mspohr
Well-Known Member
Just charge a connection fee to cover the cost of the wires. Then it's a net when your generation gets sold to your neighbors.
Utilities are public service monopolies with regulated profits.
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California Utilities Plan All Out War On Solar, Please Read And Help
- Thread starter gene
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Utilities are public service monopolies with regulated profits.
mspohr
Well-Known Member
nwdiver
Well-Known Member
NM has a state 'net metering' law. Those fees were still imposed even with that law. You may not think it's net metering but the PUC apparently did....
But that's kind of my point. If a utility is REQUIRED to credit a kWh exported against a kWh imported they'll find another way to make up a 'loss' that can be worse than simply crediting less for exports than they charge for imports.
mspohr
Well-Known Member
SageBrush
REJECT Fascism
You would not, but it is almost as wrong-headed to say that all distribution paths are equal (cost)
Merrill
Merrill
All this does not matter when you have a monopoly with no control, that’s why it’s called Pacific Graft and Extortion.
nwdiver
Well-Known Member
They should do this for everyone, not just exporters. Everyone pays a fixed fee to support the grid regardless of how much or little net use occurs during the billing period.
nwdiver
Well-Known Member
There shouldn't be an incentive to import more energy from the grid when there's a surplus and export more when there's a deficit?
Both the retail rate/import price and the wholesale rate/export price should float according to instantaneous supply and demand.
SageBrush
REJECT Fascism
A deficit of what ?
Power ? That would be the CA brown-outs
Clean power ? The utility could not care less
Cheap power ? That is the utility POV: buy DE at averted cost
nwdiver
Well-Known Member
A more succinct way to put that would have been when wholesale prices are high vs low. The utility would care because curtailed wind costs them money. If they sell at $100/MWh they would rather buy energy for $20 from wind than $40 from gas and WAY more than $150 from a peaker plant. There needs to be a market signal on the retail side to encourage use of more $20/MWh energy and less $150/MWh energy.
So why not put a surcharge on wholesale prices and fund O&M through that? More benefit to using less energy from the grid. The problem with fixed fees is it creates a regressive pricing structure. The less you use the more you pay per kWh. That's the opposite price signal we want.
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There is no inherent conflict between fixed fees for base infrastructure and incentives/surcharges for demand/response. Both can co-exist. Having a fixed fee line item for base infrastructure would provide much needed transparency on true fixed costs.
Bingo. Using less or even nothing (net) from the grid doesn't and shouldn't get you out of paying your share of O&M costs. Even shutting off your main breaker for a month (and not only using 0 net but 0 actual usage either way) should not get you out of paying O&M. The problem right now is that O&M has been bundled into the rates, and when people use less (net) energy due to having solar, they aren't paying their share of O&M. Instead of trying to put band-aids (NEM3.0) over band-aids (rates for usage are higher than they should be), they should instead break out the O&M charges and usage charges separately.
But they already do (kind of, anyway).
Energy charges are supposed to be directly passed on to the consumer without markup from generators.
Delivery charges are supposed to be directly passed on to the customer, but with guaranteed profit that the utilities have been granted.
Let's use SDG&E as an example, specifically the EV-TOU5 rate as this is the one you must use with NEM3.0. This are the current rates as of Jan 2023.
The UDC Total rate are the "delivery charges" I mentioned earlier.
EECC are the cost of energy. The rest are fees of one sort or another.
There is also a fixed $15/mo grid connection fee.
I have not been able to find what the SDG&E NEM3.0 / NBT rates will be, but looking at at the sample PG&E rates (this could be a mistake!), the MAXIMUM winter rates are only $0.09 / kWh for energy generation and $0.006 for delivery charges. That last one is not a type-o.
Basically the maximum calculated avoided cost is less than $0.10 / kWh for all of winter-time - at worst the energy costs match the claimed cost of energy.
I'm sure that there's a lot more complexity in the cost of electricity infrastructure and how these rates are determined, but at least on the surface, the avoided cost appears to be significantly minimized, while the retail cost is significantly inflated.
There is a huge mismatch, and it makes no sense.
bkp_duke
Well-Known Member
Totally disagree. Infrastructure usage costs should NOT be flat rate, but should be per kWh of energy used.
My neighbor has a 400A main panel, and no solar. There is no justifiable reason that his connectivity charge should be as low as someone with a 100A panel that has solar+batteries in a self-consumption mode and never touches the grid except in the event of an emergency.
And there is a very logical reason why O&M should be per utilization - it will encourage people to be more self-sufficient, at least those that can be. If thousands of people lower utilization, there is less demand for HVDC power lines, etc. and infrastructure build-out is lower, because the grid is more distributed.
PG&E already has a $10/month minimum charge imposed on solar customers. So even if you were to flip off the main breaker and go totally off grid, you'd still have to pay them $10/month for the wires to the house. Fair enough, though I'm sure PG&E would like that $10 number higher than it is.
Don't charge for potential peak usage, charge for actual peak usage. In other words, demand charges...but demand charges shouldn't be based on max usage but should be a formula based on max usage and time it occurs. If I use 25 kW but always do it around noon or between midnight and 5 am, the demand charge should be a lot lower than for someone who uses 25 kW at 6:30 pm.
Although...isn't a floating rate basically a demand charge? If electricity is scarce, either because the grid is overloaded or because generation is limited, we expect that someone is going to have to build some more infrastructure. The high prices during those peak hours are, in effect, the demand charges that should be invested back in the network. So after the flat fee for grid support, those who use electricity during peak hours on hot days would pay the most. Those who have solar and storage can avoid the "demand charges" (high rates) by using their storage in lieu of taking electricity from the grid, and can even sell energy back to the grid. Payments may be high if they're selling directly into a neighborhood that needs it (it only goes along 240V lines before it is consumed) and it reduces the amount of electricity that has to go through a transformer.
The last number I heard was from the SE US I believe and it was at least 5 years ago. The base cost per connection was about $50 a month - so way higher than the $10 or $15 that is typical.
In the SE, the typical electric bill is $100 a month (again 5 years ago). The actual fuel/generation costs were about $50 and the base connection costs were about $50. This is ignoring the regulated approximately 12% profit.
Convert those numbers to CA and a few years later, I suspect you are at $100 base monthly cost per connection. That would be considered quite regressive and certainly not encourage conservation - as the usage costs would decline.
You have a conflict between transparency and conservation. No one seems to think the population can handle the full complex discussion. CA rates are somewhat of a subsidy to the poor. And in some ways not.
About 10 years ago, my solar rate in NC was net metered, between 5 and 6 cents a KWH, with a demand charge based on highest KW over a 15 min period during peak. For much of the time, the demand charge dominated. It was aroun $5 a KW. Interestingly Duke dropped it so when I moved and did solar again, I am now on a typical rate - 11 cents or so.
Demand charges made sense 10 years ago and make more sense today. It is complicated but transparent so the 400A panel person pays more (likely) than the 100A person with solar. I say likely because I had 400A but I could get my demand to 3-5 KW nearly every month. And I was way more electric than the typical CA - dryer, oven, hot water, heat pumps etc. We did have NG backup on the heat which helped minimize peak demand in the winter and I had staged A/C that I could restrict to low stage until off peak.
Demand charges could really hurt renters who don't have much control over things. So again, the regressive nature of proper rate structures is a big barrier.
It really all comes down to income inequality....
In the SE, the typical electric bill is $100 a month (again 5 years ago). The actual fuel/generation costs were about $50 and the base connection costs were about $50. This is ignoring the regulated approximately 12% profit.
Convert those numbers to CA and a few years later, I suspect you are at $100 base monthly cost per connection. That would be considered quite regressive and certainly not encourage conservation - as the usage costs would decline.
You have a conflict between transparency and conservation. No one seems to think the population can handle the full complex discussion. CA rates are somewhat of a subsidy to the poor. And in some ways not.
About 10 years ago, my solar rate in NC was net metered, between 5 and 6 cents a KWH, with a demand charge based on highest KW over a 15 min period during peak. For much of the time, the demand charge dominated. It was aroun $5 a KW. Interestingly Duke dropped it so when I moved and did solar again, I am now on a typical rate - 11 cents or so.
Demand charges made sense 10 years ago and make more sense today. It is complicated but transparent so the 400A panel person pays more (likely) than the 100A person with solar. I say likely because I had 400A but I could get my demand to 3-5 KW nearly every month. And I was way more electric than the typical CA - dryer, oven, hot water, heat pumps etc. We did have NG backup on the heat which helped minimize peak demand in the winter and I had staged A/C that I could restrict to low stage until off peak.
Demand charges could really hurt renters who don't have much control over things. So again, the regressive nature of proper rate structures is a big barrier.
It really all comes down to income inequality....
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