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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 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.
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.
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.
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
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*
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.
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.
Good riddance.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
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?
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.
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.
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.
.
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!
Looks like you don't understand the concept of a meter that runs -backward-.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
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.
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!
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.
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?
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.
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?
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.
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.
To be fair, it is not an easy problem economically. The impedance of the distribution grid is not zero so returning enough power at the endpoints of the distribution grid will cause the voltage to rise out of tolerance at other points. Correcting this requires either more wire to lower the impedance or active voltage regulation in the form of changing the transformer taps in real time. Both involve infrastructure upgrades which would not otherwise be necessary. Who is going to pay for that? If it is only the customers who are returning power to the grid, then batteries are going to look economical.
It is a political problem and not an engineering problem.
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.
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.