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Utilities Battle Homeowners Over Solar Power
HughPickens.com writes Diane Cardwell reports in the NYT that many utilities are trying desperately to stem the rise of solar power, either by reducing incentives, adding steep fees or effectively pushing home solar companies out of the market. The economic threat has electric companies on edge. Over all, demand for electricity is softening while home solar is rapidly spreading across the country. There are now about 600,000 installed systems, and the number is expected to reach 3.3 million by 2020, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association. In Hawaii, the current battle began in 2013, when Hawaiian Electric started barring installations of residential solar systems in certain areas. It was an abrupt move — a panicked one, critics say — made after the utility became alarmed by the technical and financial challenges of all those homes suddenly making their own electricity. "Hawaii is a postcard from the future," says Adam Browning, executive director of Vote Solar, a policy and advocacy group based in California.
But utilities say that solar-generated electricity flowing out of houses and into a power grid designed to carry it in the other direction has caused unanticipated voltage fluctuations that can overload circuits, burn lines and lead to brownouts or blackouts. "At every different moment, we have to make sure that the amount of power we generate is equal to the amount of energy being used, and if we don't keep that balance things go unstable," says Colton Ching, vice president for energy delivery at Hawaiian Electric, pointing to the illuminated graphs and diagrams tracking energy production from wind and solar farms, as well as coal-fueled generators in the utility's main control room. But the rooftop systems are "essentially invisible to us," says Ching, "because they sit behind a customer's meter and we don't have a means to directly measure them." The utility wants to cut roughly in half the amount it pays customers for solar electricity they send back to the grid. "Hawaii's case is not isolated," says Massoud Amin. "When we push year-on-year 30 to 40 percent growth in this market, with the number of installations doubling, quickly — every two years or so — there's going to be problems."
But utilities say that solar-generated electricity flowing out of houses and into a power grid designed to carry it in the other direction has caused unanticipated voltage fluctuations that can overload circuits, burn lines and lead to brownouts or blackouts. "At every different moment, we have to make sure that the amount of power we generate is equal to the amount of energy being used, and if we don't keep that balance things go unstable," says Colton Ching, vice president for energy delivery at Hawaiian Electric, pointing to the illuminated graphs and diagrams tracking energy production from wind and solar farms, as well as coal-fueled generators in the utility's main control room. But the rooftop systems are "essentially invisible to us," says Ching, "because they sit behind a customer's meter and we don't have a means to directly measure them." The utility wants to cut roughly in half the amount it pays customers for solar electricity they send back to the grid. "Hawaii's case is not isolated," says Massoud Amin. "When we push year-on-year 30 to 40 percent growth in this market, with the number of installations doubling, quickly — every two years or so — there's going to be problems."
No problem from my power company, but it's a co-op. That said, the only goal I have with solar is being able to take a chainsaw to the power pole.
IT's early (for me) and my standard disclaimer of "the caffeine hasn't kicked in yet" applies, but "a power grid designed to carry it in the other direction" doesn't make a huge amount of sense to me.
I admit that circuits was a long time ago, and I never took (or had to take) the high power courses... But what does that even mean? The system is still AC, isn't it? So it's been handling carrying things in both directions forever.
Is this industry BS, or is there something to this claim?
I like you, Stuart. You're not like everyone else, here, at Slashdot.
The established will ruin it for everyone
The complaints that the rooftop systems are invisible to the power companies "because they sit behind a customer's meter and we don't have a means to directly measure them" can be addressed pretty easily with updated electric meters.
The power companies are all moving towards "smart meter" technologies anyway. Why not make sure they've put one in that can monitor the output of a PV solar (or even a wind turbine) installation while they're at it?
When I had my solar system installed, the power company had to switch out my meter. And even though we're one of the last remaining areas around here that doesn't yet use smart meters, they still upgraded me to a bi-directional meter so my power generation vs. usage can be tracked. So they're spending $'s on labor and hardware to mess with your meter each time a new solar system is put in. It's their short-sightedness if they don't put more useful equipment in place while they're doing that anyway!
And when it comes to solar, I think the output is fairly predictable too. The only real "fluctuations" you get with the output are based on the day's weather conditions. If you compare my panels to my friend who lives on the other side of town and has a PV solar installation, our daily power generation numbers are within 2-3KWh of each other, and the hourly rates on a graph look almost identical. The power company receives and has to sign off on a registration form stating you've installed a small power generation system and they're made aware of its exact size/maximum output at that time. So even with NO other metering capability, they'd be able to predict that in a certain part of the circuit, they now have someone who will add, at most, a specific amount of power back to the lines between the hours of 10AM and 2PM (when the panels produce the most power). It seems like this is data they should be able to work with.
It's pretty simple. If the excess power I generate has more value to me if I store it in a battery, rather than sell it to the grid, then I can just cut my connection to the grid. The fact that they're being such jerks would increase my incentive to cut them off.
> "utilities say that solar-generated electricity flowing out of houses and into a power grid designed to carry it in the other direction has caused unanticipated voltage fluctuations that can overload circuits, burn lines and lead to brownouts or blackouts"
Thanslation: "we're too stupid to do our jobs properly". Well, kids -- those are control systems. Engineering is pretty smart these days. Do your fucking homework: you're getting paid for that.
> "The utility wants to cut roughly in half the amount it pays customers for solar electricity they send back to the grid"
Ah. So it's about that. Plain greed. I suspected as much.
I was island hopping in the Philippines last week. Coal there is very expensive. Oil there is very expensive. Power, in general, is very, very expensive. An AC unit is within financial means of many people who already own a flat screen TV and/or western game console. Yet they live without air conditioning in very hot/humid conditions. Malls there are really popular as a result.
The first thing i noticed when I got in a taxi from the airport was the number of Solar + Wind advertisements. Solar has already arrived in SE Asia, and it is here to stay. There's about a billion people in SE Asia outside of China. Solar makes a heck of a lot of sense in the developing world or disconnected parts of the world, where a surprising number of people live. That's right you don't have to go back one sentence, I said a Billion with a 'B'. There's about 30 million people living in the Metro region of Manila without air conditioning because electricity is too expensive. The other half of the country is lucky to have reliable electricity.
These places exist, and they're prime candidates for distributed solar in a big way. Solar is already cheaper than mains electricity, even installed, even with big import duties. Now they're just waiting for the products to arrive en masse.
Why does this matter?
America is still waiting for price parity of mains electricity and home grown solar, but while you can stem the tide of Solar in America temporarily, the price is going to drop like a rock as manufacturers race to supply the third world with Solar, and soon American electric companies will be competing against the price of affordable solar in the third world. It may be five or ten years before Solar truly takes off in the US, but as soon as someone rolls out a $500 "Air Conditioning assist" kit that tells your AC to run at full tilt whenever the solar panels have enough juice to keep it running (who doesn't love coming home to an icy cool house when it's 100F/35C out? especially if that AC was free?), the reasons not to go Solar are going to fall like dominos.
moox. for a new generation.
Batteries need to come down in cost before it makes sense to switch to an off-grid solution. I have a 1kW battery/solar system (not grid-tied) as an emergency power source and I have to replace the lead acid AGM batteries aver 5-7 years at a cost of $500 to $1000.
The only way to beat the utilities is to go completely off-grid, but that is too expensive at the moment.
So essentially they are saying "We fought every solar incentive tooth and nail, and now that's it's winning we want a bigger cut". Screw 'em. They bet on the wrong horse (and did their very best to kill off any other horse in the race) and now they see that they will be out of the money at the end of the race. Too bad, so sad.
... is that grid tie systems need a communication mechanism to control power output.
So you worry about overloaded lines from power production: Okay, tell the inverters to output less. Problem solved.
You worry about handling load variations but you have a bunch of battery systems with grid tie inverters. Tell them when to turn on and pump power back to the grid (or at least reduce load), if there is a load spike. Problem maybe not quite solved, but certainly reduced.
Need help bringing up a grid after a power outage? Get all these inverters sync'd to the cycle phase and you've got a ton of reserve power ready to help you out of a mess.
Have extra power available on the network and need to dump it? Battery banks should have a little reserve capacity ready to fill, tell them to suck it up. Again, this can only help overall efficiency.
As more renewable stuff comes online, it would be stupid to not have a communication link to help control it, even if it is only a one-way link. Not doing it is throwing away a lot of possible advantages.
Have hierarchies of power distribution.
Federal... or across state lines
State...
County...
City...
Neighborhood.
The management of solar power should be bounced around a neighborhood. It doesn't need to go farther than that. That means the federal, state, county, and city networks all remain clean. No back feeding of power.
Each segment could also fall under different jurisdictions and be the responsibility of different institutions. That might be helpful or not. It should be done to the extent it is helpful.
Here some complete asshat will tell me "but in this circumstance it might not be helpful"... then don't do it in that circumstance. I wouldn't need to explain this if reading comprehension were especially dependable on this site.
Then we really need to work on storage. If these houses can store their power then they might not need to be connected to the grid at all.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
new tech always has to fight the old. tesla cant sell cars in many states, net neutrality is somehow an issue probably caused by cable companys losing money to online video services. I see ads on tv now with frantic women calling 911 on cell phones to save their babies while their signal cuts in and out sponsored by a landline phone company.
My personal desire is to watch Hydro Quebec squirm and complain loudly as they disappear into insignificance.
We have tons of water and fantastic dams here in Quebec, but as usual, our love for French-style bureaucracy has fucked everything up.
Why do we need buildings full of civil servants, bureaucrats and nobility-class assholes when the water falls by itself and all you need is a handful of engineers and a few hundred staff to keep it working???
Die you useless cunts, if I had the money I'd put panels on the roof and gladly disconnect from you thieves!
Oh, and fuck Quebec.
Mostly random stuff.
Linemen don't like becoming part of the circuits, so they successfully called for the disconnect-if-zero laws.
Power companies (at least in Canada and large parts of the world) already have equipment to deal with the fact that the power can flow both ways. In fact, claiming they don't have equipment is only true IFF the power companies are the ones who like electrocuting their employees (;-))
davecb@spamcop.net
Not at all surprised by the news coming from Hawaii. When it comes to the interface between utility systems and devices in the home, there's one standard that has been extensively proven to work throughout North America: ZigBee Smart Energy 1.x.
But the Hawaiian utilities followed the lead of PG&E and SCE from California and Consumers E from Michigan. They fed stories to their PUCs (state governmental bodies that regulate utilities) that they had to wait for Smart Energy 2.0. Of course, those utilities were also funding an army of consultants and drawing in other organizations like IEC, Wi-Fi Alliance, HomePlug Alliance, etc., to completely derail SE2 development. Went from a sensible protocol for M2M to bloated, ridiculous Web 2.0 crap. Years of time wasted, allowing utilities to drag their feet, and then finally throw up their hands because no vendors were interested in producing devices for such a boondoggle.
Never believe utilities that say they care about reducing energy consumption. They're just looking for new ways for their executives to buy mansions.
communication mechanism to control power output.
So what happens when the utility system operator has a block of cheap power switched onto the system and says, "We don't need all this solar right now. Switch it off." Conspiracy theories will spring up all over about how the utility is trying to 'do in' solar. Not that some of these won't be legitimate. Power companies like to buy the cheapest blocks of power first and put the expensive stuff on standby. Smart grids and technology aside, I don't think many solar system owners are going to like their generating plug pulled when it suits the utilities interests. So most of these systems are designed to push max power onto the grid and only disconnect due to a fault condition.
Have gnu, will travel.
Change the business model. Make the grid global for generating and load distribution, and everybody can pay a flat fee for infrastructure hookup.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
If really good batteries were available a great option would be to use them as a buffer between the grid and the solar. This way a person would dump their solar into the batteries and generally use the batteries for day to day use. Then if and when the solar couldn't keep up with the demands the grid could be tapped to charge the batteries.
But as both solar and the batteries get better this would then become a natural migration to where people would go completely off grid and have some sort of crappy generator (that is cheap but possibly not efficient) to top them off on the occasion that they don't have enough.
Great batteries could even keep the utility relevant for a while by giving them a more reliable source that they could tap when they wanted to from people's homes.
So right now the utilities are having growing pains as this small but growing source of energy is introduced it is that moment that people actually start going off grid that they have a serious problem. As then they will have to risk raising rates that could drive people off the grid which... then the power company will be left with a scattering of customers who simply can't generate their own power using the space they have. This could be apartments, unlucky houses, hotels, and energy intensive industries. That would be a large grid to maintain for far fewer customers.
Personally I have found my local power company to act like total scumbags. While this will provide an extra sense of satisfaction when I go off grid it also will harm any "greater good" arguments they might try to make in the future to get subsidies to maintain the grid. Quite simply people won't buy the arguments and assume that they are trying to keep their obscene bonuses and monopoly returns that the shareholders demand.
The power companies could offer people the panels, installation, proper set up and maintenance. You have the money and resources to do it why not make money off those that want to get fully/partially off the grid.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
The electrical distribution system is designed to deal with sudden change is power flow. It has to deal with loosing feeders and generators. The basic problem is that the cost of maintaining the system will fall on a smaller and smaller set of customers driving up their rates. The proper thing to do is to charge for a connection and then pay for solar power at the "avoid cost" rate. Yes, the savings for installing solar power will diminished but people must understand that it takes money to maintain the electric distribution system.
It would seem the big issue is selling and metering the voltage back to the Pwr Co. If the systems were separate circuits that never physically connect, and the issue of selling back power wasn't involved, then the load on the connected circuit would be predictable. Like you could have your fridge on the main line and TV's on the solar panels, etc. I'm sure somebody could do something stupid like connect the two circuits and blow up shit, but still; isn't just saving money enough? Why the need to sell power back?
Yes, you do.
Here is a business model for you: pay a low rate for electricity from sources you can't monitor, pay full* rate for electricity where you put a little Internet of Things gizomo on the line to measure (or even control) output from the source. You could even get the homeowners to pay for the gizmo out of future revenue.
* Yes, I know "full rate" also has its problems, but it'll get set somehow and the point is only IoT installed houses will get that rate.
No problem from SDGE with my installation. I wouldn't say they were enthusiastic, but they did what was required. The system (Vivint) saved me $1200 last year. The simple answer for utilities is to offer their own systems and compete.
In a ruling 20+ years ago, my city banned rooftop and "visible from the street" solar panels and all wind turbines in a "nuisance" ruling. That same ruling also bans trash cans visible from the street and having any sort of front yard structure to hide them (these structures are allowed on the side of the house). Living on a corner lot where my backyard is partially visible from the street (I could build a fence, but my backyard is small and would likely block the panel), I cannot legally have solar and they have cited me for trashcans on the side of the house because it is "front facing to the street," even though it is the side of my house.
What is management of that power worth? What is spare capacity worth?
Instead of few to many, the grid has to become many to many. The equations for worth are going to become very complex.
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
Maaaaaaaaaaaybe the utility companies should have put up wind turbines and electric plants of their own! That would have solved the problem ahead of time. I can see how, if they're worried about budgeting and income, that a magical device that sits there and makes money for free without fuel would be looked over when designing a new power plant.
In power distribution systems, there is some voltage drop from source to load due to resistance.
You can compensate for this with step up transformers.
With wide scale solar power, the roles of source and load sometimes swap.
This makes the direction of IR drop reverse as well.
This upsets the balance set by the stepup transformers.
To compensate for this, you either need less IR drop or automatic adjusting taps on the transformers.
This seems a fundamental extgra cost issue for widespread solar.
Another issue is coordinating a diverse set of power producers to provide stable power.
At all times, power produced must match power consumed.
This may be simply a matter fo smarter inverters at each solar site.
Or it may mean that the power company needs to be able to talk to the inverters in real time.
Either way, this does not seem to ba a big cost issue.
The value of power depends on how responsive the generator output is to varying loads in the system.
Power from a solar system that can not be asked for power when the sun doesn't cooperate is not worth as much as power the works when needed.
Somehow this needs to be factored in to make an economically sustainable system.
This is the 'when' part of the value of power.
There is a similar 'where' part to the value of power
Somebody has to bear the costs of transporting the power generated on you roof top to somebody willing to pay for it.
The difference between generated and delivered is like wholsale versus retail.
Good riddance.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Why just not to regulate any back to the network feeding system to include the connections to the metering system, and a system to ensure network stability, or simply partition the local electricity networks as separated systems?
Just put a relay on the inside of the house side of the relay. Solar produces over a certain amount of current the relay kicks in and cuts you from the grid. Done.
Every solar installation has automatic (and manual backup) power disconnection devices installed which will disconnect from the grid if the grid goes down.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
Everyone who follows political manipulation in the West knows the latest thing is BOOSTING 'solar' power- even in mostly sun free nations like the UK. How better to 'persuade' the sheeple to consider wasting their money on solar than by telling the sheeple that the BIG BAD ENERGY COMPANIES are "against it". It is the oldest PSY-OP trick in the book.
A massive clue is that Google is one of the companies boosting the tech. Google is running its DC-DC converter competition for anyone who can design an efficient way to downconvert the common DC voltages from the solar cells to those useful in the home. This is the same Google that has REMOVED the 'TRANSLATE' button on comments in Youtube to discourage people from one nation to follow video news stories posted by a person from another - to push people back to state-controlled mainstream media outlets. Google took umbrage, for instance, at the number of videos showing the true situation in East Ukraine, and the ease with which English speaking people could participate in the conversation. Google, remember, was created to be the R+D arm of the NSA.
The irony of propaganda tactics of this article is that they follow the EXACT same form as those paranoia based ads on the infamous Infowars site of Alex Jones. "The Man doesn't want you to know about this 'secret' way to reduce your energy bills". Yuk, yuk- things are becoming WAY too obvious these days.
That's why the linemen say it's not dead until it's dead and grounded. They are supposed to bond the line to ground before working on it and that bond is supposed to only be disconnected right before the line is turned back on.
But since mistakes happen, it's a good thing that home inverters won't power a dead line.
The biggest danger to linemen (and has been for a while) is id10ts wiring their portable generators in or plugging them in with a "widowmaker" (A generator chord with a male end to plug in to the wall) and not disconnecting from the grid first.
As far as I can see these complaints are all coming from investor owned for profit electrical utilities. What do publicly owned electrical districts (like the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power or the Sacramento Municipal Utility District to name a couple of big ones) have to say? Do they make the same complaints or do they just get on with the business of making it all work? If they're not making the same complaints then I think the complaints of investor owned utilities are more about profits than anything else.
I have wondered what happens if a neighbor have cheap chinese inverter that malfunctions and continue to supply power or a "widowmaker" generator. Would my (hypothetical) inverter also continue to power the grid? Would all of them do it due to some idiot with crazy equipment?
Local. Storage.
Yes, I know that battery technology isn't quite there yet, a tall water tower for every house or neighbourhood is impractical, and the whole flywheel-in-a-vacuum-can concept hasn't yet lived up to its promise. But really, we NEED to start moving away from 'the grid' as the primary power distribution system. Such a move would hasten the development of viable, economical energy storage methods; incidentally, it would also make moot the arguments about feeding power from household solar panels to the local electrical utility.
The grid is OK as a fallback position, and to provide power to heavy industry because local power storage on that scale probably won't be practical for a long while yet. But the only way we're going to have a resilient system that isn't prone to a large portion of the continent's electricity supply being taken down by an ice storm, (or, God forbid, a terrorist attack), is to start de-centralizing power production and distribution. Yes, there are technical hurdles, but we can get over them. I am less sure that we can get past the entrenched business interests fighting that kind of disruption with all of the resources at their disposal, including the money we pay them.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
Utilities are forced to buy excess energy from home-generators anyway.
It's a stupid idea that could only happen because of a law.
The idea of pushing for OLD homes to have solar added is a mistake. In addition, paying subsidies for it, is just plain wrong since it is causing solar companies to focus on just those locations.
.1MW / month can be sold to the utility. In addition, it needs to be bought at the top that the utilitity pays for that time, to any other provider, including buying it from other providers.
Instead, at a US national level, we should put in place several regs and 1 new subsidy, while removing all of the other subsidies for Solar:
1) require that ALL utilities to buy up to 10% of a buildings excess electricity that is generated via on-site AE. IOW, if a building is expected to USE 1MW / month, then
2) require that ALL new buildings of 5 stories and less to have enough on-site AE to equal the HVAC energy needs (and require heating and cooling). Note that such a building with only enough on-site to equal the HVAC will likely not be selling much if any to the utility. However, if they decide to increase it, to the point that they equal 110% of their energy needs, then the utility must buy the extra 10%. Note that the smart developers will focus on lower energy costs buildings with better insulation and hopefully geo-thermal HVAC, since all forms of AE is actually expensive.
3) provide a TIME-LIMITED subsidy for energy storage. It should be in terms of max amount and must be able to hook up to the utility, company, or resident and provide the power. In particular, Utilities should be encouraged to move from 1 big grid, into small grids in which a storage is sitting there between the local grid and the big power grid.
With this approach, it will help utilities convert to storage, and lower their costs of energy production. In addition, it will stop new buildings from adding draw to the grid. Basically, it will help lower the real energy costs for all.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
You should have enough batteries to recharge your plug-in hybrid at night.
Charge the batteries during the day and transfer to car overnight.
FREE DRIVING!
That would solve a couple problems at the same time.
The government enforcing a minimum price to buy the power from solar local user is skewing definitively in the advantage of user. The reality is that when that power is produced, the utility are already producing so forcing them to buy the power at retail actually artificially inflate the price the user sell. (for example maintenance is counted to the advantage of the user when it should not be , making power sold by user less priced than utility power).
Let us get realist you can't have everybody on solar power. That means that for the rest the price of maintenance increase , potentially also breaking the utility profit. So what happens when the utility says "screw this I am making a net loss I am going away" ? Or if it increase the price to those who cannot say no because no solar available (not everybody has a home , and not everybody has one where you can have solar or even the money to invest) ? The result as a perverse effect is that those who can#t invest in solar (renting) or have less money get a more heavy burden,skewing and distorting the social network more.
No the real solution is to make the solar people only sell their pwoer at a price which make sense, and include the price of maintenance. Sure it makes solar slightly less attractive, but that would represent the free market much better, as well as protecting social web down the line.
Solar power producers have to accept that they won't be paid (much) more than the equivalent power would be from primary generation. They also have to accept that power infrastructure isn't free (but transmission losses could work in their favor).
Once those are taken care of and everyone is weaned off the subsidies, the market economics can be made to work out, and then it would just be the power company screwing themselves if they don't buy the cheapest power available.
I agree though that there will be some shifty things done in the aim of maintaining the status quo, but I have a hard time finding a breaking point where there is too much renewable/alternative power to make primary generation economical but not enough to handle enough of the load. Prices will just shift. The part people won't like is that the cost could and probably will go up, and the grid will have to get smarter.
What could be a breaking point is if too many people disconnect completely from the power grid, and no longer pay for the infrastructue.
Sounds like the fear of loosing control as much as anything else. When people want to put in rooftop solar it really is not about selling it to the grid -- it is about generating local power to offset soaring and uncontrollable grid power rates. Looking at it myself -- power costs in Ontario have more than doubled since the 'Green Energy' act was unleashed. And the forecast is that between partial privatization and new charges from our money-hungry government costs will go up even faster. If we were to put up solar it would be for our own needs and not to feed the grid -- or push out meter backwards. There is enough 'backwards' already. One ring (or grid) to find them and in the darkness bind them...
Gigafactory (and friends)
That is, disconnect from the grid entirely. Once rechargables come down decently in price per cycle ((dis)charge) and price/watt-hour, there won't be a need to put up with this. This can only apply to residential and some small business, of course, as factories take in may times what power they could generate themselves, but the utilities should be scared, especially as they work to piss off people even more than telecom/cable utilities.
In a rational society this would just be a technical issue. Given current state of technology in solar cells versus other production techniques and figuring actual costs of the grid, just figure out the total best technique such that everyone gets the benefit of production and distribution. The problem now is that SOME people own SOME of the distribution and centralized production, and they want a profit by selling to OTHER people. Boundaries between OWNERSHIP and concern.
In the near term, pre-utopia, let us just note that the grid, which already exitsts, has many benefits for redistribution of dispersively generated energy, and thus the grid is not the enemy. What the problem is is patterns of ownership which are not optimal. The capitalist model in antihuman, a cooperative model would be much better, especially nongovernmental coops which could arise in the current system, eg along the lines of municipal power companies. We note large power companies attempt to create legislation which PREVENTS such municipal power companies. (Or internet delivery companies, like-wise.)
.
Most people who put in solar, expect the power co to essentially provide them with free batteries. They in fact aren't free. So they have a point. No, transformers work both ways just fine, and it's quite rare someone has enough to push more net into the grid even at peak times than they would draw at peak times. No one puts up that many panels (room can be an issue even if money isn't). Even though the power co doesn't currently use batteries, the effect is the same - they still have maintenance costs, have to keep wires up, trees off them, and now with this new source, have to be a lot more agile. Older coal and I'd suppose nuclear plants don't ramp up and down quickly as the sun goes behind a cloud, leading to further waste, or having to use faster responding nat gas turbine plants to handle wildly variable loads. I hate to defend these guys - they are evil, no doubt, always have been while I've had this particular company in my neighborhood - their feed-in tariff has varied from 2c/kwh for electricity you produce while charging you 14c/kwh for electricity they sell you - and they demanded two separate meters, so you'd have had to make 7x the electricity you created (after your own use) to just break even. Jerks. For a little while, law made them kinda fair, but they got that overturned first opportunity (they get the best law money can buy, right?). Entitled to a profit...gheesh. Nice to watch from a distance...a great distance. Popcorn helps.
One advantage to living in the boonies off-grid. The power company is aptly named - they have power to enforce building permits - your stupid local gov delegated that one almost everywhere. No permit required, your PP taxes are nil....heh. So I was able to afford 4 homes, taxed as barns...yeah, the solar cost a lot, as did the batteries, and you have to adapt a bit during the "dark month". But...all in all - I win, they can go and die in a fire. This has little or nothing to do with being green. It's more like I'm Scottish. I don't hate nature, but that's not the motivation. Libre was. Freedom to not have to have a job for monthly bills, and other advantages ruled the decisions. Building my own homes was fun too. And you feel like you've done something net-positive in the world. In the boonies you can get this done before the .gov even realizes you're here. And it's fun when there's a major storm, and the power co brings in outside help that asks if they can give you power - despite being the only place with lights on, and can they read your meter? Yeah, I show them my computerized meters....I've even gotten the comment from them "you can't run a house on that" - while I was actually doing exactly that and had been for decades. Doh!
Why guess when you can know? Measure!
With all their teeth.
Basically, the problem runs around the lack of command and control of the infrastructure.
If you setup fiber to home and connect the system to that fiber, with properly secured protocols, then you can have all the feedback look that is needed to cater for the increases of solar in daytime.
Additionally, if you place sensors around the locations where there is solar installations, you can predict the amount of power that is injected into the grid.
It is not rocket science (it's actually power one).
If US managed to place the man on the moon, then why is this such a big fuss?
Right... money...
Prices on solar have been dropping like the proverbial rock - and the panels are getting more and more efficient as time goes on.
When I buy a place I intend to sever the electric connection, generate my own power via solar and wind, and store what I don't use in a storage array. Problem solved and no need for the grid.
There are ways around the power company. Just take what you want solar powered off the grid. Have a pool in your backyard? Use solar to run the pump. Outdoor lighting? The easiest thing to solarize. A 12vDC system is very simple to set up. Likewise wire in a couple plugs in your home to charge all your devices etc, etc. Solar water heating is by far the cheapest to install and quickest return on investment of any of the solar projects you can do.
Eventually your electric bill will drop to nearly nothing and the electric company can eat a large bag of dicks.
I've always wondered why malls/stadiums/any other place with giant open parking lots didn't put up canopies with solar panels on top. Especially somewhere like Arizona where it's been cost efficient for years for a mall to generate it's own power during peak usage hours.
Just nationalize those lines! Vola problem solved!
Or folks start buying batteries so they can avoid paying hook up fees, which sounds easier.
Actually there is a part of a solution, use the commercial billing algorithms for residential users. If you look at a commercial rate sheet the user pays both an energy charge and a demand charge. The demand charge is based upon the maximum rate of power usage during a period (say 15 mins or so to take away surges due to motor starting). The commercial and industrial user pays for this which pays for upsizing the grid for the max demand. One could move to an algorithm where the residential user pays a generation charge based upon the maximum kw (Power rate) put out to the grid over an interval. The the equipment on the residential end could be set to limit the exported power to control the effect on the grid and minimize the bill.
If you're not a Canadian, using the term "hydro" to mean electric seems odd. I understand that there is a lot of water generation of electricity, but the terms are not interchangeable planet-wide.
because when I built a small winter time camp in SE Arizona the local power co-op was charging nearly $30,000 / mile to run new power line. A solar panel / battery system was spec'ed out at $28,000. The co-op offered a "rebate" to customers who decided not to connect to their grid, I got $6,000 in a one-time check. This rewarded us for not causing the Co-op to need to build out new capacity for an additional housing unit over the foreseeable future.
At the time there was also an income tax credit against the cost of installing solar systems. A credit is better than a deduction, as it applies to the actual tax amount, rather than to your income, like deductibles. So for 2 or 3 years our federal income tax was much lower than it would have been. To the point where the installation didn't really cost much at all.
I have a 2Kwatt Honda quiet running generator in case of overcast/stormy weather, a wood stove for winter heat, along with a ton of standing dead wood that everyone is glad to see cut as it lowers fire hazard. The house is stuccoed with Portland cement based stucco, which makes the walls fireproof, and the roof is metal, also nominally fireproof.
So for the time we spend in Arizona avoiding winter storms, we're off the grid, completely. January, February and March. Sunshine every day nearly. Cold at night, so we build a small fire in the wood-stove at bedtime.
Think of the Irony!
For decades, government has told us to either buy a smart car, small car, cars with better gas mileage. So, we did. Now government is crying because we are not buying as much gasoline as we use to, and government isn't getting "its share" of fuel tax like it use to, so they want to increase the fuel tax to make up the difference. Same with self produced electricity. Now the utility companies will want a surcharge if you make your own...typical...government hates competition.
But the rooftop systems are "essentially invisible to us," says Ching, "because they sit behind a customer's meter and we don't have a means to directly measure them."
Bullshit. My home PV system has a utility-supplied meter that allows them to measure exactly what my system is doing.
Storage is the key. Some methods work at a small scale, some at a larger scale. None are perfect. But a combination of methods should be beneficial. At a local level, small battery banks can provide smoothing to make feed-in more manageable, and a (user selectable) level of backup in the event of grid outage. At a larger scale, centrifuges, hydro pumping, thermal (e.g. liquid salts), can all be used to provide a combination that between methods addresses the various issues of response time, capacity, efficiency, and so on. One other method, with potentially (pun intended) wide applicability is gas creation (from electrolysis of water) and fuel-cells to regenerate electricity (or burn it and run a conventional generator). Unlike for electric vehicles, the gas storage space efficiency is much less of an issue. This approach can scale from neighbourhood to regional. Efficiency is acceptable (especially if one considers the input energy has an almost-zero unit cost). (posting as AC as my employer is in the energy industry and this is a personal view only)
The Power company is just pissed they can't nickel and dime every customer to death without repercussions. This is exactly how Enron or the Bush administration would have responded. It is all Greedy Capitalist bullshit. Keep installing solar power systems, and if the power company starts shit about it, sue them and use that money to install more solar systems. Do not put up with their Bull shit!
I'm just guessing, but I imagine 1 malfunctioning unit probably wouldn't be able to raise the voltage enough to trick the other units.
OTOH, in an area with a significant number of solar installations, I can easily see them creating an isolated network segment where the voltage runs near normal and so they collectively convince each other to stay on. That could create an interesting problem of how to convince that segment to re-synchronize with the grid when it's time to re-connect.
The simple but wrong answer is to cut your links to the power grid and devise ways to be comfortable at night. But even that won't work well. The power companies are going to have to hop scotch power delivery as less and less homes and businesses want a connection to the grid. That will cause an inevitable jump in the price of grid electricity. So those that can not afford to have self powered homes will be forced to pay much higher power bills. It also points the finger at power companies lying and stealing from the public. Supposedly the rise of prices on the grid is caused by the high cost of fuels to feed the turbines. Yet the power companies fight to keep power sent to them by home owners who pay for the systems at home that replace the fuel the power companies supposedly need to generate power. Essentially if i generate excess power my neighbor should see a drop in his electric bills. After all, the power company burned no fuel to supply him with power from my system. And just in case people are clueless big power, big coal and big oil are all in their end of life stages. That suggests that if you own stocks or bonds in those industries sell while you can. Progress will create chaos.
Is that it works around here. You got your power companies, you got your power grid companies (they were forced to split those two businesses) and you got your people with solar power cells on their roofs who're happily putting their power on the grid with zero problems.
Of course you'd hear the same kind of FUD in the beginning, that it'd all break apart at the seams, brownouts, overloads what have you. The latest scare was that there'd be a brownout due to the solar eclipse the other day. Has any of that happened? Hmmmmm.... nope. It Just Works (tm)
If a train station is a place where a train stops, what's a workstation?
We have never had this problem in South Africa in spite of all our sunlight. We must be doing something right. Yay!
No, transformers work both ways just fine,
The same argument as batteries applies here. Become an expert or you'll be replacing them often. In many parts of the world depending on grid design, wiring and transformer design the transformers definitely do not work both ways just fine.
Systems designed to handle backfeeding do so just fine. Many are not, the majority of those who are not are the ones close to the residential connections.
...don't let the people with solar put electricity into the system. problem solved.
Oh, they don't like that? OK then, no problem. Make them pay the carrier charges to transmit and process the electricity into the system. Make it more expensive because they are on a variable type system. Or charge them for X amount even if they don't put that much in.
You're making it way too complicated. The power-line company can buy power from whoever is providing, and sell power to whoever is consuming. Just like they do now with home solar power. They can make whatever agreements they like with generating companies as to who gets what share of demand, what response times are required, etc. Add some grid-scale power buffers, even just a few minutes worth, and things get even simpler.
While it sounds good in theory, power plants and grids take years to expand, and the information needed to project power plant demand would be in the hands of the grid owners. It would be much harder to scale power generation smoothly with demand, and potentially increase the number of power company crashes due to the potential boom/bust introduction. This would allow the line owners to control the winners and losers in the power generation industry, and create a scenario similar to the way content producers like Netflix interact with Comcast.
While the potential for competition would be nice, the potential for boom/bust crashes of power generating companies could create instability and brownouts, something many deem unacceptable. In this case, I think industry stability > industry growth.
Oh boo hoo - the markets deciding your model sucks. Maybe you can lean on your paid congressmen to double your subsidies at the expense of those tax paying homeowners?
Just use non grid tied PV systems. You don't need permission from anyone to do that. As long as it powers your major appliances that is all that matters, particularly since that is where most of people's utility bills come from.
For various reasons Germany decided they wanted to be less dependent on nuclear and not more dependent on fossil. So they massively subsidised solar panels.
People noticed that and bought them in numbers. Now it turns out that adapting the grid to massive amounts of PV-generated power is expensive too. So they have a special tax to generate the money, and they're currently spending lavish subsidies on ... improving batteries and other energy-storage schemes, smart meters, adapting the grid (more (230 KV + long-distance lines, more robust grids at the 10 KV end of the line, researching how to work around the need for heavier grids through storage at city-block level, putting sophisticated control mechanisms in place in solar farms and wind-farms, etc.
And of course organising all participants so that they can do something useful with weather forecasts, and building up robustness to deal with e.g. a solar eclipse.
It's concentrated effort rather than magic, and it doesn't come cheap. See e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G...
Certainly not a bad idea, but it's a choice. Meaning there are other possible choices.
it's quite rare someone has enough to push more net into the grid even at peak times than they would draw at peak times
It's "quite rare" that people go on vacation? During peak solar season? And they turn off their lights and AC when they go?
Yeah, that would never happen.
I guess electricity and electronics has changed since 1972, it usta be P = V x A, OK,, with AC not so simple. So is it the capacitive or inductive loading that solar overloads the circuits with ? So when it is 9xF / 4xC and it is daytime and my panels are producing enough current to run my AC unit, I think it may be the money circuits are overloaded, and the CEOs & stockholders are blowing a fuse.
One solution is to wire communities with DC micronets, and the electronics to connect those to controlled phased grid transformers at one central location. DC micronets save the home owners the expense of sync circuits in each house, and their installations are cheap enough to save the cost of the micronet in at least some communities.
Later, the DC micronets can implement their own energy storage solutions at the same grid connection site.
Hey, I sympathize when the power companies want to pay wholesale rates for small generators feeding back into the grid. That's how a lot of these companies are structured anyways (generating separate from delivery), and it makes sense that they'd prefer to treat all generators the same (apart from size). And power distribution companies have large fixed costs to deal with, which need to be covered in the cost spread.
Here's where I call BS though. When Colton Ching says that private producers are "essentially invisible to us", that's pure Texas bull! The power company mandates the power meter in use. They collect the data that they mandate be collected. Also, the power companies already routinely balance supply and demand, so that's part of normal operations for them. You're telling me that they cannot read a weather forecast? Or perhaps you are saying they cannot adjust the meters to get the needed data? Maybe they cannot perform large scale averaging of producers and consumers?
Oh wait, what are those big, fancy, NOCs for? Hmmm, exactly this problem. Uh, what was the issue again?
In the end the power companies are just being asked to deal with changes in the marketplace. Like, I don't know, every consumer and company in existence. Whining does not look good on them. I suggest that perhaps they are trying to sneak some rate hikes in there, under cover of this "big giant scary unsolvable problem." You know, the problem that they already solve, every day: Supply and demand load balancing. Don't make it more than it is.
This is a pretty uncommon configuration because of the expense. If you have a grid to tie to, then you do not need the batteries. For those that do have batteries, they would need to be paid by the utility for battery wear. Because of scale, it would be more economical for the utility to maintain their own balancing infrastructure.
Please do NOT cite DWP for anything. As a bloated corrupt bureaucracy, they will simply ask the state for more money. DWP is the worst of everything.
I would trust the Scrooge McDuck Electrical Co. more than I'd trust DWP.
I don't have much to add myself, but a friend who has worked closely with utility companies (both ones who primarily produce and which mostly distribute power) and he said there wasn't any reason they couldn't make just as much money from people's personal solar (or other) generators, but that they would have to change their business model. He said it wasn't likely unless they were paid to (via government incentives) or if the existing companies went out of business and were replaced by new ones that were prepared to deal with the changing marketplace.