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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."
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.
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
National Grid has capped the amount of energy people/companies/government buildings can put into the grid in Nantucket, MA way below then any other part of the state. One would think that due to high demands in the summer for energy in a tourist town they would be for more people adding energy to the grid, since there is talk about running new power cables to the island. NG has the contract for fixing the lines in the region and is the main energy broker, unfortunately. But with their recent double price increase people are switching to cheaper brokers and adding more solar to their homes.
The grid can't handle micro-generation. So... who is going to pay for upgrading the grid? And guarantee electricity during peak need but lowest production?
A far more economical solution is a more intelligent home that uses all of it's produced electricity. Run the AC more when the sun shines, charge the electric car, etc. Eventually the grid gets rebuilt to handle 2 way with far more local rebalancing, but that's a decade or three away.
NG has the contract for fixing the lines in the region and is the main energy broker, unfortunately.
This is the ultimate problem: having the power lines and the energy broker/provider be the same entity. The power lines are an obvious natural monopoly. The supply of energy across those power lines is not a natural monopoly. The lines should be owned by one company and the power selling/brokerage should be by a different company.
Bullshit. Hawaii power was forced to do an ACTUAL study instead of pulling number out their ass like you. They have areas with 50% of the power solar and the study found they can handle it just fine.
The utilities should keep in mind here, they push back hard enough and the cost savings of going completely off-grid will eventually reach the point that people just unplug entirely. It's better to offer backup power than no power at all.
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 the electrons are on the line they belong to the distribution company, just like while products are in Walmart's distribution channel they belong to Walmart.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
A small lead acid bank capable of driving a house for an evening isn't that expensive.
Please define "not that expensive".
Eight of these for example would run you just about $3000 (I chose 8 to get you to a 48V system, the common configuration for off-grid systems these days). I include shipping but not the wiring and interconnects and such to make them work for you:
http://www.wholesalesolar.com/...
A lead-acid system shouldn't be discharged more than around 20% in order to avoid longer term damage; you can discharge them more deeply but you'll shorten their life significantly:
http://www.solar-electric.com/... of Batteries
Scroll down to the "Cycles vs. Lifespan" section and click on that chart. It's amazing.
So if you are likely to use half of your storage (~225AH for those selected) then a single set of batts would be discharged 50% in normal use. At that rate the batts will last you around 1000 charge/discharge cycles, so a bit less than 3 years if it's every day. If you want them to only be discharged 75% (moves you up the lifetime curve to 2000 charge/discharge cycles or around 5.8 years) it'll cost you double the price above, or around $6K. And quite honestly 225AH is a very shallow system....we're not talking about much being on overnight here. You definitely couldn't consider running a microwave--you'd tap that puppy right out.
I'm leaving out the equipment costs and such; charge controllers to dump power into the batteries and an inverter to take power out will add around $5K more.
I love the idea of as many folks as possible having back up and/or being off-grid entirely (I am) but it ain't cheap. I did it because I had no other choice here; the house is 5 miles away from the nearest power line.
Ferret
Sic gorgiamus allos subjectatos nunc
But such systems are already existing on large plants
I was recently shopping around for PV panels and found out Germany requires a controller for domestic use to have an interface for a future monitoring and controlling system.
In Europe the generator and distributor are already separate entities and it's the generator that has to pay x cents per KWh for transport.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
.
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!
Seldom are contradictions so obvious.
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