California pulls the plug on rooftop solar(pv-magazine-usa.com)
pv-magazine-usa.com
California pulls the plug on rooftop solar
https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2022/12/15/california-pulls-the-plug-on-rooftop-solar/
292 comments
> "I want your cashiers to buy them from me at the retail price!"
It's not anywhere near that simple. Electric power prices change dramatically throughout the day. For example, even retail prices may more than double during peak hours, if you have time-of-day billing.
In some markets, peak demand is caused by day-time air conditioning during a few weeks in July or August. The extra generation capacity needed to cover that tiny window of time is idle the rest of the year. Those peak hours are very expensive, in real terms.
In a market with small amounts of solar, that solar is helping offset some of the most expensive electricity of the year. And I've seen power companies push their major clients to install solar so that the power companies can avoid large investments in new power generation and transmission capacity.
With net metering, power companies pay retail when wholesale electricity is most expensive. And they credit it back during the night, when wholesale power is cheaper. (The early evening window is trickier, and the hours of sunlight depend on latitude.)
But once solar capacity is sufficient to offset air conditioning, the numbers for the power company get a lot worse.
(Full disclosure: I signed a 10-year net metering contract which would barely break even in 12-15 years, in a market with little existing solar. The power company instituted separate grid fees a couple of years later, which substantially changed how the contract worked. And so my system will probably never pay for itself. Win some, lose some.)
It's not anywhere near that simple. Electric power prices change dramatically throughout the day. For example, even retail prices may more than double during peak hours, if you have time-of-day billing.
In some markets, peak demand is caused by day-time air conditioning during a few weeks in July or August. The extra generation capacity needed to cover that tiny window of time is idle the rest of the year. Those peak hours are very expensive, in real terms.
In a market with small amounts of solar, that solar is helping offset some of the most expensive electricity of the year. And I've seen power companies push their major clients to install solar so that the power companies can avoid large investments in new power generation and transmission capacity.
With net metering, power companies pay retail when wholesale electricity is most expensive. And they credit it back during the night, when wholesale power is cheaper. (The early evening window is trickier, and the hours of sunlight depend on latitude.)
But once solar capacity is sufficient to offset air conditioning, the numbers for the power company get a lot worse.
(Full disclosure: I signed a 10-year net metering contract which would barely break even in 12-15 years, in a market with little existing solar. The power company instituted separate grid fees a couple of years later, which substantially changed how the contract worked. And so my system will probably never pay for itself. Win some, lose some.)
> The power company instituted separate grid fees a couple of years later, which substantially changed how the contract worked.
Is that legal? Sounds like you were defrauded
Is that legal? Sounds like you were defrauded
As far as I know, the power company made the changes to their fees with the full approval of state regulators.
They still provide net metering for the electricity that I buy, as per the contract. They just broke out a ~$35 monthly fee for grid maintenance, separate from what I pay for electricity.
They still provide net metering for the electricity that I buy, as per the contract. They just broke out a ~$35 monthly fee for grid maintenance, separate from what I pay for electricity.
Every place I've lived in the US, 7 places now, has had a power monopoly. Yes they defraud us, no there's nothing we can do about it.
If you own your land, you can install and run a generator. Likewise, you can also roll your own services for whatever else you desire to consume.
Nobody forces electricty consumption.
Nobody forces electricty consumption.
This is false. Many places require a grid connection and most utilities have a fixed monthly fee as part of the bill.
Please cite a code that requires a land owner to contract with the electric company.
People enter electric contracts voluntarily, but maybe you can cite code from one of the municipalities in USA.
People enter electric contracts voluntarily, but maybe you can cite code from one of the municipalities in USA.
California used to require it in Title 24, and might still do so.
[https://www.cailaw.org/media/files/IEL/Publications/2016/gri...]
And most municipalities will refuse to allow on-site grid independent generation, AND refuse to issue a certificate of habitability unless you have reliable power.
Practically, 99% of urban or suburban residences lack the space and other infrastructure to have a safe and effective off grid system up to the relevant codes anyway, especially when the relevant fire codes come into play.
With how weird a setup it is, most municipalities would just refuse to figure it out with you, so good luck getting through that mountain of red tape.
Rural of course, is entirely different.
[https://www.cailaw.org/media/files/IEL/Publications/2016/gri...]
And most municipalities will refuse to allow on-site grid independent generation, AND refuse to issue a certificate of habitability unless you have reliable power.
Practically, 99% of urban or suburban residences lack the space and other infrastructure to have a safe and effective off grid system up to the relevant codes anyway, especially when the relevant fire codes come into play.
With how weird a setup it is, most municipalities would just refuse to figure it out with you, so good luck getting through that mountain of red tape.
Rural of course, is entirely different.
I found this article helpful when researching the topic:
https://off-grid-home.com/is-it-legal-to-disconnect-your-hom...
If highly depends on your State and also how your off-grid system works.
https://off-grid-home.com/is-it-legal-to-disconnect-your-hom...
If highly depends on your State and also how your off-grid system works.
To extend the metaphor a little, the farmer would be bringing in carrots in a ready-to-sell condition and putting them directly in the Safeway stores on the retail shelves.
That's a little different than forcing Safeway to pick them up at the wholesale distribution warehouse (at full retail price) and truck them around themselves and stack the stores themselves.
In the PG&E case, the residential rooftop solar power is delivered directly into the retail last-mile networks just like the carrots on the Safeway shelves metaphor.
However, the NEM2.0 model is still needed a tuneup. Last-mile networks still need maintenance. Suppose each neighborhood reached self sufficiency, somebody has to pay for the grid maintenance and run the whole thing.
IMHO, buyback at a discount makes sense, but NEM3.0 seems like a Christmas gift to PG&E. They get ToU, capacity fees, wholesale rates, and minimum usage fees. They asked for the sky and got it all.
That's a little different than forcing Safeway to pick them up at the wholesale distribution warehouse (at full retail price) and truck them around themselves and stack the stores themselves.
In the PG&E case, the residential rooftop solar power is delivered directly into the retail last-mile networks just like the carrots on the Safeway shelves metaphor.
However, the NEM2.0 model is still needed a tuneup. Last-mile networks still need maintenance. Suppose each neighborhood reached self sufficiency, somebody has to pay for the grid maintenance and run the whole thing.
IMHO, buyback at a discount makes sense, but NEM3.0 seems like a Christmas gift to PG&E. They get ToU, capacity fees, wholesale rates, and minimum usage fees. They asked for the sky and got it all.
Actually the way the grid works, in this analogy the farmer would deliver the carrots directly to the absolutely geographically ideal consumer's refrigerator.
The only kinda grey lining here is the incentivization of house scale battery storage thru gutting all other routes to solar profitability... Sort of like saying that police speeding ticket quotas 'encourage' alternative transit like bicycles and trains just by adding misery to driving.
The only kinda grey lining here is the incentivization of house scale battery storage thru gutting all other routes to solar profitability... Sort of like saying that police speeding ticket quotas 'encourage' alternative transit like bicycles and trains just by adding misery to driving.
Maybe all of your neighbors with gardens have tons of carrots in September, so many that they leave bags of them on your doorstep to rot all late summer long. So when it's February and you've got nothing to eat, how do you get carrots?
How? The same as you would if the farmer providing retail-ready carrots didn't exist.
In California's case the grid generation capacity was made up of nuclear (fixed base load), natural gas for dynamic load, and solar/other renewables (wind, hydro etc), and import/export.
If you look at the grid operator stats on https://www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/supply.html#sectio... - I find it interesting to compare days like May 10th (where solar + base load lead to exporting) vs something like Sept 1st (where solar + gas + imports was barely enough) vs today (Dec 16th, where sun is limited and we rely on natural gas + imports to fill the gap).
PG&E probably loses money on days like May 1st where a large portion of their power is acquired at retail, but makes a killing on the other two example days by selling wholesale generated/imported power at our jacked up rates.
IMHO They want to make a killing on the plentiful springtime solar surplus too. Now that they've got everything they asked for don't expect that this will reduce rates for non-solar customers - it'll go to investors.
I still think a tune-up of NEM2.0 would have been better. Other places seem to get by just fine with an 80%-90% buy-back rate vs NEM2.0's 100%.
In California's case the grid generation capacity was made up of nuclear (fixed base load), natural gas for dynamic load, and solar/other renewables (wind, hydro etc), and import/export.
If you look at the grid operator stats on https://www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/supply.html#sectio... - I find it interesting to compare days like May 10th (where solar + base load lead to exporting) vs something like Sept 1st (where solar + gas + imports was barely enough) vs today (Dec 16th, where sun is limited and we rely on natural gas + imports to fill the gap).
PG&E probably loses money on days like May 1st where a large portion of their power is acquired at retail, but makes a killing on the other two example days by selling wholesale generated/imported power at our jacked up rates.
IMHO They want to make a killing on the plentiful springtime solar surplus too. Now that they've got everything they asked for don't expect that this will reduce rates for non-solar customers - it'll go to investors.
I still think a tune-up of NEM2.0 would have been better. Other places seem to get by just fine with an 80%-90% buy-back rate vs NEM2.0's 100%.
If you think $$$$ are flowing to investors, the thing for you to do is buy their stock.
Really? Your response to, effectively, "this company which has a natural monopoly in this region is arranging things so as to increase their profits at the public's expense" is "ah, so you're saying you want to get in on that action, eh? wink wink, nudge nudge?"
I think it's much more important to see that situations like this are treated justly and fairly than to make sure I'm getting my cut of the corruption.
I think it's much more important to see that situations like this are treated justly and fairly than to make sure I'm getting my cut of the corruption.
Well, I think it illustrates that you don't really believe they're making obscene profits. Otherwise you'd swallow your virtue and buy some.
Maybe you have heard of "preferred" shares. There are myriad games played to ensure the big fish get the profits.
Maybe you have heard of looking at annual reports to find out some actual numbers?
I don't know if this is a general question or specifically about carrots, but:
Carrots keep under refrigeration exceptionally well. They transport well. They're not like peaches, which are either in-season and fantastic, or out-of-season and thus flown in from somewhere else, really expensive, and lousy.
Good chefs know this.
Carrots keep under refrigeration exceptionally well. They transport well. They're not like peaches, which are either in-season and fantastic, or out-of-season and thus flown in from somewhere else, really expensive, and lousy.
Good chefs know this.
To extend your extension. My local farmshop actually buys surplus homegrown fruit and veg (for vouchers) and sells them at cost.
But the goal here in setting these prices (from Society’s perspective) is not to maximize Safeway’s profits, but rather to incentive more people taking up carrot farming!
Since we’re fairly confident we need lots of carrots to save the world!
Since we’re fairly confident we need lots of carrots to save the world!
People are so quick to speak for "Society" because, in their minds, they think it trumps all other arguments.
But very few -- if any -- actually know what society needs.
I would say that what Society needs is to ensure a regular supply of carrots at stable prices. It's not to maximize small household carrot farming if it does not align with this goal.
There is no particular reason why solar needs to be on individual rooftops where there is no storage, no ability to make long term commitments, and no mechanism to turn it into a reliable, dependable stream of energy.
But sure, if the same households commit to maintaining their solar panels at an agreed upon capacity, and commit to purchasing enough storage to provide the agreed upon electricity despite the weather, and are able to sign long term contracts with significant financial penalties for failing to deliver the promised quantity of electricity, then yes they can be an electricity supplier to those utilities that need reliable energy suppliers in order to meet their own contractual commitments to energy users.
But very few -- if any -- actually know what society needs.
I would say that what Society needs is to ensure a regular supply of carrots at stable prices. It's not to maximize small household carrot farming if it does not align with this goal.
There is no particular reason why solar needs to be on individual rooftops where there is no storage, no ability to make long term commitments, and no mechanism to turn it into a reliable, dependable stream of energy.
But sure, if the same households commit to maintaining their solar panels at an agreed upon capacity, and commit to purchasing enough storage to provide the agreed upon electricity despite the weather, and are able to sign long term contracts with significant financial penalties for failing to deliver the promised quantity of electricity, then yes they can be an electricity supplier to those utilities that need reliable energy suppliers in order to meet their own contractual commitments to energy users.
There's no need for all that red tape. Since there are so many households, the average will be highly predictable, given the weather conditions. Same as with large suppliers.
Battery capacity is something many households may also want to invest in, if the incentives are attractive enough. Again, no need for long term contractual commitments.
Battery capacity is something many households may also want to invest in, if the incentives are attractive enough. Again, no need for long term contractual commitments.
> " Since there are so many households, the average will be highly predictable, "
Unfortunately when it's dark in one place, it's also dark elsewhere. When it's cloudy or rainy in one place it's not made up for with extra sun elsewhere. There are also differences across seasons, with less sunlight in the winter, etc. You can average and say a state has, on average, x hours of sunlight in June, but without extremely expensive storage, the sunny days don't end up powering the grid on cloudy days, and solar in the summer doesn't get stored for use in the winter.
Electricity needs to be stable and reliable year round, and every day.
Unfortunately when it's dark in one place, it's also dark elsewhere. When it's cloudy or rainy in one place it's not made up for with extra sun elsewhere. There are also differences across seasons, with less sunlight in the winter, etc. You can average and say a state has, on average, x hours of sunlight in June, but without extremely expensive storage, the sunny days don't end up powering the grid on cloudy days, and solar in the summer doesn't get stored for use in the winter.
Electricity needs to be stable and reliable year round, and every day.
But that's an argument against solar rather than against the notion of retail compensation rather than wholesale for boutique-scale production of solar (which is what the main topic on this subthread seemed to be).
No, it's an argument against solar without storage. Include the storage, include reliability, and you can have solar.
But no one wants to do that because storage is expensive, so they wave their hands and talk about "randomness evening out" or they explain "storage is a solved problem!" and then they draw something on a napkin for you.
Bottom line everyone wants to externalize the cost of storage because it's a difficult and expensive proposition. And so the household with the rooftop solar connected directly to the grid is effectively using the grid as storage, because buying the batteries is -- surprise -- too expensive.
But the electric utilities are saying -- "unreliable power is not very valuable to us, because we need reliable power" -- that is solar plus storage. If you just give us unreliable power, we'll only pay a penny for that, but we'll pay 20 cents for reliable power. And people are getting very angry at this because they think the unreliable and reliable power should have the same price, or that unreliable power is somehow a replacement for reliable power.
But no one wants to do that because storage is expensive, so they wave their hands and talk about "randomness evening out" or they explain "storage is a solved problem!" and then they draw something on a napkin for you.
Bottom line everyone wants to externalize the cost of storage because it's a difficult and expensive proposition. And so the household with the rooftop solar connected directly to the grid is effectively using the grid as storage, because buying the batteries is -- surprise -- too expensive.
But the electric utilities are saying -- "unreliable power is not very valuable to us, because we need reliable power" -- that is solar plus storage. If you just give us unreliable power, we'll only pay a penny for that, but we'll pay 20 cents for reliable power. And people are getting very angry at this because they think the unreliable and reliable power should have the same price, or that unreliable power is somehow a replacement for reliable power.
I think you want PG&E to be a government-owned company. It's not, though.
That's worth discussing, but right now it's a regulated monopoly, entitled by law to make a "reasonable" profit, AFAIK.
That's worth discussing, but right now it's a regulated monopoly, entitled by law to make a "reasonable" profit, AFAIK.
Given the amount that I've had to bail them out as a California taxpayer and as a ratepayer, it's absolutely criminal that they're not currently a government-owned company.
Well, these rates were "reasonable" enough before that they were apparently not violating some superlegal principle.
Pg&e is a regulated utility. They’re getting their profits either way, it would just come more from people who can’t afford solar.
More from commercial customers who can’t install enough to matter
I think it would be better if PG&E charges were decreased as well.
They currently charge .28-.51/kwh (yikes!)
the wholesale price for electricity in california is 3-4c/kwh
They currently charge .28-.51/kwh (yikes!)
the wholesale price for electricity in california is 3-4c/kwh
In Holland its 0.66€/KWh on average.
So 0.69$/KWh with the current exchange rate. Think you got a pretty sweet deal there.
For the US it isn't great. My small town charges $16 for the connection and $0.10 a kWh.
Less than $0.15 per kWh is pretty common.
Less than $0.15 per kWh is pretty common.
I pay about a third of the rate and I am in an area that is so close to PGE that I could throw a rock and hit them. It’s terrible pricing, even for the area.
Also before Putins energy war?
The real war is on Putin. The energy prices are on the Western world's response.
Putin started tampering with the gas already during the summer of 2021. The effects of this were likely part of the calculus on the West's response to the war, which he severely misinterpreted given that we have decided to accept the current chaotic market conditions rather than give up Ukraine.
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/24/russia-is-pumping-less-natur...
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/24/russia-is-pumping-less-natur...
Putin is only mentioned once in that article and only in a context of people criticizing the dependency on Russian natural gas. There's nothing there that implies "tampering", and the article speculatively couches the moves in economic terms, prioritizing new delivery means. I suppose you just think Putin is behind everything.
Occasionally accidentally burning half the state is an expensive habit, it turns out.
Marginal rate for power is small, yes. But the grid consumers are paying for the whole grid. Of course they are, somebody has to.
[deleted]
But retail prices of carrots don’t increase dramatically from 4-9pm.
... and that's relevant how?
I suppose you hope it's relevant because, "the solar power comes just when they need it the most" ?
They don't seem to do the math quite so happily, though. Maybe it's #1 and #2:
First, Safeway buys in very large lots from certified suppliers, who can commit to (almost) always having carrots.
Second, those suppliers have to deliver at a loading dock, and maybe at a central location, too.
I suppose you hope it's relevant because, "the solar power comes just when they need it the most" ?
They don't seem to do the math quite so happily, though. Maybe it's #1 and #2:
First, Safeway buys in very large lots from certified suppliers, who can commit to (almost) always having carrots.
Second, those suppliers have to deliver at a loading dock, and maybe at a central location, too.
I don’t think that was my hope. My comment, if anything, is that the dynamics of pg&e’s retail pricing make the comparison a bit of (pardon the pun) apples to carrots. Plus, there’s no analogy for energy, at scale, to refrigerated supply chains; hence need for TOU pricing to shape demand.
Most produce is seasonal. So your prices go up during the off season, and/or quality declines as they’re imported from farther away or picked before ripe.
Electric rates change seasonally as well, that part of the analogy holds. However time-of-use pricing is different.
Do the rates change? I thought it was usage that changed seasonally.
Yep, but it depends on what’s rate plan you select.
> SEASONAL PRICING The cost of electricity on your rate plan is lower during the cooler months from October to May, and is higher during the warmer months from June to September. For full seasonal pricing details, visit pge.com/tariffs. [0]
And here’s a an infographic [1] showing the differences between two plans for season, time of day, and baseline allowance (tiered usage).
[0] https://www.pge.com/pge_global/common/pdfs/rate-plans/rate-p... [1] https://www.pge.com/pge_global/common/pdfs/rate-plans/how-ra...
> SEASONAL PRICING The cost of electricity on your rate plan is lower during the cooler months from October to May, and is higher during the warmer months from June to September. For full seasonal pricing details, visit pge.com/tariffs. [0]
And here’s a an infographic [1] showing the differences between two plans for season, time of day, and baseline allowance (tiered usage).
[0] https://www.pge.com/pge_global/common/pdfs/rate-plans/rate-p... [1] https://www.pge.com/pge_global/common/pdfs/rate-plans/how-ra...
The next SBF will master the carrot arbitrage.
> All of those analogies apply to selling power back to PG&E at retail prices. It's in small lots; it's undependable; it comes from many sources, not just a few; and it's priced wrongly.
You must not be an electrical engineer.
Do you think the power I generate from my solar array travels a hundred miles to some facility to then be sent back to the house next door?
Not so.
Multiple homes are connected to, and fed by, power distribution transformers. In other words, five to ten homes share the same output. Which means that excess power from one or more of those homes is fed directly to any home that needs it.
My power goes directly into my neighbor's meter. The power company charges my neighbor the full rate for my power. They pay me almost nothing. Pure fucking profit.
Of course, it would not be sensible to ask for the full rate. However, they should pay a good percentage of what they are charging for the power. Among other things, if anything breaks it is my responsibility to fix it. And, of course, I paid for the entire system. They sell my electricity at full rate with minimal costs.
You must not be an electrical engineer.
Do you think the power I generate from my solar array travels a hundred miles to some facility to then be sent back to the house next door?
Not so.
Multiple homes are connected to, and fed by, power distribution transformers. In other words, five to ten homes share the same output. Which means that excess power from one or more of those homes is fed directly to any home that needs it.
My power goes directly into my neighbor's meter. The power company charges my neighbor the full rate for my power. They pay me almost nothing. Pure fucking profit.
Of course, it would not be sensible to ask for the full rate. However, they should pay a good percentage of what they are charging for the power. Among other things, if anything breaks it is my responsibility to fix it. And, of course, I paid for the entire system. They sell my electricity at full rate with minimal costs.
Maybe a silly question, but from those of us that aren't electrical engineers.
Am I correct in assuming that excess generated power can't leave my local distribution network? So there are X houses in my circuit served by a dist transformer, and if we can produce more than those X houses need at that point in time, then the excess simply doesn't get "pulled" from the panels?
Am I correct in assuming that excess generated power can't leave my local distribution network? So there are X houses in my circuit served by a dist transformer, and if we can produce more than those X houses need at that point in time, then the excess simply doesn't get "pulled" from the panels?
It's a good question.
Theory: Transformers are bidirectional. You can drive them from either side.
For example, in testing one of the devices we manufacture we need 480 Volts AC. At each test rig we use a 480 V to 220 V transformer, drive it backwards and generate 480 VAC from 220 VAC.
Distribution transformers have primaries in the tens of thousands of volts (say, 50 kV) and 220 VAC (for residential service) outputs. The topology could be different, however each home receives a two leg service with 120 VAC per leg.
So, yes, you should be able to drive the low voltage side and end-up with high voltage on the other side.
Let's say you have ten homes on the same transformer. Each home has solar. During a holiday, all homes are empty and nearly all of the power they generate drives the transformer backwards. The power would then drive other transformers and feed homes that need it.
What I don't know is if they explicitly have devices to prevent backwards flow of power. I don't think they do. Not sure this would make any sense. I could see protection devices to prevent overload.
Theory: Transformers are bidirectional. You can drive them from either side.
For example, in testing one of the devices we manufacture we need 480 Volts AC. At each test rig we use a 480 V to 220 V transformer, drive it backwards and generate 480 VAC from 220 VAC.
Distribution transformers have primaries in the tens of thousands of volts (say, 50 kV) and 220 VAC (for residential service) outputs. The topology could be different, however each home receives a two leg service with 120 VAC per leg.
So, yes, you should be able to drive the low voltage side and end-up with high voltage on the other side.
Let's say you have ten homes on the same transformer. Each home has solar. During a holiday, all homes are empty and nearly all of the power they generate drives the transformer backwards. The power would then drive other transformers and feed homes that need it.
What I don't know is if they explicitly have devices to prevent backwards flow of power. I don't think they do. Not sure this would make any sense. I could see protection devices to prevent overload.
You must not know much about actual PG&E equipment.
A neighbor here told me there was a 6-month wait to get solar & its associated metering, because PG&E doesn't have the equipment on our lines that can accept power back from the customers.
Sending humans out to fix things is costly.
A neighbor here told me there was a 6-month wait to get solar & its associated metering, because PG&E doesn't have the equipment on our lines that can accept power back from the customers.
Sending humans out to fix things is costly.
You use local distribution when selling power back, but your point still stands it is mostly profit.
Suppose there was a small committee of Californians who mandated that Safeway pay retail price minus a regulated margin to the farmers, then wait until a large number of people started to make decisions around that policy, then did a sudden rug pull. But grandfathered in some people to the old scheme and left others to go figure themselves out, because fairness is a strange thing in the world of the bureaucrat.
From the far sidelines this appears to be a stop in a long journey where the State of California tries to simulate market-efficient price of different forms of power generation solar the slow and hard way that doesn't involve using a market. All these schemes look even more foolish than usual now that solar is allegedly the cheapest form of power, so presumably a market would just throw things up at speed.
From the far sidelines this appears to be a stop in a long journey where the State of California tries to simulate market-efficient price of different forms of power generation solar the slow and hard way that doesn't involve using a market. All these schemes look even more foolish than usual now that solar is allegedly the cheapest form of power, so presumably a market would just throw things up at speed.
[deleted]
So a minor inconvenience is a good reason to eliminate a method to combat what our media calls "settled science" of a phenomenon that is an existential threat to humanity?
Interesting.
Interesting.
Who said humans always do the right thing? Who said California is going to always do the right thing? Science is never settled by definition but look, the evidence is there - go look - you don't have to rely on 'our media' - implied as corrupt. 100% know that you already have your mind made up.
> It's in small lots; it's undependable; it comes from many sources, not just a few; and it's priced wrongly.
My (very poor) understanding is that much of (all of?) power that gets sold back to the utilities goes through virtual power plant (VPP) programs like Tesla's or Swell's, where although there is a relationship between the owner of each solar installation and the utility, the VPP is the entity that sells the power to the utility.
My (very poor) understanding is that much of (all of?) power that gets sold back to the utilities goes through virtual power plant (VPP) programs like Tesla's or Swell's, where although there is a relationship between the owner of each solar installation and the utility, the VPP is the entity that sells the power to the utility.
It’s also important to emphasize that this is still _net metering_
That is, if your solar production for the year equals your energy consumption for the year, you pay $0 in energy costs[1].
You are still offsetting retail electricity rates with your own, cheaper, fixed cost form of electricity. You just get paid the same[2] for your excess production as any solar farm.
1 – It was going to be nonzero with an interconnection fee, but that got dropped
2 – $0.08/kWh is also higher than utility-scale power purchase agreements in CA, which are closer to $0.03/kWh
That is, if your solar production for the year equals your energy consumption for the year, you pay $0 in energy costs[1].
You are still offsetting retail electricity rates with your own, cheaper, fixed cost form of electricity. You just get paid the same[2] for your excess production as any solar farm.
1 – It was going to be nonzero with an interconnection fee, but that got dropped
2 – $0.08/kWh is also higher than utility-scale power purchase agreements in CA, which are closer to $0.03/kWh
That’s not what the linked article says. It says any exported energy will be valued at 10% of what it did before. When you send 10Kwh to grid, you get 1Kwh back. That is why, the breakeven period increased from 4 to 14 years on a new solar installation
Does CA split up supply, transmission and distribution on their bills? New Hampshire does and our NEM 2.0 rules are quite fair.
https://www.puc.nh.gov/sustainable%20energy/Group%20Net%20Me...
https://www.puc.nh.gov/sustainable%20energy/Group%20Net%20Me...
Except it would be more like if instead of paying in cash, Safeway paid the farmer with vouchers that they could trade in for carrots. And in many cases charges a monthly fee in order for the vouchers to continue to work.
The answer is not to sell back to the grid. The answer is to make the grid irrelevant and get off it. Especially in Cali with all the sunshine they get.
I suspect rooftop solar for most folks isn't producing electricity when they need it, at least not enough to satisfy their peak demand.
That leaves PG&E buying your excess at exactly the time of day they don't need it. And you continue to pull load at peak demand (like everybody else) so you need the grid connection.
It's a lose all around for PG&E. This change recognizes that.
That leaves PG&E buying your excess at exactly the time of day they don't need it. And you continue to pull load at peak demand (like everybody else) so you need the grid connection.
It's a lose all around for PG&E. This change recognizes that.
PG&E retail prices are 3x what they are not too far from here.
They don't buy back at retail rates though.
"cashiers to buy them from me" - now that doesn't make sense in your analogy. There is no equivalent of cashiers on the electricity side.
There is. It's the transformer you connect to. Their final point of presence before the product leaves the "store" and enters your possession.
Anthropomorphizing transformers are we. The analogy visualizes how inconvenient for cashiers to buy carrots but transformers don't care - it's easy and free.
Kind of not an accurate description of solar panels or that we just have to live with PGE but whatever.
The Rural Electrification Model is the way to go, introduced during the FDR New Deal era. It consisted of municipal-scale networks (also applicable to fiber optic networks).
https://www.investopedia.com/rural-electrification-act-51191...
> "At first, the plan was to give these loans to companies in order to help them build electricity infrastructure in rural areas—a plan that proved too costly. So instead, lawmakers chose a type of organization well known to farmers: the cooperative, or co-op. The idea was that if farmers could organize themselves into co-ops, the REA could distribute loans to them at very low interest rates—between 2% and 3%, depending on their state—to build electricity infrastructure."
Note that a key reason for its success was that they didn't use anything like a modern federal contracting program, i.e. paying private companies, but instead worked directly with rural co-ops (just extend that to towns and cities).
Of course, this would mean taking over the transmission infrastructure from the investor-owned utilities in California.
https://www.investopedia.com/rural-electrification-act-51191...
> "At first, the plan was to give these loans to companies in order to help them build electricity infrastructure in rural areas—a plan that proved too costly. So instead, lawmakers chose a type of organization well known to farmers: the cooperative, or co-op. The idea was that if farmers could organize themselves into co-ops, the REA could distribute loans to them at very low interest rates—between 2% and 3%, depending on their state—to build electricity infrastructure."
Note that a key reason for its success was that they didn't use anything like a modern federal contracting program, i.e. paying private companies, but instead worked directly with rural co-ops (just extend that to towns and cities).
Of course, this would mean taking over the transmission infrastructure from the investor-owned utilities in California.
I grew up using a rural electrical co-op. Despite the high winds, occasional blizzards, and regular thunderstorms of the Indiana plains, it was far more reliable than our current service in Redmond with Puget Sound Energy. To PSE's credit, their service is more reliable than it was ten years ago. But still, I'd never felt the need to own a generator until we moved to Redmond.
To be somewhat fair to PSE, it's generally simpler to plan for wind and ice than falling trees, which the Indiana plains relatively lack. As a proponent of "if the trees are such a problem why not bury the lines" who has since had to dig some trenches in the hellish rocky clay of King County, I am somewhat more sympathetic to their plight.
I don't buy it. Maine has small power faults attributed to falling trees, but it's usually limited to only a few residents at a time because they PROACTIVELY trim problem trees and build a redundant system that can route around a downed line. We also have ice storms every year and after many people died from it in the 90s we decided to stop that from being a problem too. The fact is, it's not hard or expensive to make a reliable network when you charge 30 cents per kWh, hell, CMP was building around ice storms and occasional windstorms and all those other problems we experience for 6 cents per kWh until very recently! They basically replaced every line in the lower half of the state with that price
A reliable transmission grid does not require burying cables! It requires engineering and fault analysis and proactive spending and caring about your customers. If your distributor doesn't have reliable infrastructure, it's not because they can't afford it, it's because they don't care and don't have to fear losing you as a customer.
A reliable transmission grid does not require burying cables! It requires engineering and fault analysis and proactive spending and caring about your customers. If your distributor doesn't have reliable infrastructure, it's not because they can't afford it, it's because they don't care and don't have to fear losing you as a customer.
Maine's trees are tiny compared to the PNW. Most of them would hardly graze the line if they fell over.
It's really difficult to prune, say, 50 miles of Douglas-fir that stands easily over 150-200ft and grows right next to the lines -- many of their limbs are fatter than any tree I saw in the northeast. You'd have to get a crane and block the road off, and one tree could take a good part of a day. Can't fell them either, generally speaking, as you get into all sorts of disputes and the environmentalists will send you to hell 50 different ways with lawsuits.
It's really difficult to prune, say, 50 miles of Douglas-fir that stands easily over 150-200ft and grows right next to the lines -- many of their limbs are fatter than any tree I saw in the northeast. You'd have to get a crane and block the road off, and one tree could take a good part of a day. Can't fell them either, generally speaking, as you get into all sorts of disputes and the environmentalists will send you to hell 50 different ways with lawsuits.
If the fir stands 150ft high right next to your power line, you have failed to proactively prune it.
Well the tree was there a few centuries before the line was. And like I said, it's impractical to fall them.
That is, it was impractical to fell them while building the line initially? The risk was considered too low for the cost of cutting and towing away large trees in a wide enough corridor?
The lines and paved road got put in during the old days of logging, I'd assume it was considered financially impractical for a number of reasons, likely from a legal perspective, due to many private property owners, along with a mixed bag of county, state and federally-owned land sprinkled in there, for a town of around 100 people or so. Things just kind of went along from there.
Nowadays it's all that plus environmental lawsuits.
Nowadays it's all that plus environmental lawsuits.
The main contributor to falling trees in the Pacific Northwest is that trees can grow quite large while having relatively shallow roots because of the ready availability of water near the surface.
PSE isn't charging 30 cents per kWh either.
Redmond can probably get redundancy, but a lot of the Sound area really doesn't have multiple routes available. If a line goes down in Gorst, it impacts a lot of people. Undergrounding is very expensive, and unless it's absolutely required, the utility comission doesn't let PSE do it unilaterally and charge to all ratepayers, it has to be approved and paid for by the affected ratepayers, but most people aren't willing to pay for it. It also isn't a panacea; underground wiring still breaks from time to time, and time to resolution is much longer; plus there's a bigger disruption during installation and new connections to underground utilities are way more expensive than connecting to above ground utilities. There's a lot of new connections as there's lots of new housing, so that's a bigger factor than a more established area.
Redmond can probably get redundancy, but a lot of the Sound area really doesn't have multiple routes available. If a line goes down in Gorst, it impacts a lot of people. Undergrounding is very expensive, and unless it's absolutely required, the utility comission doesn't let PSE do it unilaterally and charge to all ratepayers, it has to be approved and paid for by the affected ratepayers, but most people aren't willing to pay for it. It also isn't a panacea; underground wiring still breaks from time to time, and time to resolution is much longer; plus there's a bigger disruption during installation and new connections to underground utilities are way more expensive than connecting to above ground utilities. There's a lot of new connections as there's lots of new housing, so that's a bigger factor than a more established area.
Just because relatively few residents are affected by each outage does not mean CMP is particularly reliable outside of urban centers. Within the bounds of "major" metropolitan areas (by Maine standards) a number of multi-day and sometimes week-long outages have occurred in the last 5-10 years. It's always trees on ridgelines falling onto powerlines, often in the same places. Burying them would absolutely improve reliability. As it stands, everyone in these areas who can afford it _has_ to have a generator, since their water (well) and sewer (septic system or pumps to a city system) requires electrical power.
it's more to do with the limbs on the large trees. they're all problems. just like how in the first big thunderstorm in the midwest you get a lot of treefall.. and that tornado every 30 years takes out everything.
> As a proponent of "if the trees are such a problem why not bury the lines"
I really don't like the concept of burying your infrastructure.
The problem is that once you've done it, you can never change the system. You're stuck with whatever you have until the gulf between what you have and what you want is so vast that it makes sense to install a new system from scratch.
Burying the lines is great, if you're confident you won't want to make any changes for the next 100 years.
I really don't like the concept of burying your infrastructure.
The problem is that once you've done it, you can never change the system. You're stuck with whatever you have until the gulf between what you have and what you want is so vast that it makes sense to install a new system from scratch.
Burying the lines is great, if you're confident you won't want to make any changes for the next 100 years.
No, you make a perfectly valid point. Not too many corn stalks are going to fall on power lines in Indiana. Though one year there was an ice storm so bad, the accumulated ice pulled the high tension towers/pylons to the ground in crumpled heaps. That took a little while to restore power.
As it happens, I live in King County, but in an area serviced by a suburban (former rural) electric co-op. Plenty of falling trees here, as well. But we consistently have fewer blackouts every year than my friends in Redmond and Bellevue.
The east side has lots of blackouts (I WFH with many, and they will go OOF a lot during wind storms), mainly Kirkland, Bellevue, Redmond. Oddly enough, they have a lot of buried lines as well, at least more than we do in Seattle, and here in Ballard we don’t have outages nearly as much as they do. Maybe we simply don’t have as many trees over here?
I'm in North Bend. Having previously lived in Redmond and then Bellevue, I'd say there's a lot more trees here.
It's not even just the cost of digging. The cost of the design and the cables is also way more expensive. The wires hung on poles aren't even insulated, while buried cable needs some pretty fancy cabling (lots of insulation, lots of armoring, etc)
I lived in the Redmond area and I also lived in Northern BC - and despite all the bad storms and ice of Northern BC - I never had power loss for more than 8 hours. It was a lot worse in the Redmond area and owning a generator was pretty valuable.
I needed a generator in MO in St. Louis and out in the boonies except I lived next to the biggest hospital and we had underground power. We literally never lost power my first 30 years of life.
I live in Newcastle, it's very consistent with the first windstorm of the year. I just assume we'll lose power but you know it's coming. Then it's good for another year. I've considered a genny or a house battery but haven't really needed it. Luckily it happens in november not when it's actually cold.
This is pretty consistent for 15 years here.
The trees here are so much bigger than indiana. my friends come in from there and are like "fuuk you weren't lying". When I took my song GF to STL who grew up here she said "Why do the trees look like short broccoli?"
I live in Newcastle, it's very consistent with the first windstorm of the year. I just assume we'll lose power but you know it's coming. Then it's good for another year. I've considered a genny or a house battery but haven't really needed it. Luckily it happens in november not when it's actually cold.
This is pretty consistent for 15 years here.
The trees here are so much bigger than indiana. my friends come in from there and are like "fuuk you weren't lying". When I took my song GF to STL who grew up here she said "Why do the trees look like short broccoli?"
PSE has gotten quite a bit better over the last 10+ years. Grid reliability was shockingly terrible when I first moved here some 15+ years ago.
All public infrastructure should be run using the co-op model and financed directly by government. Both private investors and government have consistently failed to "do the right thing" on almost every level. That includes electric, water, communications (fiber), and transportation (roads, bridges, railways and buses).
> “financed directly by government”
Wouldn’t work in my city where tax raises have to be approved by voters and they refuse to accept a tax increase to pay to fix the water system and re-pave the roads. The city government sends fliers round explaining to people that they need to vote for it, but to no avail.
Wouldn’t work in my city where tax raises have to be approved by voters and they refuse to accept a tax increase to pay to fix the water system and re-pave the roads. The city government sends fliers round explaining to people that they need to vote for it, but to no avail.
The net metering subsidy just didn't make sense anymore. Solar is "cheap" now and the next step of decarbonization is storage.
From a carbon perspective, net metering was basically paying homeowners to provide useless power to the grid (at the bottom of the duck curve) but be able to cash it in when they actually needed it around 7 pm. This meant generating useless solar power and in exchange for letting burning a ton of natural gas when you actually needed the power.
The next step is pairing solar with residential and grid scale storage. Personally, with how intermittent production can be now, the grid should be more like AWS. Allow for per minute billing and rates that fluctuate for some customers. If you can pair storage with solar (or even just storage if you could buy low sell high off the grid), that would be the next big step in the renewable revolution.
Net metering always had to die for the next step (storage) to happen. With the electric car mandate coming into 2035 so that millions of homes will own a giant battery this will eventually be even more important.
From a carbon perspective, net metering was basically paying homeowners to provide useless power to the grid (at the bottom of the duck curve) but be able to cash it in when they actually needed it around 7 pm. This meant generating useless solar power and in exchange for letting burning a ton of natural gas when you actually needed the power.
The next step is pairing solar with residential and grid scale storage. Personally, with how intermittent production can be now, the grid should be more like AWS. Allow for per minute billing and rates that fluctuate for some customers. If you can pair storage with solar (or even just storage if you could buy low sell high off the grid), that would be the next big step in the renewable revolution.
Net metering always had to die for the next step (storage) to happen. With the electric car mandate coming into 2035 so that millions of homes will own a giant battery this will eventually be even more important.
> at the bottom of the duck curve) but be able to cash it in when they actually needed it around 7 pm.
It's only really seems useless during one month in the summer. During the rest of the year it looks like it would continue to have an impact. Today, for example, California never dipped below 10GW of natural gas production even while it had 13GW of solar all throughout the middle of the day. That's still an appreciable gap.
This doesn't even consider imported energy, or the potential misplaced environmental costs of any one particular source.
> The next step is pairing solar with residential and grid scale storage.
This looks to be entirely true. The state is barely cracking +/- 2GW with it's storage system, even though it has demands ranging from 25GW to 50GW. It's either that or we're at the next evolutionary step of "grid tied storage."
> Net metering always had to die for the next step (storage) to happen.
It's wonderful the compromises we get to make when 80% of the market is controlled by three entities.
> With the electric car mandate coming into 2035 so that millions of homes will own a giant battery this will eventually be even more important.
The worldwide market was 10 million in 2022, with just over 500 thousand units in the US overall. California has 17 million private vehicles and 12 million trucks. I think you'd be much better off just building stationary batteries and tying them to the grid, in particular, due to limitations of current technology and worldwide production capacity.
It's only really seems useless during one month in the summer. During the rest of the year it looks like it would continue to have an impact. Today, for example, California never dipped below 10GW of natural gas production even while it had 13GW of solar all throughout the middle of the day. That's still an appreciable gap.
This doesn't even consider imported energy, or the potential misplaced environmental costs of any one particular source.
> The next step is pairing solar with residential and grid scale storage.
This looks to be entirely true. The state is barely cracking +/- 2GW with it's storage system, even though it has demands ranging from 25GW to 50GW. It's either that or we're at the next evolutionary step of "grid tied storage."
> Net metering always had to die for the next step (storage) to happen.
It's wonderful the compromises we get to make when 80% of the market is controlled by three entities.
> With the electric car mandate coming into 2035 so that millions of homes will own a giant battery this will eventually be even more important.
The worldwide market was 10 million in 2022, with just over 500 thousand units in the US overall. California has 17 million private vehicles and 12 million trucks. I think you'd be much better off just building stationary batteries and tying them to the grid, in particular, due to limitations of current technology and worldwide production capacity.
To be clear, net metering was never "paying" customers, but instead providing them a credit for the energy they delivered during the period they delivered it. So, export power during the "off-peak" period, you build a credit at rate slightly less than the retail rate which you can then debit from the "off-peak" bucket later. Generally (with some exception), any remaining credit at the end of an annual billing cycle is lost.
So, the characterization of paying exports for useless power and then getting it back during the 7 PM system peak isn't quite correct.
Strongly agree with you that price signals are important to impact behavior (human or system) which will result in a lower overall price for society, so long as regulators do their work (align price with cost).
So, the characterization of paying exports for useless power and then getting it back during the 7 PM system peak isn't quite correct.
Strongly agree with you that price signals are important to impact behavior (human or system) which will result in a lower overall price for society, so long as regulators do their work (align price with cost).
From the perspective of the grid/utility it is fairly accurate though. They pay for electricity to be made at wholesale rates at every instant of time to meet demand. During the peak of the day in CA, wholesale electricity prices are near zero, and sometimes even go negative due to overproduction. Then in the evening they shoot through the roof. So they're getting power that can be even worse than useless during the day and having to provide it at the most expensive times to those same customers. The grid operator experiences this as basically buying useless trinkets (daytime solar) for massive amounts of gold (peak power demands that require capital intensive plants that hardly get used).
Yes, that can be accurate in the spring, though with more than 2 GW of batteries now in CA, it's less common. One solution would be for them to charge less for electricity in the middle of the day (as the grid is awash) and thus provide a reduced credit for export in the middle of the day. Fundamentally, it's about aligning price with cost.
There is no practical storage system right now. Have you priced them? They're outrageously expensive, with puny capacity. Not to mention the environmental impact of making all those batteries, and the lifespan implications of using them 365 nights a year.
The dumb thing is that any electric cars made in the last 5-10 years don't have the ability to serve as energy storage. Those are just now emerging.
Tesla stands out as particularly dumb, since they also sell solar systems. Why not a solar + car bundle?
The dumb thing is that any electric cars made in the last 5-10 years don't have the ability to serve as energy storage. Those are just now emerging.
Tesla stands out as particularly dumb, since they also sell solar systems. Why not a solar + car bundle?
We have millions of electric cars, 10M cars, 40kWh approximately 400GWh. Existing cars should be retrofitted, this is not difficult.
Batteries degrade when they are pushed to their limits, they last when used properly. The ESA has multiple reports on their testing, if you use the battery in the flat part of its discharge curve and don't cook it, they basically last forever.
The reasons they don't is because manufacturers build their devices with less than the bare minimum. 20% better performance for a device that fails and needs 100% replacement, good scam. Battery degradation should be barely noticeable.
The market has failed catastrophically.
https://www.esa.int/Enabling_Support/Space_Engineering_Techn...
Batteries degrade when they are pushed to their limits, they last when used properly. The ESA has multiple reports on their testing, if you use the battery in the flat part of its discharge curve and don't cook it, they basically last forever.
The reasons they don't is because manufacturers build their devices with less than the bare minimum. 20% better performance for a device that fails and needs 100% replacement, good scam. Battery degradation should be barely noticeable.
The market has failed catastrophically.
https://www.esa.int/Enabling_Support/Space_Engineering_Techn...
How about 30kWh for $9000? https://signaturesolar.com/eg4-lifepower4-lithium-batteries-...
We have ways to go before all electricity generated during the day is solar. There were only a few days last year when such a thing happened. In any case, the reason given by them is rich people not paying their due, not what you say. I say this is all a failure of imagination. Give me mobile electricity - if my solar panel is generating 5KW at home, give me the same electricity for free(or nominal charge) at my work, so I can charge my car. Electricity use will increase by a huge %, because of electrification of vehicles. You got to make sure that’s all generated by Green energy, not kill it as whole
> failure of imagination
10x. I think we should have a target of some percentage being able to be completely met by solar. Until we are literally drowning in free energy we don't know what to do with we don't have an oversupply. There are so many industries which were never electrified that need to be.
This ruling is so damn short sighted for so many reasons. Rooftop solar is the single best way to stave off upgrading the big power distribution lines, generated at the edge, used at the edge.
A year from now PGE is going to say we need XXX billions to upgrade the backbone due to increased electrification.
My central gas heater is running right now, there is no reason that a thermal reservoir couldn't have been charged during the day that I can use a 730am.
5G should have included a mandatory, public cert based low bitrate M2M network.
> Give me mobile electricity - if my solar panel is generating 5KW at home, give me the same electricity for free
Genius! Decouple transit from consumption fully. Greatly increase, mandate even, the points of consumption.
I'd like to see people charge at work, and drive the energy they need overnight back home with them.
10x. I think we should have a target of some percentage being able to be completely met by solar. Until we are literally drowning in free energy we don't know what to do with we don't have an oversupply. There are so many industries which were never electrified that need to be.
This ruling is so damn short sighted for so many reasons. Rooftop solar is the single best way to stave off upgrading the big power distribution lines, generated at the edge, used at the edge.
A year from now PGE is going to say we need XXX billions to upgrade the backbone due to increased electrification.
My central gas heater is running right now, there is no reason that a thermal reservoir couldn't have been charged during the day that I can use a 730am.
5G should have included a mandatory, public cert based low bitrate M2M network.
> Give me mobile electricity - if my solar panel is generating 5KW at home, give me the same electricity for free
Genius! Decouple transit from consumption fully. Greatly increase, mandate even, the points of consumption.
I'd like to see people charge at work, and drive the energy they need overnight back home with them.
Sadly I’m not surprised by this blatant manipulation of government by the utility companies.
I’m building a house about 15mins outside downtown Los Angeles. It’s on empty land on a public street. There is no power to the property. LADWP is requiring us to move/install 3 poles, and upgrade the transformer. Probably around $75k cost to us. Has to be their people doing the work.
The Bureau of Street Lighting is also going to require us to move another pole that just has their street light on it with low voltage to it.
I’ve been trying so hard to tell them all to get F’d and just install solar and a bunch of batteries instead. But they’ve told me it’s illegal to that (something about freezing to death).
Oh and we have to widen the road ourselves too!
The whole thing is insane. So they’ve basically created a system where we have no choice but to pay for the utilities failing infrastructure.
I’m building a house about 15mins outside downtown Los Angeles. It’s on empty land on a public street. There is no power to the property. LADWP is requiring us to move/install 3 poles, and upgrade the transformer. Probably around $75k cost to us. Has to be their people doing the work.
The Bureau of Street Lighting is also going to require us to move another pole that just has their street light on it with low voltage to it.
I’ve been trying so hard to tell them all to get F’d and just install solar and a bunch of batteries instead. But they’ve told me it’s illegal to that (something about freezing to death).
Oh and we have to widen the road ourselves too!
The whole thing is insane. So they’ve basically created a system where we have no choice but to pay for the utilities failing infrastructure.
You do have the choice to not build your house on that land. Unfortunately the city has to adhere to the mandated codes and the taxpayers should not be forced to pay for the road that now needs to be widened for emergency vehicles.
That is unhelpful.
We nearly all have choices. We can pound our heads on the desk until we bleed.
It is about power. The individual building a house has no power. The local government has lots of power.
Local governments (and the associated utility companies) here in New Zealand are notorious for dreadfully bad planning and mindless bureaucracy. It sounds like it is the same there
We nearly all have choices. We can pound our heads on the desk until we bleed.
It is about power. The individual building a house has no power. The local government has lots of power.
Local governments (and the associated utility companies) here in New Zealand are notorious for dreadfully bad planning and mindless bureaucracy. It sounds like it is the same there
>You do have the choice to not build your house on that land
In a free society one would think having 'property rights' would enable one to build on owned land and that public infrastructure would be paid out of public funds also known as taxes. If the property taxes aren't adequate to pay for utility infrastructure, that's a legislative problem.
In a free society one would think having 'property rights' would enable one to build on owned land and that public infrastructure would be paid out of public funds also known as taxes. If the property taxes aren't adequate to pay for utility infrastructure, that's a legislative problem.
Smug, infantile nonsense. Then this guy shouldn't have to pay for YOUR street maintenance, YOUR kids' school, or any other public benefit that you use and he doesn't.
Up here in Northern California quite a few of us live off grid with just solar/batteries. What law says that a grid hookup is required? Is it at the county level?
Most counties require houses to be hooked up to the grid. That's why people who prefer living off grid choose unincorporated lands.
Most counties in California
Most all urban and suburban areas. I think it's usually municipalities that have these requirements.
The Earthship Community (dirt in tires homes) in New Mexico eventually had to register as a subdivision and put in sewage lines etc, AFAIK.
That's crazy because there's houses with septic tanks all over Northern New Mexico -- outside the cities.
iirc it works through building code. it has some parts related to grid hookup and without it house won't be up to code/pass inspection. Not sure what are implication in this case
They turn off your power if you don't pay your electric bill. Do they keep charging a hookup fee after they've unhooked you?
(I know the answer is yes, because the answer to this kind of question is always yes...)
(I know the answer is yes, because the answer to this kind of question is always yes...)
they will also send your bills to collections, which will be rather unpleasant, i guess
Why would you want to live off the grid? Battery solar is more expensive than utility power.
Until you’re building transmission to your house
Don't build a house where there aren't any power lines.
He just defeated your argument, so now you're telling everyone to be helpless.
Brilliant.
Brilliant.
Dude is complaining about a 100% predictable consequence of his own actions.
Wrong. Re-read.
Because power outages are extremely annoying and eliminating dependencies is a good thing.
They are also very rare and a simple diesel or natural gas generator is a far cheaper method of getting power during an outage.
> They are also very rare
Not where I live.
> a simple diesel or natural gas generator is a far cheaper method of getting power during an outage.
Not self-sustainable. The goal is completely self-contained energy generation. Dependence on externally sourced fuels fails the requirements.
Not where I live.
> a simple diesel or natural gas generator is a far cheaper method of getting power during an outage.
Not self-sustainable. The goal is completely self-contained energy generation. Dependence on externally sourced fuels fails the requirements.
$75K could get you an insane solar system.
It could also be invested and pay for decades of electricity.
No, because if you bothered to read what he said, it would cost that much to INSTALL it... and THEN pay more in a lifetime of very high bills.
Only because HE chose to build his house in an area without power lines.
You sure work hard to promote helplessness. Do you feel helpless?
Until the next price hike
Solar power from a battery is the most expensive electricity.
> The whole thing is insane. So they’ve basically created a system where we have no choice but to pay for the utilities failing infrastructure.
I have done a bunch of construction work in Los Angeles county, including designing and building my own solar array. The only way I can describe the process, rules and the people involved is using words such as "surreal", "brutal", "nonsensical", "damaging", "expensive", "frustrating" and more. I cannot say anything positive about it. Nothing we do in this domain is designed to help people complete projects efficiently and at reasonable a cost.
If I can help it, I am never investing another dime in Los Angeles county. Even better, we have been planning a move out of California. This also means taking our businesses and employees out of this place. It's a mess.
I have done a bunch of construction work in Los Angeles county, including designing and building my own solar array. The only way I can describe the process, rules and the people involved is using words such as "surreal", "brutal", "nonsensical", "damaging", "expensive", "frustrating" and more. I cannot say anything positive about it. Nothing we do in this domain is designed to help people complete projects efficiently and at reasonable a cost.
If I can help it, I am never investing another dime in Los Angeles county. Even better, we have been planning a move out of California. This also means taking our businesses and employees out of this place. It's a mess.
Good bye!
Most businesses leaving California report growing losses after they leave. A lot of them fail.
As it turns out, the problem was never California. The problem was that they just couldn't cut it in a competitive environment that doesn't coddle business owners.
Most businesses leaving California report growing losses after they leave. A lot of them fail.
As it turns out, the problem was never California. The problem was that they just couldn't cut it in a competitive environment that doesn't coddle business owners.
> As it turns out, the problem was never California. The problem was that they just couldn't cut it in a competitive environment that doesn't coddle business owners.
These kinds of comments usually come from people who know nothing about running a non-trivial business.
Simple example: Only business owners/operators know about the city of Los Angeles Business Property tax.
What is it?
Most people would guess it's like the property taxes assessed on homes. Not so. Not even close.
This is a tax the city imposes on any business operating in or through the county. If you so much as drive through the county you have to pay it.
What do they tax?
Your desks, chairs, printers, computers, workbenches, tools, paper shredder, equipment (for example, all the machinery in a CNC shop). They even tax tenant improvements. If you lease a commercial space, paint the walls and perhaps build a few divider walls, they tax that. If you have cubiles, they will take the dividers. Etc.
"Business property", for lack of a better description, refers to all objects owned by the business, including things like the garbage cans under every desk.
Imagine paying taxes on your desks and computers to the city of Los Angeles FOREVER.
Surreal? Yeah.
Real? Absolutely.
Fucking crazy? Without a doubt.
And that's just the tip of the iceberg.
Where do you think businesses get this city tax money from? Well, they add it to their cost equation and the prices they charge are adjusted incrementally in order to maintain the profit margin they might need to conduct business, R&D, grow, have a financial cushion (you know, pandemics and shit), etc.
If costs go up, prices go up.
If prices go up, you become less competitive with lower cost-basis geographies.
If you are less competitive with other geographies due to your underlying cost structure, buyers will migrate to providers in those regions.
That could be nationally or international.
When buyers migrate, you struggle to survive, might have to downsize or just move to those locations.
In the long run, jobs are lost and businesses leave.
Look what they are doing now in CA with regards to rooftop solar. They are going to kill off the entire industry.
> Most businesses leaving California report growing losses after they leave.
Stop watching CNN brother. You are in the Matrix. This is patently false. I know so many who have left and thrived in places like Arizona and Texas that I have probably lost count. Lots of these have taken valuable talent with them.
In our case, most of our business is international or aerospace-related. So long as we are in the US, it really doesn't matter where we are. You can't manufacture shit here in California anyway, the underlying costs are very high. The difference in cost structure for suppliers we have here and in other states is hard to comprehend unless you are ready to understand and accept the fact that imposing high taxes and high regulatory costs on businesses, in the long run, is highly destructive. Most people don't have a good sense of what business looks like under the hood, so, no, I don't expect most to truly understand this.
You might want to read this:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/adammillsap/2021/08/27/business...
and this:
https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2022/12/15/california-pulls-the-...
Watch this:
What's Behind California's 'Business Exodus'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2dJ2ARP0J-E
These kinds of comments usually come from people who know nothing about running a non-trivial business.
Simple example: Only business owners/operators know about the city of Los Angeles Business Property tax.
What is it?
Most people would guess it's like the property taxes assessed on homes. Not so. Not even close.
This is a tax the city imposes on any business operating in or through the county. If you so much as drive through the county you have to pay it.
What do they tax?
Your desks, chairs, printers, computers, workbenches, tools, paper shredder, equipment (for example, all the machinery in a CNC shop). They even tax tenant improvements. If you lease a commercial space, paint the walls and perhaps build a few divider walls, they tax that. If you have cubiles, they will take the dividers. Etc.
"Business property", for lack of a better description, refers to all objects owned by the business, including things like the garbage cans under every desk.
Imagine paying taxes on your desks and computers to the city of Los Angeles FOREVER.
Surreal? Yeah.
Real? Absolutely.
Fucking crazy? Without a doubt.
And that's just the tip of the iceberg.
Where do you think businesses get this city tax money from? Well, they add it to their cost equation and the prices they charge are adjusted incrementally in order to maintain the profit margin they might need to conduct business, R&D, grow, have a financial cushion (you know, pandemics and shit), etc.
If costs go up, prices go up.
If prices go up, you become less competitive with lower cost-basis geographies.
If you are less competitive with other geographies due to your underlying cost structure, buyers will migrate to providers in those regions.
That could be nationally or international.
When buyers migrate, you struggle to survive, might have to downsize or just move to those locations.
In the long run, jobs are lost and businesses leave.
Look what they are doing now in CA with regards to rooftop solar. They are going to kill off the entire industry.
> Most businesses leaving California report growing losses after they leave.
Stop watching CNN brother. You are in the Matrix. This is patently false. I know so many who have left and thrived in places like Arizona and Texas that I have probably lost count. Lots of these have taken valuable talent with them.
In our case, most of our business is international or aerospace-related. So long as we are in the US, it really doesn't matter where we are. You can't manufacture shit here in California anyway, the underlying costs are very high. The difference in cost structure for suppliers we have here and in other states is hard to comprehend unless you are ready to understand and accept the fact that imposing high taxes and high regulatory costs on businesses, in the long run, is highly destructive. Most people don't have a good sense of what business looks like under the hood, so, no, I don't expect most to truly understand this.
You might want to read this:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/adammillsap/2021/08/27/business...
and this:
https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2022/12/15/california-pulls-the-...
Watch this:
What's Behind California's 'Business Exodus'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2dJ2ARP0J-E
Lol. I do tax for a living. I can say with absolute certainty that every single one of my clients that left California regretted it. And yes, my clients included manufacturing and aerospace companies, privately owned companies and Fortune 500 companies.
They blamed taxes, moved to Texas or some other "low tax" state, and discovered the problem wasn't the taxes. It was their business. Most of them aren't around anymore, having gone bankrupt or been swallowed up by better run businesses.
It sounds like your business has a fundamental problem with its execution. It's immediately apparent from you blaming "underlying costs", and what you really mean is that California doesn't coddle businesses with tax incentives or free money. (See, for example, your rooftop solar complaint, where you really mean the days of easy money for solar installers is going away now that there is a sufficient market that they no longer need government subsidies.)
California has been the world's 4-6th largest economy for several decades. If taxes were as killer as you said they were, it would have flamed out decades ago.
Low tax jurisdictions have low taxes because they need to have low taxes in order to have any chance at competing with properly run economies like CA and NY. Midwestern states don't give out massive government subsidies out of the goodness of their hearts, they do it because the labor force is incompetent and they need to give out massive subsidies to get companies to put up with the huge inefficiencies of a poorly educated workforce that doesn't believe in science.
It looks like your business will learn all this the hard way.
They blamed taxes, moved to Texas or some other "low tax" state, and discovered the problem wasn't the taxes. It was their business. Most of them aren't around anymore, having gone bankrupt or been swallowed up by better run businesses.
It sounds like your business has a fundamental problem with its execution. It's immediately apparent from you blaming "underlying costs", and what you really mean is that California doesn't coddle businesses with tax incentives or free money. (See, for example, your rooftop solar complaint, where you really mean the days of easy money for solar installers is going away now that there is a sufficient market that they no longer need government subsidies.)
California has been the world's 4-6th largest economy for several decades. If taxes were as killer as you said they were, it would have flamed out decades ago.
Low tax jurisdictions have low taxes because they need to have low taxes in order to have any chance at competing with properly run economies like CA and NY. Midwestern states don't give out massive government subsidies out of the goodness of their hearts, they do it because the labor force is incompetent and they need to give out massive subsidies to get companies to put up with the huge inefficiencies of a poorly educated workforce that doesn't believe in science.
It looks like your business will learn all this the hard way.
> It was their business
If it was there business that was the case before they left CA. If they leave CA because they think lower taxes alone will help them, they are dead businesses walking. Moving won't help them at all.
> It's immediately apparent from you blaming "underlying costs"
Sure. Sure.
You are focusing on taxes. There's so much more to the issue than just taxes. In fact, I would say lower taxes is just gravy. The structural issues in CA are very serious. If you really want to understand, watch the video I linked. That's just a starting point, BTW.
> for example, your rooftop solar complaint
I guess you don't understand solar either.
Here's a bit of useful advice:
Take your own money. Start a non-trivial business in CA and learn about business reality.
At the same time, take your own money, install a solar system on your home and then learn about the realities of solar as well.
My favorite saying, often attributed to Mark Twain: A man holding a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way.
Most people think they "know", when they really don't. This is seen all the time on HN and other online forums where people love to voice strong opinions on everything, whether they know anything about it or not. It would be funny, except when people have the right to vote on things they truly aren't qualified to understand. It would be like me voting on issues of medical science. Not qualified. At least I am honest enough to understand and admit this.
If it was there business that was the case before they left CA. If they leave CA because they think lower taxes alone will help them, they are dead businesses walking. Moving won't help them at all.
> It's immediately apparent from you blaming "underlying costs"
Sure. Sure.
You are focusing on taxes. There's so much more to the issue than just taxes. In fact, I would say lower taxes is just gravy. The structural issues in CA are very serious. If you really want to understand, watch the video I linked. That's just a starting point, BTW.
> for example, your rooftop solar complaint
I guess you don't understand solar either.
Here's a bit of useful advice:
Take your own money. Start a non-trivial business in CA and learn about business reality.
At the same time, take your own money, install a solar system on your home and then learn about the realities of solar as well.
My favorite saying, often attributed to Mark Twain: A man holding a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way.
Most people think they "know", when they really don't. This is seen all the time on HN and other online forums where people love to voice strong opinions on everything, whether they know anything about it or not. It would be funny, except when people have the right to vote on things they truly aren't qualified to understand. It would be like me voting on issues of medical science. Not qualified. At least I am honest enough to understand and admit this.
My clients included startups and real businesses at every stage in the business cycle. I am now in house and until involved in running a profitable business. The video you linked is just clickbait FUD; structural issues are way worse in the Southeast states that businesses claim to love. (But without massive government subsidies, businesses don't naturally choose to be in those states... hmmm....)
I clearly know more about running a business than you in the state is California.
If you're truly having this much trouble running your business in CA I suggest reaching out to your local chamber of commerce for support.
I clearly know more about running a business than you in the state is California.
If you're truly having this much trouble running your business in CA I suggest reaching out to your local chamber of commerce for support.
This is hilarious. There are literally thousands of businesses doing very well after moving out of CA and you think you know better because you run Quickbooks. As if nobody can run a great business anywhere outside CA. Please.
Lol, I don't use Quickbooks, though several of my former startup clients did. One of them had profits of about $3xx million last year on sales of roughly $2 billion, and they're still using Quickbooks. Quickbooks is a lot more powerful than people think it is, though at that size they really should be considering Fusion instead, or even upgrading directly to SAP or Oracle if they foresee needing that sort of complexity.
My client base of successful California companies exceeded the value of the companies fleeing California by about several hundred billion dollars. Post-COVID, the CA companies are even more valuable than the ones that fled California when they couldn't cut it in a competitive capitalist environment. But yes, you're right that companies that took government handouts from other states to leave CA are surviving off those governments handouts.
However, you're just embarrassing yourself. You've been whining on HN about your company leaving California for a few years now, it's pretty clear that at this point your company has evaluated that option and determined it was actually a stupid thing to do. It's like Elon Musk's "first order thinking": leaving California sounds great on paper until you actually look at the numbers and discover that it doesn't solve anything and actually makes things worse.
My client base of successful California companies exceeded the value of the companies fleeing California by about several hundred billion dollars. Post-COVID, the CA companies are even more valuable than the ones that fled California when they couldn't cut it in a competitive capitalist environment. But yes, you're right that companies that took government handouts from other states to leave CA are surviving off those governments handouts.
However, you're just embarrassing yourself. You've been whining on HN about your company leaving California for a few years now, it's pretty clear that at this point your company has evaluated that option and determined it was actually a stupid thing to do. It's like Elon Musk's "first order thinking": leaving California sounds great on paper until you actually look at the numbers and discover that it doesn't solve anything and actually makes things worse.
Citation needed.
This is how it has always been done in LA, going back to the 1950s at least, except that normally the builders are developers building lots of houses at once.
It's very rare in LA for someone to build a house in an otherwise undeveloped area of an incorporated part of LA.
So you're basically just arguing against a system that was set up and optimized for the most common case.
It's very rare in LA for someone to build a house in an otherwise undeveloped area of an incorporated part of LA.
So you're basically just arguing against a system that was set up and optimized for the most common case.
Went through this with SCE. Was looking at 300k for 11 poles. If the end of their line is on your land. See if you can put the meter there.
We ended up putting the poles in ourselves for 10% the price, so there is hope.
We ended up putting the poles in ourselves for 10% the price, so there is hope.
What's illegal about supplying your own electricity? That can't be real. But for most, likely it'll be more of a pain because batteries require maintenance.
It's not illegal to supply your own electricity. It's illegal to not have the gov mandated electricity. Once you have that, you can supply your own on top of that.
It's not real. OP is just learning why he got the land so cheaply.
> The whole thing is insane. So they’ve basically created a system where we have no choice but to pay for the utilities failing infrastructure.
LA doesn't seem to be failing, though. I mean, I get that regulation is unfair, and surely they're doing suboptimal things like every bureaucracy. Yet, the lights are on, the toilets are flushing and the ambulances are arriving.
I don't see how demanding the third largest metropolis on the continent switch to a "hook it up or don't, your call" policy is going to do anything but make things much, much worse.
Basically: your argument is predicated on the idea that you personally don't need to do these things because everyone else already did and you don't need the incremental advantages. But give everyone that choice, and no streets will be lit, no roads will be paved, and power and sewage will be plumbed only to neighborhoods that will collectively pay for it. That's the way it works in most of the developing world, and it sucks. No freeloading. If you want to live in the urban core of Los Angeles you need to be willing to live like your fellow Angelenos.
LA doesn't seem to be failing, though. I mean, I get that regulation is unfair, and surely they're doing suboptimal things like every bureaucracy. Yet, the lights are on, the toilets are flushing and the ambulances are arriving.
I don't see how demanding the third largest metropolis on the continent switch to a "hook it up or don't, your call" policy is going to do anything but make things much, much worse.
Basically: your argument is predicated on the idea that you personally don't need to do these things because everyone else already did and you don't need the incremental advantages. But give everyone that choice, and no streets will be lit, no roads will be paved, and power and sewage will be plumbed only to neighborhoods that will collectively pay for it. That's the way it works in most of the developing world, and it sucks. No freeloading. If you want to live in the urban core of Los Angeles you need to be willing to live like your fellow Angelenos.
They are charging him $75K for a transformer and three polls.
Around here, PG&E wanted to charge us $10K to remove a poll and move an existing transformer to an existing poll (and would take years to "engineer" the solution and schedule the work, despite it being a few hours of work for one crew).
No idea what a residential transformer goes for, but I guarantee it's not a significant fraction of the $75K bill.
It is also insane that they are moving polls and not burying the lines.
Around here, PG&E wanted to charge us $10K to remove a poll and move an existing transformer to an existing poll (and would take years to "engineer" the solution and schedule the work, despite it being a few hours of work for one crew).
No idea what a residential transformer goes for, but I guarantee it's not a significant fraction of the $75K bill.
It is also insane that they are moving polls and not burying the lines.
*pole, or column, or post
I thought they were forcing you to run some election polls.
I thought they were forcing you to run some election polls.
Oddly, PG&E charged me $0 to upgrade my service drop from 100A to 200A. I was pretty surprised.
Did they actually change the feeder upstream of the wires that you own? The sizing of those isn't regulated by the NEC the way your wires are, and in my experience POCOs don't really care how much your lights dim when a motor kicks on.
> Did they actually change the feeder upstream of the wires that you own?
Yeah. Completely new feeder. From what I saw it wasn't a ton of work, maybe a few hours, but hours nonetheless.
Yeah. Completely new feeder. From what I saw it wasn't a ton of work, maybe a few hours, but hours nonetheless.
Because you want to use more electricity at minimal cost to them.
But utilities shouldn't be billing that grid cost to an individual all at once. If no one moves there for 10 years, let them pay it back over that period. If N people move there, divide remainder by N.
For non-metro, utilities should allow micro grids if they are using mostly renewable power. Microgrids can be significantly more reliable when the grid alternative requires long HV lines without redundancy. And from a fire perspective, distributed generation is a huge win -- ever with a grid interconnection for winter, you can de-energize during peak fire risk and run off PV and batteries.
For non-metro, utilities should allow micro grids if they are using mostly renewable power. Microgrids can be significantly more reliable when the grid alternative requires long HV lines without redundancy. And from a fire perspective, distributed generation is a huge win -- ever with a grid interconnection for winter, you can de-energize during peak fire risk and run off PV and batteries.
> But utilities shouldn't be billing that grid cost to an individual all at once.
How about this instead: the property developer should pay, we can have a "building code" that sets standards for all residential constructions and disallow building any new housing that doesn't meet it. That way the costs are borne not by the individual home purchaser but by the investor class speculating on new housing development.
Which is exactly what the upthread poster is doing! They aren't an "individual" as commonly understood (i.e. someone who just wants a home to live in). They bought an empty/undeveloped piece of land and want to put a home there. Well, someone has to pay for that home to be of acceptable quality, who do you suggest?
How about this instead: the property developer should pay, we can have a "building code" that sets standards for all residential constructions and disallow building any new housing that doesn't meet it. That way the costs are borne not by the individual home purchaser but by the investor class speculating on new housing development.
Which is exactly what the upthread poster is doing! They aren't an "individual" as commonly understood (i.e. someone who just wants a home to live in). They bought an empty/undeveloped piece of land and want to put a home there. Well, someone has to pay for that home to be of acceptable quality, who do you suggest?
I believe that the "investor class speculating" will either:
1) pass the (excessive) costs on to the property sales price
or:
2) not speculate (and not build the house)
The OP has chosen one of the possible ways to have a home to live, you either buy an existing one or buy a plot of land and build a new one on it.
Are there other ways that you can suggest?
1) pass the (excessive) costs on to the property sales price
or:
2) not speculate (and not build the house)
The OP has chosen one of the possible ways to have a home to live, you either buy an existing one or buy a plot of land and build a new one on it.
Are there other ways that you can suggest?
Why the hell would the government charge a citizen to build infrastructure to begin with?
Poles, transformers, roads? That's what people pay taxes for. The government should deal with it.
Poles, transformers, roads? That's what people pay taxes for. The government should deal with it.
Net metering doesn't make economic sense for utilities since it pays retail rates for production and doesn't charge for a connection to the grid. It makes sense at face value, but once you dig into cases like someone only producing power or everyone using net metering, you realize you have to change the payout structure to match the utility's costs.
Austin was the first municipality (I think) to use a "value of solar" rate, and as much as I'd like to use net metering from a home owner perspective, it's much fairer. It basically just pays homeowners a wholesale rate for their excess power. It's currently 9.7 cents per kWh, not much different that this proposed rate in CA.
My power bill includes a delivery and an energy charge, both measured by kWh.
The delivery charge is intended to pay for the actual electrical lines and maintenance, the point of issue here (providing a connection to the grid).
If the issue is that a net-metered household isn't paying enough for the electrical lines, simply don't net-meter that part of the bill. Charge the full delivery charge per kWh drawn from the grid, without subtracting the amount sold back to the grid.
The delivery charge is intended to pay for the actual electrical lines and maintenance, the point of issue here (providing a connection to the grid).
If the issue is that a net-metered household isn't paying enough for the electrical lines, simply don't net-meter that part of the bill. Charge the full delivery charge per kWh drawn from the grid, without subtracting the amount sold back to the grid.
California should never have bailed out PG&E. They should have been forced into liquidation and taken over by the state.
It wasn't even a topic in the governor race, despite the numerous well documented connections between the governor and PG&E
https://www.abc10.com/article/news/local/abc10-originals/pge...
https://www.abc10.com/article/news/investigations/gavin-news...
https://www.abc10.com/article/news/local/abc10-originals/pge...
https://www.abc10.com/article/news/investigations/gavin-news...
It's the financial piece. The poor again get screwed with higher prices because they will never have solar panels. So electric company was charging more to the poor to pay for this. Just like they do for food and for gas. Just like poor voluntarily pay the education tax for the rich.
Agreed that monopolies need to be regulated by the state. In PA my electricity went up over 300% in the first 6 years it was deregulated, and the company's profits were record quaters from 2008 - 2017.
Agreed that monopolies need to be regulated by the state. In PA my electricity went up over 300% in the first 6 years it was deregulated, and the company's profits were record quaters from 2008 - 2017.
Investor-owned utility monopolies are regulated by the state. Either Public Utility Commissions or Corporation Commissions.
The alternative is publicly-owned utilities, like munis or coops. Typically the publicly-owned utilities have materially lower electricity rates.
The alternative is publicly-owned utilities, like munis or coops. Typically the publicly-owned utilities have materially lower electricity rates.
> The alternative is publicly-owned utilities, like munis or coops.
You mean, like Silicon Valley Power (Santa Clara) or Los Angeles Department of Water and Power?
Both of which charge a fraction of PG&E does, and have more reliable power, and offer better customer service (SVP's website is around 1000x better than PG&E's), and more transparent billing, and more assistance to needy customers.
You mean, like Silicon Valley Power (Santa Clara) or Los Angeles Department of Water and Power?
Both of which charge a fraction of PG&E does, and have more reliable power, and offer better customer service (SVP's website is around 1000x better than PG&E's), and more transparent billing, and more assistance to needy customers.
Yes. Other California, US examples are SMUD (Sacramento), TID (Turlock), MID (Modesto), IID (Imperial Valley), Redding, and Needles. Generally all have lower rates than PG&E, SCE, or SDG&E.
And then what happens when it is still equally badly run?
We go on streets?
How do you handle booting an incompetent government. You can't even force liquidation. You can't fire anyone. The only thing you can do is force the issue on the Governor but booting him is close to impossible.
We go on streets?
How do you handle booting an incompetent government. You can't even force liquidation. You can't fire anyone. The only thing you can do is force the issue on the Governor but booting him is close to impossible.
Crony capitalism is as socialist as socialism.
> Customers who have new systems installed and approved for grid interconnection before the effective date in April will be grandfathered in to NEM 2.0 rates.
Am I reading that right? People who already had their system in place get to keep the old rate forever?
Am I reading that right? People who already had their system in place get to keep the old rate forever?
I mean, since it’s a purchase that people make that’s designed to recoup an upfront cost over 5-15 years, it seems like making a dramatic pricing change that retroactively screws over everyone who had previously installed solar would be a great way to ensure that people are extremely cautious when they install solar.
This at least gives new purchasers some degree of confidence that they’ll be able to rely on the present pricing when costing out an install.
This at least gives new purchasers some degree of confidence that they’ll be able to rely on the present pricing when costing out an install.
> that retroactively screws over everyone
That's when you go on to mandate that all newly-built homes include solar.
That's when you go on to mandate that all newly-built homes include solar.
As others have pointed out, this isn't an optional thing. My understanding is to build a structure in California, it has to have solar on it. It's just part of the cost of housing at this point.
That’s a decent thing to do especially since many of those people bought the system based on pricing assumptions over the next years.
I live in NE Australia (~17"S) and our feed in tariff recently went up from ~6.6c to 9.3c (so now around US$0.063). Massive boon for us, given rising prices. With a 5kw system we feed in 1500kwh per quarter and buy back 600kwh (at ~22c), averaged across the year. Lots of variation summer to winter (sun angle) and depending on wet season, WFH, etc. On our "best" days we'll generate >38kWh. Pool runs for free year round, aircons run for free during the day. For now it's very cost effective for us without a battery. Less so with one. Less so for friends without pool / large appliance running through day. Older systems, generally much smaller, have grandfathered feed in tariffs sitting around 40c. These people tend to go out of their way not to use power during the day. Pool on at night, etc.
Interested to read other's experience.
Interested to read other's experience.
I'm in Perth. Our feed in tariff changed in July to 10c/kWh between 3pm and 9pm, and 2.5c/kWh at other times. Use tariff is 26.2c/kWh. I'm pretty sure our solar will pay itself back in under 5 years, but we have a 25 year warranty on the panels.
My parents are building outside of Adelaide and they've decided to go off grid (solar + battery + backup generator). Their expected payback period is (iirc) 8 years, with a 10 year warranty on the batteries and a 25 year warranty on the panels. They're expecting to have to run the generator once a year or so.
My parents are building outside of Adelaide and they've decided to go off grid (solar + battery + backup generator). Their expected payback period is (iirc) 8 years, with a 10 year warranty on the batteries and a 25 year warranty on the panels. They're expecting to have to run the generator once a year or so.
2.5c isn't great, but 5 years is. Shows its definitely worth it if you've got any kind of load during the day. Are you able to make any use of the peak rates after 3 over there?
From what I hear SA is one of the best places in the country to generate. Optimal temperature for the panels plus lots of sunlight. 8 years seems like nothing with the genny and battery. We tried but couldn't make the numbers work with any kind of decent backup, this was 3 years ago.
Cheers for the info!
From what I hear SA is one of the best places in the country to generate. Optimal temperature for the panels plus lots of sunlight. 8 years seems like nothing with the genny and battery. We tried but couldn't make the numbers work with any kind of decent backup, this was 3 years ago.
Cheers for the info!
Grid solar is so much cheaper than residential solar. Net metering is a waste of money, which could be better spent on utility scale renewables.
Alas the economic evaluation is more complicated than that. Grid solar requires transmission lines. The largest transmission line in construction right now for California load is called the Ten West Link. It will be 125 miles, have a maximum capacity of 3,200 MW, and cost $390 MM. [0]
[0] http://www.caiso.com/Documents/Feb12-2021-OpeningBrief-DCRT-...
[0] http://www.caiso.com/Documents/Feb12-2021-OpeningBrief-DCRT-...
That's $0.12/watt, which is nothing when amortized over dozens of years. Residential solar in California is roughly $2.75/watt installed and a recent utility scale solar project in Nevada looks to be coming in at $0.70/watt. Even with transmission, utility scale solar is 3x cheaper.
All of these costs need to be adjusted for capacity factor. The 3.2 GW is the maximum rating of the line. The line will almost never be at the maximum rating (due to security-constrained economic dispatch). And obviously solar only generates when the sun is up (a mid-30s capacity factor is very good).
Capital outlay on residential solar for the utility is $0.00. It doesnt get much cheaper than free.
Sort of but not really. If you install, say, an 11kW system only our house and this makes enough electricity to meet your average daily use, then during the day your house will be producing more power than it is using at the moment and then in the evening your solar array's output plummets but that's also usually about when demand peaks (except sometimes on very hot summer days).
If you're on the grid, the grid operator has to have enough energy production capacity to give you whatever power you need on demand, up to some peak limit. At the highest demand parts of the day and year, they have to resort to weaker plants, basically plants that don't come online except at the highest demand times. They cost a similar amount as any other power generating plant, but only get used 20 or 10 to 5% of the time, which means power from them is phenomenally expensive as their capital costs have to be paid off somehow even though they don't get used much.
This is a huge fraction of total costs for a grid operator, and it only gets worse as solar becomes a bigger part of the grid. For every kW of solar, the operator needs ~1kW of natural gas plants sitting around ready to turn on at a moment's notice.
In CA during the day usually we have too much power, and our wholesale prices can actually go negative ie they pay people to take generators offline as there's too much being made, and that's because that's peak solar production times. Then in the evening all the solar goes away but if anything demand goes up, so now they have to spin up all these natural gas plants to power people's homes at enormous expense.
The way we pay for electricity is by kWh mostly because it's been historically a reasonable enough way to allocate costs and it's easy. But solar is different. Without storage, the entire grid has to be available at all times even though it's getting less use during the day and certain parts of the year. Then net metering means the solar people give the operator electricity it really doesn't want or need during the day and get to cash in their credit during the high demand, extremely expensive parts the day while, on balance, pay ~ nothing for the system on which they are reliant and foist the costs of maintaining the grid onto everyone who is too broke to have solar on their house.
So the capital outlay from the grid operator and power plants is ~ identical for a house that has solar but no batteries as compared to one without solar panels at all. But now the solar power person would use net metering so they have to pay basically nothing for the system even though they're radically reliant on it. So, on balance, there really is a very large cost with no real benefit to the utility.
People should have to pay for the costs they impose on the grid / everyone else, and that's more or less what this new price structure does. It pays much less in credits during the day when the marginal unit of solar power is basically worthless and adds a per kW of installed solar monthly fee to pay for the capital costs of maintaining the generators those solar customers still need around for when the sun goes down. That's fair! iirc it has some reductions in this latter cost depending on how much storage you have, as is appropriate.
If you're on the grid, the grid operator has to have enough energy production capacity to give you whatever power you need on demand, up to some peak limit. At the highest demand parts of the day and year, they have to resort to weaker plants, basically plants that don't come online except at the highest demand times. They cost a similar amount as any other power generating plant, but only get used 20 or 10 to 5% of the time, which means power from them is phenomenally expensive as their capital costs have to be paid off somehow even though they don't get used much.
This is a huge fraction of total costs for a grid operator, and it only gets worse as solar becomes a bigger part of the grid. For every kW of solar, the operator needs ~1kW of natural gas plants sitting around ready to turn on at a moment's notice.
In CA during the day usually we have too much power, and our wholesale prices can actually go negative ie they pay people to take generators offline as there's too much being made, and that's because that's peak solar production times. Then in the evening all the solar goes away but if anything demand goes up, so now they have to spin up all these natural gas plants to power people's homes at enormous expense.
The way we pay for electricity is by kWh mostly because it's been historically a reasonable enough way to allocate costs and it's easy. But solar is different. Without storage, the entire grid has to be available at all times even though it's getting less use during the day and certain parts of the year. Then net metering means the solar people give the operator electricity it really doesn't want or need during the day and get to cash in their credit during the high demand, extremely expensive parts the day while, on balance, pay ~ nothing for the system on which they are reliant and foist the costs of maintaining the grid onto everyone who is too broke to have solar on their house.
So the capital outlay from the grid operator and power plants is ~ identical for a house that has solar but no batteries as compared to one without solar panels at all. But now the solar power person would use net metering so they have to pay basically nothing for the system even though they're radically reliant on it. So, on balance, there really is a very large cost with no real benefit to the utility.
People should have to pay for the costs they impose on the grid / everyone else, and that's more or less what this new price structure does. It pays much less in credits during the day when the marginal unit of solar power is basically worthless and adds a per kW of installed solar monthly fee to pay for the capital costs of maintaining the generators those solar customers still need around for when the sun goes down. That's fair! iirc it has some reductions in this latter cost depending on how much storage you have, as is appropriate.
Ill keep saying this, I dont understand net metering or flat rates for solar electricity. I live in the EU, our electricity prices have gone up 1000% and solar gets what you surely wonder? Well, they get whatever the price is at the _moment they sell_ their electricity!
Sure, this system does not really handle overloaded local grids and grid upgrades, but we pay through the nose for general grid access anyway. Paying the right price for every kWh just feels natural. It also automagically makes people take more or less correct decisions on batteries and when to produce.
Sure, this system does not really handle overloaded local grids and grid upgrades, but we pay through the nose for general grid access anyway. Paying the right price for every kWh just feels natural. It also automagically makes people take more or less correct decisions on batteries and when to produce.
I just want to say that rooftop solar is a complete mess in my country in Central Europe. Since the Ukraine crisis, electricity prices went up like crazy and people actually got those prices for their solar energy. The problem is: nobody was actually paying the market rate prices as a consumer which means that you payed, for example, 8ct/KWh for using energy and got 80ct/KWh for delivering. Now the government is subsidizing those insane energy prices such that the consumers still pay an affordable rate and solar pays of in no time. Everyone who could afford it of course bought rooftop solar, but now a cap has been introduced such that you are only allowed to deliver a tiny amount of energy to the grid while your neighbor, who started before the cap was introduced, delivers 10x the amount.
Power companies in DFW (Texas) area are highly competitive: just got a contract for 14.59 cents kilowatt per hour.
After visiting PG&E rate page, I cannot believe that Sacramento, CA is already pushing 50 cents kilowatt per hour.
I pity the fools who live there (as I once did).
https://www.pge.com/pge_global/common/pdfs/rate-plans/how-ra...
After visiting PG&E rate page, I cannot believe that Sacramento, CA is already pushing 50 cents kilowatt per hour.
I pity the fools who live there (as I once did).
https://www.pge.com/pge_global/common/pdfs/rate-plans/how-ra...
Just to clarify, the price is only this high if you’re on time-of-use pricing and it’s peak hours, or you’re on regular pricing and you’ve used 400% of the baseline allocation.
Neither of these events is rare, but it’s worth noting that we NorCal suckers aren’t paying this much for all of our electricity.
Neither of these events is rare, but it’s worth noting that we NorCal suckers aren’t paying this much for all of our electricity.
Similar deal in the mountain west. 11.09 cents per kwh and my power has only blipped once when they were tuning the voltages at the substation vs. regular planned and unplanned outages when I was on PG&E.
0.30/kWh is really a lot. Its a massive subsidy. 0.5/kWh seems a bit mean, but it's the same as here in the UK.
The main thing with solar is that it's cheaper to use what you generate. Due to the sun, you probably can't use all the midday, and are in deficit at night... but that's why flat rate doesn't make sense. Evening electricity is usually more expensive, daytime very cheap. (Weather dependent, of course)
Paying at flat rate is to encourage adoption, but doesn't make economic sense. Batteries are pretty cheap now. Solar + battery will pay back in under 4y, even in dull England.
So it's going from good intentioned gov subsidy over the short term to incentivized adoption -> hard cuts to meet the long term realities of the market?
I guess the people who bet on centralized subsidies probably want some middle ground. But California saw it was mostly going to private companies engineered to take advantage of [current subsidy] and anything half-way would just continue pumping money into greenco instead of the future? And they decided to cut and run and bet on raw energy/climate outcomes instead of whats best for greenco?
I guess the people who bet on centralized subsidies probably want some middle ground. But California saw it was mostly going to private companies engineered to take advantage of [current subsidy] and anything half-way would just continue pumping money into greenco instead of the future? And they decided to cut and run and bet on raw energy/climate outcomes instead of whats best for greenco?
Huh. Charge 25-40 cents/kWh, give back 5-8 cents. And that's not counting their own taxes and fees that allegedly go to improving their aging infrastructure that they can't fix with the profits they make.
For those kinds of prices, it almost makes sense to lay your own power cable between a group of 5-10 neighbours to exchange power whenever one person has excess solar generation and another needs power for their water heater.
Only when the whole group needs power take from the grid.
Technically, this would simply involve a ~200 amp cable down the street and one electricity meter for the group. No smartness is needed at all - electricity will always flow naturally in whatever direction saves the group the most money.
Bureaucratically, moving power from one house to another requires so much paperwork the incumbent provider will never let you do it.
Only when the whole group needs power take from the grid.
Technically, this would simply involve a ~200 amp cable down the street and one electricity meter for the group. No smartness is needed at all - electricity will always flow naturally in whatever direction saves the group the most money.
Bureaucratically, moving power from one house to another requires so much paperwork the incumbent provider will never let you do it.
Sure, just multi-hundred amp capable infrastructure run in the middle of the street, installed to withstand weather and seismic events, with someone on call to fix it when it fails, liable for injury or other harm...
PG&E might be shite, but the hand-wavy dismissal of modern electric infrastructure is overlooking something that is a real benefit to society, and that infrastructure has real costs to keep it running.
PG&E might be shite, but the hand-wavy dismissal of modern electric infrastructure is overlooking something that is a real benefit to society, and that infrastructure has real costs to keep it running.
There's quite a lot of buried conduit across america. A lot of high end neighborhoods have it to avoid having telephone poles up and down the street and in their nice manicured lawns. LA has an absolutely massive cable that runs from some power plant right to downtown that's over 50 years old, soaked in a paper and mineral oil bath about 20 feet underground.
For smaller conduit (like, 200 amp) you just need a standard conduit, with the cable running through it, and a couple inches of slack on either end. How do you think they run power to detached garages, sheds, ADUs etc in people's backyards?
I can totally see rich neighborhoods putting in additional solar, a private battery + diesel backup and disconnecting from the grid, just like they probably already have their own well and sometimes even septic. If the payback is anywhere near 10 years that is a no-brainer.
For smaller conduit (like, 200 amp) you just need a standard conduit, with the cable running through it, and a couple inches of slack on either end. How do you think they run power to detached garages, sheds, ADUs etc in people's backyards?
I can totally see rich neighborhoods putting in additional solar, a private battery + diesel backup and disconnecting from the grid, just like they probably already have their own well and sometimes even septic. If the payback is anywhere near 10 years that is a no-brainer.
very good story about repairs of above mentioned LA cable https://www.jwz.org/blog/2002/11/engineering-pornography/
Here’s a similar story from 1998 in Auckland, New Zealand where everything failed for 5 weeks: https://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/misc/mercury.txt
damn, I actually wanted to read about that cable
edit: I just checked archive.is and it's...there? under what circumstances do I get redirected to that nsfw meme?
edit: I just checked archive.is and it's...there? under what circumstances do I get redirected to that nsfw meme?
> Sure, just multi-hundred amp capable infrastructure run in the middle of the street, installed to withstand weather and seismic events, with someone on call to fix it when it fails, liable for injury or other harm...
You can pay people to install cables, and you can get insurance. We're talking about a lot of money to save and pay for it.
> PG&E might be shite, but the hand-wavy dismissal of modern electric infrastructure is overlooking something that is a real benefit to society, and that infrastructure has real costs to keep it running.
The real point here is that if you moved the meter slightly there could be a huge change in price, and that seems weird!
You can pay people to install cables, and you can get insurance. We're talking about a lot of money to save and pay for it.
> PG&E might be shite, but the hand-wavy dismissal of modern electric infrastructure is overlooking something that is a real benefit to society, and that infrastructure has real costs to keep it running.
The real point here is that if you moved the meter slightly there could be a huge change in price, and that seems weird!
I'm a bit skeptical, on average people generally use similar appliances at similar time, ain't noboody using that water heater in middle of the day where they are at their job.
There are certainly some savings to be had but I don't see it being that much unless some kind of battery is involved.
Maybe the future model is a small substation with battery for the whole community using some cheap-at-scale battery tech to store local community's solar and wind.
Then some net-billing system where you pay market price of electricity only if you use more than you store, with any profit from that going towards maintenance
There are certainly some savings to be had but I don't see it being that much unless some kind of battery is involved.
Maybe the future model is a small substation with battery for the whole community using some cheap-at-scale battery tech to store local community's solar and wind.
Then some net-billing system where you pay market price of electricity only if you use more than you store, with any profit from that going towards maintenance
Not everyone works 9-5, M to F.
Except solar generation and load are extremely correlated between houses, especially in the same neighborhood.
For your specific example, the straightforward thing would be to rejigger your water heater to use a variable amount of power, rather than the on-off of 5.5kW or nothing.
For your specific example, the straightforward thing would be to rejigger your water heater to use a variable amount of power, rather than the on-off of 5.5kW or nothing.
If only it maxed out at 40 cents. I pay PGE 55 in the afternoon.
This is fine.
Seems silly to put solar panels on rooftops in California until we have totally filled the I-8/10/15/40 corridors with massive utility scale plants stretching a couple miles in both directions from the highway.
Solar panel production and installation has limited capacity so shouldn’t we prefer the desert climate multiplier to get 4x the energy? Take that panel off your roof and send it to the Mojave! The grid losses are negligible in comparison
Seems silly to put solar panels on rooftops in California until we have totally filled the I-8/10/15/40 corridors with massive utility scale plants stretching a couple miles in both directions from the highway.
Solar panel production and installation has limited capacity so shouldn’t we prefer the desert climate multiplier to get 4x the energy? Take that panel off your roof and send it to the Mojave! The grid losses are negligible in comparison
> Let's completely destroy the desert biome because we are afraid of nuclear power
Agreed but avoid the fault lines, usually nuke needs a decent water source as well.
[deleted]
My home came with a solar panel and even before the change it's hard to see from a purely financial perspective why you'd do it. At least for what my house is set up with, unless I want to pay a huge sum to buy out my contract (and no longer get service if it breaks), I have to pay them by how much I generate and the savings seem pretty miniscule. It seems like it would take forever to make back your installation fee.
I guarantee you those installation and maintenance fees will go down once the new reimbursement rates go into effect. The price you’re charged is calibrated to how much money you are expected to save.
Even at the rate of 0.08$/ kwh or may be 0.05$/kwh , it is not a bad deal for rooftop solar if you intend to use most of it personally.
> if you intend to use most of it personally.
That's exactly the goal here: make grid export uneconomical so you need to pair solar with a storage system that banks your afternoon excess into self-consumption once the sun goes down and the duck curve kicks into peak territory.
That's exactly the goal here: make grid export uneconomical so you need to pair solar with a storage system that banks your afternoon excess into self-consumption once the sun goes down and the duck curve kicks into peak territory.
In Western Europe you're looking at $.50 / KWh right now. Payback time for rooftop solar is between two and three years.
Wow...is there a big move towards it individually?
So much so that you can't buy panels, inverters or mounting materials.
Everything is out of stock, earliest deliveries are weeks, sometimes months away depending on what you are looking for and suppliers that do still have some stock are playing favorites with their long term customers (which makes sense, from their perspective).
I ended up buying two NOS inverters and one brand new one that was a bit larger than what I really needed (three separate sets of panels, 42 in all). One of them arrived damaged and I had the option to return it for a full refund or take a 50% discount, I took the discount because I knew I wasn't going to be able to find another one.
Even second hand gear is priced through the roof.
Everything is out of stock, earliest deliveries are weeks, sometimes months away depending on what you are looking for and suppliers that do still have some stock are playing favorites with their long term customers (which makes sense, from their perspective).
I ended up buying two NOS inverters and one brand new one that was a bit larger than what I really needed (three separate sets of panels, 42 in all). One of them arrived damaged and I had the option to return it for a full refund or take a 50% discount, I took the discount because I knew I wasn't going to be able to find another one.
Even second hand gear is priced through the roof.
Here's the main reason:
> The utility-backed concept suggests poorer Californians are paying higher utility rates to pay for lost profits that utilities endure in order to pay solar owner for delivering clean energy to the grid.
If every Californian reduced their electricity usage by half, PG&E would just double the rate and probably come up with a couple additional fees to tack on as well.
> The utility-backed concept suggests poorer Californians are paying higher utility rates to pay for lost profits that utilities endure in order to pay solar owner for delivering clean energy to the grid.
If every Californian reduced their electricity usage by half, PG&E would just double the rate and probably come up with a couple additional fees to tack on as well.
That isn't the main reason...
The main reason is that a power company defends its existence by generating and delivering as much power as possible.
If everyone had on-site generation and batteries, PG&E would barely be required, and if they were to bill too much, users would just disconnect from the grid entirely (some battery systems can already work without a grid).
To defend their existence, they need to do everything possible to stop homeowners not needing their service. And discouraging rooftop solar is part of that.
The main reason is that a power company defends its existence by generating and delivering as much power as possible.
If everyone had on-site generation and batteries, PG&E would barely be required, and if they were to bill too much, users would just disconnect from the grid entirely (some battery systems can already work without a grid).
To defend their existence, they need to do everything possible to stop homeowners not needing their service. And discouraging rooftop solar is part of that.
Is there any industry in California? Some office buildings? Maybe some datacenters?
I suspect that a power company could concentrate on them and still turn a profit, if 90% of detached houses stop buying electricity from it and disconnect. (But the latter requires a lot of batteries installed.)
I suspect that a power company could concentrate on them and still turn a profit, if 90% of detached houses stop buying electricity from it and disconnect. (But the latter requires a lot of batteries installed.)
Yes there is a lot of industry in California. It typically leads the nation in its manufacturing output. A basic Google search would reveal the depth of the state's manufacturing capabilities. This includes includes aerospace, automotive, chemical and quite a few other products.
Indeed! That was the point, driven home by a tiny morsel of irony. No chance that selling electric power to large consumers in California could disappear any time soon.
I bet the electrical grid operator's margins are much thinner in residential neighborhoods, sometimes maybe even negative.
I bet the electrical grid operator's margins are much thinner in residential neighborhoods, sometimes maybe even negative.
California should've nationalized PG&E, but this is what they decided instead: continuing to rake ratepayers over the coals.
What would that solve? It would have never the less been subsidized by taxes. (see: LIPA)
Some government owned utility companies are extremely profitable and provide billion of dollars in profit to taxpayers.
A good example is Quebec, they nationalized all the electric corporations in the 1960s and it became a government monopoly.
http://www.hydroquebec.com/history-electricity-in-quebec/tim...
A good example is Quebec, they nationalized all the electric corporations in the 1960s and it became a government monopoly.
http://www.hydroquebec.com/history-electricity-in-quebec/tim...
Uh, well, if you get virtually free inputs, after initial construction, from a Lagrande watershed, it's not hard to make profits.
So if PG&E had massive three gorges and itaipu dams they too could offer cut rate electricity just Like Paraguay too has cheap electricity.
So if PG&E had massive three gorges and itaipu dams they too could offer cut rate electricity just Like Paraguay too has cheap electricity.
Google the minutes from a PG&E and PBUC meeting. PG&E can’t replace a fence around a substation without PBUC approval.
PG&E is privately funded but effectively managed by the state.
PG&E is privately funded but effectively managed by the state.
How do we get the ball rolling on nationalizing PG&E now?
You turn it into a co-op. California can afford to based on what its residents are already burning in fiat on allowing PG&E to exist, and it's the world's fourth largest economy. Far smaller economies of entire countries have nationalized electrical grids (France is in the process of nationalizing EDF, for example, at a cost of $9.7B; to do so in California would be closer to $2.5B). Your expenses are then governed by stakeholders within the state of California instead of shareholders sucking profits out of a dysfunctional public utility. Taxpayers already subsidize PG&E, so that's not an excuse against nationalizing, they've already Crossed The Rubicon with regards to ongoing state support; any profits shareholders have/would receive are potential re-investments back into the infrastructure. Why are taxpayers subsidizing PG&E shareholders? Subsidize the infrastructure directly!
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/07/business/pge-bankruptcy-n...
https://www.eastbaydsa.org/campaigns/pge/
https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/wildfires-californ...
https://calmatters.org/politics/2020/02/what-happens-if-cali...
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1182562176667512833.html
https://www.mercurynews.com/2022/04/28/pge-revenue-profit-ri...
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/07/business/pge-bankruptcy-n...
https://www.eastbaydsa.org/campaigns/pge/
https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/wildfires-californ...
https://calmatters.org/politics/2020/02/what-happens-if-cali...
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1182562176667512833.html
https://www.mercurynews.com/2022/04/28/pge-revenue-profit-ri...
You look at other states or other countries where the regulations have been configured to work, and model on that.
The most important part is the network infrastructure (power lines, transformers, substations) is a natural monopoly so it needs to be owned by the state. Regulation and incentives keep failing when corporate ownership of the network infrastructure is tried. In New Zealand the national grid https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Transpower_New_Zealand is a “state owned enterprise”, while local low voltage networks and power metering is owned by each local government.
The idea is to use corporate (profit motivated) ownership for generators and retail metered billing to end consumers, but design the market to be competitive for multiple generation companies (don’t allow one generator to have a monopoly in any area) and for consumer choice of who bills them.
https://wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Zealand_electricity_market has a good high-level overview of how everything is configured, and also refers to some of the failures of the regulations. It refers to a disputed study that consumers are overpaying by ~33%, so in theory bills could be reduced with nationalisation. . . although I personally would expect a government department to be more than 33% inefficient, so I don’t think electricity consumers win either way.
The most important part is the network infrastructure (power lines, transformers, substations) is a natural monopoly so it needs to be owned by the state. Regulation and incentives keep failing when corporate ownership of the network infrastructure is tried. In New Zealand the national grid https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Transpower_New_Zealand is a “state owned enterprise”, while local low voltage networks and power metering is owned by each local government.
The idea is to use corporate (profit motivated) ownership for generators and retail metered billing to end consumers, but design the market to be competitive for multiple generation companies (don’t allow one generator to have a monopoly in any area) and for consumer choice of who bills them.
https://wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Zealand_electricity_market has a good high-level overview of how everything is configured, and also refers to some of the failures of the regulations. It refers to a disputed study that consumers are overpaying by ~33%, so in theory bills could be reduced with nationalisation. . . although I personally would expect a government department to be more than 33% inefficient, so I don’t think electricity consumers win either way.
Realistically pg&e being a publically traded company (like Twitter was) - California can use money from the budget and send a take over offer over 40 billion. The current market cap is around is 39 billion. They would need to bid a premium to get it approved by the current share holders. Boom it’s done
and they can nationalize it.
How exactly would a state nationalize a company?
Look at your local police or fire department. Imagine if they were private companies. You need to buy the necessary equipment, pay the salaries of the staff, fire the board of directors, and cut out the shareholders.
Fire departments and police departments began as private companies; see the history of NYC. They were nationalized to limit the massive corruption associated with private fire departments (i.e., fire departments deliberately setting fire to rivals' customers).
But to the point: a U.S. state can't nationalize a private company. It simply lacks that power. The closest it can get is buying a private company, or creating a public agency or public-private partnership, all of which California has done before.
But to the point: a U.S. state can't nationalize a private company. It simply lacks that power. The closest it can get is buying a private company, or creating a public agency or public-private partnership, all of which California has done before.
> But to the point: a U.S. state can't nationalize a private company. It simply lacks that power. The closest it can get is buying a private company, or creating a public agency or public-private partnership, all of which California has done before.
Or build its own competition. Quite a few califonia cities run their own utilities; Palo Alto started and ran its own phone company (sold to Pac Bell in the late 50s) and cable system (foolishly and destructively sold to crapcast in the '00s) but runs its own water, electricity, and gas system. Several counties run their own utility systems, often in cooperation.
However the high speed rail project suggests that this is not the time for California to enter into such projects. A century ago progressivism flourished, building water, road, and other crucial infrastructure that we still depend on. But the "revolution" of the late 70s and 80s cut away all the maintenance and support for further such projects in the name of ideology.
Or build its own competition. Quite a few califonia cities run their own utilities; Palo Alto started and ran its own phone company (sold to Pac Bell in the late 50s) and cable system (foolishly and destructively sold to crapcast in the '00s) but runs its own water, electricity, and gas system. Several counties run their own utility systems, often in cooperation.
However the high speed rail project suggests that this is not the time for California to enter into such projects. A century ago progressivism flourished, building water, road, and other crucial infrastructure that we still depend on. But the "revolution" of the late 70s and 80s cut away all the maintenance and support for further such projects in the name of ideology.
> But to the point: a U.S. state can't nationalize a private company. It simply lacks that power.
Eminent domain is in both the US constitution and the California state constitution. You usually have to provide compensation of course, but they made a list of exceptions that includes utilities: https://law.justia.com/constitution/california/article-i/sec...
Eminent domain is in both the US constitution and the California state constitution. You usually have to provide compensation of course, but they made a list of exceptions that includes utilities: https://law.justia.com/constitution/california/article-i/sec...
That is for seizing land, not seizing and nationalizing a private business.
The fire conventional wisdom thing is just that: conventional wisdom. Debunked in this week's Tom Scott video.
What is the actual method that a state government such as California (or Arkansas for that matter - I'm sure they would love to own Walmart) can use to seize control of a private company, fire the board of directors, cut out shareholders and then take ownership etc.?
The closest I can find is eminent domain which they can use to obtain privately owned land, but nothing that gives them the power to do what you're describing. Can you point me in the right direction?
The closest I can find is eminent domain which they can use to obtain privately owned land, but nothing that gives them the power to do what you're describing. Can you point me in the right direction?
If PG&E requires taxpayer subsidies, withhold them and buy the assets out of bankruptcy (negating the need to negotiate with a board, shareholders, or the C-level). Show up to bankruptcy court prepared to wire the funds to the trustee. You want to avoid paying top dollar to people who have a proven track record of mismanaging the enterprise, in order to not reward the behavior.
As a last resort, eminent domain offering fair market enterprise value and an orderly transfer of control.
As a last resort, eminent domain offering fair market enterprise value and an orderly transfer of control.
In bankruptcy, wouldn’t all their assets be encumbered by security interests owned by their creditors/hand holders? Wouldn’t any normal bankruptcy just be a reorganization around the interests of the secured parties? I’m having trouble seeing how an obligation to pay subsidies, be it executory or not, would give the subsidisor any leverage in bankruptcy.
Is the idea that the secured creditors need the subsidy too?
Is the idea that the secured creditors need the subsidy too?
You have a lot of wiggle room to make what you want happen when you're the government, and arguing the finer points until an insolvency event occurs requires copious amounts of speculation. One of the country's largest utilities entering insolvency isn't a normal bankruptcy is a fact I hope we can agree on.
If your suggestion is that a $39 billion utility filing in federal bankruptcy court means that an unsecured counterparty would be given enough “wiggle room” to insist they be paid before secured creditors on the theory that they owe the utility subsidies, then no, we definitely can’t all agree. No bankruptcy would be that abnormal because that wouldn’t be a bankruptcy; the goal of a bankruptcy is to preserve the estate for the creditors, while the model you seem to present destroys the estate for the good of the debtors.
At a bankruptcy auction, assets are sold free of encumbrance. Generally, secured creditors participate in bankruptcy auctions because they would prefer good funds over holding the assets that failed to provide for a solvent business.
Neither of these is nationalization, and both examples you provided that are a different approach of trying to use state power to crush a private business have never been tried or tested in court, where they would fail. So I'm hoping the parent poster can correct their post since there is no method for a US state to nationalize a company. It doesn't exist, and as a fiction, it should be treated as such.
The state of Maryland was famously going to seize the Baltimore Colts. The owner got wind of it, packed the franchise's files into a semitrailer and was across the state line before morning. Sorry, Maryland, it's an Indianapolis team now.
Not quite.
NFL teams are franchises of the NFL, and owners of the other teams have to agree to ownership changes of each franchise. It's also not true that he suddenly "got wind of" anything, he'd been planning to move the team for 7-8 years and had very public spats with the city for years over it. He didn't tell the city ahead of time about the move because they had been at war with each other for many years.
NFL teams are franchises of the NFL, and owners of the other teams have to agree to ownership changes of each franchise. It's also not true that he suddenly "got wind of" anything, he'd been planning to move the team for 7-8 years and had very public spats with the city for years over it. He didn't tell the city ahead of time about the move because they had been at war with each other for many years.
Generally the way socialists nationalize is by bankrupting the company with massive tax bills, fines, or price caps. They then take control out of bankruptcy or buy the company for a pittance.
NYC took control of the subways by capping fares which bankrupted the private operators.
NYC took control of the subways by capping fares which bankrupted the private operators.
The more accurate term would be muncipalisation.
This is commonly practiced in various city and county services: fire and police services, ambulance, public transit (virtually all extant bus and rail services began as privately-owned companies), school bussing, schools, childcare, parks and recreation, utilities (water, rubbish, electricity, gas, Internet, sewerage, ...), etc.
There's a long history of this, in California and elsewhere.
The Wikipedia article unfortunately doesn't dive much into the details of mechanism though it does point out numerous instances and issues.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Municipalization>
This is commonly practiced in various city and county services: fire and police services, ambulance, public transit (virtually all extant bus and rail services began as privately-owned companies), school bussing, schools, childcare, parks and recreation, utilities (water, rubbish, electricity, gas, Internet, sewerage, ...), etc.
There's a long history of this, in California and elsewhere.
The Wikipedia article unfortunately doesn't dive much into the details of mechanism though it does point out numerous instances and issues.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Municipalization>
Where I live, my electricity is maintained and provided by my town. I pay less than nearby towns that use National Grid.
That's how.
That's how.
You seem to have misread the sentence. Having a municipality that runs a utility is not at all related to how a US state could seize the assets of a private company, fire the Board of Directors and steal the ownership shares from all of its investors (large or small) in order to make it a state run enterprise.
So no, that's not how.
So no, that's not how.
I did misinterpret the point of issue.
However, lets say that California couldn't seize PG&Es assets directly (transmission lines, etc.) - that doesn't really matter as California can force PG&E's hand, given that they could easily put them out of business.
California is in control, it just doesn't have the political capital to do what's needed.
However, lets say that California couldn't seize PG&Es assets directly (transmission lines, etc.) - that doesn't really matter as California can force PG&E's hand, given that they could easily put them out of business.
California is in control, it just doesn't have the political capital to do what's needed.
There are already public utilities in California. LA, San Diego, and (I believe?) Sacramento already have them.
San Diego performed better in both of the brownout times, including 20 years ago-ish.
Palo Alto as well: electricity, natural gas, water, sanitary sewer, and commercial fiber optic services.
<https://www.cityofpaloalto.org/Departments/Utilities>
<https://www.cityofpaloalto.org/Departments/Utilities>
An existing public utility is nothing remotely close to seizing an existing private company and nationalizing it.
I wish they would charge on an hourly basis based on net contribution to the grid's carbon emissions.
They could scale the cost of emitting carbon so that PG&E's total revenue was still reasonable.
Once the grid emissions started to approach zero, this pricing scheme would collapse. I'm OK with letting future politicians replace it at that time.
They could scale the cost of emitting carbon so that PG&E's total revenue was still reasonable.
Once the grid emissions started to approach zero, this pricing scheme would collapse. I'm OK with letting future politicians replace it at that time.
This will backfire in 10 years when EV's take off and PG&E doesn't have enough generation capacity.
Doesn't matter. They don't have enough transmission line capacity for it anyway. Was just an article in the Bee if you care, but it's not news.
Thank god we didn't actual go through with shutting Diablo, but we will have neither the energy nor the distribution capacity in 10 years to meet the goals we've set.
It always sounds good until you have to build something. Then you do and a few years later people blame it for being unfair, like this.
Yes, it's unfair. But it worked. Solar is everywhere in California.
16% of cars sold in California are already EVs
In the end there is no realistic future where every home has an efficient battery. The bulk of power has to come from grid/utility that provides storage.
Honestly my hope was that metering like this would be an incentive to build said storage but it is not. In the end the grid/utility operators are crying missed profits and lobbying government to step in "or they will become bankrupt". It's a sad state of affairs, these utilities make money hand over fist but not doing the investments they are supposed to do.
Honestly my hope was that metering like this would be an incentive to build said storage but it is not. In the end the grid/utility operators are crying missed profits and lobbying government to step in "or they will become bankrupt". It's a sad state of affairs, these utilities make money hand over fist but not doing the investments they are supposed to do.
I don't care about money. I just want one kwh credit for each kwh I give them.
CA power and water utilities were abusive before. This not only takes that to a new level, but this move is antithetical to California's entire righteous environmental posture. Not to mention that the utility's excuse is vague, unsubstantiated bullshit.
CA invents new ways to perpetrate hypocrisy.
CA power and water utilities were abusive before. This not only takes that to a new level, but this move is antithetical to California's entire righteous environmental posture. Not to mention that the utility's excuse is vague, unsubstantiated bullshit.
CA invents new ways to perpetrate hypocrisy.
Or to express the headline in a less clickbaity (or metaphorical) way:
California slashes rates paid for household solar contributions back to the grid.
California slashes rates paid for household solar contributions back to the grid.
"...[as they] are now considered uneconomical without an attached battery" to quote the article.
... without considering long term consequences.
Trying to be responsible on my farm in Iowa. Thinking of solar (ground-mounted, plenty of space here).
First we upgraded our HVAC, the old one was inefficient.
Well now our power bill is < $100/month because the new blowers are so frugal.
Ironically we now can't make solar pay, because it would take decades longer in payback than any solar system is expected to last!
First we upgraded our HVAC, the old one was inefficient.
Well now our power bill is < $100/month because the new blowers are so frugal.
Ironically we now can't make solar pay, because it would take decades longer in payback than any solar system is expected to last!
This was always a subsidy for rich people by poor people. The power generated by rooftop solar isn’t not worth 30 cents
Yep. I've always considered net metering immoral. Rich folks using poor folks for a free nighttime battery.
The fix is super simple. Just meter by the minute and pay out current wholesale electric rates as you send to the grid. When you buy, you pay retail for delivery depending on the instantaneous market.
Don't want to buy at potentially high rates during evening peak? Sounds like you need to invest in a battery system.
If you want to pretend you are a micro power plant, you should get paid as one.
The fix is super simple. Just meter by the minute and pay out current wholesale electric rates as you send to the grid. When you buy, you pay retail for delivery depending on the instantaneous market.
Don't want to buy at potentially high rates during evening peak? Sounds like you need to invest in a battery system.
If you want to pretend you are a micro power plant, you should get paid as one.
With Buy-All Sell-All you buy all you use at retail rates and sell all you produce at wholesale rates. Buy-All Sell-All has a later breakeven point than Net Metering, where you buy what you can't produce at retail and sell back the rest at wholesale or better, which is an indirect subsidy for a resilient power grid with residential renewables with external benefits.
What you describe sounds like Buy-All Sell-All, except you're allowed to use and store what you produce before paying retail rates for electricity purchased from the service provider.
Is it anti-competitive to deny residential renewable energy producers the right to use the clean energy they invested in producing if they want to purchase electricity?
Another exclusive monopoly contract: if you buy water from me, you can't use the water you capture yourself.
Net metering in the United States: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_metering_in_the_United_Sta...
Net metering > "Post-net metering" successor tariffs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_metering#Post-net_metering...
We want there to be renewable residential energy. Subsidizing renewable energy will hasten adoption. We should subsidize residential renewable energy if we want there to be more renewable energy.
If we make the break-even point later in time, residential renewable energy will be less lucrative.
What you describe sounds like Buy-All Sell-All, except you're allowed to use and store what you produce before paying retail rates for electricity purchased from the service provider.
Is it anti-competitive to deny residential renewable energy producers the right to use the clean energy they invested in producing if they want to purchase electricity?
Another exclusive monopoly contract: if you buy water from me, you can't use the water you capture yourself.
Net metering in the United States: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_metering_in_the_United_Sta...
Net metering > "Post-net metering" successor tariffs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_metering#Post-net_metering...
We want there to be renewable residential energy. Subsidizing renewable energy will hasten adoption. We should subsidize residential renewable energy if we want there to be more renewable energy.
If we make the break-even point later in time, residential renewable energy will be less lucrative.
I’m so confused, is there something that prevents the “use what you produce and sell excess at wholesale?” That seems like it would be the sanest policy. If you can’t use your own power then I think getting paid retail rates is the only fair thing since that’s how much the power is worth to you.
FWIU, Buy-All Sell-All contracts have a "termination of agreement to provide service clause" if the residential renewables are not directly attached to the grid; it's against their TOS to use your own renewable energy and sell the rest, which is probably monopolistic and anti-competitive.
Is it legal to have a cutover so that it's possible to use one's own renewable energy when the power's out, given an exclusive Buy-All Sell-All agreement?
Is it legal to have a cutover so that it's possible to use one's own renewable energy when the power's out, given an exclusive Buy-All Sell-All agreement?
Perhaps there's an opportunity for a solution here: at the junction of batteries, renewables, and local [government-granted-monopoly with exclusive first-mover rights of way over and under other infrastructure] electrical-utility junction; there could be a controller that knows at least:
- 1a) when the grid is down
- 1b) when the grid wants the customer to slowly increase load e.g. after the power has been out
- 1c) when it's safe to send more electricity to the grid e.g. at retail or wholesale or intraday rates
- 2a) how full are the local batteries
- 2b) the current and projected local load && how much of that can be throttled down
- 2ba) how full and heated the hot water tank(s) are
- 2bb) the current and projected external and internal air temperature and humidity
- 2bba) the current and projected internal air temperature and humidity, per e.g. bath fans and attic fans with or without in-wall-controllers with humidistats
- 2bc) projected electrical needs for cooking, baking, microwaving (typically at 100W*15amps=1500W or more)
- 2c) how many volts at how many amps the local renewables are producing
But IIUC, Buy-All Sell-All service provision agreements threaten termination of service if the customer/competitor does anything but sell all locally produced electricity to the grid by direct connection, so an emergency cut-over that charges your batteries off your solar panels instead of the grid (e.g. when the grid is down) is forbidden.
- 1a) when the grid is down
- 1b) when the grid wants the customer to slowly increase load e.g. after the power has been out
- 1c) when it's safe to send more electricity to the grid e.g. at retail or wholesale or intraday rates
- 2a) how full are the local batteries
- 2b) the current and projected local load && how much of that can be throttled down
- 2ba) how full and heated the hot water tank(s) are
- 2bb) the current and projected external and internal air temperature and humidity
- 2bba) the current and projected internal air temperature and humidity, per e.g. bath fans and attic fans with or without in-wall-controllers with humidistats
- 2bc) projected electrical needs for cooking, baking, microwaving (typically at 100W*15amps=1500W or more)
- 2c) how many volts at how many amps the local renewables are producing
But IIUC, Buy-All Sell-All service provision agreements threaten termination of service if the customer/competitor does anything but sell all locally produced electricity to the grid by direct connection, so an emergency cut-over that charges your batteries off your solar panels instead of the grid (e.g. when the grid is down) is forbidden.
That is exactly how it works in Finland.
Thanks! You gave me a whole lot of rabbit hole to head down, so maybe I shouldn't thank you :)
But that's not a problem with rooftop solar mandates, that's a problem with California's absolute refusal to fix their stupid and terrible electricity market. Electricity doesn't cost 30 cents per kilowatt hour in California because it's inherently harder to generate or sell electricity there, after all, how many solar panels and whatever other infra you want could you build just across the boarder in Nevada and sell back into California undercutting PG&E prices?
I don't have eyes into the specifics, but it's just always seemed like California state politicians have a vested interest in keeping money, both state and consumer, flowing into PG&E.
I don't have eyes into the specifics, but it's just always seemed like California state politicians have a vested interest in keeping money, both state and consumer, flowing into PG&E.
The basic issue is they use volumetric pricing to cover all costs, which includes everything from transmission to wildfire mitigation. It’s a dumb system and it means that people who use more already pay more of the fixed costs than those who use little.
Irony is that if you shut down your solar panels and go on vacation, PG&E gets essentially nothing. But if you’re at home and producing and paying in (there is a minimum monthly fee under NEM 2.0 today) you’re responsible for an unfair ‘cost shift’’.
Irony is that if you shut down your solar panels and go on vacation, PG&E gets essentially nothing. But if you’re at home and producing and paying in (there is a minimum monthly fee under NEM 2.0 today) you’re responsible for an unfair ‘cost shift’’.
When you look at it like that, it seems bad. When you look at it is as trying to get people to adopt solar, it has worked well. The government decided to accelerate solar uptake as a policy goal. They did that.
Everything has winners and losers, at least this has some substantial environmental justification. Not sure how paying bankers' bonuses after the destroyed the economy helps anything, including the environment. These two things are not the same.
The problem was that you could easily have subsidized residential solar installation without creating policy that required you to play stupid rate games with PG&E that seem purposely designed to get them a portion of the value YOUR solar panels create.
Florida did a similar thing, writing legislation that made it stupidly cheap for large energy companies to buy your rooftop solar power and flip it for a huge markup. These laws are just a gift to current market leaders for seemingly no reason, other than graft.
Florida did a similar thing, writing legislation that made it stupidly cheap for large energy companies to buy your rooftop solar power and flip it for a huge markup. These laws are just a gift to current market leaders for seemingly no reason, other than graft.
What about the proposed tax per kWh of solar. Will that be going into effect too?
Edit: Looks like the 8% per kilowatt-hour tax was already rejected.
Edit: Looks like the 8% per kilowatt-hour tax was already rejected.
Ask a firefighter what happens when they see a solar panel on your roof.
First, Safeway buys in very large lots from certified suppliers, who can commit to (almost) always having carrots.
Second, those suppliers have to deliver at a loading dock, and maybe at a central location, too.
Third, Safeway pays them wholesale prices, not retail.
All of those analogies apply to selling power back to PG&E at retail prices. It's in small lots; it's undependable; it comes from many sources, not just a few; and it's priced wrongly.
Yes, PG&E can be read as Pricks Grabbing Everything, but they're what we've got.