California Utilities Plan All Out War On Solar, Please Read And Help

[miimura]

@Doc Brown why do you think that Tesla doesn't have a proper VPP set up yet for the Powerwall customers that pays equivalent to ELRP? My understanding is that demand reduction is paid between $1/kWh and $2/kWh during these Flex Alert like periods. I don't see why I can't be paid $1/kWh for discharging my Powerwalls during these events.

 

[1100MCM]

There’s also the EIM which is kind of helping with the problem of negative prices. The majority of the major balancing authorities in the West have joined and all are touting the savings from being able to offload a glut of renewables to other entities throughout the West. Being able to offload a glut of solar to other states will keep power prices above negative territory.

 

[mspohr]

No. What do you think should happen to your solar generation when prices are negative? In those circumstances - producers are required to pay to send energy to the grid - instead of getting paid. Are you, as a solar producer, ready to live by those rules?

I despise PG&E and SDE. I know them (too) well. PG&E is inept and should have been permitted to fail after the Camp Fire.

That said - I keep hearing home solar people say they should get all the benefits of government subsidies for solar (mandatory purchase by companies) yet they don’t want to pay the transmission cost associated with their power or be subject to the actual price (market) for energy. You can’t have it both ways. During peak generation - the grid has to find a way to dump your generated power somewhere that needs it. That might be in the PNW or somewhere else. Who should pay to dump your power?

its easy to have 30,000 foot level arguments about this stuff - but if you’re going to plant a flag, you should know how it all works. Grid charges "for everyone" doesn’t address the overproduction of renewables. It just doesn’t. subsidization of renewables is being done, in california, to shutter natural gas plants. It’s a fact. the problem is there’s nothing to pick up the slack when solar and wind drop off. Battery storage? Please. Pumped hydro? Can’t cover the whole gap. Nuclear? Not viable in the US anymore. So now what? We’ll keep having "Flex Alerts" to try to reduce demand after 3pm.

Most people that wade into this arena don’t understand how the system works or otherwise talk in slogans or anecdotes. It’s not how the actual system works.

When prices are negative, just stop exporting and self consume or charge your battery. (Summer A/C to precool the house, hot water heating, winter heat pump, etc. are good uses of the energy.) That's how price signals work. You don't have to pay anyone to take your excess power.
TOU prices address the issue of overproduction.
If there is too much demand in the evening, high TOU prices will discourage people from doing laundry, etc. Solar/battery people can just use their batteries and stop importing.

Grid charges are a separate issue but one that utilities have conflated with solar to attack residential solar.
Power companies bundle grid costs and energy costs together. This means that people who use small amounts of electricity (small, efficient houses, solar, etc.) are subsidized by large users for their use of the grid. Best to unbundle grid and energy costs with separate charges for everyone. (If you are concerned about low income people, most utilities have provision for low income subsidies.)

Smart Rate Design for a Smart Future

The electric utility industry is facing a number of radical changes, including customer-sited generation and advanced metering infrastructure, which will

www.raponline.org

Everyone Should Pay a “Solar Tax”

Monthly connection fees are good for the climate. Regular readers of this blog are well aware that the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) published a proposed decision on reforming net …

energyathaas.wordpress.com

 

[Doc Brown]

There’s also the EIM which is kind of helping with the problem of negative prices. The majority of the major balancing authorities in the West have joined and all are touting the savings from being able to offload a glut of renewables to other entities throughout the West. Being able to offload a glut of solar to other states will keep power prices above negative territory.

So - if we need this massive effort to "offload" solar (distribute" around the west - who should pay? Rooftop solar generators? Serious question. And that’s "if" the real transmission capacity exists to offload it.

 

[Doc Brown]

When prices are negative, just stop exporting and self consume or charge your battery. (Summer A/C to precool the house, hot water heating, winter heat pump, etc. are good uses of the energy.) That's how price signals work. You don't have to pay anyone to take your excess power.
TOU prices address the issue of overproduction.
If there is too much demand in the evening, high TOU prices will discourage people from doing laundry, etc. Solar/battery people can just use their batteries and stop importing.

Grid charges are a separate issue but one that utilities have conflated with solar to attack residential solar.
Power companies bundle grid costs and energy costs together. This means that people who use small amounts of electricity (small, efficient houses, solar, etc.) are subsidized by large users for their use of the grid. Best to unbundle grid and energy costs with separate charges for everyone. (If you are concerned about low income people, most utilities have provision for low income subsidies.)

Smart Rate Design for a Smart Future

The electric utility industry is facing a number of radical changes, including customer-sited generation and advanced metering infrastructure, which will

www.raponline.org

Everyone Should Pay a “Solar Tax”

Monthly connection fees are good for the climate. Regular readers of this blog are well aware that the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) published a proposed decision on reforming net …

energyathaas.wordpress.com

if it’s that simple - just install your battery wall and disconnect from the grid. If you still want the grid for reliability when you can’t generate (or store) enough - then you’re turning the grid into something akin to an emergency room that has to be fully staffed just in case you need it.

I agree utility companies want to slow down rooftop solar - but the energy markets tell a story of a real problem even with current levels of solar (and wind). Storage is too far behind.

 

[MJ_CA_2019]

GE Will Shutter California Natural Gas Plant 20 Years Early - Clean Power Exchange

Pity poor General Electric. Once the dominant global leader in turbines for making electricity from coal or natural gas, its business has hit the skids in recent years as demand for its products has collapsed. We can thank the steep decline in the price of renewable energy for that. Now GE has...

cleanpowerexchange.org

The article read to me that they were shutting it down due to unreliability of that series of turbine and inability to respond to changes in demand cycles.

 

[iPlug]

Best solution already noted as per @mspohr: TOU prices and a "grid charge" for EVERYONE.

If negative prices are really an issue, give everyone access to those negative prices. There are huge amounts of batteries already on the grid, just not necessarily power walls and electric utility scale grid batteries.

There’s a huge market ready for those negative prices. The problem is implementation. Give free electricity and suddenly electric vehicles are absorbing this, heat pump water heaters, heat pump furnaces, pool pumps, hot tubs… these battery sinks already exist and are ready to be exploited. Many more on the way.

 

[Doc Brown]

The article read to me that they were shutting it down due to unreliability of that series of turbine and inability to respond to changes in demand cycles.

yep. The takeaway is that it was shuttered because it can’t ramp up and down quickly - which is a relatively new pressure put on gas-fired plants. It’s like large water pumps - they aren’t meant to be cycled repeatedly.
also note this from the article (which is more why I posted it):

"Reuters says the closure highlights the stiff competition in California’s deregulated energy market as cheap wind and solar supply more electricity, squeezing out fossil fuels. Some utilities say they have no plans to build more fossil plants, which is great news for the environment."

 

[mspohr]

if it’s that simple - just install your battery wall and disconnect from the grid. If you still want the grid for reliability when you can’t generate (or store) enough - then you’re turning the grid into something akin to an emergency room that has to be fully staffed just in case you need it.

I agree utility companies want to slow down rooftop solar - but the energy markets tell a story of a real problem even with current levels of solar (and wind). Storage is too far behind.

I didn't say disconnect from the grid.
I said stop exporting when prices are negative.
Lots of potential for demand management which could be tapped with the right incentives... home batteries, car charging, hot water heating, etc.

 

[dfwatt]

I just retired from 36 years at a California utility, and I'll try to explain one of the main issues. I'm a solar owner and an EV driver, so all of this affects me as well. I didn't work in the rates group or the solar group, but my knowledge comes from working at the utility for many years in various engineering positions...

Years ago, the utilities charged an all-in price per kWh and that covered all the services offered, the cost of the energy, transmission, distribution, billing, etc. Over time, some of those charges have been broken out and charged separately, but not all of them.

Here's the issue with your statement..."...when you install solar you pay for it. Now you are getting power from the sun and not the utilities so why do you have to be charged more for having solar?"...

You are making solar energy during the day, and either using all of it or using some and exporting some. You are using the grid at night, unless you have a lot of expensive batteries (most solar customers don't have batteries yet, but of course, that is increasing). But even those that have batteries are usually not covering all their consumption for the entire period of darkness. So most solar customers are purchasing power from the utility at night and using the grid. In fact, the utility peak has shifted from 4pm in the summer to 7-8pm for this very reason.

The issue is that many solar customers are not paying much of anything for the grid (The CPUC has refused a monthly grid fee for many years in the past). The grid is the tool that allows you to export your excess solar during the day and feed you with energy at night. While I happen to think that the proposed $8/kW grid fee is too much, there does need to be SOME sort of fee for the grid, because all customers use it, not just the non-solar ones. To me, that's one of the main issues (there are others, but that to me is one of the main issues). Like I said, I think it should be less than $8/kW, and with the advent of Smart Meters, I think customers could be charged based on what their actual grid demand is for the month with some sort of average calculation and that would be more accurate...We'll see what happens in the CPUC final decision...I hope that helps to explain a little bit...

Good God! You don't seriously think you need to explain to a bunch of Tesla owners (and an audience full of PhDs) the concept of a connection charge do you? And are you remotely naïve enough to believe that an $8 per kilowatt connection charge is about legitimate recouping of transmission costs? Come on! It's about maintaining total control over a centralized grid and removing the incentives for solar installation – period.

What's at stake here is just as critical a paradigm shift as the movement away from fossil fuels in vehicles. It's the notion of a massive centralized grid controlled by privately owned utilities that make tens of millions of dollars a year for their stockholders and executives, as opposed to a much 'lighter' more agile grid that is mostly decentralized and where centralized power requirements are far smaller. Public utilities Executives correctly see rooftop solar as an existential threat to their hegemony and unchallenged monopoly business model. This isn't Executive paranoia, this is disruptive technology coming right for their bank accounts. So what do they do? And what have they actually done so far? It shows you really where they're coming from, and it's far less benign than your account would suggest:

1) the first stage which is mostly over was to finance and promulgate climate change denial and other forms of disinformation so that they could maintain their fossil fuel centric power generation, without looking too bad. They've clearly lost that battle, so on to step #2

2) When #1 was no longer looking like a winning card most "public" Utilities shifted gears into 'greenwashing'. Now, all of a sudden, they were great friends of solar and renewable energy (and they falsely trumpet to have been great friends of solar and renewables all along!) – they all have spent literally millions of dollars advertising their green footprint (never mind the messy fact that most of them had delayed investing in renewable technology until recently), or that the vast majority of most public utility power generation is still from fossil fuels. Those are inconvenient facts. Greenwashing provides cover and obfuscation for the front-line battle that they are now waging against net metering. It is a life or death battle because if net metering succeeds, centralized power generation fails.

3) Put up as much a fight as possible around net metering – because again it's an existential threat. That's what we're seeing from all the utilities now that people are actually starting to adopt rooftop solar en masse. A reasonable connection charge of $10-$15 a month is more than enough given the fact that rooftop solar actually seriously cuts into transmission infrastructure costs in direct proportion to its adoption. But again that's the problem – that's an existential threat to the raison d'être of "public" utility companies. They correctly see it as such, so in order to sink rooftop solar, the best approach is to make it have virtually no payback and no cost savings. The abolition of net metering and punitive connection fees (increasingly rationalized in terms of "social justice" concepts - hah!) is the best way to kill this existential threat. This guarantees that they maintain total and a highly centralized control over energy generation, all from a still mostly non-accountable corporation set up to make money for its investors – which should be a tipoff that there is an intrinsic conflict of interest between that raison d'être and the goal of sustainable energy production at the lowest possible cost.

But in the United States we tolerate high degrees of conflict of interest, especially when you can rationalize those conflicts of interest in terms of some flimsy concept of free-market capitalism. Actually what the utility companies are doing is anti-free market capitalism – it's corporate socialism and plutocracy on steroids. Free-market capitalism is that rooftop solar as a disruptive technology (and just starting to get into its exponential growth phase) is cheaper over the long run than paying for a massive centralized grid with huge transmission lines and infrastructure. Solar system energy generation - even at just moderate scale - can now hit the target very few large-scale Utilities are comfortable with achieving – under $.10 a kilowatt hour, and that number is falling every year. We are not far from five cents a kilowatt hour within the next 5 to 10 years. So there's your existential threat. And you better believe power companies see it that way.

 

[mspohr]

Good God! You don't seriously think you need to explain to a bunch of Tesla owners (and an audience full of PhDs) the concept of a connection charge do you? And are you remotely naïve enough to believe that an $8 per kilowatt connection charge is about legitimate recouping of transmission costs? Come on! It's about maintaining total control over a centralized grid and removing the incentives for solar installation – period.

What's at stake here is just as critical a paradigm shift as the movement away from fossil fuels in vehicles. It's the notion of a massive centralized grid controlled by privately owned utilities that make tens of millions of dollars a year for their stockholders and executives, as opposed to a much 'lighter' more agile grid that is mostly decentralized and where centralized power requirements are far smaller. Public utilities Executives correctly see rooftop solar as an existential threat to their hegemony and unchallenged monopoly business model. This isn't Executive paranoia, this is disruptive technology coming right for their bank accounts. So what do they do? And what if they actually done so far? It shows you really where they're coming from, and it's far less benign than your account would suggest:

1) the first stage which is mostly over was to finance and promulgate climate change denial and other forms of disinformation so that they could maintain their fossil fuel centric power generation, without looking too bad. They've clearly lost that battle, so on to step #2

2) When that was no longer looking like a winning card most "public" Utilities shifted gears into 'greenwashing'. Now, all of a sudden, they were great friends of solar and renewable energy and they all have spent literally millions of dollars advertising their green footprint (nevermind the fact that most of them had delayed investing in renewable technology until recently), and the vast majority of most public utility power generation is still from fossil fuels.

3) Put up as much a fight as possible around net metering – because again it's an existential threat. That's what we're seeing from all the utilities now that people are actually starting to adopt rooftop solar en masse. A reasonable connection charge of $10-$15 a month is more than enough given the fact that rooftop solar actually seriously cuts into transmission infrastructure costs in direct proportion to its adoption. But again that's the problem – that's an existential threat to the raison d'être of "public" utility companies. They correctly see it as such, so in order to sink rooftop solar, the best approach is to make it have virtually no payback and no cost savings. The abolition of net metering and punitive connection fees (increasingly rationalized in terms of "social justice" concepts - hah!) Is the best way to kill this existential threat. This guarantees that they maintain total and a highly centralized control over energy generation, all from a still mostly non-accountable corporation set up to make money for its investors – which should be a tipoff that there is an intrinsic conflict of interest between that raison d'être and the goal of sustainable energy production at the lowest possible cost. But in the United States we tolerate high degrees of conflict of interest, Especially when you can rationalize those conflicts of interest in terms of some flimsy concept of free-market capitalism. Actually what the utility companies are doing is anti-free market capitalism – it's corporate socialism and plutocracy on steroids. Free-market capitalism is that rooftop solar is cheaper over the long run than paying for a massive centralized grid with huge transmission lines and infrastructure. Solar system Energy generation even at moderate scale can now hit the target no large-scale utility is comfortable with – under $.10 a kilowatt hour. So there's your existential threat. And you better believe power companies see it that way.

Clear and concise description of the problem.
Utility monopolies need more regulation to prevent these abuses.
Solar does represent an existential threat to their profits. Solar does reduce the need for the grid by making it more robust and distributed.

 

[Merrill]

The key word here is regulation, why does California have the highest electrical rates.

 

[dfwatt]

Clear and concise description of the problem.
Utility monopolies need more regulation to prevent these abuses.
Solar does represent an existential threat to their profits. Solar does reduce the need for the grid by making it more robust and distributed.

Thanks for the kind words. Unfortunately the regulations are being written by the power companies with the assistance of their lobbyists and well-paid Senators and Congressmen in various states. It's a bit like putting the fox in charge of the chickens. I'm a little surprised that there is not more organized pushback by Tesla Energy. Obviously the goal of the power companies is to make solar financially unattractive enough that people will sit in their current situation and be subject to obscene price structures and costs. What's surprising is to see the lack of outrage or at least organized outrage because individual outrage doesn't do jack. But thanks for the support and let me know of any grassroots organizing around this. I'm in Florida and I just posted this: Florida Light and Power Moves Against Net Metering

 

[RandyS]

Good God! You don't seriously think you need to explain to a bunch of Tesla owners (and an audience full of PhDs) the concept of a connection charge do you? And are you remotely naïve enough to believe that an $8 per kilowatt connection charge is about legitimate recouping of transmission costs? Come on! It's about maintaining total control over a centralized grid and removing the incentives for solar installation – period.

What's at stake here is just as critical a paradigm shift as the movement away from fossil fuels in vehicles. It's the notion of a massive centralized grid controlled by privately owned utilities that make tens of millions of dollars a year for their stockholders and executives, as opposed to a much 'lighter' more agile grid that is mostly decentralized and where centralized power requirements are far smaller. Public utilities Executives correctly see rooftop solar as an existential threat to their hegemony and unchallenged monopoly business model. This isn't Executive paranoia, this is disruptive technology coming right for their bank accounts. So what do they do? And what have they actually done so far? It shows you really where they're coming from, and it's far less benign than your account would suggest:

1) the first stage which is mostly over was to finance and promulgate climate change denial and other forms of disinformation so that they could maintain their fossil fuel centric power generation, without looking too bad. They've clearly lost that battle, so on to step #2

2) When #1 was no longer looking like a winning card most "public" Utilities shifted gears into 'greenwashing'. Now, all of a sudden, they were great friends of solar and renewable energy (and they falsely trumpet to have been great friends of solar and renewables all along!) – they all have spent literally millions of dollars advertising their green footprint (never mind the messy fact that most of them had delayed investing in renewable technology until recently), or that the vast majority of most public utility power generation is still from fossil fuels. Those are inconvenient facts. Greenwashing provides cover and obfuscation for the front-line battle that they are now waging against net metering. It is a life or death battle because if net metering succeeds, centralized power generation fails.

3) Put up as much a fight as possible around net metering – because again it's an existential threat. That's what we're seeing from all the utilities now that people are actually starting to adopt rooftop solar en masse. A reasonable connection charge of $10-$15 a month is more than enough given the fact that rooftop solar actually seriously cuts into transmission infrastructure costs in direct proportion to its adoption. But again that's the problem – that's an existential threat to the raison d'être of "public" utility companies. They correctly see it as such, so in order to sink rooftop solar, the best approach is to make it have virtually no payback and no cost savings. The abolition of net metering and punitive connection fees (increasingly rationalized in terms of "social justice" concepts - hah!) is the best way to kill this existential threat. This guarantees that they maintain total and a highly centralized control over energy generation, all from a still mostly non-accountable corporation set up to make money for its investors – which should be a tipoff that there is an intrinsic conflict of interest between that raison d'être and the goal of sustainable energy production at the lowest possible cost.

But in the United States we tolerate high degrees of conflict of interest, especially when you can rationalize those conflicts of interest in terms of some flimsy concept of free-market capitalism. Actually what the utility companies are doing is anti-free market capitalism – it's corporate socialism and plutocracy on steroids. Free-market capitalism is that rooftop solar as a disruptive technology (and just starting to get into its exponential growth phase) is cheaper over the long run than paying for a massive centralized grid with huge transmission lines and infrastructure. Solar system energy generation - even at just moderate scale - can now hit the target very few large-scale Utilities are comfortable with achieving – under $.10 a kilowatt hour, and that number is falling every year. We are not far from five cents a kilowatt hour within the next 5 to 10 years. So there's your existential threat. And you better believe power companies see it that way.

Sorry to have offended you...My response was intended to be educational from my utility career point of view and to address the previous posters thinking from the statement made ("...when you install solar you pay for it. Now you are getting power from the sun and not the utilities so why do you have to be charged more for having solar?"...). I enjoy discussing EV and solar technical issues with folks and find that even the most educated usually don't have all the pieces of the puzzle that my utility insight has provided me over the years...Have a good day...

 

[dfwatt]

Sorry to have offended you...My response was intended to be educational from my utility career point of view and to address the previous posters thinking from the statement made ("...when you install solar you pay for it. Now you are getting power from the sun and not the utilities so why do you have to be charged more for having solar?"...). I enjoy discussing EV and solar technical issues with folks and find that even the most educated usually don't have all the pieces of the puzzle that my utility insight has provided me over the years...Have a good day...

I have no idea why you think I'm offended. I'm more dumbfounded than offended particularly with the notion that you would need to educate us about infrastructure costs related to the grid and its maintenance. It would be like taking offense when people argue against global warming. It's just a difference of opinion and ultimately of worldview. You see the utilities very differently than we do. Then again you worked for them so that's understandable. For sure no one has all the pieces of the puzzle but it seems to me you have a very whitewashed conception of what both California and Florida utilities are actually trying to do. It's not an amortized cost to truly spread the cost of infrastructure. It's a bit more than that. I'm sorry if you don't see that. It's significant that you didn't respond to any of the substance of my post. Perhaps you don't really have an effective rebuttal for the substance and the argument that the utilities see rooftop solar as an existential threat best squelched with a punitive tax or connection fee that erodes any financial payback and thus incentive to install. So perhaps rather than responding to that it's better to focus on what you think is inappropriate anger. I think that's what they call an ad hominem argument.

 

[RSpanner]

I don't get why single family home owners just don't buy a few more powerwalls and cut the cord. Anyway, how do the municipal owned utilities feel? Like the various irrigation districts, eastside, trinity, smud, etc.

How many people can afford it?

The standalone cost of the Tesla Powerwall in 2021 is about $8,500, but there’s a catch. The company no longer sells the Powerwall individually to consumers — instead, you have to buy it as a part of a full home solar system. Combined with Tesla’s solar system, the Powerwall has a price tag of around $10,500, which includes installation and other soft costs.

 

[darhall993]

How many people can afford it?

The standalone cost of the Tesla Powerwall in 2021 is about $8,500, but there’s a catch. The company no longer sells the Powerwall individually to consumers — instead, you have to buy it as a part of a full home solar system. Combined with Tesla’s solar system, the Powerwall has a price tag of around $10,500, which includes installation and other soft costs.

This is certainly a challenge, if you used a local installer you may have more flexibility, I didn't have the option of Tesla Solar in the State of Georgia back in 2018 when I installed Solar/Powerwall's. Folks that already have Solar are great candidates for adding Powerwall's but might be limited in their options depending on their situation. I started with 7.6kW of Solar and 1 Powerwall, i've added on twice to Solar and the Powerwalls and now have 16.24kw of Solar and 3 Powerwall's.

 

[mspohr]

This is certainly a challenge, if you used a local installer you may have more flexibility, I didn't have the option of Tesla Solar in the State of Georgia back in 2018 when I installed Solar/Powerwall's. Folks that already have Solar are great candidates for adding Powerwall's but might be limited in their options depending on their situation. I started with 7.6kW of Solar and 1 Powerwall, i've added on twice to Solar and the Powerwalls and now have 16.24kw of Solar and 3 Powerwall's.

There are lots of options for backup power besides Powerwalls.
I was unable to buy Power walls so installed Outback Skyboxes. There are more flexible and have some additional features such as generator input. You can add different kinds of batteries. I chose LFP since they are safer and cheaper than others. I have three Skyboxes which provide 15 kW backup power, 38 kWh batteries, 9 kW DC solar (plus 8kW AC solar).
Other companies such as Enohase, Panasonic, Sonnen, Generalac,etc. Offer similar systems.

 

[roblab]

How many people can afford it?

............ If people could afford the interest on a home improvement LOAN, and then buy the power walls (I have three) the savings on power will easily pay for the power walls over time. My power bills were over $300 a month, and I live frugally. SO, to rephrase the question, how many people can afford NOT to buy power walls. They buy cars for well over the $25,000 it costs for three power walls which will last longer than the car, and I am now in the position where PG&E owes ME nearly $800 for the year, on top of my not paying anything more than about $5 per month for being connected to the grid. Sure, there were initial costs of installing solar panels and controllers, but in the end it has cost me almost nothing.

 

[mswlogo]

I don't get why single family home owners just don't buy a few more powerwalls and cut the cord. Anyway, how do the municipal owned utilities feel? Like the various irrigation districts, eastside, trinity, smud, etc.

Because it wasn’t needed before and it’s extremely expensive. With NetMetering your ROI is infinity.

But it is great backup plan if some of those go through. But if you are connected to the grid at all those new fees would still apply. And being 100% off grid is extremely expensive and risky. I suppose you could get a backup generator for the few times powerwalls might run out of juice.

So, on average, you’d need a good size Solar array, probably 4 powerwalls on average and a full time backup generator.

I can understand utilities wanting a small monthly fee. But not those fees posted.