houseofancients
Solar Wizard
Or rather, and in my humble opinion, all netmeter..
Costs are shared, excess power get used ( or stored) and less fossil burning antiques have to be kept in service, cost everyone taxes and they are heavily subsidized
Opinions on grid exporting/net metering. Poll included :)
- Thread starter Crowz
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Costs are shared, excess power get used ( or stored) and less fossil burning antiques have to be kept in service, cost everyone taxes and they are heavily subsidized
well those already ended and nem 3 is avoided cost. there are some grandfathered in because when they signed up they were being incentivized to add solar and go green but there is an end date for nem 1 and 2
Um, that ship sailed from the earliest days of the grid. Utilities were granted the right of eminent domain, normally reserved only to the government itself, so that utilities could construct power monopolies. Territory was divided up into “certificated” areas where only one utility could operate. Power companies have never competed in a free market. Which, I’ll say again, especially justifies the trade-off of regulation in the public interest.
I happen to believe that it’s in the public interest right now to encourage and incent distributed generation from renewable resources. If that includes making the utility accept feed-in power on some fair rate base, for some reasonable period of time, so be it.
I didn't say I was anti regulation I said government run. Government run normally doesn't end well efficiency wise.
Nothing like California's level. Making a power company divest of power plants to me is oxymoron to the max. It enslaves the rates to outside state regulation and leaves you at their mercy power wise. Its the freaking power company. They should make power.
I guess it was to force being more green if the plants are not in your state you don't have to suffer the pollution of making the power you just get to enjoy having power.
Hedges
I See Electromagnetic Fields!
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The avoided cost rate is what they would have had to pay a peaker plant (for 99% of the 10GW we put in the grid, not the last 1% they didn't want.)
Plus what they would have had to pay for transmission lines.
What PG&E does is to say, "See!? We had to pay Arizona to take the last MW of PV production because it exceeded our needs! All your PV power is less than useless!
Encourage level consumption plus peaks during solar peak.
PV users were put on a schedule where rates peak after the sun don't shine, but consumers were not (so they would continue to start A/C cooling after work rather than during peak PV production.)
The pricing is gamed by bean counters. The system is not being optimized by engineers.
They are already proposing that in California. Together with income-based pricing. Highest tier something in the range of $95 to $135/month depending on utility.
The goal is simply to make rooftop solar even less attractive.
Pennsylvania has net metering which I enjoy every month when the bill comes. That being said, I know this can't go on forever, it's not a financially sustainable program. If I just buy power, that price includes services which I receive and take for granted. Hardware like poles, wires, transformers. With a phone call, I can summon a lineman crew with trucks and supplies at 3:00 a.m. in the worst weather conditions.
When I sell power to the grid, the utility company receives nothing else, and they pay full retail price. They're still on the hook to support everything that makes up the grid with no support from me. As the number of grid tie customers increase, it's costing them more every day.
So do I like net metering? Yes I do. Do I believe it's fair? No not at all. I didn't make these rules but would be foolish to not take advantage of them.
When I sell power to the grid, the utility company receives nothing else, and they pay full retail price. They're still on the hook to support everything that makes up the grid with no support from me. As the number of grid tie customers increase, it's costing them more every day.
So do I like net metering? Yes I do. Do I believe it's fair? No not at all. I didn't make these rules but would be foolish to not take advantage of them.
OffGridForGood
Catch, make or grow everything you can.
That is the part that pi$$es me off the most.
I worry they are positioning the public into believing that 'solar & EV's are to blame' for what in many cases is actually decades of infrastructure-neglect/lack of investment and maintenance. What a sweet deal they could be looking at: get exess solar during on peak time of the day for NEM-3 rates, And get subsidized/paid to upgrade the infrastructure "because of EV's" are overloading the system.
{BTW: Looks like this was a pretty hot topic, lots of replies in a short time span!}
I've also thought about this quite a bit. Our primary goal is to simply not need the power company, producing our own electricity. As in all of New England (US), our utilities and their customers got addicted to cheap natural gas to generate electricity, and had no plan for the day that fuel became expensive. So, we're now paying about $0.28/kwh, almost double what we paid just 4 years ago. There's a movement afoot to have the state take over the two biggest electric suppliers in the state, which would create the largest government debt ever seen here. Given my distrust of the government doing anything efficiently, I'd rather that not happen. But whether it does or not, I just want to have the ability to "opt out". We'll already have our own well, and a septic system. Heck, we can gow some of our own food. There's not much we can do about phone and internet dependency as we need some provider, but at least I don't have to have their wires running here if I don't want them. I have a friend who says I'm crazy to not do net metering, but I'm not sure I want the hassle. I might hook up to the power company to make for easy battery recharge, but even then a generator seems more appealing, and sometimes more reliable.
OffGridForGood
Catch, make or grow everything you can.
agreed, but generator power = expensive power, even with nat gas. In spite of my avatar name, I do maintain a grid supply connection, November - Early January are tough to deal with in my neck of the woods, the choices are: over-panel x3.5 of my summer needs, or pay to run the expensive generator power, or keep the utility connection, or do without some energy uses for 2.5 months (and my spouse leave me!).
For us, we used to have two utility services, now only one -our business is located next door and is 100% off grid, the house became the summer 'dump load' as a result of exess energy available. Now we are increasing the capcity of the total system and using an EV as the main dump load.
To your point: we use solar first, then battery, then utility, and lastly the generator (if the others are all unavailable) four levels of power supply. The cost for maintaining the utility service, with minimum monthly charges etc is still a lot less then running a generator, and quieter too.
You make an excellent point, and that might well be where I, too, land for the next house. Or, we may connect to grid and then figure out whether over-paneling is worth it after a year or two in the house. The thing that really irks me is that energy prices are so volatile these days. Electricity was once very stable in its pricing, but reliance on fossil fuels to generate it has made it almost as volatile as oil. We're doing our retirement years planning, and that's a big reason for building a net zero (or near it) home – I don't want a lot of big swings in expense once I retire. Anyway, we shall see... If it looks like we need the generator only a couple of times per year, then I might well cut the cord. But like you, we're far north with little winter sun. Makes it hard, for sure.
OffGridForGood
Catch, make or grow everything you can.
I hear ya, it has been a key part of our planning and expansion to have things 'set' so when we are retired we don't need to worry about utility rates. Right now we have the finances and the physical capacity to do what needs to be done, later that may not be the case.
I ran a few numbers for Concord NH (central New England) as a proxy for your area, this is what I see per 1000w PV array:
30-degree tilt 1300Wh /yr, July=136kWh, Dec=70kWh ratio of worst to best is 1:2 approx.
If you tilt to 65-degrees for winter(5 months Nov-Mar) the total for the year increases by 67kWh to 1367 (only 5% overall improvement, but December increases 18.6% likely you will need it) but tilting will also assist with snow removal/sliding assuming the PV is high enough that snow clears when it slides. (in my area I would tilt up even if there was zero change to the PV just to deal with snow removal).
If you over-panel x 2 and keep the snow off the panels, you would have PV all year around (if you also have battery bank to suit), and double what you need in summer - or lots spare for A/C and EV use.
Edit: or lots spare for your guest house set up your spouse runs!
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Bingo! That's exactly my line of thinking. I'm not even sure I'm going to put panels on the roof, even though we're putting the house roof almost due south. I can't really tilt a roof to 65 degrees, but I can easily do that with ground mounts. And we've got lots of land, so....
We won't get much more done on the property until next year, but then it'll be a mad dash through summer and into fall. I'm letting the excavated pad settle over winter before we do the concrete pour come spring, and then my framer can have a field day. If we get it to the point of weathertight by fall of '24 I'll be happy. A slow build, but we don't really need to move fast, and I'm going to try to avoid debt AND keep our current house, just 7 miles away, but on the lake. We may eventually sell that due to the cost and burden of maintenance (try plowing in and out 1.7 miles, and being the only person that spends anything significant on the road) but we'll cross the bridge later.
I could make all of this work easily with propane heating (will have radiant in-floor on first floor) but I'm trying to avoid fossil fuels if I can. My plan for the radiant is primarily to feed a wood boiler when I WANT to feed the wood boiler, rather than being forced to do so. As much as anything it will be used for exterior snow melting, with a valve that allows me to divert to the interior loops if I wish. Otherwise, we'll do most of our heating with air-air mini splits. If I were 20 years younger I'd be thinking differently, but those 20 years have taken their toll. And, frankly, I want a system that my wife can easily maintain if I croak or am too feeble to be helpful.
Anyway, your numbers align with my initial calculations, so thanks for the reassurance. Greatly appreciated!
OffGridForGood
Catch, make or grow everything you can.
We did the heating the same approach as solar: three or four levels of back-ups: Firewood/sawmill slabs, Pellet furnace, Mini-split, Propane. (we actually had the propane removed last year, just never used it anymore, and the tank was a rental so it had to go LOL) anyway - do what makes sense for your location and situation for sure.
With a boiler system, you can have lots of heating source options.
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