Is the power company just biding time?

[Overtaxed]

I was thinking today (riding my tractor around, always good for the imagination), given my lovely interactions so far with Duke where their solar plan basically transfers all the benefit of the panels from me to them..

Is it just a matter of time? Right now batteries are the problem, they are $$. But the prices fall every year, capacity increases and innovate companies come out with better and better ways to store power on site.

If things continue on the path we're on today in 10 years, batteries will be 1/4 to 1/8th the cost per KW. Solar panels will also continue to fall, although, honestly, they're a bit of a rounding error compared to the amount of battery required to disconnect entirely from the grid.

Anyway, as the power company moves to more and more lopsided TOU, removes any sell back benefit, etc; is this just the last hurrah before the end? Now, in urban areas, those folks are stuck, the power company will have a forever customer/market there. But in suburbs and rural areas, it's kind of possible, IMHO, that you start to get a lot of people "cutting the cord" and going disconnected from the grid, particularly if the rates and conditions for grid tie keep moving in the direction they have been.

Is this just "squeeze the last penny while it's there"?

 

[robby]

I was thinking today (riding my tractor around, always good for the imagination), given my lovely interactions so far with Duke where their solar plan basically transfers all the benefit of the panels from me to them..

Is it just a matter of time? Right now batteries are the problem, they are $$. But the prices fall every year, capacity increases and innovate companies come out with better and better ways to store power on site.

If things continue on the path we're on today in 10 years, batteries will be 1/4 to 1/8th the cost per KW. Solar panels will also continue to fall, although, honestly, they're a bit of a rounding error compared to the amount of battery required to disconnect entirely from the grid.

Anyway, as the power company moves to more and more lopsided TOU, removes any sell back benefit, etc; is this just the last hurrah before the end? Now, in urban areas, those folks are stuck, the power company will have a forever customer/market there. But in suburbs and rural areas, it's kind of possible, IMHO, that you start to get a lot of people "cutting the cord" and going disconnected from the grid, particularly if the rates and conditions for grid tie keep moving in the direction they have been.

Is this just "squeeze the last penny while it's there"?

The Grid is not going anywhere because as you said not everyone can get Solar and Solar is not reliable.
Batteries and Inverters will probably be half their current prices in three years and that will make a lot more people go Off-Grid or use so little power per year as to be seen as not contributing enough to keep the Grid system viable.
I suspect at some point an energy tax will be levied on all homeowners to keep the grid going.
No sense complaining about it because you already pay taxes to maintain roads and maintain a lot of infrastructure that you never use. This will just be one more item on the list.

I guess the real hope is that Solar will be a short term fix until they can get Fusion reactors running.
Once those are up the Grid will be fully in demand again and I suspect Solar will once again be just for people who are too far away from the Grid or those who want energy independence.

 

[Shimmy]

As I understand it, utilities' long-term plan is to charge retail "real time pricing" for energy, a bi-directional demand fee that ratchets every 12 months, and a fixed minimum customer fee. I have a lot of data for my system, and I modeled something similar to California's NEM3, my utility's (HECO) current discussions, and real-time pricing. On my ~12MWh annual consumption and 13MWh production, a California strategy would increase my costs by ~$120, HECO's by $150... and real-time pricing by about $500. Ratcheting demand fees could generate about $400 (I currently don't try to manage demand). My HECO customer fees are already $30, so I doubt that would go up significantly.

If I were to go "off grid", I would initially install a circuit between my house and my neighbors to push energy on good days and pull it on bad days, making sure they come out ahead. That is about the only way it would be viable, as I can't generate what I consume on bad weeks in the winter.

 

[Shimmy]

I guess the real hope is that Solar will be a short term fix until they can get Fusion reactors running.
Once those are up the Grid will be fully in demand again and I suspect Solar will once again be just for people who are too far away from the Grid or those who want energy independence.

The bulk of the utility's costs are on the distribution side rather than generation, and they are a mix of capital and line maintenance. The death knell for utilities is neigborhood scale microgrids that combine centralized storage and backup generation with a single grid link sized for charging batteries on low production days and minor export only. Each house then has minimal needs for the neighborhood system, but it can handle the arbitrage between homes and the utility.

 

[Quattrohead]

I have said it before and I will say it again, Solar is making less and less economic sense unless you go 100% off grid.

 

[Overtaxed]

I have said it before and I will say it again, Solar is making less and less economic sense unless you go 100% off grid.

I'm coming to the same conclusion Quattro (is that a Victron reference, I have a MPII in my RV!). The way the rates are structured for solar vs just staying on my normal plan with Duke make it really hard to see a ROI. With batteries, it's doable, in fact, I could probably skip the solar entirely and just put in batteries and move my load to off peak; that's likely the financial "best" play given the current rates. And, while that sounds stupid, it's actually in line with the desire of the power company, producing a KW for them is cheap, what's expensive is upgrading infrastructure or building new power plants, if I take power when they have plenty and then don't consume when they are constrained, as silly as it sounds, I'm helping them.

I suspect at some point an energy tax will be levied on all homeowners to keep the grid going.

A solid prediction; honestly, I don't see how this doesn't happen.

The only wildcard, let's say batteries do get really cheap; now the power company could really play directly in the market for bulk energy storage. They might be a lot more interested in my solar production if they had something to do with it (charge their batteries) rather than today, they use a microscopic amount of uranium to produce a few 1000 KW's that I need. I'm saving them almost nothing by putting up solar, the fuel costs approach 0 in a nuclear grid.

But I do think, as prices fall, you'll find more and more suburban and rural homes that just cut the cord. And, of course, this will be highly income segregated, those at the top will cut first, those lower down likely won't be able to stomach the capital costs for solar. Sounds like a new "not fair" initiative that we'll be reading about in a few years.

 

[Ampster]

I suspect at some point an energy tax will be levied on all homeowners to keep the grid going.

That does make some sense in terms of the fixed costs of maintaining the grid. Especially in California where deregulation of electrical generation took place over twenty years ago. I buy my generation from a CCA and pay PG&E only for distribution. The challenge will be to find an equitable way to apply the fixed cost of grid maintenance and upgrades. I have a Net Credit at True Up and have a credit from my CCA and pay $230 per year to PG&E for fixed charges and Non Bypassable Charges. I don't know whether that is the correct allocation or not? I use the grid as a seasonal battery and occasionally an overnight battery to charge my EVs so I get some benefit from having a grid connection. My inhouse batteries allow me to avoid paying peak rates so my patterns do not contribute to stressing the grid.
For my consumption patterns it is not possible to go completely off grid.

 

[OzSolar]

I have said it before and I will say it again, Solar is making less and less economic sense unless you go 100% off grid.

I agree. Utilities are doing everything in thier power to change the rates more and more towards fixed monthly fees and less about unit (KWH) charges.

 

[Overtaxed]

The bulk of the utility's costs are on the distribution side rather than generation, and they are a mix of capital and line maintenance. The death knell for utilities is neigborhood scale microgrids that combine centralized storage and backup generation with a single grid link sized for charging batteries on low production days and minor export only. Each house then has minimal needs for the neighborhood system, but it can handle the arbitrage between homes and the utility.

What's the benefit of a neighborhood microgrid vs doing it yourself (a nanogrid?)? I see a lot of these discussions and understanding a bit about solar/batteries, the economies of scale don't seem that compelling. Can you 1/2 the cost of panel/batteries if you're buying MW's at a time? Maybe? IDK, but, if not, I'm not sure how a microgrid would be better than off grid.

 

[Overtaxed]

The challenge will be to find an equitable way to apply the fixed cost of grid maintenance and upgrades.

That is a challenge, but, other utilities have a model to follow. Your cable company delivers Internet service for X/mo. 99% of that cost of delivery of that bill is "distribution", there's effectively no cost to the cable company if you use 1MB/mo or 10TB/mo (there is a little, but it's pennies/TB; unlike solar where it's a hobby, networking is my profession, so I have a pretty good idea on how that system works and the economics behind it).

Thing is, you can't generate your own Internet. If you want it, you're going to have to pay a "grid fee" to get it. Where with power, if you have enough panels and batteries, you really can completely cut the link to the grid. Today, it's not very cost effective to do that, but it is possible and, in the future, it's just going to get cheaper and cheaper. At the same time, the costs for the utility will, at best, stay flat, more likely, will go up (they need a lot of people to maintain the grid, those people have salaries, those trucks take fuel, those transformers go up in price every year, etc).

 

[Quattrohead]

None Road users don't have to pay for the roads so why should I have to pay for the grid?

 

[Quattrohead]

Quattro (is that a Victron reference

No it's Audi quattro group B rally cars

 

[ksmithaz1]

None Road users don't have to pay for the roads so why should I have to pay for the grid?

Sure you do, road taxes from fuel and whatnot pay for a portion, but by no means all of it.

 

[ksmithaz1]

A healthy grid benefits everyone, unless you truly are 100% self-sufficient = some hermit in a log lean-to in the woods, eating berries. Pretty much everyone uses the production from industry, and the roads that deliver the goods to market. I for one have no desire to return to the middle ages way of doing things. There are just some things that cannot really be done efficiently (albeit with caveats) without some form of governmental planning and possible intervention. I mean governmental = as local as possible for the project. At this point we must use taxing to get the revenue needed to make it happen. The road system in the US is one of the reasons we are able to move tremendous quantities of products to to practically any inhabited corner of the country relatively inexpensively.

We as a citizenry need to make sure that the idiots we elect to office levy the taxes sanely, spend the revenues appropriately, and create rules that benefit society as a whole, and not line the pockets of their friends and themselves.

 

[Cronix]

Sure you do, road taxes from fuel and whatnot pay for a portion, but by no means all of it.

And as more and more people buy EV's, fewer people are paying those gas taxes to maintain the roads causing budget issues all over.

 

[ksmithaz1]

And as more and more people buy EV's, fewer people are paying those gas taxes to maintain the roads causing budget issues all over.

I've mentioned this as well in other threads. My EV registration here was peanuts compared to an ICE, but something is going to give, and I expect the taxes to be collected from / at the registration process in the future.

 

[Cronix]

I've mentioned this as well in other threads. My EV registration here was peanuts compared to an ICE, but something is going to give, and I expect the taxes to be collected from / at the registration process in the future.

In Oregon (first state to implement gas tax in the US), they're (ODOT) wanting to install GPS devices in cars and go with a mileage based tax (many states are looking at this). Seeing as how cars don't 100% stay on public roads (which is what the tax is for) and don't 100% stay in the state they filled up or charge up in, they claim they need the GPS data to exclude taxing travels outside of the state and on private roads/property. ICE car efficiency is also part of the problem as cars became more efficient, the gas taxes didn't go up to make up the difference in lost revenue. So less taxes have been collected and road costs have gone up. And on top we're already subsidizing EV's bigtime with tax credits, etc. And to solve this, they want you have to give up your entire travel history and know everywhere you've been, and when. One way or another, we're all going to be paying for it, just like the grid whether you have it or not.

 

[ksmithaz1]

In Oregon (first state to implement gas tax in the US), they're (ODOT) wanting to install GPS devices in cars and go with a mileage based tax (many states are looking at this). Seeing as how cars don't 100% stay on public roads (which is what the tax is for) and don't 100% stay in the state they filled up or charge up in, they claim they need the GPS data to exclude taxing travels outside of the state and on private roads/property. ICE car efficiency is also part of the problem as cars became more efficient, the gas taxes didn't go up to make up the difference in lost revenue. So less taxes have been collected and road costs have gone up. And on top we're already subsidizing EV's bigtime with tax credits, etc. And to solve this, they want you have to give up your entire travel history and know everywhere you've been, and when. One way or another, we're all going to be paying for it, just like the grid whether you have it or not.

Something about tar & feathers comes to mind. The simplest and most likely will be posting your mileage at the time of registration. Drive down, plug in your OBD, it gets the mileage, takes the difference pay the tax. As far as driving in/out of state, that's going to be a push. And if you only drive on non-public roads (Like a golf cart for example) then you don't have to register it in the first place. If you live there fix it, don't move here and screw up my state.

 

[SeaGal]

I have said it before and I will say it again, Solar is making less and less economic sense unless you go 100% off grid.

In USA maybe, but not here in UK. I am expecting / realistically calculated sub 4 year ROI for grid-tied savings, even without export payments ?.

Audi quattro group B rally cars

Now there's a classic.

I guess the real hope is that Solar will be a short term fix until they can get Fusion reactors running.

The problem is 'they' have been predicting Fusion reactors since I was in school... and that's a very very long time ago... like even before the world had heard of Audi Quattro group B rally cars or Michèle Mouton

 

[ksmithaz1]

The problem is 'they' have been predicting Fusion reactors since I was in school... and that's a very very long time ago... like even before the world had heard of Audi Quattro group B rally cars or Michèle Mouton

No, no we have cold fusion, I saw it light a light bulb in that movie "The Saint" with Val Kilmer. They've just been hiding it from us.

'Fusion' is a major technology breakthru away. However some sort of breeder-reactor technology to make use of 'spent' nuclear fuel might be on the near horizon. This was the perpetual-motion machine of the same era's, but "they" have actually had some success using reactor A to create fuel for reactor B. Obviously there will be losses along the way as energy is created, but if the net result stretches the fuel even 50%, and reduces overall waste/watt it's likely a win. We need to let technology solve our problems as we have them, instead of allowing governments to solve problems we don't have yet.