So, I’m not going by the breakdown the utility gives, my source is CAISO, I am on my cell so can’t post a link, but they have pricing for California and the entire western US. Electricity at the source of generation is 3 cents to 6 cents per kwh. with 6 cents being peak. CAISO quotes per megawatt, so it’s $3 to $6. I also have a friend trying to get a massive wind and solar project off the ground. and it has to be able to produce at 3 cents or financing is a no go. The rest of the charges on a customers bill are for everything needed to get the electricity from where it’s generated to your house. It’s because of this crazy imbalance that residential solar works at all.
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CPUC NEM 3.0 discussion
- Thread starter jjrandorin
- Start date
Thanks, I've looked at CAISO before and have looked at the prices. But in Summer, the spot prices go way up. Anyway, I'm just thinking how much a CCA could really save if the generation portion of the bill is so low
PG&E has published rate comparisons to each of the CCAs. I don't think they are accurate because they do not address the customer usage patterns wrt TOU. Perhaps they use averages? In any case, I've never seen a CCA come out much less in these PG&E docs and often times more. Pioneer used to have a link to these on their site and it showed PG&E to be less. In any case, the generation portion is 1/3 to 1/5 of the rate in most cases.
teh attached is an example of what I've been trying to say. The state auditor finds that PUC is "seriously deficient"......and since every PUC commissioner is appointed by the Governor, the PUC does what the Sacto pols want them to do. Yeah, we can blame the utilities until teh cows come home, but the root cause is inept government regulators. (We Californians have the government that we elect.)
www.mercurynews.com
Editorial: California PUC failing to oversee PG&E wildfire safety
Scathing report blasts commission and a new safety office for approving ‘seriously deficient’ prevention plans.
www.mercurynews.com
Merrill
Merrill
This has been known for a long time but the Governor has failed to make changes that could avoid this mess.
LA Times is back to promoting class warfare, same author as mentioned before.
www.latimes.com
Op-Ed: Sorry, rooftop solar supporters, California incentives really do punish the poor
Reforming California's solar subsidies is the right thing to do for people and the planet.
www.latimes.com
LA Times is back to promoting class warfare, same author as mentioned before.
Op-Ed: Sorry, rooftop solar supporters, California incentives really do punish the poor
Reforming California's solar subsidies is the right thing to do for people and the planet.
Lol the 65 year old guy with the $2.5mm dollar house in Orinda that pays $12,000 a year in property taxes (less than 0.5%; which is less than half of the fair market rate) is complaining about rich people screwing poor people? His pot and kettle need to meet each other.
These old dudes need to stop driving fiscal policy decisions that affect millions of people who are nothing like the rich old person. Instead of turning people against each other in the NEM 3.0 debate, this guy needs to start figuring out how to get the CPUC to do its bloody job and regulating PG&E to stop wasting billions of dollars.
Elon's interview over the weekend made a lot of sense. The United States has a problem with the "leaders" being a very poor representation of the people they purport to support. They need to start to impose age limits on policy makers; not just age minimums.
Elon Musk says the US has 'very, very ancient leadership,' believes there's 'a serious issue with gerontocracy' in many countries
"It is just impossible to stay in touch with the people if you are many generations older than them," Musk told Axel Springer CEO Mathias Döpfner.
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Yep, continues total class warfare!!!!LA Times is back to promoting class warfare, same author as mentioned before.
Op-Ed: Sorry, rooftop solar supporters, California incentives really do punish the poor
Reforming California's solar subsidies is the right thing to do for people and the planet.
How about I believe it is like 54% pay zero federal taxes! I am SO SO sick of the socialist comments, but what else to expect from any media, they are all socialists. Move to one of those countries if they think it is SO much betterLol the 65 year old guy with the $2.5mm dollar house in Orinda that pays $12,000 a year in property taxes (less than 0.5%; which is less than half of the fair market rate) is complaining about rich people screwing poor people? His pot and kettle need to meet each other.
These old white dudes need to stop driving fiscal policy decisions that affect millions of people who are nothing like the rich old white person. Instead of turning people against each other in the NEM 3.0 debate. This guy needs to start figuring out how to get the CPUC to do its bloody job and regulating PG&E to stop wasting billions of dollars.
Elon's interview over the weekend made a lot of sense. The United States has a problem with the "leaders" being a very poor representation of the people they purport to support. They need to start to impose age limits on policy makers; not just age minimums.
Elon Musk says the US has 'very, very ancient leadership,' believes there's 'a serious issue with gerontocracy' in many countries
"It is just impossible to stay in touch with the people if you are many generations older than them," Musk told Axel Springer CEO Mathias Döpfner.news.yahoo.com
What's sort of disappointing is the structure of the op-ed. As in "these are the claims ........" made by pro-solar actors. Well, those aren't the claims, with the possible exception of one. The other five "claims" are made up by him to refute. Not quite classical "straw men" but close.
The structure of how we got to rooftop solar in the first place is not that hard to figure out. Unlike, say, allowing everyone to drill an oil well in their own backyard, which is not zoned for even if you happen to be The Beverly Hillbillies, rooftop solar was allowed, with NEM, to do one thing and one thing only - to increase the amount of green energy production when a technology emerged that allowed individuals to do it.
That's it. Now, it certainly happened that as costs of solar dropped, more people would do it (however rich they were or not), and that with some sort of NEM, solar would result in some energy bill savings. But those results were not the purpose, they were the effect. You would think a Berkeley professor would know the diff.
Borenstein now writing op-eds to the effect that it takes a Berkeley professor to figure out that (a) rooftop solar does not eliminate the need for the grid, or even really lower costs of the grid for utilities, and (b) paying for the grid through volumetric pricing basically means that any form of conservations of electricity results in astonishing increases in price per Kwh, and therefore (c) solar, being an example of really, really great, not-just-lip-service conservation, will throw off the whole structure of paying for the grid --- well, I mean a reasonably intelligent middle-schooler can grasp that, you don't need a post-doc.
His last paragraph is accurate. Spinning it as class struggle is analytically wrong.
And what's really wrong is the IOU's could care less about the poor, they just don't like rooftop solar because it actually works.
What's weird is his next-to-last paragraph where he says:
The bottom line is that California’s net metering policy is a regressive cost shift. It’s also undermining the state’s goal of replacing greenhouse gas emitting cars and home furnaces with clean electric alternatives because those options get less attractive each time rates go up.
I don't understand how net metering "undermines" people to replace home furnaces with clean electric alternatives. This makes zero sense. I have never heard anyone argue this position before because it seem to require a logic-pretzel that is so messed up that PG&E wouldn't even attempt it.
People are highly motivated under MEM 2.0 to pull a @nwdiver or @h2ofun and gut natural gas appliances and heating to replace with electric alternatives that are powered by that solar energy generation they're slapping on their rooftops.
The only reason h2ofun has possible regret about converting to all electric coupled with lots of solar is because the emergent policies that would torpedo his grandfathering and effectively fine him hundreds of dollars a month for having solar on his roof.
Find me a real customer out there that says "you know, I need to replace this gas furnace with a new gas furnace. I won't consider electric because natural gas is so cheap!". This attitude doesn't exist at the scale that some Berkley Professor has imagined. PG&E's costs are out of control regardless of net metering. There is no net metering on gas; and the costs are going insanely high (for both rich or poor people).
Is not weird, its incredible sloppy.
I've read a fair amount by this guy, and in no single memo or posting or whatever have I seen any proof that anyone's rates, let alone the rates of the poor, have been raised due to rooftop solar. And that is the entire point.
Its a classic error in persuasive writing. Yes, once rooftop solar reaches a a certain penetration of the market, consumers still on volumetric pricing will have to pay more, if you have a couple of assumptions, the main ones being that the cost of maintaining the grid can only go up, and the other one being that energy use of high volume consumers ("The One" in Bel Air, anyone?) doesn't offset the savings of rooftop solar customers.
I have read more of this stuff than I really want to, but I have no idea at what point there is "too much" residential solar.
Actually, I think gas heat is less expensive (or about the same) than heat pump even with high gas prices. Modern furnaces are 95% efficient. What is efficiency of heat pump - 300%? It takes 29 kWh to create 1 therm. At 300% efficiency, that is ~10 kWh consumed. At my highest Tier for gas, it costs me $2.5/therm. Winter rates are ~$.35/kWh. That's $3.50 to create same heat. Is my heat pump efficiency wrong? Of course, if you have solar, heat pump is no brainer
Merrill
Merrill
All this stuff is what the utilities want you to believe, none of it makes any sense. If you look at PG&E’s marketing bs they say save energy, install solar and use more efficient heating and cooling, cook tops etc. Then they punish you for doing that. PG&E needs to go away.
I don't have any experience/data with HVAC heat pumps, but I am pleased with my switch to a hybrid electric water heater.
I was using on average 30 therms/month or a 1 therms/day for my gas hot water heater, gas dryer and gas cooktop. After switching to an electric hybrid hot water heater with a 4.0 ER my usage dropped to 3 therms/month or 0.1 therms/day and has averaged 75 kWh/month. So the 27 therm reduction vs 75 kWh increase is a 1:2.8 ratio. Some of my savings is coming from a fix to my recirculation system and looking back the absolute lowest month that I had was 20 therms when I had turned off the recirculation valve and lowered the temp. That would still be a 17 therm reduction or a 1:4.4 ratio which would be $1.54 for electric vs $2.50 for gas. More importantly my wife is very happy to have very hot water for her showers and baths now that I'm not constantly tweaking the temp down until it generates complaints.
BTW, I'm a net generator so I'm not paying $0.35/kWh instead I'm giving up a payment based on 200% of the net surplus commsumption rate of $0.035 or $0.07/kWh so it's more like $0.31 for the 4.4 kWh vs $2.50/therm.
Your hybrid water heater consumes only 75 kWh monthly with recirculation pump? I am thinking of switching but some websites suggest that annual consumption with recirculation pump could be 2000 kWh.
That's only slightly over a factor of 2 difference, which is easily attributable to type of recirculation (continuous vs on demand; CA requires on demand) and the details of the recirculation loop (insulation level, length). Plus of course actual amount of hot water used.
Cheers, Wayne
That's right on average. The highest was 93.7 kWh in December when we had 6 people in the house and I had changed the mode form "Energy Saver" to "High Demand". I have my recirculation pump on a WiFi plug and I created an Alexa routine to turn on the plug, wait 2.5 mins and then turn off plug , so when we are about to get in the shower or do dishes we just say "Alexa run hot water" and it acknowledges and responds with "Hot water ready" when the routine is complete.
Based on the Rheem energy guide specs versus my original gas water heater specs and my summer gas usage I had expected to use about 3.0 kWh/day or ~90 kWh/month. Right now in March with the weather warming and only 2 people in the house it is running at 2.12 kWh/day. The additional savings is most likely due fixing the recirculation system issue that had a thermal gravity draw (longer rise after the pump) regardless of the pump usage and maybe a little bit more with the addition of thermostatic mixer valve (the heater is set to 138F). The energy guide lists the estimated yearly use as 1240 kWh for my model.
The downside is that it is much noisier than I expected and it will run for 1-2 hours reheating the water.
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stopcrazypp
Well-Known Member
I can speak personally to this, we were considering switching all gas appliances to electric to take advantage of NEM, but now with the recent shenanigans, I don't dare to do that. The original NEM 3.0 proposal would have a chilling effect on the goal of switching away from gas appliances.
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