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CPUC NEM 3.0 discussion

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When did TURN favor solar and battery? They are in favor of NEM3 when I called them so I cx'd my membership. They think they are defending the poor non solar households.
Give them a call; perhaps they changed their errors of their way?
From the reporting they are in favor of NEM 3.0 and is typically mentioned in step with NRDC (which as mentioned up thread is a thinly disguised utility shill):
Solar power advocates slam new California proposal to reduce subsidies
California proposes big changes to rooftop solar incentives

The logic they are using is the same cost shift argument and low income rate payers.
 
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From the reporting they are in favor of NEM 3.0 and is typically mentioned in step with NRDC (which as mentioned up thread is a thinly disguised utility shill):
Solar power advocates slam new California proposal to reduce subsidies
California proposes big changes to rooftop solar incentives

The logic they are using is the same cost shift argument and low income rate payers.
When did TURN favor solar and battery? They are in favor of NEM3 when I called them so I cx'd my membership. They think they are defending the poor non solar households.
Give them a call; perhaps they changed their errors of their way?


I'm glad you brought this up. It is unlikely a single advocacy group is 100% aligned with your own personal beliefs. So yeah, do your homework before picking one to support. Personally I do like the efforts being made on that point #3 I posted where the Clean Coalition is trying to address transmission and distribution costs going out of control. If you agree then you can look into that. They think DER can be encouraged in CA by fixing transmission costs allocations. So you know they're against the $25Bn of underground power lines. They'd rather some of that just go into local DERs.

TURN is a tough one ... they are in favor of the NEM 3.0 PD; but they are also first in line to bash the utilities on all their proposed rate case increases. I think the bottom line for TURN wants to "defend poor people". So anything they rationalize as driving up rates for poors is bad, and they'll fight it tooth and nail.

This means NEM 3.0 is bad because they agree with the cost shift argument (which ya'll know I hate). But the IOUs raising rates and being inefficient is also bad, so TURN tries to get reform there too. So yeah; please don't support them if you disagree with their take on NEM 3.0. But, if you don't care about NEM 3.0 and want to put your dollars in play for a group that is very vocal opposing higher energy rates I guess they're worth a look.

Here, they call the GRC a slap in the face of Californians; so it's not like they're a IOU shill. But I agree they bought into the cost shift argument really hard. So maybe I should have excluded them from my list since this is a NEM 3.0 thread?

PS, TURN is in favor of distributed energy resources (DER/DERMS) instead of the utilities desire to just bury a bunch of underground lines and beefing up their centralized distribution management systems. So they're technically in favor of solar and batteries, just not a NEM 3.0 that makes poors pay too much. I can't really tell if they think the $8/month/kW fixed cost fee and ACC rate on exports was good or bad for DER.

 
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Seems like any new proposal is going to be pretty bad so far still. Not sure how it survives when solar installs drop 90-95% and new construction won't install solar due to costs being so bad.

Is anyone proposing just taking over the utilities and has a plan of how to do it (should probably have happened in PG&E's bankrupcy) or find ways to carve them up to local municipalities? It seems like that'd be a worthwhile exercise (or if some cities have decided to "cut the cord" to an IOU already).

I still feel the rate/cost structure is just impossible to solve with current IOUs. The comment, if true of raising prices/taxes for people who use less is a perfect example of how silly this looks to a normal person and how the IOUs generally think. Why are they not proposing slapping a higher fixed fee for everyone already/yet? Too many people to piss off? Newsom will lose re-election?

We really need more tech/options to go off grid. I think a lot of people would be willing to cut the cord completely with some of our own $$ invested. This is easier depending on where you live (So Cal has more sun) and your usage of course. I was calculating my overnight consumption is like 8 kWh. If I had 2 more batteries, I'd still have 80% battery capacity when the sun comes back out. Add the massive generator and I'm good. I need to then add a large propane tank (not sure if allowed) for gas though.
 
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I still feel the rate/cost structure is just impossible to solve with current IOUs. The comment, if true of raising prices/taxes for people who use less is a perfect example of how silly this looks to a normal person and how the IOUs generally think. Why are they not proposing slapping a higher fixed fee for everyone already/yet? Too many people to piss off? Newsom will lose re-election?
They very much know a fixed fee for everyone is the true solution, but that would piss off everyone. Right now even if they piss off all solar owners, we are a very small group. Very easy to make out solar owners as the boogyman to take the blame for high electricity prices.
 
Lol, those people living in the cool microclimates aren't paying their fair share!!!! blah blah blah.

BTW, it's going to be 100 F degrees inland today. Like blows the record high for the day out of the water by 5 degrees. I've been running my AC's since March lolol. Global warming is going to suck for those people that are still alive after I die.
 
Lol, those people living in the cool microclimates aren't paying their fair share!!!! blah blah blah.

BTW, it's going to be 100 F degrees inland today. Like blows the record high for the day out of the water by 5 degrees. I've been running my AC's since March lolol. Global warming is going to suck for those people that are still alive after I die.
We are in our second Red Flag warning in the last 2 weeks
 
I lived in Belmont (Bay Area) and we did not even have A/C for the house. Wish we had one about 5 times a year.
Now live near Sacramento and cannot live without A/C. For sure we need it at least 5 months of the year.
Yep, in Bay Area many homes don't even have AC because it's only really needed for a handful of days per year. Once you go further east, AC is required, and Sacramento is super hot for long periods of time.
 
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Maybe if you are near the ocean. Most of NorCal requires A/C for six months of the year.
We are in Sunnyvale, so near the south end of the bay but not near the coastal ocean. We may be more temperature tolerant than some, and we do have a whole house fan to help move the heat out of the house in the evening. Today outside is 91.4 and inside 71.2 without A/C. Inside will go higher in the 70s before the outdoor temperature drops to match the indoor temperature this evening and we open the windows.
 
Why can’t you charge an EV during a red flag event?
No reason you could not, but charging a car does consume 12 kW. House generates about 8 kW at noon so that means Powerwalls are always draining when a vehicle is charging. So, I terminated charging to ensure my Powerwalls were full, even after pre-cooling the house, prior to the 4 PM peak rate start.
 
If I were designing NEM 3, I would look at several things. 1) What do we want the grid to look like in the future. 2) What market structure will enable us to get there the fastest? 3) Will other parties be affected?
A simple answer to the first question is that we want to eliminate greenhouse gasses. This will leave us with a network of generation from solar, wind, hydro, and some others. In order to reduce outages, I think we should also try to bring the generation of power close to where it is used. In the past with huge power plants, it wasn't possible. But now, much of the generation can be put close to where it is used.
With some new technologies increasing rapidly or coming online, our infrastructure can be simplified. In some areas, and on most days we will be able to generate all of the electricity that we need using Behind the Meter (BTM) solar power. This will include residential, and commercial buildings, parking lots cover, and probably some other areas. This will generate enough energy, but it will all be during the day. Buildings are warmest during the day in the Summer. This coincides with when Solar Generation is the highest. We will need to use batteries to use this energy during evening and night hours. Electric Vehicles (EVs) have batteries and the sizes of the batteries keeps increasing. Some of them have bidirectional charging. Tesla doesn't yet, but I hope it does soon. This means that we can charge the cars during the day when the sun is out and use the energy in the evening and night when we don't have sunlight.
That's it. We will need to have access to solar power where we park. For some of us it is at home. For many it will be at businesses, retail malls or other parking lots. We won't need to move that energy from the desert to the cities. We won't need to move it from one state to another. We won't need to use fossil fuels. Across most of the South Western part of the country, that will take care of our energy needs almost all of the time.
But even in Southern California, sometimes the sun doesn't shine much for many days in a row. When that happens, it is almost always very windy. If we strategically install enough windmills we will almost always have enough energy.

Economic Considerations

With this grid design, we want to encourage almost everyone to install solar panels until we have enough. We can use market supply and demand to get us there. One of the biggest problems with our pricing structure is that we are paying lots of money to legacy generation and for infrastructure. Trying to decide who is going to pay for legacy generation grossly distorts the supply and demand curves. Infrastructure under this design is still useful, but not nearly as much as before. Instead of consumers paying directly for the infrastructure, the companies that are generating the electricity should pay for it. So, if a company near the Salton Sea is generating electricity and it is being used in Downtown Los Angeles, the company that is generating the electricity should pay to have it moved from the Salton Sea to LA. It is likely that a kilowatt generated in Los Angeles will be much less expensive than a kilowatt generated 200 miles away if the transmission is paid by the people who use it.

The obvious problem that we haven't addressed yet is the very unlikely case where we have no sun and no wind for a long time. This will be helped greatly through widespread use of smart electric meters. These are still evolving and they don't yet have all of the features that we need. But, they will be able to look at the price of electricity and decide how their home grid should function. During the day when the sun is shining and price of electricity is very low, the car and any other batteries should be charged. When the sun goes down in the evening, the batteries can be slowly discharged. Either to our own usage in the kitchen, the TV or the AC/heater or to the grid where others will be willing to pay a higher price. If we see a long weather event coming that might threaten our energy security, we can decide to program the smart meter to hoard the energy until the price of energy is really expensive. During this time, we might also decide to reduce our usage of electricity as it is becoming expensive. We could change the thermostat or shut off some of the other appliances in the house or business. It might also make sense at this time to import electricity from far away.
We have been acting as if it is unacceptable to run out of electricity at any time. So we are making huge investments in barely used energy infrastructure. Many of these investments are worth it. But some are probably not. We should use the market forces of supply and demand to determine which investments are worth it and to determine who should pay for them.

This proposal should reduce electricity prices to almost everyone, so subsidies won't be necessary.

There are several important parts to this proposal.
1) Dramatically increase BTM clean power generation. Primarily solar and wind.
2) Use car batteries as storage.
3) Cars will be charged during the day rather than at night.
4) Use competitive markets to determine price.
There will probably be a small charge to everyone in a city or town for the local infrastructure to transfer energy from you to your neighbors. Probably $10 to $20/month.

This plan will not be complete for a while. Probably 10 years. But, we need to aggressively move in that direction now to get there as quickly as possible. The NEM 3.0 proposal moves us in the wrong direction.
 
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No reason you could not, but charging a car does consume 12 kW. House generates about 8 kW at noon so that means Powerwalls are always draining when a vehicle is charging. So, I terminated charging to ensure my Powerwalls were full, even after pre-cooling the house, prior to the 4 PM peak rate start.


Oh ok I see. You're like @jjrandorin where you try to be self-powered as much as possible to use the grid as little as possible.

Did you see that thread about software that can modulate your Tesla EV charge rate to exactly equal to the solar production less your normal home usage? That way after your PWs fill up.. the car soaks up solar instead of exporting back to the grid. This means you can charge without depleting your PWs, and you can save on NBCs since you won't have to export the solar than re-import it later to charge the car.

The software is called "ChargeHQ". It's in beta, but you may have a better experience with it than me since you have a single inverter instead of micros. ChargeHQ and my Model 3 are causing some weird behavior with my Enphase micros. I'm not sure why. But when it works; it's pretty cool.

 
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No reason you could not, but charging a car does consume 12 kW. House generates about 8 kW at noon so that means Powerwalls are always draining when a vehicle is charging. So, I terminated charging to ensure my Powerwalls were full, even after pre-cooling the house, prior to the 4 PM peak rate start.
You can't direct all solar energy to the PWs and then draw from the grid to charge the cars? This is the time of day when you WANT to be using grid power.