No but i am interested in fairness. Net metering was inherently unfair to utilities and non-solar customers. What Alabama is doing is unfair to off-grid users. The latter is very recent development and new rules will be needed to make it fair to everyone.
Lawsuit challenging Alabama Power solar panel charge
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DIYrich
Solar Wizard
"name plate" is inverter capacity, not pv. You only displace the inverter capacity that the utility has to supply if you run out of pv/battery.
SkyBlue
New Member
Where I live the roads are owned by me and my fellow citizens and the electric grid is owned by a private, for profit corporation. I agree I have an obligation as a citizen to pay my fair share of the cost of the public road network, whether I use it or not. But I can't agree that I have an obligation to pay for the private, for profit corporation's electric grid above and beyond the value of what I use from the grid. If the private utility wants to be treated like a public agency with guaranteed public funding they can transfer their grid to public ownership.
Think big.
In the macro view these networks are national or even international.
cs1234
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I was "asked rhetorically" if I was a communist earlier in the thread. I'm thinking about electricity for everybody, what's best for the overall system, not just what's best for one individual household. I appreciate your streak of rugged individualism though.
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wpns
Solar Joules are catch and release
They just lost a big chunk of their load, and I got alerted to:
Grid Frequency is 70.8 Hz at 2024/10/12 13:32:10
Yeah, they need more money.
cs1234
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I think it's unfair to on-grid users as well. $5 per 1kw of solar is almost the entire amount of solar generation cost offset. That's bull crap.
I agree that net metering was also bull crap, the power company shouldn't have to pay for any power from residential solar installations either.
cs1234
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Is your frequency usually 60Hz?They just lost a big chunk of their load, and I got alerted to:
Grid Frequency is 70.8 Hz at 2024/10/12 13:32:10
Yeah, they need more money.
TM48
Solar Wizard
I didn't call you a communist. I asked you if you were.
wpns
Solar Joules are catch and release
Supposed to be!
cs1234
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Maybe English isn't your first language, or you are full of caca. I can't be certain.
Rhetorical Questions
EDIT: I've edited my original post to not put words in your mouth.
Hedges
I See Electromagnetic Fields!
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The only thing it is fair to charge a utility customer for is the energy and services he has used, is using, or will use.
Not what he produces and uses for himself. If you want, throttle increased usage during periods of inclement weather or charge more for it.
I might, for instance, use large amounts of electricity when the sun shines, but I will not use electric heat anymore, now that net metering is dead.
Instead, I will burn safe, clean, comfortable natural gas in my furnace, just like I used to 20+ years ago before I put in PV panels.
No reason for the utility to tax me on my PV array, which will be the only thing that powers my A/C in the summer. Never their grid. I won't be using them for infrequent high power levels, no need to reserve capacity for me. So don't charge me for it.
Not what he produces and uses for himself. If you want, throttle increased usage during periods of inclement weather or charge more for it.
I might, for instance, use large amounts of electricity when the sun shines, but I will not use electric heat anymore, now that net metering is dead.
Instead, I will burn safe, clean, comfortable natural gas in my furnace, just like I used to 20+ years ago before I put in PV panels.
No reason for the utility to tax me on my PV array, which will be the only thing that powers my A/C in the summer. Never their grid. I won't be using them for infrequent high power levels, no need to reserve capacity for me. So don't charge me for it.
Recovering EE
Solar Addict
In many states, there's an additional fee for EVs at its yearly registration, to make up for lost road taxes. In CA, it's $100. In some states, it's as high as $200. If you do the math, a yearly fee of $200 can be *more* than an ICE vehicle driver pays in road taxes at the pump for an average car going an average number of miles per year.
Seeing as it's wear and tear on the roads that needs paying for, a yearly fee based on an odo read and vehicle weight metric seems the most fair, as those are the two most impactful variables.
teal95
Solar Wizard
Except that EV weigh 1.5 to 2x what a comparable ICE vehicle weighs, so 3 or 4x the road damage.
cs1234
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Charge by weight and mileage, who cares what it's powered by.
Recovering EE
Solar Addict
And it would be fair for them to pay more, based on something between it's curb weight and GVW.
cs1234
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Where I live, most non EV vehicles are trucks. Most EV's are type 3 muskmobiles. As heavy as muskmobiles are, the average F150 around here weighs more.
EDIT. I get you said "comparable".. but it seems I can go an entire day without seeing an ICE car vs non stop ICE trucks/SUVs.
Was there some indication that they lost connection to a big chunk of their customers about that time?They just lost a big chunk of their load, and I got alerted to:
Grid Frequency is 70.8 Hz at 2024/10/12 13:32:10
Yeah, they need more money.
Tiny frequency shifts act as internal signaling in the grid to increase/decrease generated power to match load. A giant frequency jump like that (18% :-O) sounds like maybe your area got "islanded" (disconnected from the main grid) and had enough local generation (i.e. more inverter capacity than load) to stay alive. Without the power plants' large collection of massive-rotating-machine generators connected to regulated-speed prime movers to fight it, the frequency of the island's grid-piece rapidly drifts out-of-spec. (This is the main input to the inverters' mandated detect-islanding-and-shut-down features.)
Did your grid feed go down shortly after that alarm. ("I sense a great disturbance in the grid, as if hundreds of inverters suddenly cried out and cut their bypass relay connections or went dead.")
HarryN
Solar Wizard
At that price point, the main reason to have solar is to have back up power.
Wish we had pricing like that here in California.
My utility does same bs charge every month. On top of paying me .04/kw but charging .15/kw for power. So they buy it from me to sell to my neighbors for almost 4x. Oh and next year they are adding peak hours for .35/kw during certain on demand times but not increasing the amount I get for exporting to them. Sounds fair
We used to use 2200 - 2400 kWh per month in Jul, Aug, Sept. If I had fully deployed solar I would set the AC thermostat back to 76 all summer. Conservation works but is not very comfortable.
I doubt with all the AI data centers being built they will run out of costumers. If anything you will be curtailing grid usage because you will be competing with big data centers for power. They’ll be able to afford a higher price per kw than any residential customer.
cs1234
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"Able to afford". I wonder if they will be paying more or getting substantial volume discounts and the utility will be sticking us with the higher cost per kw.
If you are off grid 100% the utility can't charge you anything. We have solar on the house and under FPL and they are very solar friendly for now. About 15 miles away we have an off grid cabin in an co op very unfriendly power company area. I don't pay a dime to them and never will. Why would I tell the unfriendly power company I have solar on my land. F them...
It's closer to 30% of solar generation offset assuming 4 rated solar hours per day.
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