWh electricity rate to keep things simple.

      The people behind the proposition wanted the utilities to pay people with rooftop solar the same per kWh rate that the utility charged. If the retail price were only generation costs, then that would make sense. But because it also includes the cost of distributing electricity on the grid, paying rooftop solar owners full retail price is essentially making the utilities pay people for using their grid. It's like requiring landlords to pay tenants, or toll road owners to pay the cars who use the roads, instead of the other way around. Makes no sense. The party using the item or service (power grid, apartment, toll road) needs to pay the party which builds and maintains the item or service.

      The long-term solution is for utilities to break apart the power bill into generation and distribution components. The people with rooftop solar who put excess electricity onto the grid can then be paid an equal generation price, minus the cost for using the utility's grid to distribute their electricity. I'm already seeing this on my power bill - it's breaking down to roughly half generation, half distribution, meaning the net money you get for selling electricity back isn't much. (Whether that's a fair breakdown is another argument. But the utilities are regulated by each state's Public Utilities Commission, which usually has complete access to the utility's accounting books. So I assume it'd be difficult to impossible to cheat on this breakdown. It's already done this way with natural gas. The gas company tallies up its costs for building and maintaining the piplines, and comes up with a distribution charge to recoup those costs. Natural gas suppliers then pay the gas company that distribution cost for using the pipelines to distribute their gas to customers. And the money the supplier receives is how much the customer pays, minus the distribution cost.)

      A similar problem is occurring with EVs. The money for constructing and maintaining the roads comes from fuel taxes. But EVs don't use fuel, so they're not contributing money to building and maintaining the roads they use. If you follow the logic of the rooftop solar owners, the state should be paying EV owners for the wear and tear EVs put on the roads. Obviously that doesn't make sense. So states are beginning to experiment with a vehicle registration surcharge for EVs. When you renew the EV's registration each year, you pay a couple hundred bucks extra to make up for the fuel taxes you aren't paying.

      Just because a company is opposed to something doesn't automatically mean it's right.

      • It is also much like road taxes. Currently, heavy EVs get a fat tax break on the roads. Most of the fuel taxes paid by ICE vehicles go towards road maintenance. Since damage to roads go as the 4th power of vehicle weight, EVs are getting - literally - a "free ride" for the roads. We need to move to a weight-and-mileage based road tax regime, and get rid of the fuel taxes altogether. Because it's not just the cost of fuel - it's the network that supplies the ability to move around. Much like the grid m
        • by Luthair ( 847766 )
          Pickup trucks are heavier than EVs, many SUVs are as well. Until a carbon tax is implemented they get a "free ride" on pollution. Obviously when EVs are a meaningful part of the active cars we'll need to rethink it, but until then its a colossal waste of money.
      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by ShakaUVM ( 157947 )

        > The power companies are right on this one. Your power bill is not just for electricity. it's (cost of generating electricity) + (cost of maintaining and upgrading the distribution grid). Because electricity used to flow only one way, the utilities just rolled both costs into a single per kWh electricity rate to keep things simple.

        This is what the utilities say, but it is not true. If you have solar here in California, you pay a grid maintenance fee of $15/month. This is already a resolved issue, and th

        • The price of power is roughly 1/4 generation, 1/4 transmission, 1/4 distribution, 1/4 overheads such as solar subsidies.

          People want to reduce their power from the grid but still have the grid there at night, and also get paid 4 times the wholesale price of power.

          Splitting the bill into grid + power will help for a bit. But as batteries become cheaper, people will go off grid altogether if there are large fixed charges. A small natural gas powered generator can fill in the gaps.

          Except, of course, for those

        • by blindseer ( 891256 ) <blindseerNO@SPAMearthlink.net> on Monday December 16, 2019 @04:08AM (#59523520)

          This is already how it is here. But the utility still says that solar customers don't help maintain the grid.

          So, just because the utility says this it must be false? Have you considered that they are not lying?

          This is already a resolved issue, and they're just pushing to squeeze more money out of solar customers by trotting out lies like these.

          Net metering requires that the utility buy the power these solar panels produce, at a rate higher than that from a power plant, whether they want this power or not. How are residential net meter customers getting "squeezed" here? It is the utility getting squeezed, and if they want to stay in business then they have no option but to get more money from their customers. They make money on buying low and selling high, if the law says they have to buy high then they have to sell higher to pay their overhead costs.

      • A similar problem is occurring with EVs. The money for constructing and maintaining the roads comes from fuel taxes. But EVs don't use fuel, so they're not contributing money to building and maintaining the roads they use.

        You have picked the wrong target there. Damage to roads is proportional to the 4th power of the weight applied by the wheels, so, if you want to tax according to the amount of maintenance that driving along the road causes, you need to propose a massive increase in taxes for trucks (and bu

    • This is why I want mandatory voting. I don't trust old people.

      Serious question, do you think young people are better?

    • I don't trust old people. Your brain goes in your old age and you become susceptible for all sorts of tricks like this.

      Which is why we need Bernie (two shy of four score years). Or Joe (but one year less than Bernie). At least we'll get good Jell-o at the home with either of them in the White House...

    • This is why I want mandatory voting. I don't trust old people.

      Mandatory voting would get even worse results. Why would you assume that forcing someone whose level of political caring is low enough that they wouldn't vote given the choice is somehow going to change them info a fully informed rational voter?

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      I wonder if it's older people in general or just the current generation. They did well out of screwing the younger generations but now gen X is getting to middle age are we going to do the same?

    • It's not about old people, it's about informed voters. Young voters are at least as bad, and often worse, because they have no clue what they are voting on. In TFA: Voting on a law about net metering? First and foremost you ought to have to correctly answer a question "WTF is net metering".

      The people who blindly vote for candidates because of the political party they belong to? Nope. They ought to have to correctly identify the candidates' actual position on a couple of key issues, before they are allowed t

  • PG&E whining about people paying for infrastructure would be somewhat more convincing if they weren't so negligent about infrastructure that they keep setting the place on fire..
    • by HiThere ( 15173 )

      There's several different sides to that problem. The grid does need to be paid for, but the utilities have an incentive to overcharge. And part of the reason for poor maintenance was that nobody wanted to pay for the maintenance (it isn't free, after all). Yes, they should have been doing a much better job of it, but the PUC didn't want them to spend "excessively" on it.

      OTOH, the PUC was right, in that there are instances where the utility *did* overcharge (and still not do enough maintenance).

      Any simple

  • More growing pains (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Rick Schumann ( 4662797 ) on Sunday December 15, 2019 @07:55PM (#59522542) Journal
    The energy paradigm is shifting and like so many other industries (RIAA, MPAA, I'm looking at you) they fight tooth and nail to keep using their outdated business model and exclude and discourage everything else regardless of whether it makes sense to do so.
    I know for a fact that there are counties in the United States that require you to have public utilities not only hooked up to your house, but actively used, and if you don't meet those 'requirements', your house is declared 'uninhabitable' and is condemned. Two guesses who's behind that and the first guess doesn't count. That's the sort of mentality we're dealing with here.
    If that sort of law doesn't apply to where you live, then I'd be tempted to tell you to install all the solar you can, get one of those Tesla battery banks, and disconnect the house from the grid entirely.
  • by ghoul ( 157158 ) on Sunday December 15, 2019 @08:23PM (#59522610)

    Solar is mostly installed by upper middle class folks who own their homes not rent and who have enough income and good credit. Hardly the demographic needing a handout but these are the folks always first in line for their handouts whether its solar, EVs or subsidized guaranteed college loans or employer subsidized health insurance.
    Utilities have 3 costs - Generation, long distance transmission and local distribution. Nowadays they break the generation cost out but the long distance transmission and distribution costs are still clubbed and its the local distribution - the last mile (or 5 miles to be more accurate) which costs the most in maintenance and monitoring labor costs. Utilities bake this cost into the per kwH rate.
    Now Solar customers with grid backup cost just as much to maintain the distribution but they hardly pay any of the rate due to net metering. If net metering was only on the generation and long distance transmission costs and not on the local distribution than it might be fair but the upper middle class wont like that. Folks living in tiny apartments with 40 apartments to a building cost much less in last mile distribution than folks living on country estates and single family ranch houses.
    They might be shocked to know that for years even prior to solar the poor have been subsidizing the rich.

    • by liquid_schwartz ( 530085 ) on Sunday December 15, 2019 @11:30PM (#59523060)

      Solar is mostly installed by upper middle class folks who own their homes not rent and who have enough income and good credit. Hardly the demographic needing a handout but these are the folks always first in line for their handouts whether its solar, EVs or subsidized guaranteed college loans or employer subsidized health insurance.

      That's the very demographic that pays the most in taxes by percent and generally makes areas nice. They pay their taxes and don't commit many crimes per capita. They don't buy off politicians the way the uber rich do. They should be respected and courted, not demonized. The poor on the other hand consume far more than they give and make areas lousy and full of crime. If you step out of your ivory tower you would see this. Want the poor better taken care of? Then you better hope for more upper middle class since they will fund the various services that you are likely pushing for.

    • It makes sense to subsidize early adopters of non-carbon-based energy. The idea is to bring the costs down for everyone else over time due to efficiencies realized by manufacturing at scale and potential Mooreâ(TM)s Law type effects. In the ideal case, itâ(TM)s a tragedy of the commons, in reverse.

      In the short term I would love to see a system that also motivates both tenants and landlords to get solar panels installed on every single unit of rental stock, with each party in the equation holding b

      • It makes sense to subsidize early adopters of non-carbon-based energy.

        Let's assume this is true. What is the time frame and/or other conditions that need to be met for this early adopter subsidy to end? Will we still be paying out solar power subsidies after it reaches 99% of our electricity supply?

        Solar power has been getting these "bootstrap" subsidies for decades. At some point this isn't "bootstrap" funds any more. Then it becomes corporate welfare. Taxing the poor to pay the rich. Money that could be pricing out cheaper and lower carbon energy. If the answer is th

  • by joe_frisch ( 1366229 ) on Sunday December 15, 2019 @08:29PM (#59522624)

    If a substantial amount of solar is going to be installed, the electricity distribution infrastructure needs to be paid for by some mechanism. There is a risk that wealthier people with more capital will be able to afford solar, pushing the support of the grid more onto the poor.

    Lots of ways to fix this, including changing tax structures etc, but some care is needed to avoid a rather common problem that environmental incentives turn out to support wealthier people - eg "Tesla lanes" on freeways.

    PG&E itself is of course horribly inefficient and probably corrupt, but some funding is needed to support the infrastructure.

    • If a substantial amount of solar is going to be installed, the electricity distribution infrastructure needs to be paid for by some mechanism. There is a risk that wealthier people with more capital will be able to afford solar, pushing the support of the grid more onto the poor.

      Lots of ways to fix this, including changing tax structures etc, but some care is needed to avoid a rather common problem that environmental incentives turn out to support wealthier people - eg "Tesla lanes" on freeways.

      PG&E itself is of course horribly inefficient and probably corrupt, but some funding is needed to support the infrastructure.

      This is the same problem that will manifest with greater adoption of EVs as well. Fuel taxes pay for much of the transportation infrastructure, and that revenue model is going to have to change also.

      It's quaint these people want to save the world and all, but not on the backs of everyone else.

    • I think the objection isn’t actual and realistic infrastructure charges, but the massive CEO bonuses, shareholder dividends, and profits in general. Many efforts are being made to require all solar installations within cities to be connected to the grid, the majority are paying these costs which in many areas are line items that don’t depend on the kWh you use. Utilities are fighting tooth and nail to exaggerate costs or dangers and are misleading to protect profits. This is directly at odds
    • Yes, that was the argument a few years ago when they tried to kill net metering here. The way they were (and still are) billing they claimed that PV owners were not paying their share of the infra maintenance and it was being unfairly borne by the customers who couldn't and can't afford to put PV panels up.

      To which I replied: then fix the damn billing.

      Even so, if I can generate enough to offset the infra charge, why shouldn't I be able to pay it in kind, i.e. with electricity. If I put 100 kWh on the
    • but some funding is needed to support the infrastructure.

      That's what the daily minimum charge is for.

  • It's a mess (Score:5, Interesting)

    by locater16 ( 2326718 ) on Sunday December 15, 2019 @08:39PM (#59522638)
    The takeaway should be that the whole thing is a mess currently. Utility companies have always charged based on "killowatt hour" but that number doesn't actually cover how much that killowatt hour cost to produce. It covered power line construction and upkeep, power generation, power generation installation, and any other miscellaneous costs.

    But now personal solar installations and batteries are breaking this scheme, and there's no established commonly accepted scheme to replace it. Just look at what happened to music in the switch from CDs to digital purchase to streaming, all in the span of like a decade. Music companies couldn't keep up, and had to figure things out as they went. Now, are utilities also trying to sabotage the threat to their monopoly on power generation? Obviously yes. But at the same time they're trying to figure out what, and how much, they can charge people to keep them connected to the grid in a way that doesn't rely on charging for "kilowatt hours". That there's a bunch of regulations in place that define things in terms of charging for "kilowatt hours" actually doesn't help anyone in figuring out that second part.

    The end result is that there's a mess of conflicting interests and established practices and laws that are going to take a while to figure out. And while preventing utilities from being anti monopoly is important, doing so should keep in mind that there's other things that are mixed up in that process.
    • Re:It's a mess (Score:4, Insightful)

      by jroysdon ( 201893 ) on Sunday December 15, 2019 @09:01PM (#59522714)

      Working for a not-for-profit utility, we're not trying to sabotage anyone. We're just trying to keep things equitable. Those who can afford solar shouldn't do it on the backs of those who cannot.

    • The problem is that solar generates power in the right place at the wrong time. So the consumer is out most of the time while the sun is high and then when they get home and want to consume the power it is either supplied by batteries or the grid. If batteries fine, if the Grid then the solar was of little to no use. I will explain. Cost of generation is building and maintaining the generator. If you have usage during the whole day but then have to supply for a short time then the capital cost needs to be
      • Battery prices are falling. Big customers will install batteries. Malls and other buildings with large parking lots will just disconnect from the grid, as soon as it becomes viable. That will increase the cost of all those still remaining. People with larger acreage will peel off next. Cost goes up for the rest even more.

        The low end apartment dwellers row houses etc will be stuck with the utility. The big and powerful interests who have peeled off will have the political power and the utilities will follo

        • This will help reduce the costs of the Grid however. It is fine if people disconnect. I have not heard of any large consumer (such as a Mall) disconnecting so I think this is just an assumption. To disconnect you need to have the ability to supply enough power and to store enough power. Even if you cover a mall with solar panels if it sees snow fall it will never disconnect from the grid, perhaps it may be able to supply enough power in California some places but it will require maintaining backup diesel ge
    • Things are certainly a mess, but at least here in AZ for 5 sites the group I'm part of has, the raw cost of power, along with metering, distribution, transmission, and generation charges, are all itemized on the monthly statement, and have been for at least the last 10 years (that I've been paying attention). Power entity type (we have both private for-profit and co-op non-profit), distribution, transmission, and generation all vary a little bit in the overall mix, as well as depending on the site location.

  • Separate the costs for generation, long distance and local distribution. A line item charge for your tier of service would solve the problem. Less people using the system lowers the total cost and a good solution is to downsize the utility, long distance transmission, and local transmission. Exponential growth isn’t a sustainable model long term, and moving to a decentralized distribution system has lots of advantages. A few shareholders losing value isn’t the end of the world.
    • Less people using the system lowers the total cost

      Not that much - it would raise the cost per watt and per user.

      • Which would boost the sales and adoption of more solar until It’s no longer profitable for low density residential areas. That’s a win.
  • by jroysdon ( 201893 ) on Sunday December 15, 2019 @08:58PM (#59522700)

    Having been in a power scheduling room for a small electric utility, do you know what a partially cloudy day is like? Going from total sun production to 50% to 5%, it's like juggling on a unicycle. Oh, and then it suddenly clears up, and you've got to ramp down all that generation that had to get spun up to cover for the cloudy loss of solar generation. Complete overcast is much easier to deal with.

    The actual cost of electricity on the wholesale market is pennies and then resold for a dime or more. The mark-up for the rate is a way to "share" to cost with those who use the service the most. Another way to "share" the cost is have a base meter/connection fee that is equal to all, and reduce the power rate (or keep the rate the same, and instead of a needed rate increase, adjust the base fee up for all).

    Those who have solar and bank power "in the grid" are still using the distribution and even transmission networks and their meter as much as they did before - if not even more so because now they're banking power and then taking it later. But there is no such thing as truly "banking" power - unless you install a battery, it has to get used up instantaneously.

    If you really want to go solar and not pay the power company, get a power wall or other local battery storage solution. Bank your own power and disconnect from the grid. You'll find that's not economically feasible - and neither is it reasonable to think that one should be able to bank that power "in the grid" and expect to get it back on demand later with no mark-up. It cost money for the meter and the billing infrastructure behind it and the distribution network to take that power away and assuming the power is going from a large area to another then costs for that transmission network, millions for the transformers, etc.

    Power companies should be able to treat solar generators as wholesale markets and buy at wholesale prices, and then sell back at retail rates. Suddenly solar panels don't make sense, even with huge subsidies.

    • by jonwil ( 467024 )

      Do it like they do in Australia where you pay a fixed daily supply charge that is meant to cover the cost of the infrastructure and a per kWh charge for the power you actually use.

      Solar owners do get paid for the power they generate but the feed-in tariff is lower than the per-kWh charge they pay out when they use electricity from the grid.

  • by Gideon Fubar ( 833343 ) on Sunday December 15, 2019 @09:51PM (#59522818) Journal

    This is some Amercian version of the word 'socialized' where it's a corporation getting the public to pay for its (then privately owned and profit generating) infrastructure...?

    Some people in economic theory attribute that kind of behaviour to a certain type of government, and it's not a democratic republic. If this all lines up then it explains a few things.

  • As time goes by and people get more efficient methods of generating their own electricity, the local monopolies will eventually lobby for taxes against these methods.

    Yes, they will start taxing the light from the sun and the wind that blows the air we breathe, sighting their right to profit from their monopoly.

    They're all rubbing their hands together greedily as they wait for more electric cars to roll out and increase the demand for electricity, so they can jack the prices up based on that demand.

    Needless

  • If we remove whatever profit and expenditures you do not consider valid - what is a fair deal for both solar and non-solar homes? Should utilities (and thus ratepayers) pay a premium to subsidize rooftop generated solar electricity? Or should rooftop solar get the same wholesale rate other generators get?
  • I find it ironic that poor people (those without solar panels) have to subsidize wealthy people (those with solar panels). When the California legislature created the solar buyback system that is exactly how they structured it. The proponents felt that the poor should pay for improving the environment.
    • Well its not simply poor vs rich. Obviously more "rich" people don't have solar than do, at least at this point. So it is more accurate to say that everybody needs to help pay to improve the environment, particularly since everybody has been getting a free ride (i.e. not paying the true costs) of damaging the environment. And the now small numbers of "rich" people that invest in solar do need at least some incentive to do so, since it ultimately, hopefully, will reduce the total costs of living in the envir

  • by blindseer ( 891256 ) <blindseerNO@SPAMearthlink.net> on Monday December 16, 2019 @12:15AM (#59523134)

    Rooftop solar is very expensive. The only reason people buy it is because of the tax subsidies and net metering.

    Solar produced power to the home when people are least likely to be there. The power produced gets put on the grid too late for the morning demand surge and disappears before the evening demand surge. This is assuming cloud cover does not disrupt this more.

    Unless the house has a battery the solar panels cannot provide power in case of utility outages. In this case it's the battery keeping the lights on, not the solar panels. This is especially true at night and in cloud cover, which is more likely than the sun shining.

    The solar panels add little value to the utility, the solar panels are providing energy at the wrong time if they produce any at all. The homeowner gains little since it's the battery and inverters that keep the lights on, the solar panels are likely the most expensive part of this system and it will rarely add value in keeping the lights on.

    If solar was a good idea then the utility would be all over this with far less expensive utility scale arrays of solar panels. They can put them on a single or double axis sun following mount to collect more sun. And they aren't paying the far higher residential rates for it. If for some reason there is simply too much sun then they can disconnect the solar panels from the grid. Like with the residential solar system there will almost always be a need for storage to manage this solar power. But once the utility has the batteries then they can use their thermal power plants to charge the batteries, saving them from having to use expensive and inefficient natural gas turbines to meet peak demands.

    Solar collectors cost a lot of money. Batteries cost a lot of money. More than natural gas. Likely more than nuclear power.

    People are placing the blame on the wrong place here. The problem is not the utility. As much as they are money grubbing capitalist pigs just looking for another penny they are also people trying to keep their customers happy. They can't do this if government subsidies and mandates are driving up prices by inducing people to put solar panels on their rooftops.

    You want whole house battery backups on your home? I think that is a great idea. You want solar panels to keep the batteries charged up? Sure, go ahead. You think the utility should be required to buy your excess solar power? This is where I draw the line on good ideas. Net metering is the problem. It's making the job of the utility more difficult, it's driving up their costs, and it's not helping in lowering the CO2 emissions. The utilities will even point this out but people will simply ignore them because they must be just money grubbing capitalist pigs.

    Tell me something. Who should these people listen to? What would be considered a knowledgeable disinterested neutral party? I really want to know. Net metering is a bad idea and I want to know who it is that everyone would listen to if this person said that net metering is a bad idea.

  • So separate out the service cost (providing the infrastructure) and the usage cost. Everyone pays the service charge even if they don't use any power.

Make sure your code does nothing gracefully.

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