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Energy Utilities Trying To Stifle Growth of Solar Power
An anonymous reader writes: Incremental improvements have been slowly but surely pushing solar power toward mainstream viability for a few decades now. It's getting to the point where the established utilities are worried about the financial hit they're likely to take — and they're working to prevent it. "These solar households are now buying less and less electricity, but the utilities still have to manage the costs of connecting them to the grid. Indeed, a new study from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory argues that this trend could put utilities in dire financial straits. If rooftop solar were to grab 10 percent of the market over the next decade, utility earnings could decline as much as 41 percent." The utilities are throwing their weight behind political groups seeking to end subsidies for solar and make "net metering" policies go away. Studies suggest that if solar adoption continues growing at its current rate, incumbents will be forced to raise their prices, which will only persuade more people to switch to solar (PDF).
This strategy is untenable in the long term - as battery technology grows better and cheaper thanks to the likes of Tesla, they will eventually drive consumers off-grid entirely with these punishment tactics, losing any chance of making money from them.
First there will need to be a minor revolt against codes requiring electrical service as a condition of human occupancy.
This. I have no problem at all if they want to split my bill into two parts, a fixed cost for just being hooked up and an incremental cost for generating the electricity I consume, as long as the two costs are calculated sanely. The proper fix is to adjust the tariffs to reflect the growing reality of universal connection without universal consumption.
Electric companies don't like being forced to pay far above their normal cost for something they have to throw away by shunting it to ground. That's net metering, when done on a large scale. The light outside might LOOK ten times brighter than the lighting inside Walmart, but it's actually 10,000 times brighter. Your eyes are very good at seeing in a wide range of light - from candlelight to full sun, a million times brighter. They do so by using a logarithmic, rather than linear, scale for brightness. For the same reason, although the noon sun may APPEAR to be only twice as bright as the sun at 9:00 AM, it's actually much, much brighter. Virtually all of the solar electric is generated when the sun is bright, from about 10:00-2:00.
What that means is that if most people had solar panels, from 10:00-2:00 they could generate as much power as they use the rest of the day. Their electric bill under net metering would be zero. However, the power company still has to provide power to them the other 20 hours per day - for free. See how that could be a problem for the utility, having to provide power for everyone, but nobody has to pay for it?
The utility can't give them back the power generated ten hours earlier, because there is no effective way to store power at utility scale. I know someone who heard a stock tip about some cool new company with magic storage will want to argue with me on that, but I've looked into all of the options and nome of them work at scale. You can try to argue with me, but I'll make you look very, very foolish when I apply some arithmetic to your idea.
Net metering is survivable if only 1% of people do it, because their neighbors can use their noon power. If everyone is doing net metering, you need a magic free energy source the other 20 hours per day. If you decide that solar electric implies net metering, you only end up proving solar electric to be impractical, because net metering absolutely, positively cannot ever possibly work for more than a small fraction of the population.
On a related note, if your argument for solar power assumes that solar means solar electric, you're probably shooting yourself in the foot too. There are several varieties of solar power that work well. Solar water heaters are a no-brainer. Solar electric is probably the silliest approach that anyone seriously suggests, as shown by the trillions of dollars we've wasted on utter fail so far.
I don't know if you've been following this story, but the efforts of the energy companies to thwart any development in renewables has gone a heck of a lot further than a $5 monthly surcharge.
In Oklahoma, Wisconsin and other states, they are requesting special taxes on solar panels. They don't even care if the money goes to them, they just want solar users penalized. Yes, this is about more than just the economics of energy. There is malicious intent.
You are welcome on my lawn.
The problem the utilities have here is that solar is dropping so fast in cost that it's now cost effective on a 10 year ROI to install. You can put panels on your roof with a loan right now where the monthly loan cost will be cheaper than the cost of the electricity it offsets. That's true right now in almost every state in the union. The utilities see this and see a death spiral because their entire business is built around making money generating power from dirty central hydrocarbon based power plants.
So the power companies do the natural thing, they try to get tariffs raised on the solar panels to make them more expensive and halt the installations. But the problem is the panel prices are dropping so fast that anything they do is just going to be temporary. The problem with chasing the "raise the cost of solar" method of competing is that at some point those increased costs make homeowner owned storage viable. Because of the screwing around with Tariffs that happened in Hawaii they now have a booming power storage market and people are beginning to disconnect from the grid entirely.
The power companies are scared that they'll sell less power to customers with solar panels and make less money (which will hit their dividends badly) but what they should really be worried about is customers disconnecting from the grid entirely. Every customer that disconnects from the grid raises the fixed cost transfer to everyone else, which raises power prices and makes solar more attractive. You end up with a self feeding harmonics that starts a slide into a situation that doesn't just destroy the power companies dividend but destroys the company all together.
The companies need to be evolving to be that backup power supply. They need to be shifting generation strategy and bringing online storage so they can displace the gaps so customers don't do it themselves. That's their future business, moving power around and storing it for use when the sun isn't shining. It's going to mean smaller companies and less revenue but that's better than no company at all. Forward looking states realize that the games the companies are playing with the solar tariffs right now are just that games, these states are mandating the companies invest in renewables and storage so they are ready for the change. The states without foresight are allowing the companies to put a big tariff on solar customers thereby driving them towards disconnecting from the grid entirely.
I think centrally managed storage and distribution is better than everyone running their own storage array. These companies are public utilities, that is government granted monopolies that the taxpayer has control over. We should be encouraging solar installation and investing in the grid changes necessary to support it because no matter what the solar is coming. The costs are dropping rapidly and have reached the mass acceptance pricing. Solar is already cheaper without any subsidies than nuclear power. In a few years it's going to be cheaper than coal with the subsidies and within the decade it'll be cheaper than coal without. If we don't make the changes to the grid right now we won't be ready for that colossal shift in generation and everyone will be installing their own backup systems and disconnecting from the grid (which is going to hurt the poor and those living in apartments very hard). I'd be willing to bet that by 2050 half of the homes in the US will have solar arrays on the roof and solar will comprise nearly 50% of the generation capacity.
I wouldn't be investing long term in residential power companies with heavy carbon assets right now.
The missing revenue is small, under $100 per year (12k miles per year for a 30 mpg car is 400 gallons of gas at $0.18/gal of tax for a total of $72). As an EV owner I would be happy to pay my fare share. I do not want a GPS tracker in my car, and would prefer either a flat fee per year or to have my odometer checked every couple years. Hell I want my taxes raised to properly fund schools too, there is an excess of dumbasses in this country.
EV's that charge at work combined with solar is a great combo, but it would be nice to see some of the Smart Grid fantasies come to reality so that I could just set my car to be charged by 7 AM and 5 PM and it would smartly play nice with the grid to charge when the sun is shining, the wind was blowing, or the dams are full. We are still a ways from the point where solar will fill in the afternoon peak daytime hours and EV's more than plug the night time trough in base usage, but those days are likely closer than we think.
> Because there isn't really a good pie yet, they take far too long to pay off and can be
> dangerous to air traffic and wild life if they are A. in the wrong place, or B. installed incorrectly.
Note the conflation of a single location on the planet with every system everywhere.
> Oh, and if they don't have over spec'd components, they can cause a phenonom called "flicker"
> which is destructive of delicate electronics like your fridge, washing machine, A/C, and computer
Offgrid PV systems are far *less* susceptible to flicker than the grid. Which shouldn't be surprising given that off grid PV systems are essentially a very large UPS.
Expect more AC posts like this, the power companies are paying green washers to come up with moronic arguments so people in the same tribe can re-post them thinking they actually make sense and won't look like a tool in the process:
http://matter2energy.wordpress.com/2014/04/30/wont-anyone-think-of-the-seniors/