CPUC NEM 3.0 discussion

[J0hn_]

Sorry, didn't real ALL the posts, but I found this topic to be very interesting so I joined the forum...

I am not a Tesla Solar customer, but I wanted to point out to the people who feel Net Metering 1.0 isn't 'fair'.

Please keep in mind, that each of the three big IOU's only allowed up to 5% of their customers into this program! They were the guinea pigs, the beta testers. They are the ones who paid the most money to get solar installed and they sort of paved the way for the rest of Solar in California... The fact that the PUC wants to change the terms of their net metering agreement is outrageous in my mind. If it wasn't for NEM 1 customers in California, solar would not be were it is today. (5%! And SCE never even reached that cap. SCE timed out when NEM 2 went into effect I believe July 2017) Why are we trying to screw them now, 5 years later?

 

[yblaser]

One would think that the most cost effective way with dealing with excess power production would be to store it. The infrastructure and everything is already there, you're probably still paying for most of the power whether or not you are taking it. Its sort of like free energy. If the problem is the contracts they entered then that can be resolved in the future.

It would be nice to be able to store it but in the near term I'm not convinced it's cost effective at this point from a purely direct economic standpoint. Given the curtailment is only 10% on the worst month averaging it across the year it's probably only a few percent and having ESS to capture that amount is probably not worth the cost (gut feeling I have no data to back this up). I don't know what the marginal cost of a kWh is during peak so maybe that could change the analysis. I think of it kinda like DC-AC inverter sizing in a residential install, you can give up some clipping but still get increased generation over the year at a potentially lower cost point. Moving toward the future ESS is certainty necessary if we want to move farther away from reliance on fossil fuels.

 

[getakey]

if they are curtailing solar at 2 pm, why are they charging me peak rates of $.54/kWh at 2 pm

 

[Zabe]

So how did they curtail before solar and wind?

If they got into overgeneration conditions they would do what they do now back down units economically, sell energy to entities outside the CAISO. If that was not enough they would set negative prices and pay others to lower output. In the past this only usually happened at 3 am when there was low load conditions it did not generally happen in the early afternoon. It also never happened in the kind of volumes that they publish today.

 

[Zabe]

if they are curtailing solar at 2 pm, why are they charging me peak rates of $.54/kWh at 2 pm

Tariff rates vs real-time pricing. Plus it does not happen all the time. Profits baby, profits!

 

[Zabe]

Maybe a matter of semantics but they curtail solar and wind because it is the easiest and cheapest option.

This statement is incorrect. It is cheaper to curtail more expensive generation. They lower everything that has a bid to lower output. They curtail after exhausting all market bids. It is not cheaper or easier to curtail solar and wind.

 

[wwhitney]

This statement is incorrect. It is cheaper to curtail more expensive generation. They lower everything that has a bid to lower output. They curtail after exhausting all market bids. It is not cheaper or easier to curtail solar and wind.

Given the above, in the early afternoon, if CAISO needs to curtail, it obviously doesn't make sense to curtail a supply that would be needed in the evening and can't ramp back up fast enough. And so as solar is going away in the evening anyway, curtailing it won't have that problem. But what about wind, is there a reason to curtail it over other sources? Does wind power available generally follow a particular pattern over a 24 hour period?

Cheers, Wayne

 

[Merrill]

Personally I wish they would curtail Pacific Graft and Extortion.

 

[Zabe]

Given the above, in the early afternoon, if CAISO needs to curtail, it obviously doesn't make sense to curtail a supply that would be needed in the evening and can't ramp back up fast enough. And so as solar is going away in the evening anyway, curtailing it won't have that problem. But what about wind, is there a reason to curtail it over other sources? Does wind power available generally follow a particular pattern over a 24 hour period?

Cheers, Wayne

They attempt to forecast wind as well as they can. Typically wind is has more output during the evening and off peak, so it actually works well with solar. Of course it is not as predictable as solar, more intermittent.

The early afternoon curtailment is as you have described. It is done after everything else that can be lowered is lowered. They can not remove units from service that they would need in the evening peak when solar has ramped down.

It would obviously be better to have more storage and keep the renewable resources producing power and use the storage to meet the peak.

I will ask again my main question though. Who is going to pay for the storage from a ratepayer perspective? All NEM solar customers are locked in for currently 20 years. Those NEM customers without ESS are partially exacerbating the overgeneration conditions with no mechanism for them to help cover the cost of adding more storage and no mechanism to curtail their output. That means the only rate payers left to cover this cost are the non-solar customers.

 

[RKCRLR]

I will ask again my main question though. Who is going to pay for the storage from a ratepayer perspective? All NEM solar customers are locked in for currently 20 years. Those NEM customers without ESS are partially exacerbating the overgeneration conditions with no mechanism for them to help cover the cost of adding more storage and no mechanism to curtail their output. That means the only rate payers left to cover this cost are the non-solar customers.

And I'll give the same answer. Divert the money from the centralized solar production facilities they are proposing. Aren't those centralized solar production facilities just exacerbating the problem?

And the curtailment is just another example of the problems created when the rate structure doesn't reflect the costs. If they sometimes have so much electricity during that time period they should have a very low rate during that period and encourage people to use electricity then, not at midnight.

One thing they could do is encourage EV charging during that period when people are at work.

 

[holeydonut]

I will ask again my main question though. Who is going to pay for the storage from a ratepayer perspective? All NEM solar customers …

Per the EIA, of all energy generated in the USA… about 16% is end point used by residential.

The answer to your question is the same entities that we’ve always using the energy will be paying for the energy tomorrow. Residential solar households today by and large are paying to use energy already.

Residential solar and the IOU’s fake class warfare issue will not solve the overall problem of a messed up California grid infrastructure

 

[Southpasfan]

They attempt to forecast wind as well as they can. Typically wind is has more output during the evening and off peak, so it actually works well with solar. Of course it is not as predictable as solar, more intermittent.

The early afternoon curtailment is as you have described. It is done after everything else that can be lowered is lowered. They can not remove units from service that they would need in the evening peak when solar has ramped down.

It would obviously be better to have more storage and keep the renewable resources producing power and use the storage to meet the peak.

I will ask again my main question though. Who is going to pay for the storage from a ratepayer perspective? All NEM solar customers are locked in for currently 20 years. Those NEM customers without ESS are partially exacerbating the overgeneration conditions with no mechanism for them to help cover the cost of adding more storage and no mechanism to curtail their output. That means the only rate payers left to cover this cost are the non-solar customers.

There are a couple of options.

1. The utilities build "it", the ESS, spread the cost pro rata amoung all ratepayers, solar and non. It would be a non-bypassable charge. Everyone's bill goes up by a bit.

2. The State builds it, then contracts for the energy at whatever the market is, and funds the difference out of the general fund.

3. Subsidies are vastly increased to get individuals to add ESS without Solar.

4. We wait around until an energy company builds it.

5. It doesn't happen because the discussion seems to be about rate shifting and the IOUs don't care about ESS.

Right now this discussion appears to only be happening here, which is the real shame. Options 1, 2, and 4 would not have any "rate shift" to non-solar customers. Option 3, as we know, just kicks the can down road, even worse, because then the accusation will be that "rich" people are the only ones with ESS.

I'm fine with 1 or 2.

 

[holeydonut]

3. Subsidies are vastly increased to get individuals to add ESS without Solar.

Don't discount #3 as a stand-alone or as a pairing with solar...

Prior to the wildfires and the SGIP getting derailed as a "resiliency" solution for at risk homeowners, it was actually helping to get self-gen and ESS online.

The incentives were not 1:1, so SGIP encouraged both private and public ESS adoption without fully subsidizing it. It was more of a catalyst program to get consumers thinking in the right direction and planning clean-investment/DER they may otherwise not have done. Things were looking pretty good pre-COVID and pre-mega-fires and PSPS.

But after the Kincade and Camp fires, a metric crap ton of people started applying to SGIP to strengthen their own homes; not to strengthen the grid. And as a result, I think policymakers now view the SGIP as a 1:1 subsidy (edit: for the residential steps) since SGIP began to cover all ESS costs and even the labor, permitting, and sub-panel work.

 

[MJ_CA_2019]

3. Subsidies are vastly increased to get individuals to add ESS without Solar.

Why ESS without Solar and not just ESS in general?

 

[Southpasfan]

Why ESS without Solar and not just ESS in general?

"Without Solar" was becuase, based on some other issues we ground out, that we are only a year or two away from basically curtailing solar all year round.

If that solar can be stored, then it would not have to be curtailed.

Solar with ESS is beneficial for the customer, but does not help the overall power distribution as much.

This whole topic is so depressing.

I just got my LADWP bill for mid-November through mid January. LADWP's two month cycle is convenient as mid nov through mid jan falls exactly in the 60 day period where my system does not overproduce.

So,

1. LADWP gives 1 to 1 net metering credit.
2. If you over-produce, you get a "NEM bank" at whatever the rate was when you overproduced.
3. However, you only get to apply your "NEM bank" to the electricity portion of what your charges are, which LADWP pins at about 6 cents.
4. You never get cashed out of your NEM bank.

These programs are so complex, needlessly so, that its no wonder solar salespeople came up with the ridiculous "ROI" to sell systems. I suppose in the end I can't blame them. Actually figuring out what you would save or not save per month is well beyond too many.

 

[skepticcyclist]

"Without Solar" was becuase, based on some other issues we ground out, that we are only a year or two away from basically curtailing solar all year round.

If that solar can be stored, then it would not have to be curtailed.

Solar with ESS is beneficial for the customer, but does not help the overall power distribution as much.

This whole topic is so depressing.

I just got my LADWP bill for mid-November through mid January. LADWP's two month cycle is convenient as mid nov through mid jan falls exactly in the 60 day period where my system does not overproduce.

So,

1. LADWP gives 1 to 1 net metering credit.
2. If you over-produce, you get a "NEM bank" at whatever the rate was when you overproduced.
3. However, you only get to apply your "NEM bank" to the electricity portion of what your charges are, which LADWP pins at about 6 cents.
4. You never get cashed out of your NEM bank.

These programs are so complex, needlessly so, that its no wonder solar salespeople came up with the ridiculous "ROI" to sell systems. I suppose in the end I can't blame them. Actually figuring out what you would save or not save per month is well beyond too many.

Those LADWP customers, whom are only 20 miles away from me, also don't need to worry about NEM 3.0

 

[Zabe]

"Without Solar" was becuase, based on some other issues we ground out, that we are only a year or two away from basically curtailing solar all year round.

If that solar can be stored, then it would not have to be curtailed.

Solar with ESS is beneficial for the customer, but does not help the overall power distribution as much.

This whole topic is so depressing.

I just got my LADWP bill for mid-November through mid January. LADWP's two month cycle is convenient as mid nov through mid jan falls exactly in the 60 day period where my system does not overproduce.

So,

1. LADWP gives 1 to 1 net metering credit.
2. If you over-produce, you get a "NEM bank" at whatever the rate was when you overproduced.
3. However, you only get to apply your "NEM bank" to the electricity portion of what your charges are, which LADWP pins at about 6 cents.
4. You never get cashed out of your NEM bank.

These programs are so complex, needlessly so, that its no wonder solar salespeople came up with the ridiculous "ROI" to sell systems. I suppose in the end I can't blame them. Actually figuring out what you would save or not save per month is well beyond too many.

Interesting that LDWP program is closer to NEM 3 as far as over production credits go, without the $8/KW charge for solar capacity. It looks like they thought about it a bit more than the IOU's. Shocking

 

[Southpasfan]

Interesting that LDWP program is closer to NEM 3 as far as over production credits go, without the $8/KW charge for solar capacity. It looks like they thought about it a bit more than the IOU's. Shocking

Its a blend of NEM 1 = up until you over produce for a two month cycle its 1 to 1 credit.......

And

NEM 3, as you said, those credits at the end of each two month cycle, are converted to dollars, but then you can only spend the dollars on actual electricity.

In my case I will likely over-produce for a ten month cycle, and then not use it up.

Since there is no "true up" I will effectively donate a certain amount of money every year. Not a significant amount, but around, looks like $30 a month or so.

For example, as of today I have about a $225 balance. Since the system is now about to carry itself through November, it might build up about $500.

If the end of 2022 beginning of 2023 is the same, I will have a $700 balance and use about $130.

 

[EVDRVN]

if they are curtailing solar at 2 pm, why are they charging me peak rates of $.54/kWh at 2 pm

Also your Summer and their Summer sure do vary. Whats good for them sucks for you and I.

 

[EVDRVN]

Its a blend of NEM 1 = up until you over produce for a two month cycle its 1 to 1 credit.......

And

NEM 3, as you said, those credits at the end of each two month cycle, are converted to dollars, but then you can only spend the dollars on actual electricity.

In my case I will likely over-produce for a ten month cycle, and then not use it up.

Since there is no "true up" I will effectively donate a certain amount of money every year. Not a significant amount, but around, looks like $30 a month or so.

For example, as of today I have about a $225 balance. Since the system is now about to carry itself through November, it might build up about $500.

If the end of 2022 beginning of 2023 is the same, I will have a $700 balance and use about $130.

You should have a free EVSE on your driveway so you can give away some free charging