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solar costs keep shrinking and then you have power companies like SDGE that want to punish solar owners based on their salary and set a $125 min cost to be conn

solar costs keep shrinking and then you have power companies like SDGE that want to punish solar owners based on their salary and set a $125 min cost to be connected to the grid

candiddevmike 2y ago
Utility companies around me will gaslight you into not getting solar--bury you in paperwork, FUD, and last ditch efforts to buy into some kind of solar timeshare program. I'm hoping to see more decentralized/hyper-local power generation and storage.
- macspoofing 2y ago
  >I'm hoping to see more decentralized/hyper-local power generation and storage With the scale we're dealing with decentralization does not work. You need to centralize for efficiency (i.e. optimize power generation and maintenance per unit of land-area). Though in this case the point is moot, since we don't have any grid-scale storage solutions for wind/solar - making them non-viable as the primary power generation regardless of price.
  - glenstein 2y ago
    >decentralization does not work. This is not quite true, because the vast majority of solar generation is consumed on site, avoiding the transmission and distribution costs of delivering electrons that would normally be necessary. Which is just one of a whole motley of dynamics working in favor of solar at larger scales: the arc of solar generation over a 24hr period almost perfectly coincides with actual market demand over the course of the day, with the exception of the afternoon/evening "duck curve", so it's actually relieving pressure on peaking generation. The important fallacy here is assuming that counterbalancing for the cycles of solar generation requires new investments, when in fact it's relieving pressure on infrastructure that already exists and is already serving those exact counterbalancing purposes. This is in addition to the benefit of offsetting alternative forms of base load generation. To be clear you are right in an important sense about a pretty fundamental thing. There is indeed a tipping point, and when we reach that tipping point of grid penetration all of the points you have raised will indeed become not merely relevant but crucial. And I forget the exact number, but my understanding is we're nowhere near that tipping point right now. I want to say around 20% of the overall grid being generated from solar power is the tipping point but I'm not sure if that's accurate. It's kind of like the argument sometimes people want to make about taxes which is that if you overtax it is a drag on the economy, which is hypothetically true but it's true at a given tipping point and it's a tipping point that we're not anywhere near, which doesn't tend to stop the advocates from bringing it up all the time.
    - happyopossum 2y ago
      > the vast majority of solar generation is consumed on site I don't believe this is true for a vast swath of residential solar. In spite of HN's love of remote work, a lot of homes are mostly or completely empty during the day, with energy use ramping up in the evenings as people return home. This results in homes 'selling' electricity to the grid during the day, and buying it back in the evening and overnight.
      - nicoburns 2y ago
        That's true in many (but by no means all) cases now, but it's a short term problem. Home batteries with capacity for a day or more's usage are on track to hit affordability in the next 5 years, which will remove this problem. There is also a lot of scope for demand shifting. For example, timing washer and dryer runs during the day when people are out. Or running AC during the day (even if nobody is home!) so that it doesn't have to work so hard in the evening.
rtkwe 2y ago
I don't think utility companies are entirely wrong to charge some flat rate for being connected to the grid, there are fixed costs with each customer and solar homes are not actually independent from the grid even if they're net neutral their night time power has to come from somewhere. Even if we get to enough residential solar to completely power the grid from solar and charge enough storage to last overnight there's still the costs associated with storing that power overnight we can't get around.
- glenstein 2y ago
  The trouble with this logic is that public utility commissions across the country have measured the impact that solar has on the grid, and found that not only does it not impose a cost, but it confers a benefit, in some studies up to 33 cents per kilowatt hour. I completely agree with your core point, which is that there need to be costs associated with impact on the grid, to make sure that there's no incentivization of freeloading in either direction. Whether utilities owe solar owners a one time payment, an ongoing payment, or should be contributing to the financing of new construction of solar panels is an open question imo.
  - rtkwe 2y ago
    I think the utilities are moving very early with their flat rate charges but I don't think they're wrong in the long term that a flat rate will be required to fund the grid in the future. I'm thinking about the point where a large majority of customers have sufficient solar generation to cover their entire energy usage for the day on average, those people still need generation or storage of power during the night when solar doesn't work so somewhere they'll need to continue paying for power generation or storage during the night. This is probably doable with time based rates instead but we'll have to see and even then we'll probably need some flat rate to account for people with local storage because they also exist as a cost to service.
    - glenstein 2y ago
      So as I mentioned in my previous comment, public utilities commissions across the country have all run their own independent studies of the value of bringing solar on the grid measured against its costs and generally found it to be a net positive rather than a negative. Those studies encompass things that you're talking about such time base rates, cost of mobilizing peaking and base load production, efficiencies from consuming power on site instead of having to send it through the transmission and distribution system, etc

solar costs keep shrinking and then you have power companies like SDGE that want to punish solar owners based on their salary and set a $125 min cost to be connected to the grid

candiddevmike 2y ago

Utility companies around me will gaslight you into not getting solar--bury you in paperwork, FUD, and last ditch efforts to buy into some kind of solar timeshare program. I'm hoping to see more decentralized/hyper-local power generation and storage.

macspoofing 2y ago
>I'm hoping to see more decentralized/hyper-local power generation and storage With the scale we're dealing with decentralization does not work. You need to centralize for efficiency (i.e. optimize power generation and maintenance per unit of land-area). Though in this case the point is moot, since we don't have any grid-scale storage solutions for wind/solar - making them non-viable as the primary power generation regardless of price.
- glenstein 2y ago
  >decentralization does not work. This is not quite true, because the vast majority of solar generation is consumed on site, avoiding the transmission and distribution costs of delivering electrons that would normally be necessary. Which is just one of a whole motley of dynamics working in favor of solar at larger scales: the arc of solar generation over a 24hr period almost perfectly coincides with actual market demand over the course of the day, with the exception of the afternoon/evening "duck curve", so it's actually relieving pressure on peaking generation. The important fallacy here is assuming that counterbalancing for the cycles of solar generation requires new investments, when in fact it's relieving pressure on infrastructure that already exists and is already serving those exact counterbalancing purposes. This is in addition to the benefit of offsetting alternative forms of base load generation. To be clear you are right in an important sense about a pretty fundamental thing. There is indeed a tipping point, and when we reach that tipping point of grid penetration all of the points you have raised will indeed become not merely relevant but crucial. And I forget the exact number, but my understanding is we're nowhere near that tipping point right now. I want to say around 20% of the overall grid being generated from solar power is the tipping point but I'm not sure if that's accurate. It's kind of like the argument sometimes people want to make about taxes which is that if you overtax it is a drag on the economy, which is hypothetically true but it's true at a given tipping point and it's a tipping point that we're not anywhere near, which doesn't tend to stop the advocates from bringing it up all the time.
  - happyopossum 2y ago
    > the vast majority of solar generation is consumed on site I don't believe this is true for a vast swath of residential solar. In spite of HN's love of remote work, a lot of homes are mostly or completely empty during the day, with energy use ramping up in the evenings as people return home. This results in homes 'selling' electricity to the grid during the day, and buying it back in the evening and overnight.
    - nicoburns 2y ago
      That's true in many (but by no means all) cases now, but it's a short term problem. Home batteries with capacity for a day or more's usage are on track to hit affordability in the next 5 years, which will remove this problem. There is also a lot of scope for demand shifting. For example, timing washer and dryer runs during the day when people are out. Or running AC during the day (even if nobody is home!) so that it doesn't have to work so hard in the evening.

rtkwe 2y ago

I don't think utility companies are entirely wrong to charge some flat rate for being connected to the grid, there are fixed costs with each customer and solar homes are not actually independent from the grid even if they're net neutral their night time power has to come from somewhere. Even if we get to enough residential solar to completely power the grid from solar and charge enough storage to last overnight there's still the costs associated with storing that power overnight we can't get around.

glenstein 2y ago
The trouble with this logic is that public utility commissions across the country have measured the impact that solar has on the grid, and found that not only does it not impose a cost, but it confers a benefit, in some studies up to 33 cents per kilowatt hour. I completely agree with your core point, which is that there need to be costs associated with impact on the grid, to make sure that there's no incentivization of freeloading in either direction. Whether utilities owe solar owners a one time payment, an ongoing payment, or should be contributing to the financing of new construction of solar panels is an open question imo.
- rtkwe 2y ago
  I think the utilities are moving very early with their flat rate charges but I don't think they're wrong in the long term that a flat rate will be required to fund the grid in the future. I'm thinking about the point where a large majority of customers have sufficient solar generation to cover their entire energy usage for the day on average, those people still need generation or storage of power during the night when solar doesn't work so somewhere they'll need to continue paying for power generation or storage during the night. This is probably doable with time based rates instead but we'll have to see and even then we'll probably need some flat rate to account for people with local storage because they also exist as a cost to service.
  - glenstein 2y ago
    So as I mentioned in my previous comment, public utilities commissions across the country have all run their own independent studies of the value of bringing solar on the grid measured against its costs and generally found it to be a net positive rather than a negative. Those studies encompass things that you're talking about such time base rates, cost of mobilizing peaking and base load production, efficiencies from consuming power on site instead of having to send it through the transmission and distribution system, etc