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explore_broaden ,

It doesn’t really seem like net metering is sustainable. Say for example someone generates the same amount of electricity they use, in that case they pay $0 for electricity even though the grid has to take the burden of storing the electricity until they use it later in the day.

Brkdncr OP ,

They can pay for the grid maintenance and storage if they’d like to set it up that way. NEM sort of addresses this but they’ve planned it poorly.

Brkdncr OP ,

Utilities have avoided infrastructure development such as more solar generators, rooftop solar buyback incentives.

They avoided power storage development too.

They now complain that there’s too much fluctuation between peak solar hours and have to charge the people that were taking action on their own to avoid excessive power costs to make ends meet.

Hello_there ,

We are paving over the Mojave and prime ag lands to build solar instead of incentivizing people to put it on top of their homes.
Also, the current PUC is hopelessly corrupted by PGE influence. Anything that could be twisted to create more profit for PGE should be construed as doing so in practice.

reddig33 ,

People are just going to install backup batteries and then PG&E isn’t going to get anything.

tal , (edited )
@tal@lemmy.today avatar

I mean, the existing scheme is economically-problematic, because it means that non-solar-generation users are subsidizing solar-generation-users grid connections.

The utilities have two separate set of costs, one from providing the grid connection, and the other from providing power over it.

Traditionally, because the two were linked for practical purposes, utilities just generated their revenue from charging a fee based on electricity use.

But they became decoupled when home solar power generation became more-common. That caused people who were doing solar power generation to not just not pay for electricity being provided – which is fine, they’re providing that – but also to not pay the costs of keeping the grid available, which is not. Under the traditional billing system, those grid maintenance costs were transferred to people – who statistically are poorer, another point of contention – weren’t doing home solar power generation.

Having a grid connection provides value to solar generation users. It means reliability, and ability to scale up use on demand. It costs something to provide that. And the folks who are incurring the cost and benefiting from it should pay those costs.

And yeah, I agree that it makes solar less-advantageous, and some rooftop solar users got sold a bill of goods by rooftop solar installers who promised that their rooftop solar would make more economic sense than it did, because they could exploit that billing inefficiency. But the point is, it was a bad policy, and rooftop solar installers had no ability to guarantee that it would continue.

If you’ve got rooftop solar, you can still avoid paying for the electricity that you’re generating rather than pulling from the grid. You just have to pay your share of the grid maintenance cost. Or, if you really don’t need that connectivity and you legitimately feel that you’re better off off-grid – which I suspect is probably not the case for most people – you can just cut off from the grid, rely entirely on your local generation capacity of whatever sort. The only thing you can’t do is have grid access and have non-solar-rooftop generation customers subsidize that grid access.

mipadaitu ,

Could easily just charge separate lines on the bill, just like they do for everything else.

1 - $0.0x c/KWh for line maintenance - this charges on both incoming and outgoing power.
2 - $0.xx c/KWh for power usage - this charges only on the incoming side.
3 - $xx flat fee every month for administration of your account.

Charge what things cost and it won’t matter how your use your energy.

edit: formatting

tal , (edited )
@tal@lemmy.today avatar

I agree – that decoupling of fees is what’s happening and is what the article is complaining about.

EDIT: I’d also add I kind of feel like this pattern is turning into something of a chronic problem for California. The same sort of thing happened with EVs getting to ignore carpool rules.

  1. California tells people that if they buy an EV, they can ignore carpool rules and use the carpool lane without carpooling. Advocates get this past voters by billing it as being “green”.
  2. EV companies sell a relatively-costly product, implying that the policy will continue ad-infinitum. They can charge a premium because they’re giving special road access bundled with the vehicle. This is lucrative for EV manufacturers; they’re actually profiting by selling access to a state service that they aren’t paying for.

https://lemmy.today/pictrs/image/b57d9e24-df24-41f1-981b-fd4f0e2897e0.webp

  1. Well-to-do people do the math and figure out that while the car costs more, it’s a pretty cheap deal for your own road. They buy the car.

  2. California announces that the policy is going to expire. People who paid more and had an expectation of never-ending special road access are angry.

    abc7news.com/…/14604142/

    There are over 400,000 drivers in California who currently have decals - many of them bought their clean air vehicle to speed up their commute so losing that privilege is a big deal.

    A Tesla driver says, " It is frustrating. Like I said the main reason for the decision is driving in Bay Area traffic."

Wrench ,

That’s a pretty weird rant on EVs.

The carpool lanes were very under utilized. Hybrids and later EVs were also slow to be adopted, and the state wanted this adoption accelerated due to air quality and just general environmental consciousness.

So the state decided to add the carpool benefit, which solved two problems.

Now that EVs are far more abundant, that policy is getting revisited. Which is fair, because the carpool lane can only support so many before it just gets clogged like the main road. And people don’t necessarily need the encouragement to get EVs anymore.

Nothing is permanent.

MyOpinion ,

We already pay a grid connect fee and on top of that we purchased over 10k in hardware and we make it so their needs to be less grid upgrades and we provide our excess power for 8 cents a kw for NO hardware cost to them. Sounds like they are getting a nice deal. But of course that is not nice enough for PG&E they want it all.

ITGuyLevi ,

Sounds good, but it essentially means you would then have to buy and maintain the method of power generation and delivery back to a company to sell it to someone else. I totally get remaining grid connected is important, but those grid connected systems are supplying a whole lot of power back to the grid. Perhaps if you generate more than you use, the power company should pay you to maintain your generators and infrastructure.

Transparent pricing and not itemized billing could help a lot (and allow for better application of fees based on use case).

MyOpinion ,

I make the investment and then don’t get the return. Sounds about right for the criminals at PG&E and their paid for people in office. Time to turn them into a not for profit public institution.

RageAgainstTheRich ,

Here in europe we’re gonna have to pay the electrical company for the energy our own solar panels generate above a certain amount.

“Can we just turn them off?”

“No 😠”

MyOpinion ,

That is nuts. We need to take back power from these companies.

CosmicTurtle0 ,

I’m pretty sure this will break the law of thermodynamics.

Lost_My_Mind ,

What happens if you just…don’t pay the bill?

MyOpinion ,

Then you get disconnected.

Lost_My_Mind ,

I thought that was the point of paying so much for solar? To be OFF the grid?

MyOpinion ,

That is no the point. Solar provides most of your power and if you need additional power you can easily get additional power from the grid. That power can come from other people that have solar connected to the grid or other sources. It allows people to not have to spend huge amounts of money on batteries while providing power for themselves and others.

SacralPlexus ,

No going off-grid is a substantially larger investment than most people can afford. To be off grid you have to be able to make enough electricity even on cloudy, short winter days. That means your system must be massively oversized for your needs during most of the year. You also need adequate batteries to store energy for overnight.

Instead people get enough solar to offset some or all of the electricity they use - but on average over time. So they produce a ton during the day and then draw from grid at night.

Humanius ,
@Humanius@lemmy.world avatar

Correct, but that also comes to the main reason why paying people for roof solar isn’t sustainable in the long term.

As solar panels keeps getting cheaper, more and more people will put solar on their roof. Since they get paid / reimbursed for feeding power back into the grid. And they don’t need a battery because they can just draw from the grid. This causes two problems:

  • During the day far more power is produced than needed, since everyone has solar on the roofs
  • During the night there is a lot of power draw from the grid, which cannot come from all the available roof solar.

Paying people for their roof solar is a good strategy short-term, but as more and more people have solar on the roof you cannot really keep doing that.

nivenkos ,

Yeah, this is exactly the point of the “problem” OP complains about. Charge people for overproduction, so they’re encouraged to buy a home battery and contribute in the night.

Eventually home batteries will become a standard part of such installations.

tabular ,
@tabular@lemmy.world avatar

If you want to encourage purchasing of storage then contribute to making that an easier task. Charging for overproducing is spiteful and mostly encourages resentment. I wouldn’t blame these people for finding a cheap way to avoid the “charge” (and if there is a law that prevents that, it is disgusting).

osaerisxero ,

Sure, but it's 'free' generation capacity, and storage works far better at grid scale

CaptPretentious ,

Are they providing support for the things?

MyOpinion ,

They provide no support for the solar. If I have problems I have to go to my solar installer.

CaptPretentious ,

Well that’s fucked.

Humanius ,
@Humanius@lemmy.world avatar

Where in Europe is this? Europe isn’t a monolith, after all.
Here in the Netherlands we (currently) still have the “salderingsregeling” which is used to reimburse people for the solar they feed back into the grid, though that will eventually go away.

Paying people for solar on the roof is a bit tricky in general, and probably not sustainable long term:

  • The money to maintain the grid has to come from somewhere, and if a lot of people have a bill of zero euros or a negative amount, that system kind of breaks down.
  • The grid has a maximum capacity (especially in residential neighbourhoods) so you cannot pump an infinite amount of power back into the grid. If many houses in a neighbourhood have solar the grid simply cannot cope.
zout ,

In the Netherlands we now also have a "terugleveringstoeslag" where you have to pay a monthly fee based on the maximum peak power delivered to the grid over the year. At least, the bigger electrical companies already have it, the rest will soon follow. My coworker (who has way too many solar panels installed) got a letter from Essent that he had to pay 67 euros monthly starting October. So he switched companies, but he'll have to figure out something else next time.

nivenkos , (edited )

Because they have to give that energy away in order to keep the grid stable.

Hopefully better battery storage will make this better in the future.

The aim with it is to naturally discourage people from overproducing in such overproduction times - e.g. maybe you disable your solar panels when you predict it will happen, lessening the sudden impact on the grid.

FWIW you could buy a high capacity home battery already to eliminate it yourself (charge the battery in those times), but they’re still expensive.

simplejack ,
@simplejack@lemmy.world avatar

It’s so weird that a basic public utility is totally owned by a private company. Roads and water are maintained by the government in my county. Why not power?

Dearth ,

Water is owned by private business on California too.

Hello_there ,

I made a post with ideas on what initiatives could be proposed here: https://fedia.io/m/VoterInitiatives/t/883352/Electric-utility-company-reform

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