yup - too late. I see discussions on NextDoor and I tell them too late
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CPUC NEM 3.0 discussion
- Thread starter jjrandorin
- Start date
Under NEM 2.0, our expected ROI went from my pre-purchase predicted 7.5 years to 5.5 years, thanks to faster than expected rate increases from PG&E, and the sunsetting of our original, more favorable rate. (Not a "Tiered" rate!)
Yes, well, a heat pump might ratchet up your solar needs...
When folks ask me about getting solar, I usually respond by asking why they want solar. Saving money tends to be #4, or #5 on their lists. Helping the planet, self sufficiency, and not paying a cent to PG&E, tend to be #1, #2, and #3. Most of them have come to realize after the Santa Rosa suburban fire that they live in wildfire areas and the power might disappear with no notice. Many of us suffered through more than a few PSPS events, and random equipment failures or tree limbs falling on clear days. We have a substation a couple miles from here that routinely seems to either have a switching failure, requiring an onsite crew to reset, or equipment that dumps, requiring onsite repair crews. Either way the power goes out for awhile.
All the best,
BG
The proposed change with monthly fee includes a 30% in kWh rates across the board (care included).
Keeping it simple, assuming nem3 payback in 9 years, after the rate change, add 30% to the payback time plus some amount for the monthly fee, and I cannot see it paying back until near end of system expected life.
Until we get the new rate system in place and if there is even a sniff of a revised nem, solar is a no go unless saving money or breaking even is no factor.
Personally, care household, disabled adult daughter. Or better yet, hopefully care as we are in the review for being over 400% baseline. Of course, their new baseline for us no longer includes the extra medical since we changed to eva2.
For us, the tou, even with adding ev charging, has resulted in a 100 ish saving per month. Off peak heating of swim spa and hot tub, and pre cooling of ac are the main factors for the savings.
Silas sales folks usually balk - with me - regarding care effect, and play dumb when asked about the new rate system as far as we know it.
What is interesting to me is how nem prior to 3 will pencil out with a monthly fee and kWh rate cut.
Keeping it simple, assuming nem3 payback in 9 years, after the rate change, add 30% to the payback time plus some amount for the monthly fee, and I cannot see it paying back until near end of system expected life.
Until we get the new rate system in place and if there is even a sniff of a revised nem, solar is a no go unless saving money or breaking even is no factor.
Personally, care household, disabled adult daughter. Or better yet, hopefully care as we are in the review for being over 400% baseline. Of course, their new baseline for us no longer includes the extra medical since we changed to eva2.
For us, the tou, even with adding ev charging, has resulted in a 100 ish saving per month. Off peak heating of swim spa and hot tub, and pre cooling of ac are the main factors for the savings.
Silas sales folks usually balk - with me - regarding care effect, and play dumb when asked about the new rate system as far as we know it.
What is interesting to me is how nem prior to 3 will pencil out with a monthly fee and kWh rate cut.
"Pixie dust, pixie dust, pixie dust"
Just to clarify, those numbers were mine, not the solar companies' predictions. I'm not complaining that I thought PG&E wouldn't raise rates as fast as they did. You can file that under naïveté, or trying not to think ill of others, as you like.
I think if you haven't played around with long term forecasts, mortgage prepayment effects, ROI, and discount rates, it can be very hard to understand how a shift from a 5% cost of capital to 6% torpedoes the return on investment for anything that isn't near term.
My takeaway is that if you are making a forecast that has a long ROI, it becomes very sensitive to and dependent upon the assumptions. That makes the robustness of the prediction questionable in my book. (Or "wicked unreliable" if you are from Boston.)
Right now, I can see buying solar for lots of reasons, but saving money is not one of them.
The TL ; DR answer to the thread title, at least to me (which is " How to help A prospective California customer understand their possible savings under NEM 3.0" is " There isnt any prospective savings under NEM 3.0 in any sort of time frame anyone would consider reasonable".
And yes, people ask me about solar and storage at work, because they know I have both, and I tell them "since you didnt get NEM 2.0 you need to wait and see if its worth it, because right now it doesnt appear to be so for new people, to me".
And yes, people ask me about solar and storage at work, because they know I have both, and I tell them "since you didnt get NEM 2.0 you need to wait and see if its worth it, because right now it doesnt appear to be so for new people, to me".
A potential silver lining is that vendors will capitulate to falling demand and give up their fat margins that have been propped up by government incentives for years. Solar panel and electronics costs should have fallen much more and followed much more closely to Moore's law given the market growth. If the equipment costs go down by 50% then home solar could make financial sense even under NEM3.
I cross-posted your post and my reply into this thread to prevent the other one about ROI from becoming a NEM 3.0 policy thread convo heh.
Your point was one of the arguments the pro-IOU-camp used against Residential solar. They cited that the residential rooftop solar industry is supposed to find ways to operate more efficiently (cheaper materials, labor, components, cookie-cutter-designs, cheaper permitting, and less overhead) to make rooftop residential work in the long run. So the IOUs were just helping push the rooftop residential solar industry to make adjustments to survive.
What is maddening is then the same effing logic cannot be turned against PG&E and the CAISO members.
Every rate payer will benefit if utility scale operations also follow Moore's Law and we see cheaper generation and energy is distributed in a more efficient manner over time. But the IOUs and CAISO members do not think such efficiencies are possible. Instead of finding efficiencies to benefit all; they simply say efficiencies for themselves at the IOU monopoly level and utility scale operations are already super efficient and safe. So all that's left now is for them to jack up rates at at a 10% CAGR and watch every rate payer squirm.
The "rules for thee but not for me" crap in NEM 3.0 was easily the worst part of the whole thing. Ratepayers are getting screwed all over the place paying for the most expensive energy in the USA (next to Hawaii). But instead of finding efficiencies, they just finger point at Residential Solar saying it's their job to lower costs; but the IOUs can just keep on going on since they're the monopoly.
Totally agree about IOU's. IOU's are simply hijacking anything they can for their BS talking points. Home solar vendor profits have nothing to do with the ridiculous rate hikes they have implemented.
bradtem
Robocar consultant
With NEM3, you probably want a smaller system, so that you are not feeding back to the grid very often, as they will pay you very little for what you feed back, except from around 4:30pm until your panels die from the low sun, which may be 5:30 or 6 depending on orientation. There will be times in summer when there's a fat payback at just that time, but it's hard to justify for just that.
If you have NEM3 you will want to charge your Tesla as much as possible during the daytime, particularly from 9am to 3pm. There are companies that sell systems that track household use, spare solar capacity and try to feed the spare solar to the car whenever it has room.
You can buy batteries and do better with NEM3 but all battery systems are massively expensive now, I fear it would be hard to get payback there. Perhaps as batteries get cheaper. I also don't think you'll want to do V2G, though it will certainly be more attractive under NEM3. For V2G you must consider how much of your battery life it uses to cycle power in and out of the battery for the grid instead of driving. Not much point in being paid 20 cents/kWh for power in your car if you will over time lose enough range to notice. Loss of range is not just loss of battery, it's loss of utility of your car. Some hope that V2G will feed out power at low wattage and not degrade the battery much.
However, one option is to size a much smaller solar system, size it to your base daytime load, not your total load. For example, if your house is always drawing 300 watts minimum except for rare occasions, and your car charging can bump that to 800 watts, you could get an 800 watt system and rarely feed back to the grid. But you must charge your car more slowly and always have it plugged in during the day -- no commuting. Also an 800 watt system is too small to be economical
If you have NEM3 you will want to charge your Tesla as much as possible during the daytime, particularly from 9am to 3pm. There are companies that sell systems that track household use, spare solar capacity and try to feed the spare solar to the car whenever it has room.
You can buy batteries and do better with NEM3 but all battery systems are massively expensive now, I fear it would be hard to get payback there. Perhaps as batteries get cheaper. I also don't think you'll want to do V2G, though it will certainly be more attractive under NEM3. For V2G you must consider how much of your battery life it uses to cycle power in and out of the battery for the grid instead of driving. Not much point in being paid 20 cents/kWh for power in your car if you will over time lose enough range to notice. Loss of range is not just loss of battery, it's loss of utility of your car. Some hope that V2G will feed out power at low wattage and not degrade the battery much.
However, one option is to size a much smaller solar system, size it to your base daytime load, not your total load. For example, if your house is always drawing 300 watts minimum except for rare occasions, and your car charging can bump that to 800 watts, you could get an 800 watt system and rarely feed back to the grid. But you must charge your car more slowly and always have it plugged in during the day -- no commuting. Also an 800 watt system is too small to be economical
Yeah someone needs to tell the CPUC their theory about ROI and potential financial benefit of a residential rooftop solar array under NEM 3.0 is completely whack. The NEM 3.0 info basically painted a picture that was opposite of what you're proposing.
The CPUC model assumed less than 100% annual energy offset already (basically an moderately undersized solar array) and even then with their ridiculously cheap expectations of investment costs for that solar system, they had like 12+ year ROI. And you can imagine that if their model had a 12 year ROI, the actual ROI of this moderately undersized PV-only system would be like 25 years.
The CPUC's model required on premises batteries to post better ROIs (they also had ridiculously cheap assumption for batteries).
I think your last point could work... a 1 kWp-AC solar array may offer enough energy savings to have a faster ROI. But such an array would only offset like 10% of annual consumption (of a normal usage pattern; not a solar-trickle charged EV), so it wouldn't be worth the trouble.
Anyway, my neighbor went ahead with his PV+ESS install because he wants the savings; and the installer swears up and down he'll see the $ in his pocket with a fast payback. Too bad swearing up and down isn't in the contract lol.
This is the true value of charge-on-solar. Too bad it doesn't work without a powerwall. Fortunately third party options like chargeHQ will still allow your car to adjust to exactly the amount of excess solar your car isn't using.
That's true with the current heavy regulatory requirements in the US but not in EU. EU already allows up to 800W plug-in grid-tie solar inverter to be plugged into a wall socket without any approval or permitting. The result is much lower cost to adopt solar albeit at a limited scale. US needs to follow the same to democratize solar.
nwdiver
Well-Known Member
Only idots prepare this way. I have a 500 gallon propane tank filled, ready for my generator
nwdiver
Well-Known Member
Not everyone has the space required for a 500 gallon propane tank. It needs to be 10' from any building and 10' from any property line. In my sisters neighborhood in San Diego I don't think there's a single house that could accommodate that. But everyone has a roof
RKCRLR
Active Member
It also depends on how bad the storm is and where you live. People around me ran out of propane after a couple of weeks but between local shortages and road conditions propane trucks couldn't make it in to refill their tanks last winter. But solar doesn't help much either when there is a lot of overcast and the panels are covered with a few feet of snow.
bradtem
Robocar consultant
Usually the ones that plug into a wall socket violate code. Otherwise they would be great. Problem is you have a wall socket on a 1500w circuit. You plug in your 800w panel. You plug in a 2200w device. It works, getting 800w from the panel and 1400w from the wall, but it's drawing 2200w over wire meant for 1500w. Melt melt melt. Fire fire fire.
And there's the problem with back feed if your power goes off.
All that can be solved, but it usually isn't by these types of devices. It would be nice if the electrical codes did get updated to understand smart devices. If you can put the right sensors to assure you don't put more current in the wire than it should handle you should be good.
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