Yep, some of the comments there are mirroring what we've seen here on TMC.
This Tony Wilcox fellow in Redwood City is also super peeved since he just converted his NG stuff to Electric. He's coming to the realization he made a mistake. He thought he could pull a
@h2ofun and generate monster solar energy in the Summer to offset Winter energy consumption to heat his home. But now he's realized NG is the way to go under the current NEM 3.0. Maybe I can convince him the even better way to go is to burn some firewood haha.
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Tony Willcox
Redwood City, CA 94061
I recently converted my home to full electric with a solar system to provide the net energy (13.5k kWh/yr). I shutoff the natural gas line to the house and replaced all gas appliances with electric/heat pump. I would not have done this (and will struggle to convince others to do so) with the proposed NEM policy changes.
I accept that using the grid needs solar producers to contribute for grid upkeep/maintenance, but please be cautious on how this is executed as we all need to have more clean energy and keep it economically attractive - or clean technologies will cease to be purchased by end-users. Heat pump heating (which uses 1/4 of the energy of even the most efficient gas furnace) requires more energy in cold months - moving electric energy consumption towards the morning/evening and winter - out of sync with Solar.
The removal of net energy metering policy (and a cheap energy source in the winter) will mean there is no financial motivation to change from combusting natural gas, particularly for heating needs - the largest offender of NG consumption in a home. Any anti net-energy-metering policy STRONGLY disincentivizes users from electric alternatives that avoid gas and use less energy (via heat pumping or electric appliances). This would be a terrible and direct hit to GHG reduction in the future as it will not be afforded by end-users due to negative economics.
Further, the removal of a net energy metering policy motivates people to design their solar system to align only with their own personal energy use profile (not the grid total or max clean energy production). This means people will reduce their total GHG reduction (per $$ spent) because they will optimize their solar system only to their use case and cost of energy - not maximum energy production. This can only reduce the total clean energy generated and paid for by the end-user.
For example, a user like myself with more winter electric consumption than summer (due to heat pumping) would opt for heavily south facing panels - and make significantly less annual power for the same $$ into panels. Less net annual clean energy is the wrong direction. Reducing the maximum clean energy available will delay the development of much-needed clean-energy-storage technologies. Excess clean energy is needed before these technologies make economic sense.