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Power United States

California Is Grappling With a Growing Problem: Too Much Solar (washingtonpost.com) 338

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Washington Post: In sunny California, solar panels are everywhere. They sit in dry, desert landscapes in the Central Valley and are scattered over rooftops in Los Angeles's urban center. By last count, the state had nearly 47 gigawatts of solar power installed -- enough to power 13.9 million homes and provide over a quarter of the Golden State's electricity. But now, the state and its grid operator are grappling with a strange reality: There is so much solar on the grid that, on sunny spring days when there's not as much demand, electricity prices go negative. Gigawatts of solar are "curtailed" -- essentially, thrown away. In response, California has cut back incentives for rooftop solar and slowed the pace of installing panels. But the diminishing economic returns may slow the development of solar in a state that has tried to move to renewable energy. And as other states build more and more solar plants of their own, they may soon face the same problems.

Curtailing solar isn't technically difficult -- according to Paul Denholm, senior research fellow at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, it's equivalent to flipping a switch for grid operators. But throwing away free power raises electricity prices. It has also undercut the benefits of installing rooftop solar. Since the 1990s, California has been paying owners of rooftop solar panels when they export their energy to the grid. That meant that rooftop solar owners got $0.20 to $0.30 for each kilowatt-hour of electricity that they dispatched. But a year ago, the state changed this system, known as "net-metering," and now only compensates new solar panel owners for how much their power is worth to the grid. In the spring, when the duck curve is deepest, that number can dip close to zero. Customers can get more money back if they install batteries and provide power to the grid in the early evening or morning.

The change has sparked a huge backlash from Californians and rooftop solar companies, which say that their businesses are flagging. Indeed, Wood Mackenzie predicts that California residential solar installations in 2024 will fall by around 40 percent. Some state politicians are now trying to reverse the rule. "Under the CPUC's leadership California is responsible for the largest loss of solar jobs in our nation's history," Bernadette del Chiaro, the executive director of the California Solar and Storage Association, said in a statement referring to California's public utility commission. But experts say that it reflects how the economics of solar are changing in a state that has gone all-in on the technology. [...] To cope, [California's grid operator, known as CAISO] is selling some excess power to nearby states; California is also planning to install additional storage and batteries to hold solar power until later in the afternoon. Transmission lines that can carry electricity to nearby regions will also help -- some of the lost power comes from regions where there simply aren't enough power lines to carry a sudden burst of solar. Denholm says the state is starting to take the steps needed to deal with the glut. "There are fundamental limits to how much solar we can put on the grid before you start needing a lot of storage," Denholm said. "You can't just sit around and do nothing."
Further reading: The Energy Institute discusses this problem in a recent blog post.

Since 2020, the residential electricity rates in California have risen by as much as 40% after adjusting for inflation. While there's been "a lot of finger-pointing about the cause of these increases," the authors note that the impact on rates is multiplied when customers install their own generation and buy fewer kilowatts-hours from the grid because those households "contribute less towards all the fixed costs in the system." These fixed costs include: vegetation management, grid hardening, distribution line undergrounding, EV charging stations, subsidies for low income customers, energy efficiency programs, and the poles and wires that we all rely on whether we are taking electricity off the grid or putting it onto the grid from our rooftop PV systems.

"Since those fixed costs still need to be paid, rates go up, shifting costs onto the kWhs still being bought from the grid."
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California Is Grappling With a Growing Problem: Too Much Solar

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  • by whoever57 ( 658626 ) on Monday April 22, 2024 @10:44PM (#64416180) Journal

    If there really is too much solar during the day, why are there special, cheap rates to use electricity at night? Why aren't the companies like PG&E asking the CPUC to change rates in such a way as to balance out this supposed surplus?

    Yes, there are a few days where solar produces too much, but its limited in time. It's not the whole year. Note that the period shown in the graph (March to May) is the time of year that probably experiences minimum electricity usage in California: it's not so hot that A/C is used extensively.

    What's really going on: investor-owned utilities and generators want to maximize profits and solar is getting in the way of that goal.

    • No, they really are producing too much. California periodically paying its neighboring states to take electricity during the day and then buying it back from them in the evening has been going on for a long time now.

      I get that it's the "in thing" for progressives to defend every dumb policy decision this state makes purely on principle alone, but you wouldn't do that if you actually lived here. You literally can't even wipe your ass in this state without getting taxed, and nobody knows where that money even

      • by micheas ( 231635 ) on Monday April 22, 2024 @11:44PM (#64416260) Homepage Journal

        Which would make things like Tesla power walls incredibly profitable. The problem is that the rate plan that is provided to the owners of solar panels pays them for electricity during peak production times, which is stupid.

        Most newer solar panel installations that I know of have power walls installed with them so that you can sell your electricity to the grid during peak periods.

        It's almost like they don't want to suggest a solution of simple economics. If the rate is negative, fine the rate is negative and people will collect money charging their batteries, and if the rate is $0.95 a kwhr people will dump power into the grid. I'm not sure what the fascination beyond making sure people don't cheap out and skip the battery packs.

        • by haruchai ( 17472 )

          "Which would make things like Tesla power walls incredibly profitable"
          V2G would be enormously helpful; I'm still surprised it's not a feature of every EV

          • V2G would be useful, but would shorten your EV's battery life. As one who leased a 2012 Nissan Leaf, I can tell you the last thing I wanted was more battery degradation. Could not return the car fast enough.
            Also, I would need a huge car battery. Today my PV produced 123 kWh, and exported 107 kWh to the grid. Only 16 kWh were self consumed. Most consumption is during evenings and night, not daytime.

          • Problem is it's not a simple matter of making it a feature of the EV. You have to get permitting, which is expensive as hell in California, not to mention installing the additional appliances and wiring needed. And then of course, there's the whole matter of your car often being on the road or parked somewhere else when other people in the house might need it to be parked in your garage.

            It's just not something many consumers will either demand or use.

        • Your statement about the problem is incorrect . Most rate plans niw have peak hours in the evening. My ETOU-C is 4-9pm peak every day. There is not much solar production during those hours on most days.
          A battery would prevent dumping the solar electricity into the grid when there is excess, storing it, and dumping it during peak hours, or self-consuming it whenever it is you need it.
          Batteries are quite expensive, though, and don't last as long as solar panels. I would need at least 5 Powerwalls for 1 day o

        • I'm seeing a lot of hybrid solar installs. Not just Tesla PowerWalls, although those are the most popular, to the point where people locate them outside their homes to show them off to the world, but I've seen people build large battery banks from cells from Aliexpress that are tested and have a BMS attached, and use those with a decent charge controller/inverter. This allows one to charge their batteries, and once the batteries are topped off, feed the grid, which is arguably the best you you can have fr

      • by eepok ( 545733 ) on Tuesday April 23, 2024 @12:10PM (#64417874) Homepage

        No, they really are producing too much. California periodically paying its neighboring states to take electricity during the day and then buying it back from them in the evening has been going on for a long time now.

        I accept that.

        You literally can't even wipe your ass in this state without getting taxed.

        I do it just fine. What part of California are you in?

        nobody knows where that money even goes

        Here you go. https://ebudget.ca.gov/budget/... [ca.gov] . If you want more detail, go here: https://www.calcities.org/reso... [calcities.org]

        we know 100 billion of it is being spent on a high speed railway to nowhere.

        The intent of the project is to connect the LA Metro region with Sacramento and the Bay Area. The extent of actual *highspeed* rail, though is intended to go between Merced and Bakersfield (where people would prefer to zip by at max speed anyway). You can see the map of current stations and sections being constructed here: https://www.buildhsr.com/ [buildhsr.com] . It's really quite fascinating the lengths they have to go through to ensure the rail is grade-separated.

        there's going to be a 150 some odd billion dollar budget deficit next year

        Historically, California runs a surplus: https://calmatters.org/explain... [calmatters.org]

        it's going to keep getting even bigger as more and more people who apparently "aren't paying their fair share" keep leaving while the state only increases its spending

        That's related, but not exactly correct. Half of California's income taxes come from California's top 1% wealthiest residents. A whole lot of their income is based on the capital gains tax and thus the performance of the stock market. The market wasn't great, so tax revenue expectations had to be be adjusted downward and cuts have to be made to be more inline with actual tax revenues.

    • The peak rates used to be during the day. As a solar user who uses most electricity at night, I was able to zero out my PG&E bill even though my PV was only covering 60% of my usage on an annual basis.
      This was the case for many years. Maybe until 2017.
      Now the rates are inverted. For solar users, the peak rates are 4pm-9pm. Most solar customers don't have panels facing west, and have little to no generation during those hours, even during the longest sunshine days of the year. So, even those on NEM1 or N

    • California is a special case with tons of sun days each year. Btw I live in Austria which has way less sunny days, but by adding a battery to my PV panels on the rooftop I have full energy autarky around 8 months per year, I imaging california or most of it can reach 11 months with such a setup!

    • by Bob_Who ( 926234 )

      What's really going on: investor-owned utilities and generators want to maximize profits and solar is getting in the way of that goal.

      Bingo! When earnings are at stake, media and social networks are utilized.

      Neural reflexology: issue activated like a Manchurian Candidate with a persistent cookie

  • Pumped Hydro (Score:5, Informative)

    by CaptQuark ( 2706165 ) on Monday April 22, 2024 @10:44PM (#64416182)

    This is one of the advantages of pumped hydro energy storage. It has a very large capacity to store excess energy when available and supply it when needed. With efficiency of about 80% it is less efficient than some battery types, but it usually has a higher storage capacity than most battery installations.

    https://www.sdcwa.org/projects... [sdcwa.org]

    • by Ichijo ( 607641 )
      We could also use that cheap electricity to desalinate water or train AI models. [slashdot.org]
      • by Kaenneth ( 82978 )

        Is there a desalination system that is cost effective to only run when there is excess power? Or is the hardware cost high enough that you want to run it 24/7?

        • by Ichijo ( 607641 )

          Electricity is a major cost of desalination. So you're right, the question is whether it's cheaper to run the plant when electricity is expensive, such as during a demand response event, or idle it during that time.

          • Bitcoin/crypto mining also would solve this. Run miners when the rates turn negative, turning the excess electricity into compensation. This is economic incentive could replace the curtailed net metering discounts and preserve the ROI parameters needed to continue the solar build out.

      • We could also use that cheap electricity to desalinate water or train AI models. [slashdot.org]

        Desalination plants are expensive. It's silly to build one and then only run it for 50 hours per year when energy prices go negative. You wanna run it 24/7, but then it's baseload and contributes nothing to solving the surplus energy problem.

        AI data centers are even more expensive. They need clean, reliable baseload power.

      • Desalination is a good idea. So is wastewater treatment.

    • Pumped hydro energy storage needs mountains and rivers, we have quite a lot of those and also pumped hydro powerplants over here in the Alps, but then you need also a ton of water for it, which california obviously does not have, a quite interesting concept would be to have something like gravity towers which you could use as battery system, but on the other hand you have batteries also!
      Going green never really was a problem of production, panels are cheap, it always was a problem of how to store the excess

  • When I stop hearing about brown outs due to excessive AC use then I'll believe it.

    • When I stop hearing about brown outs due to excessive AC use then I'll believe it.

      RTFA. The brownouts are in the summer. The excess solar is in the spring.

      • by NFN_NLN ( 633283 )

        Well there you have it. I guess they should change the title from: "California Is Grappling With a Growing Problem: Too Much Solar" to a more honest title like "California has excess solar capacity in the spring but how will they address brown outs in the summer".

  • by caseih ( 160668 ) on Monday April 22, 2024 @11:22PM (#64416222)

    Grady from Practical Engineering recently posted a good video on the challenges of hooking solar to the grid:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

  • So the problem isn't "too much solar" but "Solar companies aren't getting subsidized anymore because the max capacity currently needed has been reached and want the subsidies back". Boohoo
  • that LCOE (Levelized Cost of Energy) is only one side of the equation. Solar has had a low LCOE for several years now, but if you're a business running a solar farm, LCOE isn't what you care about -- profit is what you care about! Profit depends on the cost of solar panels, but it depends just as much on the value of the electricity you are selling to the grid. If the price tends to be near zero (or heaven forbid, negative), profit is dead and the power plant is not worth building.

    Wind and solar are the

  • by Wrath0fb0b ( 302444 ) on Monday April 22, 2024 @11:30PM (#64416232)

    "Since those fixed costs still need to be paid, rates go up, shifting costs onto the kWhs still being bought from the grid."

    The entire problem stems from the fact that the per-KWH charge is actually some gross amalgam of actual cost to deliver an additional KWH plus fixed costs like (in theory anyway) keeping the grid maintained. The fixed costs increased even as the per-KWH price of generation tanked and so the inflated per-KWH rates drives solar adoption until they finally decided that you can't recover the delivery charge part.

    Instead, the evenhanded to do it would be to actually align the fixed portion of everyone's bill to the fixed costs of the grid (e.g. they would go way way up) and the usage based part of to the marginal cost of generation (e.g. they would go way down). Then you wouldn't need "special" rules for solar that counts against your usage at all -- the desired policy would fall out totally naturally.

    The other enormous benefit would be that shifting the bills to fixed and slashing the rates per-KWH would massively favor environmentally friendly policies like EVs and electrification of heating and water heaters. At the current PG&E rates, those things are money losers (even with huge tax credits!) whereas in a world of 10Â/KWH power, an EV would be 3x cheaper per-mile than gas and pay back in ~5 years without a tax credit. The carbon emissions benefits would be enormous and would fall out naturally.

    To me, the fact that the industry and the State pretend to be environmentally-conscious but won't do the basic thing to promote electrification is illuminating. Draw your own conclusions.

  • High quality problem (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Bandraginus ( 901166 ) on Monday April 22, 2024 @11:34PM (#64416236)

    There's plenty of solutions to this "problem". How about let the market decide what to do with all that access energy by letting more people/entities participate in the market? Then we'd see what economies would spring up around this problem.

    Just some thoughts:

    • Massive incentive for EV owners to soak up that excess at very little cost
    • Produce green hydrogen for export
    • Hell, any kind of imperfect storage (even at a 50% loss, at a low cost it's still worth storing)
    • Small-scale price arbitrage
    • Desalination plants. They are energy intensive to run.

    Really doesn't take much imagination. And especially when we could see this "problem" coming from 10 years away. Why on earth would we be curtailing that energy?

  • Just do like they do in Australia. The solution isn't hard, if they are grid connected then you charge them a daily rate for the connection/infrastructure, they have been doing that here in Australia for as long as I can remember and you pay it regardless of whether you are a net importer or exporter of power.
  • If solar is "too cheap to meter," then shut down the fossil fuel plants. This isn't rocket science, you corrupt fucks.
  • by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Monday April 22, 2024 @11:54PM (#64416268)
    To drive desalinization plants and solve the water crisis in the Southwest. The problem is that'll cost a whole bunch of money for the extra infrastructure needed to get the power where it needs to be. And it's surprisingly hard to get that money because so much of California's money needs to go to the Southern States to keep them barely functional
  • by OrangeTide ( 124937 ) on Tuesday April 23, 2024 @12:03AM (#64416284) Homepage Journal

    I kind of gave up the dream of selling my spare solar power back to PG&E. They don't really pay me much under Net Energy Metering and Net Surplus Compensation (NSC). They're billing residential customers around 40-50 cents per kWh [live.com] but they only pay a whole sale rate of a 4.256 cents [pge.com].
    I still do net metering to offset my usage. But the idea that I'm going to some how break even with these guys isn't possible anymore, not after they jacked rates so much in the last several years.
    I did end up getting a whole house battery, mostly as a backup. The math doesn't work out where it's going to save money in my situation. While the utility bill is lower with a battery than without. The amount doesn't actually cover the cost of the battery for the life of the battery. As for the "life" of a battery, I'm going by the manufacturer's 12 year warranty.

    • I did end up getting a whole house battery, mostly as a backup. The math doesn't work out where it's going to save money in my situation. While the utility bill is lower with a battery than without. The amount doesn't actually cover the cost of the battery for the life of the battery. As for the "life" of a battery, I'm going by the manufacturer's 12 year warranty.

      If your cost is 40-50 cents per kWh, I’m assuming you are running on that whole house battery every single day/night and allowing the solar to recharge it?

      At those rates, I wouldn’t merely be using a 12-year warranty. I’d be proving it.

  • Renewable energy has made stunning advancements in the time I've been a Slashdot reader. In the early 2000s a situation like this seemed utterly impossible within my lifetime. Now here we are 20 years later with sometimes too much renewable energy on hand. It's amazing.

    I think it's only getting more and more obvious now that for renewables to really take over steady/dependable energy generation duty, some affordable and dependable method of reliably storing excess energy during sunny or windy days needs

  • LOL (Score:5, Insightful)

    by backslashdot ( 95548 ) on Tuesday April 23, 2024 @12:33AM (#64416338)

    The issue isn't that solar isn't the solution to energy needs --if anything things issue shows that solar can generate enough power in a distributed manner to solve everyone's energy need. The problem is the way in which the transition is taking place and the need to pay fixed cost of the utility companies that are too big to fail. This "hostage crisis" is more reason to double down on solar, than have to keep paying the extortionist power companies.

  • Didn't I just read that data centers are using HUGE amounts of power and requesting coal stations be re-ignited? For heaven's sake instead of throwing that power away divert it to data centers and charge for it. California makes no sense to me. They push for green energy until it starts to hurt the green backs in their pockets. Their solution? Throw it away.

    • Given their geographic advantage for sunshine you'd think they would encourage further panels while building out infrastructure for storage and transmission to sell it.
    • by Bob_Who ( 926234 )

      California makes no sense to me. They push for green energy until it starts to hurt the green backs in their pockets. Their solution? Throw it away.

      "It's not easy being green!"

      -- Kermit Frog

  • You can turn solar off on the spot with not detrimental effects. There's never a reason to pay someone to take solar electricity. Electricity prices go negative from other sources of energy which can't stop producing electricity or would incur a cost greater than what they pay to take the electricity. Nuclear, for example, cannot follow the load quickly.

  • That will suck the power and then some.
  • by battingly ( 5065477 ) on Tuesday April 23, 2024 @02:12AM (#64416502)
    The simple and obvious solution is to incentivize batteries to go with rooftop solar. Eliminating net metering was a short term handout to the utilities that will have terrible long-term consequences.
  • "Free rides can't last forever".

    When the market is saturated, your return on each product diminishes.

    But you're still getting free electricity!

    Subsidies for solar were always going to be short-lived and rather pointless for the grid beyond a point - you want them to pay you for electricity they literally cannot use?

    It's why when I started my little amateur installation at home, I didn't ever care about "feeding back" to the grid. I'd really rather not be tied to the grid at all, even for feeding back. It

  • by Revek ( 133289 ) on Tuesday April 23, 2024 @06:57AM (#64416946)
    I've read several articles about this and the problem in all of them seem to be PG&E doesn't like negative cost since they don't like lowering bills.
  • by Locutus ( 9039 ) on Tuesday April 23, 2024 @09:16AM (#64417218)
    From what I've seen mentioned on this they are getting high electric bills not because of high generation costs but because of high distribution costs.
    So someone is out blaming solar when it's hardly the problem and if it really were the problem the solution is spreading out 7-14kWh batteries on homes with solar.
    But instead, we see massive mega battery stations getting funded by State and Federal agencies and being put out in the boonies so expensive distribution lines need to be installed or upgraded. A win for the utilities and even more costs to the consumers.

    Home storage using LFP batteries are the way to go for flattening the solar output curve and eliminating the 4-9p high energy usage bump.

    LoB
  • by ElitistWhiner ( 79961 ) on Tuesday April 23, 2024 @10:25AM (#64417482) Journal

    SDG&E were paid decades ago to underground their residential service. Nada

    San Diegan’s are still waiting. While politicians, commissioners, state and generators hide behind their Strawman arguments, the whining is deafening as their rates keep ratcheting-up.

    Solar installed, based on saves and paybacks at the time, have been gutted by change after change in rulings, rates and fee restructure.

    Californian's need to direct State representatives to re-cast a solar-forward electricity policy going forward. The goal of which is distributed solar power generation, augmented by wind purchased out of state and incorporates private-public actors to facilitate a stable grid system. Massive battery storage farms, Tesla-style Autobidder rate management and fixed-fee generator contracts should guarantee investor ROI

    Solar and battery technologies are destined to become cheaper and cheaper due to mass adoption while wind, hydro, thermal and nuke remain relatively high cost corner-case solutions. Californians are surfers. Failure to catch this third wave of technology destines them to rate-slavery by regulatory capture.

    Before solar energy Californians made a sport out of seeing who could go longest without turning on their furnaces. Typically, doubling their energy bills. This seems to be a way of life for State, generators and politicians going forward

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