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Oklahoma Moves To Discourage Solar and Wind Power
Hugh Pickens DOT Com (2995471) writes "Paul Monies reports at NewsOK that Oklahoma's legislature has passed a bill that allows regulated utilities to apply to the Oklahoma Corporation Commission to charge a higher base rate to customers who generate solar and wind energy and send their excess power back into the grid reversing a 1977 law that forbade utilities to charge extra to solar users. 'Renewable energy fed back into the grid is ultimately doing utility companies a service,' says John Aziz. 'Solar generates in the daytime, when demand for electricity is highest, thereby alleviating pressure during peak demand.'
The state's major electric utilities backed the bill but couldn't provide figures on how much customers already using distributed generation are getting subsidized by other customers. Oklahoma Gas and Electric Co. and Public Service Co. of Oklahoma have about 1.3 million electric customers in the state. They have about 500 customers using distributed generation. Kathleen O'Shea, OG&E spokeswoman, said few distributed generation customers want to sever their ties to the grid. 'If there's something wrong with their panel or it's really cloudy, they need our electricity, and it's going to be there for them,' O'Shea said. 'We just want to make sure they're paying their fair amount of that maintenance cost.' The prospect of widespread adoption of rooftop solar worries many utilities. A report last year by the industry's research group, the Edison Electric Institute, warns of the risks posed by rooftop solar (PDF). 'When customers have the opportunity to reduce their use of a product or find another provider of such service, utility earnings growth is threatened," the report said. "As this threat to growth becomes more evident, investors will become less attracted to investments in the utility sector.''"
The state's major electric utilities backed the bill but couldn't provide figures on how much customers already using distributed generation are getting subsidized by other customers. Oklahoma Gas and Electric Co. and Public Service Co. of Oklahoma have about 1.3 million electric customers in the state. They have about 500 customers using distributed generation. Kathleen O'Shea, OG&E spokeswoman, said few distributed generation customers want to sever their ties to the grid. 'If there's something wrong with their panel or it's really cloudy, they need our electricity, and it's going to be there for them,' O'Shea said. 'We just want to make sure they're paying their fair amount of that maintenance cost.' The prospect of widespread adoption of rooftop solar worries many utilities. A report last year by the industry's research group, the Edison Electric Institute, warns of the risks posed by rooftop solar (PDF). 'When customers have the opportunity to reduce their use of a product or find another provider of such service, utility earnings growth is threatened," the report said. "As this threat to growth becomes more evident, investors will become less attracted to investments in the utility sector.''"
Why do investors think they are entitled to growth?
There is a risk to returns. If the investors want no risk then they should get no gains.
Obviously this varies from region to region, but I was always led to understand that in hot locales, peak was late afternoon, when houses began to cool down, and businesses were still cooling. ...part of the reason why large solar plants are moving to molten salt -- to keep providing power in the early evening when the sun isn't directly overhead.
'When customers have the opportunity to reduce their use of a product or find another provider of such service, utility earnings growth is threatened," the report said. "As this threat to growth becomes more evident, investors will become less attracted to investments in the utility sector.''
Suck it up princess!
I know you're going to fight tooth and nail to get legislators to protect your business model but the writing is on the wall. Feel free to look up buggy whip manufacturers if you want to see how this story is going to end in the long run.
Oh, and if you think we, the public, are going to feel any sympathy for you as your business model gets replaced by newer and better technology, trust me when I say you're wrong. No sympathy. Adapt or die.
I know you think legislate or die are the options on the table but I assure you, it's adapt or die.
Battery backup to completely cut from the grid. When people learn how well it works the pace will accelerate until no residential power users exist. You can bet that long term.
I bet republicans are behind this.
500 customers from 1.3 million is pretty much a rounding error. You can't tell me that they are such a drain on the system that the power company can't pay the maintenance costs.
Just because the current technology isn't good enough doesn't mean "solar power" is going to be bad forever. That's like comparing a Ford Model T with an IBM Model M.
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
If you take off your "Electric Companies are TEH EVIL" hat for a second, it's pretty interesting that they have the same issue that states do with paying for roads in relation to electric cars. That is, someone generating electricity or using an electric car is making use of a resource where the cost of access is subsidized by something you are no longer consuming.
I think the electric companies have a pretty good point that they still have to pay to maintain lines to your house even though you are now consuming a fraction of what you would have.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
This seems like the sort of problem that could be much more logically and less painfully solved by breaking out the (more or less constant, at least within a given size class and geographic area) grid hookup cost and the per-KW/h price for electricity as separate items on the bill.
Infrastructure doesn't build and maintain itself, so if you want to maintain your connection, it's only logical that you'll pay something for that. If you try to bundle the distribution costs into the energy cost, though, you just get a bit of a mess since the amount a given person is paying for infrastructure can vary wildly and you end up having to field requests like this. Even here, they make a somewhat arbitrary distinction between users who do feed to the grid and those who don't (who presumably also use less power but just aren't easy to identify). Just break out the two items and call it a day.
Assuming the maintenance costs are built into the cost of a kilowatt-hour and your budgeting process assumes a minimum usage to recoup each customer's share, customers that dip below the minimum would necessarily need to pay more.
The real question is why they feel the need to change the base rate (the most politically difficult route, as you have to convince the Public Utilities Commission of your state) instead of adding a "co-generation fee" or something similar to make up the difference.
A co-generation fee would only make sense if it was extra work for them. The baserate is the correct place to do it but not the way they are doing it.
They shouldn't charge a different baserate to different customers. There should be a "connection fee" and a "per kilowatt" fee. The "connection fee"
should be the same whether you use 0kw, 1kw, 100kw, or negative kilowatts. Whether and how much you should get credited on the "per kilowatt"
side if you go negative should be the only thing being debated. On a somewhat related note, I kindof like how alot of other countries do utlities and
charge progressively. The first kilowatt is cheap but if you are a high user (i.e. business or rich) then each additional kilowatt gets progressively
more expensive. This encourages conservation and is a decent type of consumption tax (assuming they reduce taxes elsewhere) as it allows the
poor to get basic electricity for free but charges a "luxury tax" on richer high usage consumers. Of course this works better in countries where the
government owns the electricity.
They say they want to start working out a solution BEFORE it becomes a big problem.
A solar customer could sell lots of power to them around noon, and use about the same amount at night. This customer would have an electric bill of $0, because they put as much energy into the grid as they took out. In 10 or 20 years, if a million customers are doing that, you have the power company trying to run on a budget of zero - no money to pay salaries, no money to fix equipment, etc. Obviously that doesn't work, the power company would go broke and noone would have power, except while it's sunny. They don't want to wait until that happens to address the problem, a problem which probably will occur if nothing is changed.
At present, more or less all the options for electricity storage pretty much suck. Some of the more advanced purpose-built ones (fancy batteries, supercapacitors, that sort of thing) might actually be reasonably efficient; but the cost enough that it hardly matters. The ones you get 'for free', like pumped hydro, are not particularly efficient and only work if you have certain conditions in place.
I think the idea is to get this passed while it is still "only" 500 people. They would get a lot more push back if it was 5,000 or 50,000 at which point it would start to be a significant factor pushing up costs for others. NOTE: I think they need to evolve with the times, not try to charge more to sustain their model but I do understand why they are doing it.
Perhaps this is all a part of the vast right-wing conspiracy against green energy. Can't let the hippies win!
I live ze unknown. I love ze unknown. I am ze unknown.
Oklahoma has some fantastic wind & solar resources and adjoins the Texas Panhandle where there are many wind turbines and therefore a reasonable transmission infrastructure.
Even if they didn't need the wind & solar, Texas can make very good use of it. They should be investing in those resources and they could probably get Texas to pay for a big chunk of it.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
The costs are built in, that's standard in any utility.
I've talked to one of our utility boards and sat in on their meetings. Around here, you pay for the box that measures the electricity going both ways instead of the usual one way box. Other than that, you get paid the normal rate for sending power to the grid, despite some people wanting to scam a premium for renewables.
As to the infrastructure, it costs the same whether you are using it or not, the big cost is the power, especially at peak. It's very expensive to import power, and that has to be done a lot. It's also very expensive and difficult to get new power plants built. Having customers supplement the available supply makes things better for the utility company, their customers, and everyone else down the road as well.
What you're seeing in Oklahoma is just a greedy money grab by some heartless bean counter that is conveniently ignoring the benefits so they can try to push off some unavoidable expenses on their part onto their innocent customers.
It's too bad they couldn't store that energy in another way for long term usage in batteries. Are the windmills too efficient?
This is NOT about efficiency, it's about availability. With wind and solar there are unpredictable variations in the power provided. The problem here is that this variation in power output effects the stability of the power grid in a number of ways. The most basic issue is that the electric providers must schedule power generation literally *hours* (and sometimes days) in advance. This means you order capacity to cover the possible variations from all these solar and wind power sources. But capacity costs money if you use it or not, because you committed to burn the fuel, but you didn't use the power.
So, solar and wind add to uncertainly and lead to more fuel waste. This translates into increased financial costs/KWh that is not always apparent to users of the grid. Battery storage could help, but it is hugely inefficient so most solar and wind power installations don't have any storage capacity.
There are other stability issues, but they get pretty hard to explain..
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
The last time I looked, the flip side to a regulated utility was a deregulated utility. Deregulated utilities end up as monopolies.
The other last time I looked, business interests of all kinds turn to governments to maintain their profits, and raise barriers to competition. And spare me the "The problem is bad regulation." That's not the problem.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
You obviously are not familiar with Oklahoma.
Oklahoma is a firm Republic state, and past experience tells me this will be legislated.
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
The utilities were already required by law to buy customers' solar power at full retail price. That eliminated any free market angle right then.
This just modifies the laws.
If you are a huge free market fan, would you agree that removing the regulatory requirements on these utilities and letting them determine what to pay for customer-generated solar power would restore the proper order?
We all know that wouldn't work. With only one way to sell their solar power (through the utility) the utility would just refuse to pay them anything.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Exactly this. They shouldn't charge solar customers a higher base rate, they should make the pricing more transparent. Charge everybody a monthly connection fee. That goes to maintain the lines. Then you charge for electricity consumed by their plant. They have two businesses going, generation and distribution. Their pricing should reflect that.
I think the electric companies have a pretty good point that they still have to pay to maintain lines to your house even though you are now consuming a fraction of what you would have.
I don't know about Oklahoma, but my bill is split into two parts: a fixed per-day customer charge, plus a separate charge per kWh. Presumably, the charge per day covers the lines and administrative overhead. (The per-kWh charge is further divided into separate fuel and generation charges, and the fuel rate changes frequently.)
If Oklahoma uses this system, then the utility is being fairly compensated for the power lines no matter how little electricity the customer actually buys.
It's about time that power companies realize that their most important goal is not in providing customers with a quality source of electricity, but in making investors as much money as possible.
These customers currently (using OGE, one of the utilities for Oklahoma as an example) get to sell power during the day at $0.14/kWh and buy it back at night at $0.0027/kWh. They are using the grid as a 500% efficient battery.
If they go to using an actual battery, will have to increase the size of their array many times in order to reach the same level of monthly bill reduction they currnetly have. And they have to buy a battery.
The current plan is an enormous subsidy to solar customers. That's why they will stick with it. Even if a fee is tacked on top which reduces their financial advantage it will still be far more financially advantageous than going off-grid.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
"The state's major electric utilities backed the bill but couldn't provide figures on how much customers already using distributed generation are getting subsidized by other customers"
How does generating your own electricity subsidize other customers? Isn't this just a way of the utilities to gouge more revenue out of people who use less of their expencive electricity.
>I think the electric companies have a pretty good point that they still have to pay to maintain lines to your house even though you are now consuming a fraction of what you would have.
Which is why I, as a solar customer, pay $12 a month to PG&E to maintain the grid.
It's interesting that OK thinks that it's OK to change solar customers higher *power rates* instead. This means that it will penalize people for having smaller solar installations, and still not recover any extra tariffs from large installations that break even (or come close to it).
I should also mention that PG&E has been lobbying furiously in the state to void the CA state senate's decision that they need to pay me 3c/kWh for any excess generation I produce. We're still freeloaders, somehow, even though they're technically the ones trying to freeload on us.
It's amazing how much bullshit they and their shills have spit over the issue, and how the local newspapers have lapped it up, uncritically.
Do Oklahoma power companies not charge separately for connectivity and power consumption?
I thought it was common sense to be charged a fixed daily rate and an additional rate per kWh.
The fixed rate is supposed to pay for transmission lines, maintenance, billing, customer support etc. The kWh rate pays for generation.
It's true that the vast majority of damage to roadways is from trucks, but there's also an opportunity cost of roads to which every road user contributes.
In other words, if you could magically remove a portion of users from the roads without affecting commerce, you could reclaim some of the lesser-used road lanes for taxpaying businesses and thereby improve that land's cost effectiveness to the city.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
If homes with the solar panels had electrical storage systems and disconnected from the utility, the utility would not have a case. It's hard for me to understand why people attack the utility when the money types get a free ride paid for by those who can't cash in. The crowd that can afford the solar panels can afford to chip in to help support the utility. I live in an apartment. Why should my bills have to help cover the extra capacity needed when the solar panel people have a bad day and want the power.
At its core, Solar is solar and it all suffers from one glaring problem, it's extremely difficult (i.e. impossible) to accurately project how much power you will get from an installation at any single instant. Power grids must always have excess capacity available or risk going down and most industrial sized power plants take hours to throttle up while usually providing very little storage capacity. So you have to schedule hours in advance how much fuel to burn which means you have to know how much power you will need to have. Solar power may or may not be available and may come and go on a partly cloudy day, meaning that providers have to schedule excess capacity to cover for this uncertainty. This means that a Kw/H from a solar plant is worth somewhat less than from a power source that is easier to predict because it wastes more fuel to keep enough capacity in the system when you use solar.
This issue with solar will *not* go away. What may happen is that we may be able to someday store electrical power and smooth out the uncertainly.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
I don't know how or where this "grow or die" idea began, but it's just plain wrong.
It's not grow or die. It's grow or lose investors. If I own a company (I'm a shareholder) and want a return on my investment the only way for that to occur is for the company to grow. In fact it has to grow faster than the rate of inflation or I will be losing money. The company has to engage in profitable activities sufficient to generate a return for investors. If the future value of risk adjusted cash flows is lower than another potential investment then the company will lose investors because they will put their money into the other investment.
You can't have infinite growth within a finite market.
I've never seen a company experience infinite growth or anything close so that's kind of a meaningless statement. You can however have substantial growth rates for a long time both for a company and for a market. There are companies that have grown by 10%+ per year on average for decades.
Size? Potential size?
you mean in square feet?
No, no -- he's clearly talking in terms of coconuts to sparrows.
:-P
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
Where I live a large number of summer homes are unoccupied the majority of the year, to get around zero charges for empty homes (which still require system maintenence to keep connected) the utility charges a daily connection fee, coupled with slightly lower per KWh charges.
This change in billing structure could easily solve the $0 solar customer problem.
However the proposed changes, raising the base rate, will also encourage energy conservation.
Last I checked Oklahoma was not growing at such a fast pace that electrical services are in an "expanding" phase. More like "run and maintain" phase.
Nope, we are pretty much maxed out on power. Thus they are pushing out some programs to highly incentivise (by a factor of 10) to move power consumption out of peak time. They are putting in expensive smart thermostats that communicate rates to you that can change from on day to another depending on the temperature. they have rolled out smart meters that report back every 15 minutes on the usage. Basically, they know they need to build another plant but they are delaying as long as possible because it is a huge capital expense, and of course, no one wants to let them build it either, at least until the rolling blackouts start.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
They only make a profit if they can sell it or store it at the time it is being generated. When the demand dips low enough (a substantially non-zero number, given technical and business overheads), they start losing money.
Spot the contradiction in the above sentence.
Table-ized A.I.
What the hell are you talking about. Any engineer will tell you that generating power at peak demand is much more expensive on the plant than at other times. So even though the customer is being billed zero, the utility still gains. Of course the utilities are greedy bastards so they go to the government for more money that they somehow feel they are entitled to. You see the utilities are the real welfare queens here.
Further, they should go to charge you based on "time of use" for that Kw/H.
Personally, I think the electric company should *pay* (at a discount) the Solar customer for each Kw/H the customer provides based on their current cost on the wholesale market and not pay at the customer's current retail price. Yes, customers may get more or less than they pay depending on when the power is supplied to the grid, but this would more closely reflect the utilities actual costs and benefits.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
If Oklahoma uses this system, then the utility is being fairly compensated for the power lines no matter how little electricity the customer actually buys.
OG&E certainly does not do this, but that would certainly be a fair way to do it. Of course, then you run the risk of pissing people off with your complicated and proliferous line item charges,
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Obviously that doesn't work, the power company would go broke and no-one would have power, except while it's sunny.
So why don't they fix their broken model and charge a fixed fee for everyone that is connected to the grid. Oh wait, they already do that (albeit a nominal fee).
The "fair" solution is to set a fixed fee so that their grid-maintenance costs are covered. Then they can reduce their tariffs to reflect the true price of generating (not delivering) the electricity.
This is so incorrect I am not sure where you are getting your information.. Electric companies have the ability to finely turn their electric generation in the matter of minutes, they can sense a peak and turn up the power from one location, or a trough and turn it down. The only issue is for those that are already running at peak, but solar helps those, not hinders, sot hat would not be an issue here.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
Lets see them budget the cost of not having to build peaking plants and extra full power plants as renewables slow the need for growth.
:)
Accounting works both ways
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
Peak demand usually occurs between 11:00 and 2:00 pm. There is plenty of sunshine on rooftops at those times, so the panels are in fact generating power.
Did you click "reply" on the wrong post, because it doesn't sound like you read mine.
Let's pretend for a moment that solar can actually work on a large scale, maybe some new solar panel comes out that's 500% efficient. So most companies install solar panels. Therefore, the power company doesn't have to generate ANY power around noon. They save boatloads of money, right? They don't need to generate that peak power. (Not on sunny days, anyway, they still need to maintain the capacity.)
Okay, so the utility is now spending less. They are also billing most customers $0. They have zero revenue. Explain to me how you run a large utility without any money.
That WOULD be fair, for everyone to cover their share of the cost, what it actually costs to provide service to them. It's not politically possible, though, because residential bills would jump much higher. For years now, residential rates have been heavily subsidized by business customers. Outside of cities, it can cost hundreds of thousands to run lines several miles to serve a few households that have acreage. Suzy the barrel racer isn't going to pay $50,000 for the power to her house and barn.
Making it fair (everyone pays their own costs) would result in 500 happy companies for every 100,000 pisses off households (voters).
Short term throttling of power is possible for short terms, but most large scale plants throttle average power output in terms of hours not seconds. There usually is some stored potential form the heat already in the boiler. But that's for plants which are actually generating power right now and it is limited because it takes time to throttle up most burners and actually get the heat into the water. Plus, most plants will be operating near capacity anyway, which is where they are the most efficient.
Cold starts can literally take days for some kinds of fuels. Because of the lead time, scheduling of power capacity is usually done over a period of days, with finer and finer detail in the plan as the time approaches. Solar and Wind are extremely difficult to schedule as the weather is hard to predict. This leaves much more uncertainty in the plan, which means they have to keep more capacity in "stand by" longer. This costs the generator fuel, money buying and stockpiling fuel, wages and such.
Solar and wind are subject to the weather. Sometimes the wind blows slower than expected, or gusts cut instantaneous power available. Solar suffers from clouds drifting over the collectors. This means that capacity must be maintained to cover for these variations. Other kinds of plants don't suffer from variations in output, so you can run at lower margins. But with Solar and Wind, you have to maintain higher margins. Margins cost money by burning fuel and other operating costs or by keeping a quick throttling plant in a lower power output than it's ideal efficiency.
So Solar and Wind, simply because they are unpredictable cause inefficiencies in the system, waste more fuel as a result.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
You are absolutely right. You should start sending me that $500 / month you're saving for retirement. In 20 years, I'll send the exact same amount back. There is no reason you should be getting that gain from your mutual fund.
Oh, I forgot. You're clueless, so you're probably not saving for retirement, but rather expecting the government to take the money I save and give it to you. Anyway, just loan me $1,000. I'll pay you back in 20 years. The interest rate? What do you mean interest rate? Why would you expect a return?
They can even break it down more by showing you the cost of generation, transmission, and distribution.
That doesn't mean you have to use it. That's why they make transfer switches. And if you ever want to sell your house, you can be damned sure you'll get a better ROI if it's hooked to the grid.
Here's a juicy tidbit for those not familiar with the Codes: Builders and Fire Marshalls are not the only ones writing the codes. The mortgage underwriters and the insurance companies also have their hands in the pie (in addition to all the manufacturing special interests, like sprinkler manufacturers and hurricane strap companies). The insurance people want to minimize losses in major events, and the mortgage underwriters want to make sure they can resell your house when you default on the loan. Look at the codes with an eye to *who* wants to preserve their business helps to see how some otherwise odd provisions get put in.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
This change won't fix it. They're still doing billing based on net metering, which means a net zero consumer will still pay $0 (if I'm reading it right). They're just charging people with small solar systems a lot more.
PG&E does it with a monthly minimum for grid-tied solar systems, which is reasonable (or not, depending on the size of the minimum). But they're still lobbying hard to destroy rooftop solar in the state.
The utilities already charge a flat baseline connection fee. That should take care of all infrastructure and grid maintainance. If you want it your way then I say get rid of the flat connection fee.
You are correct that there is no good way to store grid-level amounts of power. The best we have is pumped hydro, but we will never build any more of that. (Environmentalists are working hard to try to tear down existing dams, so good luck building new ones to make pumped hydro storage. And the best sites have already been built anyway.)
I do have hopes that the Ambri liquid-metal batteries will work as promised. I'm not an expert on this stuff, but the technology does seem to make sense as far as I can tell.
http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/Slideshow-Update-on-Ambris-Liquid-Metal-Grid-Scale-Battery
Practical grid-scale energy storage would really help solar and other renewable energy sources become practical and dependable.
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
In Texas the State forced the Electric Utility to separate the delivery/distribution and generation portions of the business. Everyone pays the same fee for the distribution/delivery (infrastructure) and you are free to choose which provider generates the electricity you use. Of course there is a bit of a sham there in that many of the largest providers in Texas are all owned by the same holding company but it has helped bring a TINY bit of competition and downward pressure on electricity here. In this model a Solar/Wind customer would still be required to pay a monthly fee for the infrastructure and would pay or be paid based on their net usage or surplus generation of electricity. Of course I have no idea if that is actually what happens here in Texas and since it makes some sense, I actually doubt it. :)
The token connection fee, $2 or whatever, isn't significant. Get a cost quote to build power poles and run lines out to this guy's ranch and tell me $2 makes any difference whatsoever to the discussion.
If the connection fee were a) significant and b) based on the actual cost to run utilities to that particular customer, then you'd have a point. That, and if the utility were not forced to buy power they can't use. In some areas, utilities have to shunt power to ground, throwing it away, on sunny days - but they still have to buy the solar power they have no use for and have to pay to dispose of it.
The utilities already charge a flat baseline connection fee. That should take care of all infrastructure and grid maintainance. If you want it your way then I say get rid of the flat connection fee.
Do you know for certain that this is the case with this utility? I have a house in California that does not have a baseline connection fee. I have a house in Arizona that does have a baseline connection fee. I don't have a house served by this utility and don't know if they actually have a baseline connection fee.
Here in phoenix the plan I have with SRP charges me a $30 flat connection fee every month. $30 should be enough to cover line maintainance.
The Man wants us to pay for power.
Free power.
Power from the Sun.
An unlicensed, unregulated nuclear fusion reactor that gives us free power.
Power from the Wind.
An unlicensed, unregulated energy distribution device that consists of air that respects no international or state borders.
The Man wants you to be Serfs.
And this is why Solar and Wind are dangerous.
Because Freedom.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
It makes sense in the long term, because the lines have to be taken care for, regardless of the direction of how the meters are spinning.
There will be blowback though. It is very easy to have several circuits in a house on battery power, and instead of using an inverter to backfeed the electric company, have a charge controller keep a battery bank charged and attach inverters to that for very clean, stable power. No, these won't run an A/C unless one has a disproportionately large solar array, but stuff like computers and other electronic items can be moved completely from mains power.
This might be a good thing though... less power that the utility company has to generate and route, although it would mean less power coming its way from people's houses.
People can certainly do that. Having priced such systems a couple of times, I don't know why anyone who has access to utility power would spend huge piles of money on batteries that only last a few years, though. Maybe if there was a law forcing their neighbours to PAY them to waste money on expensive, toxic batteries.
This is a higher BASE rate. Not what they get charged for power. Since the customers are generating power and possibly even getting paid by the power company to do so, they are paying far less than most of us. But they still use the most expensive part of the utility, the lines. Green energy doesn't make power lines any cheaper.
When customers give power back, often the utility is required to pay them for that power. But wind and solar do not provide power to the grid continuously. When the wind picks up or the sun is out, suddenly all these people are providing power at the same time... and not when the power company needs it. The power companies methods of generating power do not ramp up or down easily. For example, coal burning plants operate very inefficiently when they are not running at full capacity. So every watt contributed by wind and solar actually make a coal plant even less efficient.
Shit like this is what will sink green energy. Turn it into a subsidy like Ethanol and it'll never get anywhere.
To paraphrase the last sentence, "People don't like making bad investments in dying industries. We want to require it."
Shouldn't fair share of the maintenance cost go into the cost per kilowatt hour? Sorry, but this smells like energy providers can't take the heat and they're penalizing solar/wind power generators in an effort to make them go "the hell with it" and sell their equipment on eBay.
Chewbacon
The Bible is like Wikipedia: written by a bunch of people and verifiable by questionable sources.
That's the Koch's, again, buying legislators.
As usual, their lobbyists (bribe bagmen) provide plausible-sounding bafflegab that has nothing to do with the reality. It's just there because most people cannot even find the details, much less understand them.
http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-solar-kochs-20140420,0,7412286.story
Look, these MBA's always chase the sure short-term dollar for a tactical idea, that leaves them with plenty of money, while disregarding long-term strategies.
AE is a utilities best friend. Instead, utilities should be pushing to have a clean separation of power vs. grid. In addition, they themselves should focus on storing the energy and selling it back.
Finally, if these utilities Executives had HALF a brain, they would realize that electric cars are about to come and they can make a killing on these since the majority will charge at night. As such, they can drop the expensive on-demand systems, and focus on lowering their costs to generation.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
That runs contrary to reality, at least according to progress/duke while I was working for them.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
Actually, we are getting ready to buy a tesla, and we have solar solar city. We will use the SC to run the house and charge the car. When the net drops, not an issue. It makes for a wonderful back-up generator.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Exactly. That is how I pay for my natural gas, a monthly service fee and charges for BTUs consumed. In the summer my service fee is typically more than my charges for the fuel but in the winter the fees are a fraction of the total bill.
I have no problem with having to pay for the utility to maintain the connection to the service separately to the services provided. If these people want to have the utility buy their power then someone has to pay for the connection. One might assume the utility should pay but it's not the utility that wins out in this arrangement, the homeowner does. Without the utility there the homeowner would have to invest in an expensive battery pack or have the power go out at night.
Without the connection to the utility the homeowner could not sell their power so the homeowner can pay for that connection. The utility might not mind buying the power but the hassle of having to deal with single provider that provides them so little power they might rather not deal with them at all if the utility had to pay for the line to their property too.
The change does not "discourage" wind and solar any more than any other homeowner provided power source. It just turns out that most people don't have a coal fired steam generator on their property.
I can hear it now, "But shouldn't we encourage wind and solar?" I'm not so sure. If wind and solar can't make a profit on its own merits then it's not a viable energy source. "But coal and oil gets subsidies too!" Yep, and they shouldn't get subsidies either. No more energy subsidies.
I like distributed power and we should have more of it. Problem is that the nature of wind and solar have tendencies to destabilize the electric grid. People with solar panels on their roof spreads out the energy generation sources but without utilities keeping the grid in order the rooftop solar panels don't help much. These homeowners need the utility more than the utility needs them. Let them bear the cost of the benefit of the grid connection.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
And here in KS your rates get raised if you use too much, so they need the funds to "build capacity". Use too little and your rates get raised because of "budget shortfalls". Water, electric...doesn't matter. Happens either way.
They are asking the government for a rate change, because the government sets the prices. Does that sound like free market to you?
If it WERE free market, customers would probably be charged based on the cost to serve them. If solar customers demand less from the utility, they pay less. It would certainly make you think twice about moving into the country, to some place where you have ten or twenty acres, though - installing and maintaining a mile of towers and lines for each customer would be expensive.
Lets see them budget the cost of not having to build peaking plants and extra full power plants as renewables slow the need for growth. Accounting works both ways :)
In the long run, you're correct. In the short run, sadly, my local electricity company applies for a rate increase to cover the depreciation on an already-existing peaking plant that is not being used at full capacity. And it's not limited to electricity. When we conserved water due to a drought, the water utility applied for rate increases, because we were not using enough water. But when we use lots of water, do they offer us a rebate? No, I think not!
I know that there has been some (largely speculative/small scale test) work on a pneumatic equivalent to pumped hydro, using oil and gas wells that have already been emptied of hydrocarbons but are suspected of being geologically sound enough to store compressed air; but I haven't heard of any commercial-scale deployments. Not sure if that one hit the rocks in some fairly fundamental way, or if it's just winding its way through R&D. That one would be handy if it did work, especially since a lot of the US petro production includes areas that don't have much in the way of hydro potential (even if you were given a free hand against environmental objections, hydro means some serious construction if you don't already have a reasonably appropriate site).
I know less about batteries; but I'd love to see something less obnoxious than lead acid become viable even at the smallish datacenter scale.
That's not what I was told. Peak power consumption typically happens shortly after sunset as people turn on lights, TVs, ovens, and so forth. Business and factory loads are winding down at that point but residential loads are winding up at the same time and overlap.
Solar power not only does not help in this case it hurts. There's all kinds of good information on this if you take off your solar powered blinders long enough to read some of it.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Not in this world sunshine. In this world we have a lot of wires running around the place so that other places can get that energy from photovoltaics at times of peak demand, which is in day time since few businesses operate at full capacity 24/7.
Please read what you've written, consider it, correct your mistake and resubmit. If that's not acceptable and makes you look disloyal to The Party and endangers your chance at getting promoted to Commissar then perhaps you would have better luck posting to another site where belief is considered far more important than reality.
Solar is even used at Dome A in Antarctica FFS - easy to install because it's on vertical poles! You sound like some guy complaining about how the horse will never be replaced by the motor car.
I believe such a comment after your misinformed comment about the peak happening after sunset is what is called an epic fail.
Even in the short term there's local transmission equipment that needs to be upgraded as peaks rise, or not if they do not rise so rapidly.
Electric Utilities are heavily regulated. I am not sure about Oklahoma, but in many states the rate that utilities can charge is tied back to the cost of electric production
Sure, and the battles over the rates that utilities pay for customer-generated electricity are raging right now.
Since electric production tends to be capital intensive
But in this case the utility customers are putting up the money!! I blew $19,000 on solar panels, my utility got a new source of electrons for no money down! I'm taking on the risk for them!
Feeding electricity back into the grid is not a free lunch for the utilities – there are costs involved.
Well the utilities say that, but it's mostly fear-mongering. The wires they built to send electricity to my house will happily carry electricity in the other direction. And again, compared to building a new fossil fuel plant buying my excess instead of fueling a plant is easy money for the utilities.
(and I am sure that electric utilities will whine loudly in an exaggerated fashion as they fight a rearguard action.)
That's what this is all about. Most states have net metering: if the utility sells to me at 15/kWh , I can sell my excess to them at the same rate. It's currently a win for the utilities because they're getting electrons in the hot summer with minimal capital cost, but they're throwing up roadblocks and raising rates now in fear of a future where a significant percentage of their customers are selling to them. In a fair system they would pay me what they would pay to run a plant at that moment, less a transmission fee and plus a bonus that my electrons are low CO2. this month's Sierra Magazine lists state-by-state efforts to fight net metering, refuse to hook up new solar installations, etc. South Carolina sounds worse than Oklahoma, there "initial determination that rooftop-solar leases should be banned as unfair competition to the utility industry."
In a sane approach to limiting global warming, there would be taxes on fossil-generated electricity or (less ideally) carbon emissions trading, and the utilities would be trying to figure out how to decrease those costs. Well hey look, our customers are putting up their own capital to solve the problem for us!
It's a similar situation with V2G (Vehicle 2 Grid) to cope with demand spikes and brown-outs. Electrical vehicle owners could be a huge instantaneous reserve of electrons to avoid, without the capital and operational costs of having dirty peaker plants on standby. There have been dozens of studies of this, but again the electric utilities are allergic to the idea of paying their customers. Most owners would be willing to let the utility drain 20% of their battery, but not if they get nothing in return.
I naively hoped that the electric utilities would be happy about distributed renewable power generation and would evolve to work with customers who are also suppliers to their mutual benefit. But it turns out they're wedded to the idea of burning fossil fuels to make electricity to sell to us, and many are in bed with the fucking Koch brothers. But soon they'll need electrons more than people with renewables need them: "SolarCity is partnering with electric car company Tesla ... to store solar energy in battery packs for use at night, with a connection to the grid solely for backup."
=S
Power grids must always have excess capacity available or risk going down and most industrial sized power plants take hours to throttle up while usually providing very little storage capacity. ... we may be able to someday store electrical power and smooth out the uncertainly.
There's a fix for that: all the electrical energy stored in electric vehicle batteries. Hence the dozens of studies and pilot programs of Vehicle 2 Grid systems where the utility can work with its customers to meet peak demand. And just like rooftop solar, the customer is spending the $1000s per kWh capital costs, not the utility!
But just like rooftop solar, when it comes to a utility actually paying its customers instead of billing them... Does. Not. Compute. <Utility looks around wildly for government people to influence so it can raise rates>
=S
That they will be successful is only a foregone conclusion in a country where people steadfastly stick to the belief that political donations are speech and that corporations have rights in addition to the rights of the individuals it employs.
Because there's only one interest possible in the corporate world - make some quick bucks for these particular electricity companies? No. You don't get it. This is not the only corporate interest out there. Even in a world dominated by corporate interests, which isn't the case in Oklahoma or the US, there would still be conflicts between the corporations.
Also, we see once again that certain people are willing to take rights away from business owners and employees. You still have that little problem that it is unconstitutional. The Constitution doesn't make an exception for agents of corporations from its lists of rights, enumerated or not. The whole point of corporate personhood is to honor those rights.
With wind and solar there are unpredictable variations in the power provided.
No true. In fact the UK National Grid considers wind and solar to be more reliable than fossil or nuclear generation because it is distributed.
We have extremely good short term weather prediction because we can observe clouds coming in from a long way off with satellites and ground observation. We can predict wind speeds over the next few hours with a high degree of accuracy too. If one set of solar panels or one wind turbine fails you don't lose much, compared to a fault at a fossil or nuclear plant that can take 1000MW or more offline instantly and without warning.
In other words on the time scales required to ramp up other forms of energy to cover dips in solar and wind output we have no trouble predicting what will happen. As battery based smoothing comes in (Japan already has a few 50MW packs installed for wind farms) it becomes even less of an issue.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
While driving around Honolulu back in February I couldn't help but notice something crazy like 1 out of every 6 homes had solar panels and/or solar hot water panels on their roof. I was in shock at the sheer number of solar panels strewn about on every single size and type of house I saw. I don't know what the power company there does but they seem to have it figured out since they seem to still be in business and everyone has power. I don't think the distribution lines are in any sort of disrepair as I didn't go through inspecting all the lines but it looked to all be in order. What do you think Hawaii has figured out that Oklahoma doesn't?
--- Nothing is secure.
OG&E certainly does not do this, but that would certainly be a fair way to do it. Of course, then you run the risk of pissing people off with your complicated and proliferous line item charges,
Of course, when pissed off people have nowhere else to go for their electricity needs, it hardly matters. (Unless pissed-off people are more persuasive to lawmakers than OG&E). But then, my ConEd bill has 9 different line items for electricity (and several more for gas).
OG&E always points out that they don't make a profit on generating electricity, they pass on the fuel charge to the customer. OG&E makes it's profit on distribution. Of course, what they DON'T tell you is that the company they buy the fuel from is OneOK, which is the parent company of OG&E. That's how you do an end run around the Citizens Utility Board. The CUB can't regulate OneOK because it is not a utility, so OneOK can charge whatever they want for fuel, so long as OG&E doesn't actually charge us more than OneOK charges them.
Oklahoma is the largest producer of Natural Gas per square mile of any state, but we don't have the lowest rates on Natural Gas of any state. OneOK, Chesapeake, Devon and Sandridge sell most of it out of state and charge us a premium for whatever is left.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
With wind and solar there are unpredictable variations in the power provided.
No true. In fact the UK National Grid considers wind and solar to be more reliable than fossil or nuclear generation because it is distributed.
That makes zero sense from a power scheduling perspective. There is no way you can know how much power a set of solar collectors will produce at any single instant, even an hour out. Sure, you can estimate that within some margin, but there is no way you are going to know the power produced each instant. Clouds move, change size etc.
So can you provide a source for your claim?
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
It's hard to believe you've written that in 2014. I suggest you stop recycling drivel that was probably proven wrong before you were born.
Yea... Since before I was born eh? Have you any clue when that was? Here's a clue:
Get off my lawn punk!
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
As far as pumped storage, how about using some of the old open pit mines as those can get fairly deep. If you used a mine like the Hull Rust mine on the north side of Hibbing, MN you would have around a 500 foot drop from the rim to the bottom. Granted that mine is still in use but there are others that are just a giant hole in the ground now.
Time to offend someone
Because FUCK YOU , that's why.
Excellent! The new policy is taking hold
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Fuck the rich assholes who have bought our state and federal lawmakers. And Fuck those lawmakers too. Be sure to wear a condom. Better yet, two.
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Most people seem to be focused on new battery technologies, which are designed to be small and light-weight - which is not important for solar. These newer batteries also tend to last no more than 3-5 years, and they are made of toxic materials. The lack of reasonable battery storage is one major reason I think solar isn't going anywhere.
These old-tech iron-nickel batteries sound very interesting. That information is more convincing than 99% of the pro-solar propaganda I've read on Slashdot.
At some point you have to stop pretending that the guy spitting in your face is there to make polite conversation.
Yes, before you were born. I'd say many decades before.
Why that long? Here's another clue - Einstein was they guy that figured out the photoelectric effect and then after the transistor was invented it became relatively easy to get nice well behaved AC out of DC sources like a large number of photovoltaics. It was possible long ago, but today it is both relatively cheap and easy.
Having a very large number of small sources of electricity right in the middle of cities are a blessing for power transmission and not your curse from political propaganda dreamed up by someone that has never even heard of an ohm. I suggest taking a practical instead of an ideological view since it's techies and not the greenies you wish to stop that are on this site.
Of course you were surprised, it's not what happens. Who showed you this thing and can the rest of the world see it too or do we just have to take it on trust? You've been bullshitted. Please stop spreading it.
Please tell me you are joking about that being the source that has convinced you of this bullshit.
While loads do vary around the world I certainly saw nothing like that when I was working in power stations.
> If everyone was on solar as you say there would be no problem because excess energy goes back into the grid
There would be no grid! If everyone (or many people) are producing a lot of energy for six hours per day, and therefore paying nothing, there's no money, and therefore no power grid.
> no more dependence on prehistoric power like coal and foreign oil, no more pollutants
For several hours, on sunny days. Except that there is no power, because there is no grid.
"There has grown in the minds of certain groups in this country the idea that just because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with guaranteeing such a profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary to public interest. This strange doctrine is supported by neither statute or common law. Neither corporations or individuals have the right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back."
-- one of Robert A. Heinlein's characters in the short story Life-Line, 1939
II hold a degree in Electrical engineering, so where you may disagree with my conclusions, I do have a few clues about what I'm talking about. My degree was earned about the time solid state photovoltaic technology was in it's infancy. I hold an Extra class radio license and regularly teach Radio, electronics and electricity to junior high, and high school students so I'm pretty sure I know what an ohm is, not to mention impedance, conductance and a whole host of generally advanced concepts used in electrical/electronics engineering. Heck, I even know when and how to use the square root of two and three...
At this point, I'm done debating with you. Not because I cannot answer, but because it doesn't seem to be worth it. Full stop.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
You mean 50MWh ? 50MW is kinda meaningless for batteries, are you quoting discharge speed ?
Typical of those in favor of solar and wind, most of them are not engineers.
Even if solar+wind works just fine 364 days / year, that's one day too little.
As long as solar+wind is replacing coal, I'm all for it, even replacing natural gas. But people forget that a new natural gas baseload plant is about 60% efficient, while a natural gas peaking plant is little over 20% efficient, so this only works if you can replace 90% of your baseload demand with solar+wind.
So far most solar+wind in large countries have resulted in more CO2 emissions whenever solar+wind is replacing baseload. If it can reduce need for peaking, then it's great.
Don't tell me baseload is not needed. This is a factoid that is yet to be proven. Replace all fossil fuels on a medium sized island like Puerto Rico, Hawaii, Bahamas or Bermuda, then we can compare notes on the economics.
You just rate the entire system at 80% of what you expect it to produce given current conditions, and small variations due to small passing clouds are absorbed. As I said, battery smoothing works well too.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
You just rate the entire system at 80% of what you expect it to produce given current conditions, and small variations due to small passing clouds are absorbed. As I said, battery smoothing works well too.
Ahh, you make my point then... What happens if you happen to produce 120% than expected? Great right? Perhaps, but my claim is that because you don't know and are only counting on 80% and got 40% more than you expected, somebody burned fuel in the expectation of providing that 40% and at least *some* of that will be wasted. See what I'm getting at? This is the waste I am talking about.
BTW, I understand that for wind power, you can only count on 25% of expected capacity. Solar is a bit better availability, depending on the kind of weather being expected, but is still not anywhere near your 80% number.
It's not that solar and wind are useless, but that there are unseen variables that add to their actual costs that most folks don't know or think about.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Power lines are shared. If I go off the grid that powerline is still going to run down my street. They don't have any justification for the fees they are imposing at this point when only a few people are putting power back into the lines. When areas progress to the point there the line costs are greater than the usage then they can raise prices to make it worth maintaining but before that point it's just an excuse to attack the competition they've never had to deal with before.
Furthermore, base rates are itemized on the bill to cover grid costs already and it has been this way for a long long time. Unless more powerlines are going down or they need expensive regulation gear or upgrades, then the connection fee to cover the grid costs should remain the same for everybody (unless your state lets them charge you by your actual location's cost - which I doubt because rural areas rarely pay the actual cost for their lines.)
Power Utilities are heavily (often poorly) regulated services which should have been publicly owned in the first place. The private ones get all kinds of welfare and free money gaming and corrupting the system. There is no reason they have to remain profitable; they can be regulated to bankruptcy and at that point the public can take them over while we all transition to clean energy. We should not hold back progress just so one corrupt old industry can stay profitable forever. The horse and buggy and iceman went out of business and coal can too. Besides, it's not like they invest in modern infrastructure; they just keep the lines going cheaply as possible and wait for disasters to get gov bailouts to do half ass upgrades.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Thanks.
Though I wonder where he got 'defending coal mining company jobs' from. Reviewing what I wrote, I think I kept it from really looking at utility generation methods at all.
I don't read AC A human right
This sort of thinking has the cost of the line be $0 every customer but the last one, who's charged millions. Not all that practical. It's much easier to look at the cost of the line* and divide by the number of customers. I'd say it's more fair as well.
You've presented two extremes, and neither represents the most fair and accurate way to allocate maintenence costs.
The most fair and accurate way is to look at who is served by each segment of the line. It makes no sense to make the last customer bear the entire cost of maintaining the entire line; but it does make sense to make him bear the entire cost of maintaining the last segment of the line, which serves only him. The next-to-last segment serves two customers, and its maintenance should be borne by those two customers; the next segment after that serves three, etc.
There are scenarios where simply dividing by the total number of customers can lead to severe misallocation of resources. If the line serves 999 customers who live in a relatively tight cluster, but the 1000th customer wants to build a home 100 miles from that cluster, the utility will never recover the cost of that extremely long line extension if the single customer it serves is permitted to pay "average" rates. The other 999 customers should not be forced to subsidize the new customer's unrealistic desire to live in such a remote location while enjoying all the comforts of civilization.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
Distribution utilities pay a wholesale price for each kilowatt-hour purchased from a generating facility. Individuals who want to sell excess power generated by their rooftop unit should have the same status as the big guys -- receiving wholesale, not retail rates for the power they put into the grid. (This encourages right-sizing of an individual's solar installation. Effectively, those individuals do get retail price for the non-excess solar power that they consume themselves.)
Once that level playing field is understood and established, distribution utilities should heartily welcome little guys selling power. The more places you can go to obtain the commodity you're redistributing, the better off you are. Each additional seller makes the market more competitive and makes the network more robust.
Perhaps what is needed here is breaking apart the distribution side of the business and the generation side, so each side can pursue their conflicting interests.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
If Oklahoma uses this system, then the utility is being fairly compensated for the power lines no matter how little electricity the customer actually buys.
That's true if the pricing scheme accurately reflects the costs. If the pricing scheme is a kludge that merely gives the illusion of providing an accurate cost breakdown, it is now coming back to bite them.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
I suggest looking at that right hand graph for at least a full second - and if that is not enough USE A RULER.
It looks like we've hit the depths of a bluff and a link to something that does depict what you say in the hope that it will be followed.
For those that didn't follow the link or didn't look at it properly it is a graph of typical seasonal loads of electric utilities in Eastern New England Division in 1919. That's certainly extraordinary evidence, and while it can be argued that it's probably irrelevant to today's usage it still doesn't have that 6pm peak the above poster says it shows.
I really hate it when comments that are really just politically motivated no holds barred green bashing turn up to try to encourage people to turn away from what is now mainstream technology. You should be ashamed of yourself blindseer.
Try using it instead of swallowing and regurgitating political bullshit. You've been getting very simple stuff wrong - try talking to someone in transmission for maybe about half an hour about these delusions.
Ah yes, talking about a 10% loss in transmitting electricity to what is effectively next door in transmission scales even if it takes an hour to get there in traffic - are you SURE you looked up actual figures?
To me it just looks like no holds barred Red on Green political action with a few technical sounding guesses (which you are probably very much aware are not correct) to try to make it look like it's not just an outright lie.
I'd rather this place remained a technical discussion site of a sort instead of a political rant site. You may hate the concept of people not buying power from a Party approved supplier, but the technology works, is mainstream, and I wish it had been on the grid when I was working in power generation and transmission in the 1990s because it would have made dealing with peaks a hell of a lot easier.
Solar panels are not really a "green" thing any more - they are used by people who do not care about politics, so please use a different target for your rants.
Other readers who don't already have an engineering background and time working in the electricity industry should feel free to follow the links and make up their own minds - but I'm sick of arguing against what I see here as either invincible ignorance or active disinformation. I suspect it's the second case and it turns my stomach - you are effectively grooming the kiddies to join up with the politics you are pushing.
Yes, but not very well since you mixed up a 3 and a 6.
The first link does not support your point - total household demand is typically far less than industry demand.
The second is cherry picking by choosing a place with almost no industry.
More utterly disgusting bait and switch. However your strong loyalty to your Party over and above the constraints of morality are noted Comrade.
Never had a brownout? Or a voltage spike? I had one a couple years back which blew up a low of lights and a bunch of equipment. Once you start allowing highly variable power sources into the grid, especially if you have feed-in tariffs, it becomes much harder to manage an electrical grid.
It also means the power company needs to spend money on peaking plants like natural gas fired power plants which may spend most of their time idle not generating any useful power while you still need to pay off the capital investments to build them. Not to mention that turbines have crap efficiency if you keep spooling them up and down all the time.
As more affluent people go off the grid people who can not afford home generated power will pay much higher bills as the utilities must hop scotch to get power lines to those forced to buy power. In effect the people who purchase power will be as if they are rural customers, few and far between. Conflict will follow. The same issue will strike with home education over computers. Stable homes with one parent at home can gain from a child being educated at home. Single parent and low income families will require brick and mortar school buildings. Obviously those educating at home will not want to pay taxes for those who are not in a position to educate at home. Colleges will also suffer severe change as the campus may become irrelevant for many college degrees. Technology may act as an amplifier for the friction between the haves and the have nots. The big question is how we get progress to work for all of us without placing burdens on those less fortunate.
It shows that you have fabricated a line of bullshit to push a political agenda.
US Energy Information Administration good enough for you?
On average demand peaks at ~1900. Overall power demand starts ramping up at 0500, reaches a relatively stable level at 0800 which lasts to 1700, peaks at 1900 and drops rapidly thereafter.
BTW, I DID go looking for actual household measurements, haven't found them yet.
I don't read AC A human right
Also known as rent seeking behaviour.
I'd better provide a simple thought experiment as to why the line you have been fed is bullshit, and as to why you should not have accepted it unquestioningly.
Let's consider an extreme.
Consider a well off area that has also got an insanely generous government handout for installing solar panels, a place with more houses with solar panels than anywhere else. Let's say it is a very sunny day, as sunny as it gets, but a nice breeze is blowing so it's not hot enough to run airconditioners. Let's say it's also a public holiday so a lot of people have turned a lot of things off and gone to the beach plus a lot of businesses are closed for the day. Let's say an incident kicks the local substation off the grid - what do you think happens?
What will happen is that even at the extreme end of the solar ownership graph there are enough people, small businesses etc without their own generating capacity but plenty of fridges, pool pumps etc that the total consumed in that area is still much less than the total generated. It means that some people will have electricity in that situation and some won't, and it will fall a long way short of the total demand.
Following me so far?
Let's consider things now at the substation while things are running normally. The area will demand a certain amount of power - it will be asking for less than anywhere else but will still be getting quite a bit off the grid and won't be sending anything back. Thus all locally generated power is used locally which means nearly zero line losses and no conversion up from 110/240V to 11kV or whatever so no losses there either.
Do you see it yet? Household solar is still a tiny proportion of generating capacity and even if it reaches saturation the electricity consumption of local retail, light industry etc is going to take all excess and ask for many times more in just about every situation.
Do you see now why I get so annoyed at people pulling such a blatant con as the one that was pulled on you and you innocently passed on? The "losses" confidence trick is of the scale of a manufacturer of dentures saying that brushing teeth is bad because it causes tooth decay.
In reality when an area demands less power that reduces network and generation costs. It doesn't "cause problems". It reduces them.
I think you need to re-read what 'strawman' means:
"The so-called typical "attacking a straw man" implies an adversarial, polemic, or combative debate, and creates the illusion of having completely refuted or defeated an opponent's proposition by covertly replacing it with a different proposition (i.e., "stand up a straw man") and then to refute or defeat that false argument, ("knock down a straw man,") instead of the original proposition."
I'll admit that I changed your proposition a bit - but I did so with the intent of firming it up enough to actually analyze it. While doing so I used public data that was available for basically the exact situation you described. I even cited it.
Second, While it might be a while if HECO has it's way, the fact that HECO was stopping connections because areas were hitting 100%(check the links!) tends to indicate that without those brakes 'not likely to happen any time soon' could be next year.
Though I should probably ask what you mean by 'substation level'. How many homes do you expect to see served by a substation? Do substations typically service mixed user groups, IE residential, commercial and industrial?
I don't read AC A human right
On 120% being a strawman:
Hawaii solar boom so successful, it's been halted, Dec 20, 2013:
On Oahu, 10 percent of utility customers will have rooftop solar by year-end, Rosegg said. That compares with California, where it is 2 to 3 percent, he said. And demand for new connections for PV has been heavy.
The new edict for Oahu mostly focuses on grid circuits where power available from rooftop solar reaches or exceeds 100 percent of the minimum daytime load, the low point of the total power that customers on a circuit are using.
About one-fourth of circuits on Oahu are at 100 percent, Rosegg said. At the current rate of adoption, Harris said, all electrical circuits controlled by the utility could be closed to small-scale solar within six months.
Changes could include adding grounding transformers or increasing the capacity of a substation, Rosegg said.
Combine the above statements with the power company allowing 120% Daytime Minimum Load(DML) that I found earlier, how long will it be before substations are seeing that 120%? Don't forget that commercial companies can install solar panels as well. I drive by that building fairly frequently, and it's not the only one with solar panels.
Another NREL study on Hawaii's issues, detailing technical information on WHY they're concerned.
I don't read AC A human right
One hundred fucking percent of residences. Did that make the point clearly enough so you can't pretend to not get it this time? Stop pretending to be too stupid to breath and take this seriously.
You seem to be under the mistaken impression that a solar generating unit can't just be taken off the grid like any other unit when the desired capacity is reached. What did you think those very expensive controllers that come with mains connected solar panels do?
If it was a taxpayer owned utility in those islands they would be cheering on the situation since they could save a lot of expensive fuel costs. It's only a compliant because it's a commercial enterprise seeing a reduction in profits. People still want power at night so the company is not doomed but they do not want to lose the profits they currently have - it's harder to gouge on low volume than high.
All of that should be very obvious once you know that there is zero threat of "overload" or whatever you have been imagining.
If we ever do get to the point where an area can supply your mythical 120% then that is actually very good news. Then instead of not accepting excess from panels beyond the 100% in the substation area it becomes financially viable to put in some gear to move the excess across to the next substation,. So once again, instead of creating problems it's reducing others. I can't see it happening soon at full peak load anywhere even if it may be able to work at 6am in Oahu in a few years. If it can happen there, good luck, I think they burn oil there so taking units off line means you can stop feeding them expensive fuel and get them up pretty quick when you need them later.
As an aside that may help with understanding, windmill farms and in some cases large arrays of photovolatics are made up of lots of little electricity generating units that are connected to the grid as required and disconnected when not needed. That's the only reason why windmills are in the mainstream of electricity generation at all - you need another 1.5MW so you connect another expensive and tiny windmill but the alternative is spending hours warming up 250MW of cheap coal capacity that devours fuel at a tremendous rate so at low demand costs a hell of a lot more per MW than a few little windmills. Rooftop solar is designed to be operated the same way with the excess generation capacity. Too much power? Stop it sending excess to the grid. The people living under it won't even notice unless they are getting paid for whatever they feed back into the local power network.
1. 953,207. Not a 'few thousand'.
2. As a small monopoly, HECO can't really have a world-wide impact. But it serves as a useful case study.
3. You have failed to address the technical problems listed in the links, ergo I still consider them a real-world problem, not 'invented'. Remember, equivalents to 'Nu-huh' don't count.
4. If you're an engineer who's worked with electrical systems, you should realize that powering up said generation capacity takes time, often an OOM slower than supply&demand can change at. A power supply that takes an hour to stand up isn't very useful when you need the power in 60 seconds.
5. The NREL study covers specific ways HECO wants any solar system installs to be set up, concerns about rolling standby power to cover fluxuations*, etc... If you don't think it points out concerns that I have, you're still making silly assumptions about my position(which is the definition of strawman): To restate yet again: I think there's nothing wrong with using solar power. However, as the deployment grows significant the power company/electrical grid MUST change the way they do business in order to cope. This includes altering their generation mix($$$), updating the grid to properly handle bidirectional power flow($$$), and changing their charging system to maintain cash flow in order to pay to maintain electrical infrastructure in areas that are now net neutral for electricity consumption.
*Some of which still needs to be built as solar installs expand.
I don't read AC A human right