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Arizona Approves Grid-Connection Fees For Solar Rooftops
mdsolar writes with this excerpt from Bloomberg News: "Arizona will permit the state's largest utility to charge a monthly fee to customers who install photovoltaic panels on their roofs, in a closely watched hearing that drew about 1,000 protesters and may threaten the surging residential solar market. The Arizona Corporation Commission, which regulates utilities in the state, agreed in a 3-to-2 vote at a meeting [Thursday] in Phoenix that Arizona Public Service Co. may collect about $4.90 a month from customers with solar systems. Arizona Public is required to buy solar power from customers with rooftop panels, and the commission agreed with its argument that the policy unfairly shifts some of the utility's costs to people without panels. Imposing a fee designed to address this issue may prompt power companies in other states to follow suit, and will discourage some people from installing new systems, according to the Sierra Club."
shifts costs to the utility? What costs? A second meter base (which the customer has to pay for anyway) and a second meter? The second meter can't possibly cost $4.90/mo to maintain, over the typical life-time of a system.
What if they drop the APS utility altogether? What about starting a parallel renewable-energy fueled power grid?
The utility spent $3.7 million to promote its argument, compared with about $330,000 spent by the solar industry, according to documents filed with the commission.
Fuck these crooks. $3.7M buys a lot of infrastructure improvement.
Oldest trick in the book. Ask for the moon ($50/month insanity) and cry when they hand you a sterling silver platter instead.
I sincerely hope cheap high density batteries come out in the next decade that will make grid tie completely moot point if all you want is energy at night.
You still need fossil fuel power plants to regulate voltage. Those have to be paid for and solar installations are getting a benefit without paying for it. VARS aren't cheap. And bitching over 5 bucks a month - that is nothing.
I'm OK with a grid connection fee. It is reasonable.
However, I am not OK with some other policies that I have seen, such as no buyback for excess generation. Or, as in my case, the policy is such that regardless of how much excess generation you pump into the grid, there will NEVER be a net on the bill. The bill will always be at least ~$30 even if I pump 20MW of excess generation back into the grid.
It really pisses me off. But, luckily, the state commission just approved another rate hike that "will benefit consumers".
If i produce power and give it back to the system they should be paying ME, not the other way around. WTF.
Its not hard to avoid not feeding back into the "system", but what sort of nonsense is this where you get penalized for trying to be a good citizen.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
If you have solar panels and don't want to sell your excess back to the utility then don't . But don't try to pretend that you don't make use of the grid when you do. The public utility has been forced to buy your excess energy at above market rates thus pushing up costs to everyone. Stop crying about being treated like a wholesale power supplier.
The free market argument is a weak one, and doesn't correlate with the reality in which we live. Have you seen the way "free market" ISPs operate in regards to competition? Doesn't work so well does it? With many geographical areas being locked into a choice between AT&T and Time Warner, there is virtually no competition. There are many who are arguing that ISPs should be treated as public utilities so that they can't throttle competing services that traverse their wires, requiring government intervention.
If you want to argue that the government is screwing something up and needs to get its hands out of something, I'd look towards the military industrial complex.
Crimey
I was thinking more along the lines of people stocking up and staging a nice protest next spring/summer. Be pretty fun if half their customers dropped service for a couple months and just used their solar. Wonder how nice their profits would look for those other million customers.
That probably won't work: most (all?) grid-tie solar systems will cut off the solar panels if the grid connection is interrupted (so as to avoid feeding power back into the lines in an outage, which would endanger utility workers). Battery-backed solar systems could run independently, but are considerably more expensive and require more maintenance than simple grid-tie systems.
Also, most (again, all?) states have legal requirements that inhabited dwellings have basic utility service (e.g. electricity, water, sewer, etc.). If people were to cut off their power for several months they would likely be in violation of the law.
That is just one tiny example of why gov't shouldn't be regulating any businesses, why it shouldn't be involved in any projects, including infrastructure - no competition. If this law passes, it just gives the gov't established monopoly a special power to tax people because they have no competition. No competing grids, no competing roads, no competing water and sewer and garbage providers, etc.etc. This company COULD, in a free market, do the same thing: impose a fee like that. However if it did, people would have a choice to switch to another provider, however that would have been done, but we can't even KNOW at this point, because of gov't meddling, which gives monopolies to the most connected players.
While I generally agree that the marketplace should decide who wins and loses, there are some things that are impractical to leave to the market. Taking your example of roads: how would you picture a road system for a city that allows for multiple "road providers?" How would new players enter the market? I ask because I can't picture having multiple road grids in the same geographical area that doesn't end up with more roads than buildings (picture downtown Chicago with the local lanes and express lanes everywhere in the city).
Government's idea of a balanced budget: take money from the right pocket to balance...oh who am I kidding?
It's a separate itemized charge on my bill. I imagine Arizona Public charges something similar.
For that matter I'm charged the residential rate. I suspect commercial customers pay more.
So customers with panels will pay an extra $5 for the privilege of being a customer. Some customers are more equal than others. Nothing new about that.
But I'm waiting for the day when I walk into an ice cream store am told that my ice cream cone is $3 and there's a $10.60 customer charge for a total of $13.60 for my ice cream cone.
...and if the utility had dedicated that $3.7 million from advertising to implementing better grid interoperability or storage options it could have been a win for both sides. If nothing else, increasing the one time Engineering charge that most utilities require to connect to a utility and implementing a "PV throttle" via smart grid or minimum hold up requirements (sag ride through, dP/dt limits, supplying short circuit current support,etc) could solve alot of these issues. It's time for the local electric monopolies to put a little skin in the game and develop a requirements doc to satisfy interoperability with their grid systems. UL1741 covers basic safety and this is necessary, but it's clear there's a missing link. Distributed PV should be a net gain for the energy industry -- aiding during peak use hours; the two sides of the industry need to start reaching across the aisle and resolve their differences.
-Panz
I'm not sure I understand the logic of the commission (that is, the logic of their stated argument, as opposed to the unspoken "we just got $3.7 million from the utilities so we'd better side with them" argument that we all suspect).
The Arizona Corporation Commission says that this fee is necessary because people who use solar are foisting off some of the maintenance cost onto the other customers who do not use solar panels.
Some residents installed solar-electric panels on their homes. Any excess energy they generate is sold back to the utilities, transmitted through the utilities infrastructure. The utilities are claiming that this is costing its other, non-solar customers money. But how?
It's not costing them money in infrastructure; that is still being paid for by all its customers - including those using solar power, as they are still hooked up to the grid and paying Arizona Public for the service (necessary, I suppose, for the occasional cloudy day in AZ). The maintenance costs of the lines are included in this service, just as they are for any other Arizona Public customer; it is not as if AP had to hook up any extra lines to these users of solar power, or as if the lines remain connected and the solar-customers aren't paying for the privilege.
The utility has to pay for the juice they receive back from these solar-customers, but they can then redistribute this power to other non-solar customers. AP need generate less electricity. I /suppose/ that AP might be operating at loss here if they have to pay out more per watt than it costs them to generate it themselves, but I have strong doubts this is the case. More likely, they are getting a deal on the extra volts and saving by not having to buy extra fuel for their generators.
In either case, I do not see how the use of solar would raise the cost of electricity for non-solar customers. Maintenance is shared equally among all customers, and purchased electricity from solar users saves the corporation money. There's no added cost to be passed on to non-solar customers.
There is a danger of becoming irrelevant (and unprofitable!) if solar usage takes off, but - while that may be the real concern of the utility - that is /not/ the argument that they are making.
Is the Arizona Corporation Commission's case that blatantly bogus or am just I missing something?
And the highest consumer demand for power is during a hot sunny day.
And those are the days where there's most gained from solar power, so the other moron is wrong too.
The cost of delivering power has two components: fixed costs (say, power lines to the home) and variable costs (say, of producing the power) The current system was to bundle the fixed costs into the variable ones, and just chage proportional to consumption. Since those selling back power to the grid still need to pay for the fixed costs, this principle of this change seems right. Better execution would have been to add the fixed cost to everyone and make a corresponding reduction to the marginal (per KWh) tariff, at which point those with and without solar panels would be treated equally.
That's a tax. Shouldn't it be illegal for a private corporation to merely collect taxes - from people that don't recieve any service from them? Like tollroads that bill you even when you don't use them, because others do and you might benefit from their services and economic activity? That's a shakedown on scant pretence. They already pay a public lighting tax, right? That's like those medieval "window taxes", or "roof taxes", or "beard taxes", fromm King John's days.
Sounds like slumlords that are trying to get rid of the tenants, in antecipation of a land development scheme of some kind. That's what happens when you disarm a population. They become sheep for the slaughter.
According to the information I find about Arizona net metering, the power you generate offsets your bill (at retail rates) until your bill is zero; after that you are paid wholesale for any excess:
"Net metering is accomplished using a single bi-directional meter. Any customer net excess generation (NEG) will be carried over to the customer's next bill at the utility's retail rate, as a kilowatt-hour (kWh) credit. Any NEG remaining at the customer’s last monthly bill in a calendar year will be paid to the customer, via check or billing credit, at the utility’s avoided cost payment. "
If this is really true, then the utility is making a profit reselling the power you generate. So what's the basis for this fee they want to charge?
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
This law is the equivalent of telling your wife you love her while beating her half to death. Society should love people who conserve energy and our government has begged the public to conserve for decades. So laws that encourage people to use solar power are all that we should have. This new tax will hold back solar installations which is exactly what the government claims it does not want. The same is true for electric cars. Electric cars avoid a gas tax so some states now have a special fee for allowing people to use electric cars under the guise that they are not paying their fair share of road taxes. In the case of a fee applied to solar powered homes the tiny fee first required means little. But it puts people on notice that that fee will grow and grow over time. The simple truth is that as more and more homes go solar the grid, in effect, gets smaller and smaller but still has the same maintenance fees which must be passed on to the people who use the grid. Therefore we should expect electric prices to rise for those that do not install solar which will encourage more and more people to go solar. At some point the power gri will not be needed at all for homes and industry will be the only consumer.
Have you seen the way "free market" ISPs
Protip: Such a thing doesn't exist in the US. You know why you have a shitty choice in Internet providers? Because your local government sold you out.
In addition to APS, the campaign against solar energy is being waged by ALEC and a group called 60 Plus, both funded by the Koch brothers and other far right/libertarian persons and groups.
"may collect about $4.90 a month from customers with solar systems. Arizona Public is required to buy solar power from customers with rooftop panels"
They likely charge about the same for connecting for import, so this seems perfectly fair to me.
And I install solar panels for a living.
.. so I don't expect any slashdotters to read it.
http://erc.ucd.ie/files/theses/Eleanor%20Denny%20-%20A%20Cost-Benefit%20Analysis%20of%20Wind%20Power.pdf
It's a recent doctorate thesis examining the impact of wind power on the Irish Grid, and it explains a lot of the damaging effects that putting variable power supplies can have on a grid.
To save you going through the maths, it comes to the conclusion that, with best possible assumptions, a maximum of 30% power from variable renewable supplies can be accepted. With worst assumptions, the figure is 5%. Beyond these figures, costs are in excess of the benefits gained, and remain so up to 100%. That includes things like fuel costs, which are actually greater due to increased base-load cycling.
The Irish power stations are fairly old and inefficient. On a more modern grid, the 30% figure would come down to about 20%. At all times the variable supplies add some value, and take some away due to their variable nature.
The charge applied by Arizona will offset some of this grid damage due to variability.
Let's see, you're probably planning to spend $15,000-$20,000 after factoring in the incentives, in the hope that you'll reduce your power bills by enough to pay for that in some reasonable time. But, then, OH NO you discover that you'll have to pay $4.90/month, so of course you immediately abandon your plans, because now it's utterly hopeless that the project might ever have a decent return. Yeah, right...
It seems to me that all customers should be charged this fee and their per kwh fee reduced. This is a service that benefits all customers, not just solar panel owners. In some ways, non-solar customers use the gird even more that the home generators. It is a matter of getting the power charge, the distribution charge and the connection charge properly balanced across the board.
I have to pay 15 dollars a month, about half my bill right now, just to stay connected to the grid. So adding another massive dis-incentive for conservation really does seem unfair. You can never conserve your bill to zero.
As more homes get built with solar pre-installed, I look forward to the time when entire subdivisions buy a "community battery" and never need fossil.
Are you the same nut that attacked me recently? I see you still have no capacity to control your emotions are state any actual useful information.
Maybe you can explain how panels smooth out peaks? They are not inductive. They peak and wane every day and even during the day. I suspect any response from you will not be informative but will rather be an attack, in which case you will get no further discussion from me.
Demand is not flat and the peak is in the day when all this solar stuff is making life a hell of a lot easier for power distribution. I think I worked that out in the first week I was involved with electricity generation back in the 1990s when there was almost nothing but coal and small hydro on my state's grid, so are you slow or are you not actually in the electricity generation industry?
We have a shitty choice because ISPs lobbied to get municipalities to give them exclusive monopolies and ISPs choose amongst themselves to not compete with each other in certain areas. The best part is then the ISPs come back around and act like the very things they lobbied for were against what they wanted.
$4.90 a month is fine, of course I'll have to raise the cost of electricity I sell back to the grid to offset the new fees. Cost of business get's passed on to the customer.
Every electric bill contains a fee to remain connected.
Disconnect from the grid entirely. But yeah - raise the fee - or try to do it. You'll find that your electric provider has the upper hand in setting those rates. They're a protected monopoly after all.
I have to wonder though with the advances in storage technology - I mean a stupid rule like this would just force me to go off grid completely.
In the USA most don't get a second meter, they use what's called 'net metering'. IE if you generate, say, 500 kwh in a month and use 600, you only pay for 100 kwh, even if you only used 100 kwh during the time your panels were generating significant power and used the other 500 at night and such. If your install is big enough that you go negative(spin the meter backwards), you get paid.
While 'spinning reserve' can be a problem, the bigger expense right now is that homes with solar panels are effectively getting out of would be line maintenance expenses. It costs money to keep the distribution lines and equipment up, and they're still using said lines.
They're effectively being paid retail for the power they produce.
I don't read AC A human right
Current smart meters just run backwards when you generate power, no second meter or upgraded equipment is needed. They have it locked down out here, to the benefit of the 1% of course. Current regulations do not allow private home solar systems to sell excess power, your bill can go to zero and any excess is free bonus to the power company. :/ I'm surprised they don't impose a fee here to "offset" the cost of accounting for and distributing that excess. :)
Tweet, tweet, all id10t's out of the gene pool, open swim is over.
...is to turn the question around. There are two electrical generation utilities connected by a wire: your solar panels and their big fossil plant. Their problem is that they are *required* to buy power from yours when yours happens to be generating, whether they need any power or not. They *have* to turn down or shut off their big plant whenever your system feels like doing some output.
How would most of us feel about being *required* to buy electrical power whenever their plant is underutilized and needing some extra work? Plus, they can build it up all they want and thus make you buy more?
It all imposes costs and they're attempting to recover them. That said, all profit-making utilities love to exaggerate their costs to regulators so as to be allowed higher income, all such claims need to be checked, and the budget for the checking - and the internal information made available to the checkers - needs to be as much as the utility had for the request to the regulator.
With that caveat, there's nothing wrong with this; the system imposes a cost, they deserve compensation. Any contrary view is really based on a belief that solar power people are inherently "good" and the utility is inherently "bad" by using fossil fuels and thus deserve to be punished for their sins.
So free market caused "geographical areas being locked into a choice between AT&T and Time Warner"!? I don't think you quite understand what free market means. It is regulation at the local level that gives monopoly to ISP providers over certain geographical areas, not the free market.
As for government getting it's hands off military industrial complex, you got it wrong again. The primary purpose of the government is the national security, that's one thing that can't be privatized. This is not to say that there isn't an enormous amount of waste and corruption in defense procurement, just like in everything else government does.
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
Just charge every customer a flat "connection, billing, and because-we-love-your-as-a-customer fee" on top of metered usage and be done with it.
OK, I was joking about the because-we-love-you part but utilities have costs that are "fairest" to bill by the kW/h or other per-use basis and costs that are "fairest" to bill on a per customer-per month or per-customer-one-time basis. In a capitalist system, it's up to the companies to figure out how to make money. In a regulated system, sometimes the right thing to do is to bill each customer a one-time setup charge to cover "one time costs" of setting up the account, a recurring fixed monthly charge to cover recurring monthly charges that don't depend on usage, and an energy charge (or refund) based on net usage.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
There is a cost of spinning reserve and grid stability maintenance. Why shouldn't those who need it or negatively impact it pay for it?
The answer has to do with the Prisoner's Dilemma. What is best for the individual may not be the best for society, and what appears to be a sub-optimal choice for the individual often turns out to be better for the individual in the long run if everyone makes the same choice.
For a concrete example, consider the Polio vaccine. There is a small chance of getting polio from the vaccine, so from the individual's point of view it makes no sense to get your kids vaccinated. If everyone else is vaccinated, you can forego the vaccination and reduce the risk to your child even further... except that if everyone makes that selfish choice, no one is protected.
In this particular case, there is now an incentive for people to purchase batteries and disconnect from the grid (or perhaps purchase batteries and not back-sell electricity). Instead of having the public service managing grid load using the best possible method with economies of scale, the problem is distributed among many small players. It's a narrow-minded view of an externality.
People have an incentive to spend revenue purchasing the batteries, and spend time dealing with installation/setup/maintenance/disposal rather than a few people doing this in bulk. The aggregate loss of productivity to society is much greater. Environmentally speaking, there will be lots of batteries in landfills in 10 years or so.
There is an incentive for less electricity put into the grid to be made available for others. The market has less "liquidity" now, generally considered (economically) to be a bad thing. The utility will need to generate more energy to compensate, which will result in more expenses and more environmental damage, and these changes may cost the utility more than the revenue from the monthly fees.
People without solar panels had the burden of an extra expense. Rather than viewing the expense as unwarranted, you could view it as an incentive to purchase solar panels, which is generally better for society.
Public services are corporations and as such want to make as much money as possible for their stock-holders. They only view this in terms of revenue - they could also consider the expense of externalities, and make decisions to maximize stockholder value rather than narrowly focusing on profit.
Alright, lets look at this. I install solar panels to reduce my monthly electric bill, not completely disconnect. AP now wants to charge me $4.90 a month for using less of their service/selling them my extra energy. Question I have for everyone talking about AP workers and maintenance cost. If I disconnect completely instead, should I be paying AP $4.90? If you answered "No", then why should someone still connected (and using) AP have to pay $4.90 because they are using less / AP has to buy tiny amount of excess energy? And yes the excess is a very very small amount. What the people should do there is completely disconnect and move to pure solar and wind with battery backup. At least those outside the Phoenix cluster. But wait, is that even legal? ....
People in the 'States scream about Big Government...
Oddly enough in most of Europe, with their big government that actually regulates industry, you see MORE competition in broadband, in cell service. Weird. Almost like businesses get too huge, start monopolistic practices, and NEED to be wacked with a stick once in a while.
Remember folks, there's a world outside the USA, and it works pretty well for a lot of things. Our culture/economy/law is not a universal Truth for the world.
... someone who spends $25,000 on solar panels from installing their system? Am I really supposed to believe that?
They smooth out peaks during Summer because the hottest & sunniest part of the day where you need your AC on full blast here in Phoenix, the panels are also hitting their maximum output.
This is not hard to figure out.
At this point, the government is the only thing preventing monopolies. For example, if it wasn't for the government, there would be only 1 phone company in the entire US today (at&t), and you would be renting your cellphone from them instead of buying it outright.
It's not government stopping competition, it's anti-competitive businesses stopping competition. Why do things better than your competitor, when you can just borrow a bunch of money and buy your competitor outright.
We didn't get into this ISP/Phone/cable/power monopoly situation because of government interference, we got this way because the government STOPPED interfering in the 1990s
Generally the way it works is that a few local cable providers will bid for a municipal contract, and as soon as one of them wins, comcast or time warner swoops in and buys out the winning company.
Even if a city allowed 4 or 5 different companies to set up competing networks it still wouldn't matter, because comcast would just buy-up all 5 companies
Critical infrastructure items should never be privatized, it's simple greed.
The law should be every new home made has to include X amount of solar and has to be wired into he grid, imagine the drop in profits for the snareholders.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
If these were community owned (government) power services, like water, sewer and the roads we'd not have these troubles. As private monopolies they funnel our money to undermine and corrupt democracy by larger amounts than we give to our local officials to run for office -- and with our own money! You've already got publicly funded elections-- but with a middleman controlling your money!
They have no incentive to promote alternative energy sources or reduce power consumption and play clever tricks to maximize profits. My power company has promos on conservation which amount to being marketing and merely placate the already ineffective and captured regulators so they can APPEAR to be doing the right thing. We have high connection fees with low power costs which discourage anybody from investing in alternatives themselves... plus again, it makes them APPEAR to look good because simpletons only notice the price per kWh.
If they managed the ROADs, you'd pay a high monthly fee to have a road to your house, you'd pay a rate per mile traveled; they'd add higher fees for other kinds of transit (bicycles, buses, light rail) because they simply would want to compensate for their profit lost -- with a made up excuse, naturally.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
1. 8 cents, US or Canadian, is below average cost for the continent
2. Fees everywhere - sounds like your company doesn't want to 'deal' with solar. $30/month for the 'privilege' of net-metering? Man, that's easy, and if you want to know how many kwh your solar system is producing, generally the inverter system has a much more in-depth tracking system such as keeping track of the production rates at different times (How much power did I generate between 0900-1030 every Tuesday for the last year?) Net metering is generally the easiest for the electric company to handle - they just keep reading 1 meter every month(or so) just like normal.
BTW, my electric company is something like $50/month even if you don't use any power, so I feel your pain.
I don't read AC A human right
But, no fee if you instead install a wind system?
Here in Vermont if you 'sell' via grid-tie you're not paid, rather you get a 'credit' that you must spend before the end of the year. Then at the end of the year the power utility company 'donates' your accumulated credits to itself. Since most power is generated in the sunny months of warm weather and most power is needed during the cold winter months this means the power company comes out way ahead. All summer and fall you are accumulating power credits and then they steal them, oops, I mean donate the credits to themselves so that all winter when your system is producing little power you must buy power and can't use your accumulated summer credits.
On top of that they charge a hookup fee and a monthly fee for services, a meter reading fee (although they don't actually read meters anymore) and a energy efficiency fee and then taxes on the power you generated too.
Net metering is a sweet deal for the electric power companies.
<humor>
That's easy: just learn from the history of messr. Richard Turpin
</humor>
(I added the humor tag in case Roman Mir thought I was serious)
To be, or not to be: isn't that quite logical, Slashdot Beta?
After all the fixed costs of connecting each house is the same.
Not really, especially when you get into the back-end. This gets complicated, I'm not an expert, I mostly worry about field capacity, stability, and such using generators in remote locations.
Somebody who merely uses less electricity isn't as much of a load on the electric lines as somebody who puts solar lines up, as aaarrrgggh mentions.
That's because, just like roads, while there's a fixed component to just having a line somewhere, there's also costs associated with sizing the lines based on maximum load and costs based on wear&tear on actually shipping the power. Most electric equipment is high durability, but there is gear that wears out, besides things like weather damage.
With just lowering usage you can shrink the size of the lines(or don't upgrade as you expand). Now consider the house w/solar panels situation - The house is using just as much power at night, so you can't shrink the lines, but now it's producing power during the day when people are generally not home, which translates to current on the lines(losses). Right now that doesn't matter much in most areas because vampire drain and such from homes to do things like keep fridges running and AC/DC converters warm, as well as homes with occupants means the power won't go far. But if you get enough solar panels now you need the infrastructure set up to move the power away from the neighborhood to the rest of the grid.
As for the last part of your comment, while I don't live there anymore, my old utility in ND would cut your rate by about a penny for any kwh over ~1k/month. It's political maneuvering why places like California charge you more per kwh if you 'use too much'.
I don't read AC A human right
I guess the extra cost to the utility to interoperate with a grid tie justifies a higher Service Charge for grid tie customers.
This thread is full of a bunch of people who aren't from Arizona and don't have rooftop solar. I, on the other hand, am from Arizona and have rooftop solar.
I live in Tucson and have electric service with TEP. Everyone, including those with and without rooftop solar, already pays a $10/month "Customer Charge". Reading verbatim on the back of my bill, the Customer Charge is "A fixed fee that helps cover the cost of maintaining electric service to your address. This fee does not vary with usage." Solar customers, as well as everyone else, already pays $10/month to maintain the grid. Now the Arizona Corporation Commission is unfairly telling the solar customers that they have to pay more than the non-solar customers to maintain the grid.
Supporting net-metering requires adding additional complexity to all the billing, customer service, and other IT systems at a utility.
That leads to more things to build and test when making changes to those systems -- the cost of which could be very much out of proportion with the number of customers who have net-metering.
Well, here's something to think about; a nice "teh eevil terrists" counter-argument: Distributed power generation, like solar or spread-out wind, is terrorism-proof. It would take thousands of coordinated attacks (people climbing around on your roof wearing a bomb girdle ?!?) to take down the grid in case of terrorism or war.
On the other hand, a centralized nuclear power plant, or a coal power plant, is NOT terrorism proof. It needs just a single terrorist engineer, undercover for as long as it takes to be in the "inner circle" with access to the "Homer Simpson control room" to bring the grid down.
This argument was particularly potent in the '70s-'80s, when governments seriously considered building fast breeder reactors: You'd need a police state to protect the reactor from terrorists so it doesn't contaminate your own country; and you'd need a surveillance state for background checks on the engineers allowed to operate it. Basically, you'd need a police state. With central control of the electricity (just cut off any provinces or states that get too "uppity").
Of course, some people were obviously all FOR it.
To be, or not to be: isn't that quite logical, Slashdot Beta?
you can't have someone competing directly with a public utility monopoly.
Natural monopoly is a myth. Government-granted utility monopolies reflect the municipal government's failure to efficiently use the space under its roads. Cities should bury conduit and sell real estate inside the conduit at reasonable rates. At that point, cities would renew utility franchises on nonexclusive terms, allowing two power companies just like there are two Internet companies (DSL and cable).
Over the 360-month expected service life of a set of rooftop PV panels, $4.90 per month knocks $1,764 off the lifetime ROI of a grid tie. In a borderline case, this $1,764 might tip the scales between installing and not installing PV panels.
Let's say I don't put up that many panels, but just one of them. That produces about the same amount of power that my fridge uses daily. So in fact, there is exactly zero difference between putting up a panel, and buying a new energy star fridge.
Then wire up your house so that the PV panel doesn't pump any power back into the grid. Run the fridge on a separate circuit with a flywheel to store the panel's energy.
But I'm waiting for the day when I walk into an ice cream store am told that my ice cream cone is $3 and there's a $10.60 customer charge for a total of $13.60 for my ice cream cone.
It wouldn't be without precedent. Credit cards with high credit limits and high rewards, such as the American Express Delta SkyMiles card, charge an annual fee. Warehouse clubs such as Costco and Sam's Club charge an annual fee to shop there. A multichannel pay TV operator charges an annual fee to be allowed to order pay-per-view movies and pay-per-view sporting and sports-entertainment events. Apple and Microsoft charge an annual fee to run software that you wrote on an iPod touch, iPhone, iPad, or Xbox 360 that you own.
Obviously you have never taken a look at the California ISO website during the summer, which gives real information on demand and production. as opposed to rants of solar fanboys writing for Wikipedia. Peak production from solar occurs at 12 noon, peak demand occurs at 6PM. Solar does help with energy production during the hottest part of the days but is no help when demand is highest and thus does nothing to reduce the need for spinning reserves.
A Shadeless room is a brighter room.
your hydrogen will store indefinitely
How so? I thought compressed H2 had a tendency to leak out of any affordable container. And good luck using it to heat your home through the winter when the sun isn't out as much.
Well duh. they're probably OWNED by the State. At least they should be?
To be, or not to be: isn't that quite logical, Slashdot Beta?
Would the penalty for not connecting to the grid be interpreted as a "tax" in the same way that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the penalty for not signing up for insurance that conforms to the Affordable Care Act is?
The utility should pay a fee for being able to have power generated by their customers. After all, the customer is footing the expense of installing the solar panels. What would be really interesting is if there were some competition (gasp!) and the consumer would be able to provide power for the utility that offered the best price for their product.
Fuck these crooks. $3.7M buys a lot of infrastructure improvement.
Erm no it really doesn't. $3.7m could buy maybe one or two HV transformer replacements (like for like, this does not include engineering costs). You could maybe upgrade one or two substations. In the street it would buy you a shitload of pole mounted transformers, but as for replacement and installation costs you'd get about less than 10 of those in for that price. You could do quite a bit of LV inspection but wouldn't scrape the budget needed to do HV inspection and maintenance including dropping people onto UHV powerlines via helicopter. You don't get to overhaul a turbine for that money, and even the basic control systems can cost somewhere in the order of that figure.
The reality is you can't do much at all for $3.7m.
An old transmission engineer I know (now in his mid 70s) used to talk about that stuff. These days we have semiconductors that can handle the situation so it's no longer difficult.
I'd say "the grid cannot handle that instability" has not been true in your entire lifetime.
Where are you getting this shit, recent polsci grads in some sort of thinktank? What is it exactly that you do for a living? You refused to answer last time I asked.
There's another example that shows you just string together words that sound impressive without having a clue - induction has nothing to do with being able to supply power at peak times and reduce the demand on other generators.
Large spinning generators can help smooth transients because of their inductive nature. VAR flow is where this is seen. Regardless, solar cannot respond to a peak and therefore cannot smooth it. Solar can supply some of the demand that makes up that peak, if the sun is shining at that particular time.
Why shouldn't those who need it or negatively impact it pay for it?
Agree. Hidden subsidies are by definition "unfair" in a capitalist society- which reminds me, when will (we) the proudly capitalistic coal consumers start practicing what we preach and compensate the rest of the planet for the health problems and environmental damage they have dumped on us over the last century?
The real cost should probably be even more.
Acid rain, deadly pea-soup fogs, black lung, AGW, ocean acidification, mercury in fish, dead rivers and reefs, the list is long and the deeds immoral.
Its only $4.95/mo.
When the hidden subsidies are removed from coal consumers their bill will be considerably more than $4.95mth. And to show there's no hard feelings, forget the "past due amount" and let a coal consumer deduct $4.95 from their "externalities" bill and add it to mine, I would gladly pay the connection fee for both of us in a "fair" world.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
I believe, if you recall,our very first interaction began with you attacking me. I see you still intend to keep it up.
Which has nothing at all to do with supplying power at times of peak demand.
Stop trying to distract the kiddies with big words they don't understand just to attack an energy source that threatens the one you are trying to sell to them.
The main article of this thread covers only one aspect of this subject. Over the years Arizona Public Power's (APS) regulated rate structures, developed while solar electric was not a main consideration, evolved such that most fixed costs were monetized into part of the variable (energy) price. Maybe a little too ideal for solar. This balance is likely to get shifted in the next general rate case. Solar has two impacts on the utility, mostly it directly reduces the total customer purchased energy, and secondarily has the utility act like a free battery if there is net metering. Both of these impact the utility revenues and costs. These can be sort of measured by careful accounting. There are also benefits to both the utility and the public, but they are harder to quantify. APS claimed that they see few benefits, but do see costs. Not surprising as you have to look harder and many of the benefits (lower pollution) accrue to the public. APS's main complaint was that this represents a shift of fixed costs from solar users onto the non-solar users because any non recovered costs will be simply added on to the future base rate. No credit is being mentioned that the solar users are investing in a cleaner environment to the benefit of the non-solar users. That is the stated objective of the Renewable Energy Portfolio that Arizona has adopted.
Wanna bet?
That depends on how many Amish live in Florida.
"Aluminium smelting is the process of extracting aluminium from its oxide, alumina, generally by the Hall-Héroult process. Alumina is extracted from the ore bauxite by means of the Bayer process at an alumina refinery.
This is an electrolytic process, so an aluminium smelter uses prodigious amounts of electricity; they tend to be located very close to large power stations, often hydro-electric ones, and near ports since almost all of them use imported alumina."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium_smelting
Most areas in the states don't have any subsidies beyond helping with the install costs. Without German-style 'We pay you for every kwh you generate and consume yourself' subsidies two meters just aren't necessary when you're doing net-metering. Because we don't generally have generous purchase subsidies for solar electric, instead paying wholesale or 'deferred credits' most solar installs are quite deliberately somewhat undersized so the consumer still purchases 'some' power. 70-90%, generally speaking.
On the question of actual usage, collecting the data, you don't actually need 2 meters, you need a fancy one. Most solar power inverters actually have better meters and logging options than the relatively barebone ones most power companies are still using(in the states), especially if you buy one of the add-ons that allow you to log everything to a computer.
I don't read AC A human right
So, first solar companies lobby politicians to support solar power and impose regulations on electric companies. Then, electric companies are lobbying politicians to compensate them for lost business. It's crooks on all sides.
FTA:
Arizona Public is required to buy solar power from customers with rooftop panels, and the commission agreed with its argument that the policy unfairly shifts some of the utility’s costs to people without panels.
Come on, comrades, everyone should be supporting one power generation collective. What Arizona Public needs is some solidarity and loyalty from you people of the state. We don't want any individuals breaking away and spending money on fancy solar panels to make their own electricity.
I find it ironic that an American company is wheeling out communist-like arguments to protect their business.
So do not connect to the grid.
Establish a local and grid power distribution in the house
and never connect the two.
With some planning (not unlike grey water for the lawn) it should
be possible to move many home services from the grid to local.
The most obvious to me are battery charging stations for phones,
tablets, CARS and more. Automobile batteries are big and have
a dedicated plug. Use the local plug on a sunny day and the grid
plug as needed. Hot water and home AC+ventilation are other
big power consumers.
Electric autos are interesting because with correct configuration
they can be both local home storage as well as stored fuel for
transportation.
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. Mark Twain.
A sock puppet account telling someone they lack integrity... I can't decide whether roman_mir is Slashdot's longest and most elaborate troll or just some poor libertarian making a rapid descent into insanity.
Peak production from solar occurs at 12 noon, peak demand occurs at 6PM.
If you're going to be an condescending asshole, you might as well get your facts correct. :-P
Peak production for solar in the summer generally occurs at 1 PM, not 12 PM (during non-daylight savings time the peak is at 12 PM).
Peak demand for the year is generally between 3-5 PM, not 6 PM and typically around 4:30 PM.
At 4:30 PM solar output is starting to drop, but is still producing significant power since many utility scale plants use tracking systems which allow production to remain very flat for a few hours around solar noon. Fixed pitch solar can easily be biased towards mid-late afternoon peaks by aiming farther west rather than south which most systems aim for in order to maximize energy production instead of aiming to match production to demand.
It would not take much storage for your typical home PV system to shift load to the utility peak - probably no more than 5-10 kWh of storage for your typical house.
References:
California ISO Today's Outlook
California ISO Renewables Watch
California ISO Peak Load History
Are Solar Panels Facing the Wrong Direction?
That sounds like it's an order of magnitude too high. Is it a copy paste error?
Last I knew you lose in the deal with solar. That is, more energy is put into the manufacturing of the cell than you'll get out of it in the lifetime of the cell thereby making this all a boon doggle. Does anyone know if that's still true today? Where to get a great deal on good units?
The US big government was bought out by massive corporations decades ago.
Most of the US conservatives that 'hate' government and want to see its power reduced, are also in favor of things that make government ineffective. Money=free speech is popular in conservative circles, but that is the very problem causing the government to be filled by cronies each election cycle.
I don't care how enlightened your government is, if all major corporations in the world turn their attention to your elections.. good luck.