-
Want to remove ads? Register an account and login to see fewer ads, and become a Supporting Member to remove almost all ads.
CPUC NEM 3.0 discussion
- Thread starter jjrandorin
- Start date
RKCRLR
Active Member
So, you think solar customers should disproportionally absorb the cost for solar in the future? Sure, some would install solar for environmental reasons and pay extra. But most people wouldn't.
The cost for the grid that their system is connected to and benefits from, yes they should absorb that cost.
charlesj
Active Member
RKCRLR
Active Member
So, if a solar system is installed behind the meter and they don't export, should they pay more to be connected to the grid or for the power they get from the grid than someone that has a very efficient home or tiny house? Or someone that lives in a moderate climate and uses less electricity?
What impact on the grid are you talking about?
Last edited:
skepticcyclist
Member
And as I have already showed you, WE PAY fees to them for "storing it" (which they technically don't do) and we pay fees for just using their equipment to send our solar to others who need it.
And they do buy all net excess back at retail value only. It is only 1 to 1 for what we used ourselves
What about this do you not understand?
You do pay fees but it does not cover your cost of service. What do you not understand about that?
skepticcyclist
Member
Again, for the third time and as I already shown, WE DO pay for the cost of the grid system that we are connected to. We just don't pay for electricity above the net consumption that we DO NOT USE, like everyone else.
It is as equitable as it can be. We use 1 kWh more than we produce, we pay for that kWh at retail price just just like everyone else. We produce 1 kWh more than we use, they pay us wholesale price, just like every other place from which they purchase energy. And we pay all the same daily fees and kWh NBCs, just like everyone else.
What about this do you not understand?
skepticcyclist
Member
It does cover the cost, that is what you don't understand. We pay more than we would if we did not have solar and did not use any electricity during the month at all
I guess we have a fundamental disagreement. You believe I do not understand and I believe you do not understand the exact same issue. No real reason to continue discussing it.
I agree. I don't see how the IOU proposal to the CPUC for existing customers survives any sort of counter suit. There is no clause in my contract that I see that reserves PG&E the right to amend at will.
Price clearing has no bearing on how much power is coming from solar. It is just another source of power. The IOUs post their five minute loads, the producer post their prices, and it is done. Lots of the power is locked into fixed cost production contracts. Solar happens to be one of many.
That isn't the issue here. IOUs are trying to find a way to raise rates. By attempting to isolate one group (e.g. solar) at the expense of another (e.g. non-solar), they hope to achieve it.
The whole proposal flies in the face of what California has been trying to achieve in terms of greenhouse gas emissions and grid reliability.
All the best,
BG
@Zabe what do you think is a reasonable ROI for Residential Solar? I don't see how it could be less than 15 years (probably more like 20) under NEM3. No one will invest in that
By your own logic, you are part of the problem if you charging from the grid when prices are low and using your ESS when prices are high.
Shame on you!
RKCRLR
Active Member
Especially with the risk you take when investing in solar.
My first system's manufacturer/installer has basically left the business. They were bought out by a Chinese company and now no longer doing solar. Their business is now crypto mining. The solar generation monitoring website no longer exists. My string inverter is over 10 years old and that is about the lifetime of the older inverters. I asked the installer of my second system how much a new inverter would cost. He estimated about $2k and that is assuming a building permit isn't required and I'm not required to rewire to a rapid shutdown system per the new code requirements. Since the old style inverters (and, specifically, my particular model) are no longer readily available, it may be considered an upgrade.
The panels are warrantied for 25 years. However, I suspect that if some panels go bad I will never get the Chinese crypto mining company to replace them.
Link this logic that you imply that I have that is completely backwards from reality. Your comment is silly.
One of the reasons I said I have so much difficulty reading many (not all, but a large portion) of your posts on this topic is, beside the confrontational nature of many of your posts, you have stated that you are "just representing non solar customers". Your position appears to be that solar customers are the problem. You are advocating that tearing up of previously agreed contracts is "fair" and something we should be expecting.
Yet, you yourself got free powerwalls from a program that is funded either by the utility or by taxpayer money. What you are arguing should happen to solar customers would be the equivalent of the SGIP program telling you:
=============
(obviously hypothetical)
"I know you got those powerwalls expecting to be reimbursed for them, but we have decided that is not a sustainable business model. We know you already spent the money expecting reimbursement, but we have decided that we are only going to reimburse 75% of what we said we were going to previously, and we are also going to pay that out monthly over the next 15 years."
=============
Your "free" powerwalls probably cost the utility more than they will pay for any solar customer, and they had to pay it all out now, instead of over 15 years. I certainly have not saved 20k+ off my utility bills since they were installed. Your position that you are arguing for "non solar customers because solar customers are taking money from them", somehow doesnt include the money you have received, which is more than what most of us have saved.
Everyone is free to have whatever opinion they want to carry on this (or obviously anything else). Your position on "fairness" doesnt make much sense to me, from the position what you yourself has cost the utility. You do not appear to be arguing that the SGIP program is not "fair", yet its a few people costing the utility a lot that is coming from a larger majority that can not take advantage of it.
The above is why I previously said "its hard for me to read your posts challenging solar customers when you got free powerwalls"
==================================
(moderator note)
I should probably separate this into a separate post, as its not related to what I said above. Those that have been here a while know that I separate the act of moderation from my own posts / feelings. I am not a robot, but I try to be very careful in this regard. If I dont agree with something personally, I am very careful about moderation of same. With that being said...
Some of your posts have been informative, with information I would categorize as interesting / "I didnt know that" type of information. Others have been argumentative, and almost appear to be trying to incite a flame war. I have said before that TMC is welcoming of different opinions, even if they are not popular ones. What I am not welcoming of, is flame wars. I would suggest leaning into the information and away from the attempts to fan flames.
Zabe deserves agreement on one point though. Often lost in the discussion and completely lost in this latest debate over NEM 3.0, is the astonishing portion of a person's electric bill which goes to something other than electricity. We are sort of used to this in the case of buying a soft drink from McDonalds, or a cheap pizza, but I think most people think the actual electricity is the major portion of thier bill. Thats why you see people with an absolutely straight face arguing that a $30 buck or $40 a month charge somehow pays for a share of the grid. Not by the math I see. The grid probably costs about $200 a month per customer, or more.
Perhaps becuase Zabe worked at CAISO, he knows that the electricity is like 10 to 15 percent of the charge.
To put some numbers to it, if my electric bill is 500 a month, $6k a year, that's about, say $800 for electricity and a whopping $5,200 for "the grid" - which includes all administration as well.
If I go from $500 a month to LADWP before solar, and $10 to LADWP after solar and $350 for twenty years on my solar loan two things occur.
One, I save $100 or so a month.
Two, LADWP loses over $400 a month that it otherwise uses to maintain the grid -- A GRID THAT DESPITE MY SYSTEM I STILL NEED.
The IOUs have spun this into "its unfair for Southpasfan to have the benefit of the grid to the extent he needs it and not pay for its maintenance."
I do not agree with that sentence, but you have to hand it to them, its a nicely crafted argument.
The reason I do not agree is the relative burden of anyone as to "the grid" is not based on current rooftop solar customers and their deals, but on volumetric pricing.
LADWP, as a city agency, only charges a "peak premium" of a couple of cents per kwh. Somehow they, unlike the IOUs, get it done at 19 cents off peak, 22 cents or so peak. This, of course, vastly minimizes the so-called "cost shifting" that the IOUs are now so vocally claiming is unfair to "poor" ratepayers.
By the f-ing way, they don't necissarily mean "poor" they just mean people who don't use alot of electricity.
There is some overlap, but its not the same, before I moved, we lived in a condo complex.
My wife always worked at home and our three kids were there all day, so the A/C was on all the time, and the insulation on the condo was so bad they might as well have not bothered. There was a single dude, no kids, in the condo next to us, who worked all the time got home everyday after 10, , and went back to visit his folks in China for like two months a year. I bet his bill was like 20% of ours. For all I know the guys a mulit millionaire.
We used the same, grid, the same pole, the same lines, the same transformer. But due to volumetric pricing, which I did everything to avoid (taped newspaper to all the damn windows on September, what a joke) I paid for 80% more of "the grid"
Paying for "the grid" has never been equitable, so its really rich for the IOUs to trot this out now.
However, residential solar is not scalable if the utility has to act as the battery for the residential solar customer and maintain the grid anyway, without figuring out some way to pay for the grid.
That way is not to disincentivize rooftop solar, in my opinion. Its also not workable to keep raising rates on non-solar customers. Something needs to be done other than the proposed rules.
Perhaps becuase Zabe worked at CAISO, he knows that the electricity is like 10 to 15 percent of the charge.
To put some numbers to it, if my electric bill is 500 a month, $6k a year, that's about, say $800 for electricity and a whopping $5,200 for "the grid" - which includes all administration as well.
If I go from $500 a month to LADWP before solar, and $10 to LADWP after solar and $350 for twenty years on my solar loan two things occur.
One, I save $100 or so a month.
Two, LADWP loses over $400 a month that it otherwise uses to maintain the grid -- A GRID THAT DESPITE MY SYSTEM I STILL NEED.
The IOUs have spun this into "its unfair for Southpasfan to have the benefit of the grid to the extent he needs it and not pay for its maintenance."
I do not agree with that sentence, but you have to hand it to them, its a nicely crafted argument.
The reason I do not agree is the relative burden of anyone as to "the grid" is not based on current rooftop solar customers and their deals, but on volumetric pricing.
LADWP, as a city agency, only charges a "peak premium" of a couple of cents per kwh. Somehow they, unlike the IOUs, get it done at 19 cents off peak, 22 cents or so peak. This, of course, vastly minimizes the so-called "cost shifting" that the IOUs are now so vocally claiming is unfair to "poor" ratepayers.
By the f-ing way, they don't necissarily mean "poor" they just mean people who don't use alot of electricity.
There is some overlap, but its not the same, before I moved, we lived in a condo complex.
My wife always worked at home and our three kids were there all day, so the A/C was on all the time, and the insulation on the condo was so bad they might as well have not bothered. There was a single dude, no kids, in the condo next to us, who worked all the time got home everyday after 10, , and went back to visit his folks in China for like two months a year. I bet his bill was like 20% of ours. For all I know the guys a mulit millionaire.
We used the same, grid, the same pole, the same lines, the same transformer. But due to volumetric pricing, which I did everything to avoid (taped newspaper to all the damn windows on September, what a joke) I paid for 80% more of "the grid"
Paying for "the grid" has never been equitable, so its really rich for the IOUs to trot this out now.
However, residential solar is not scalable if the utility has to act as the battery for the residential solar customer and maintain the grid anyway, without figuring out some way to pay for the grid.
That way is not to disincentivize rooftop solar, in my opinion. Its also not workable to keep raising rates on non-solar customers. Something needs to be done other than the proposed rules.
Just make going to non export mode easy
The city next to me has their own public utility, they charge a flat $29 to be connected to the grid. Their rates are half of what PG&E charges. So every customer will pay at least the $29. PG&E should start by raising the minimum monthly charge, which I believe is about $10. Just doing this would force every solar user to pay more. I can't imagine anyone other than solar customers pay the $10 a month. My PG&E bill will increase 20x in the NEM3 proposal, from $10 to $200. They know they can't jack the minimum high enough across the board to satisfy their investors, easy target is solar. To me the easy fix is, increase the minimum across the board, and reduce exports, leave the 20yr grandfathering alone... They could probably raise the minimum and affect existing NEM1/NEM2, seems to me like the easy quick fix.
Similar threads
- Locked
