the problem is that the TOU Peak will be squeezed to such a small period of sun time that you have to have batteries to benefit and that adds large cost
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CPUC NEM 3.0 discussion
- Thread starter jjrandorin
- Start date
aesculus
Still Trying to Figure This All Out
At some point you will be better off buying batteries, consuming or arbitraging someone elses solar, instead of installing solar yourself.
The paying cash up front is probably the worst case for comparing solar versus investment ROI. If you can get a loan that is below the expected rate of rate increases (aka inflation) then you are paying back that loan with money that is didn't have the same buying power as it did on day 1.
The PG&E black-and-white NEM-PS bill is just a bizarre mess and it doesn't need to be that way at all. Almost all of the tables have zero value to them, maybe they have some value to a real generator, but for residential it is ridiculous. The other stupid "feature" of PG&E billing is non-full-month billing. Tariffs changes start on the 1st of the month and bills should be the same so that there aren't weird bills with 10 days on one tariff and 30 days on another tariff which adds confusion to blue bill as well.
I think a better comparison is if you can get a loan lower than what the rate of return on you investments is/will be
Its complicated enough without bringing other investments into it.
The IOU's use the term "ROI" in its classic sense - for every $1M they invest in stuff they expect to get 10% annually, or $100k.
In the solar world, somebody, probably solar salesman, came up with this totally bespoke "ROI" which really was total cost divided by estimated annual cost you would have paid to the utility represented in years.
I just like the traditional method. My 16.32kw with three powerwalls costs $4,800 per year for twenty years (when the loan is paid off).
It produces about $7,000 of energy each year, I mean, the ROI is like 40%.
The problem is that if the gets lower, like it costs $6,300 per year to produce $7,000 of electricity, people won't go for it, even thought its a 10% ROI.
We've gone round and round about how the utilities are trying to screw customers, and that rooftop solar is in the way of profits.
But its also true that via human nature people won't generally go for it unless the savings are out-of-this-world good.
RKCRLR
Active Member
The problem with using 20 years for the Powerwalls is they are only warrantied for 10 years so you also need to factor in the risk that you may have some additional costs after 10 years.
My billing cycle is around the 18th of each month, so yeah this bill-splitting every time there's a change is another way they nickel-and-dime you. It basically splits the billing period and baseline into two half-months - which at least doubles the chances that variable Bay Area weather will get you over baseline in a half-month, when your total baseline quantity over the full month might keep you within baseline. I think two-thirds of PG&E customers have billing mid-month rather than at the start of the month, and would be vulnerable to this. And for those who think this is a rare thing since it only happens on rate changes, PG&E changes (i.e. raises) rates 4-6 times a year - ironically since the big increases in the beginning of the year, the past five months have been the longest period since at least 2017 where they kept rates steady...
This bill-splitting is more evident in the gas portion of the bill, because of the five winter months with higher gas baseline allocations, the baseline quantities change in 4 of 5 months. And their gas prices change almost every month in winter anyways, so pretty much all five months will be split into two half-months. The effect is most egregious in the November bill just finished, because most region's gas baseline triples on Nov 1 (mine is from 0.49 therms/day to 1.55) - not only do they split the baseline, but they also smear your usage evenly across the billing period despite knowing your exact daily gas smartmeter usage. In other words, they smear your higher usage in the colder half of the month to the warmer half, almost ensuring you go over baseline on the lower quantities.
So for example, I just happened to average exactly my baseline 0.49/day for the 2nd half of October, and 1.55/day for the 1st half of November, so right at baseline for the whole billing month. But due to smearing the higher Nov usage to October, they billed about 20% of my monthly usage at Tier 2. In fact there is no possible way to use the full baseline and stay within baseline this period - even if I used the entire period's baseline in 1st half of November, and none at all in October, it would smear enough into October to push some into Tier 2.
Yes, it's only a few dollars each time, and for larger homes they'll always be into Tier 2 and thus get the full gas baseline "benefit" so doesn't matter. But you know who's most vulnerable to this? It's the lower-income folks who have smaller homes, or live in multi-unit complexes, that are most likely to be able to stay within gas baseline, and for whom the lower baseline rates are most intended to benefit - they're all being shortchanged on their baselines all winter long...
Cars are only warrantied for a few years, but are expected to last about a decade. I think it is reasonable for a homeowner to expect 20 years of use out of Powerwalls installed right now.
One thing I noticed is that normal people don't create a savings balance dedicated to repairs for home fixtures and their automobiles (if they're not leasing). If you've ever looked at how your HOA calculates their reserves and annual costs for investments, it's a very interesting way to break down that for every item in the covered zone, it has a useful life and an expectation to need repair/replace. So the monthly dues create a cash flow that operates the HOA and creates a reserve. Homeowners should do the same thing for their own home and car.
Kitchen/laundry appliances have a reasonable useful life of about 10 years now-a-days due to planned obsolescence where all major friction components are made out of plastic instead of metal (LG, GE, Samsung Kitchenaid, etc). And good luck finding an inverter driven refrigerator that might be more reliable in the long-run. Anyway that's about $15k in today's money... so say $150 a month you should be squirreling away.
HVAC + water heater in my house was $35k (barf) and should last 15 years? Like I know Lennox = POS but seems possible ... so that's $200 a month.
Assuming no ITC and assuming your name is not h2ofun, your solar + ESS systems should be $200 a month or so.
Since I buy my cars to keep a while, and spent an inordinate amount of time working in auto... I know ICE vehicles have an average repair cost per vehicle between 36k miles to 100k miles of about $1,200. This is why paying $3k extended warranties is handing 50%+ margin to the dealer. You as a human can easily save $1,200 and cover about 99% of your normal car risk. Factoring in tires and maintenance you're looking at about $100 a month savings over the life of the car.
Home repairs and stupid stuff... let's just say $150 a month for funsies because who the heck knows what your home looks like.
So yeah, take $800 of your after-tax income each month and shove it into some brokerage account and put it in some ETF. If you're not doing this then you're not creating a reasonable reserve.
RKCRLR
Active Member
While I agree that cars and appliances last longer than the warranty it also isn't uncommon to have repair costs after warranty when your doubling the time period after the warranty. Like your HVAC example my heat pump outside unit had a 10 year warranty but had to be replaced at 14 years.
My point is that this needs to be taken into consideration when calculating a ROI.
Since my first powerwalls have dropped capacity like 10% in 18 months, 20 years, well, ....
Just saw this post now:
Solar tax is back, grandfathering dropping to 15 again...
Seeems like the current proposal is summarized by this:
Meatwad650 32 points 8 hours ago
So let me get this straight:
Solar tax is back, grandfathering dropping to 15 again...
Seeems like the current proposal is summarized by this:
Meatwad650 32 points 8 hours ago
So let me get this straight:
- The first pass at NEM3 comes out. It’s horrific.
- We all contact people and they realize they ****ed up and pull it.
- The second pass at NEM3 comes out. It’s less horrific.
- Right at the deadline the comments come out showing that the utilities want NEM3 to be even more horrific than the first pass.
Last edited:
FYI here’s the joint IOU comments to the latest NEM 3.0
Here’s the CPUC’s “cal advocates” comments.
Here’s the CPUC’s “cal advocates” comments.
Here by page 138, I expect everything has already been said. So I've only read about half of it. Likewise the 2021 "Lookback Study" on which the CPUC's discussion is based, as well as the current proposal and other materials.
What strikes me is that CPUC's mandate it to protect consumers from the monopoly utilities. What is being proposed is to increase rates (no decreases proposed for anybody!) for solar owners. We bought solar because it fills our needs cheaper than the utilities do. We and our solar installers and product companies are competing with the utilities. CPUC raising our costs as proposed will benefit the utilities, kill all future solar, and provide no benefit for non-solar customers. This is the exact opposite of the CPUC's mandate.
The proposal describes two problems with NEM: 1) "cost shifting", and 2) the fact that solar peaks mid day while consumption peaks after sunset, the duck curve problem
The loopback study found that it costs the utilities LESS to serve NEM customers that non-NEM customers. The NEM credits are not described as a cost, because they are only offsets debits at other times. But solar customers (NEM or not) need less electricity, so they buy less. The supposed "cost shift" is not a result of NEM per se, but rather of the volumetric pricing structure, where fixed and volume dependent costs are combined into "bundled" cost per kWh. The means that large users contribute more to fixed costs than small users. So, since solar customers use less, they contribute less.
What is strange is that the rate structure is not being considered as part of the solution. It is outside of the scope of the discussion. This is a fatal flaw in the process. Another strange aspect of the discussion is that the volumetric pricing has always created cost shifts. For example, rural distribution costs more per customer than suburban customers. Another case is the vacation home, which pays only monthly minimums until it is occupied. And low income, small houses and apartments use less, and are subsidized by large air-conditioned homes, swimming pools, EV's etc. How does the "cost shift" from solar compare to these other cost shifts? The analysis assumes that everything but solar is fair, so any shift caused by solar is unfair.
As for the offset timing of solar and peak loads, batteries solve this completely. Not only can we store our solar to cover our own consumption during peak times, but our Powerwalls now let us do our exporting during peak periods, reducing the total peak loads even more. This is very important because the so called "fixed costs" of generation and transmission systems are largely determined by the highs peak load they must serve. By reducing the peaks, batteries reduce the costs for everybody. When NEM3 kills off solar, it will also kill off batteries because without solar there is no way to charge a battery during an outage, a main justification for batteries in the first place.
Finally, the purpose of NEM was to facilitate the adoption of renewables, primarily solar. It has succeeded very well, and at no extra cost to the utilities. But the real purpose is to reduce green house gas emissions. Here the Loopback study is completely silent. The term greenhouse gas, climate change, and others do not appear at all. Rooftop solar in California is annually producing as much carbon free energy as the Diablo Canyon Nuclear plant. The carbon reduction benefits are completely ignored.
I think NEM3 is a scam by the utilities to con the CPUC into quashing competition for utilities, and as such is profoundly improper.
I think more should be done to promote batteries and schemes for renters and condo owners to participate in the advantages and cost savings from local solar generation and short term storage. NEM, especially with batteries to smooth the daily load curve, is a clever and efficient way to smooth the seasonal power demand curve, reducing costs for all consumers.
I encourage anyone with an interest in this to follow the links recently posted b others and let your thoughts be heard by the elected who are allowing this to proceed. Also CalSSA has a site with fact sheet, suggestions, petitions, letters to the governor, etc here: Save California Solar
Sorry for the long rant.
SW
What strikes me is that CPUC's mandate it to protect consumers from the monopoly utilities. What is being proposed is to increase rates (no decreases proposed for anybody!) for solar owners. We bought solar because it fills our needs cheaper than the utilities do. We and our solar installers and product companies are competing with the utilities. CPUC raising our costs as proposed will benefit the utilities, kill all future solar, and provide no benefit for non-solar customers. This is the exact opposite of the CPUC's mandate.
The proposal describes two problems with NEM: 1) "cost shifting", and 2) the fact that solar peaks mid day while consumption peaks after sunset, the duck curve problem
The loopback study found that it costs the utilities LESS to serve NEM customers that non-NEM customers. The NEM credits are not described as a cost, because they are only offsets debits at other times. But solar customers (NEM or not) need less electricity, so they buy less. The supposed "cost shift" is not a result of NEM per se, but rather of the volumetric pricing structure, where fixed and volume dependent costs are combined into "bundled" cost per kWh. The means that large users contribute more to fixed costs than small users. So, since solar customers use less, they contribute less.
What is strange is that the rate structure is not being considered as part of the solution. It is outside of the scope of the discussion. This is a fatal flaw in the process. Another strange aspect of the discussion is that the volumetric pricing has always created cost shifts. For example, rural distribution costs more per customer than suburban customers. Another case is the vacation home, which pays only monthly minimums until it is occupied. And low income, small houses and apartments use less, and are subsidized by large air-conditioned homes, swimming pools, EV's etc. How does the "cost shift" from solar compare to these other cost shifts? The analysis assumes that everything but solar is fair, so any shift caused by solar is unfair.
As for the offset timing of solar and peak loads, batteries solve this completely. Not only can we store our solar to cover our own consumption during peak times, but our Powerwalls now let us do our exporting during peak periods, reducing the total peak loads even more. This is very important because the so called "fixed costs" of generation and transmission systems are largely determined by the highs peak load they must serve. By reducing the peaks, batteries reduce the costs for everybody. When NEM3 kills off solar, it will also kill off batteries because without solar there is no way to charge a battery during an outage, a main justification for batteries in the first place.
Finally, the purpose of NEM was to facilitate the adoption of renewables, primarily solar. It has succeeded very well, and at no extra cost to the utilities. But the real purpose is to reduce green house gas emissions. Here the Loopback study is completely silent. The term greenhouse gas, climate change, and others do not appear at all. Rooftop solar in California is annually producing as much carbon free energy as the Diablo Canyon Nuclear plant. The carbon reduction benefits are completely ignored.
I think NEM3 is a scam by the utilities to con the CPUC into quashing competition for utilities, and as such is profoundly improper.
I think more should be done to promote batteries and schemes for renters and condo owners to participate in the advantages and cost savings from local solar generation and short term storage. NEM, especially with batteries to smooth the daily load curve, is a clever and efficient way to smooth the seasonal power demand curve, reducing costs for all consumers.
I encourage anyone with an interest in this to follow the links recently posted b others and let your thoughts be heard by the elected who are allowing this to proceed. Also CalSSA has a site with fact sheet, suggestions, petitions, letters to the governor, etc here: Save California Solar
Sorry for the long rant.
SW
Hah, they want eight years grandfathering now. Guess some of the folks here will be on NEM 3.0 pretty soon or are already on it! I think we'll definitely see lawsuits at 8 years, then, the CPUC will say, ok, here's 15 years! That's pure strategery.
IntentionalFuturist 1 point 17 hours ago
I just got around to this one. They no longer want to reduce grandfathering from 20 years to 15 years. They want to reduce it to 8 years… (first bullet point on page 5).
"They" in your post refers to the Public Advocates Office at the California Public Utilities Commission (Cal Advocates). Can someone please explain what exactly differentiates Cal Advocates from the broader CPUC? Like is Cal Advocates a voice of the CPUC? Or is it just some random ass lobby paid for by the IOUs that was formed under the CPUC? I expect @Redhill_qik to know haha ...
Wow - those so-called "Cal Advocates" are little more than utility shills along with the rest of the CPUC.
It looks like the "Cal Advocates" are arguing for the utilities and not arguing for the lowest possible monthly bills for customers as their mission statement, states, and instead arguing for the opposite.
What they should be arguing for is to decrease the guaranteed utility profit margins and to turn the for-profit utilities into true public, non-profit utilities.
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