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from the defeating-lobbyists-for-non-renewable-energy dept.
The Las Vegas Review-Journal reports
Gov. Brian Sandoval said [June 5] he intends to sign a bill that supporters expect will bring the rooftop solar industry back to Nevada.
During a ceremony to sign the major bills implementing the two-year, $8.2 billion general fund budget, Sandoval said he will be signing Assembly Bill 405, a bill making it worthwhile for homeowners to invest in rooftop solar and participate in net metering. Net metering is where people with rooftop systems get a credit for the excess energy they return to the grid.
[...] The passage of AB405 has been praised by the solar industry.
A statement from Tesla said the bill will not only bring back solar energy to Nevada and enable the industry to innovate and grow sustainably, it will create thousands of jobs and bring millions of dollars in economic benefits to the state.
"Tesla will begin selling rooftop solar and residential storage products in Nevada, and we look forward to bringing even more jobs to the state in the years ahead to help provide residents with affordable rooftop solar and energy storage choices", the statement said.
GlobeNewswire adds Sunrun Announces Plans to Re-Enter Nevada Solar Market
"The near unanimous bipartisan support for legislation to reinstate net metering and establish a bill of rights for solar customers is a reflection of overwhelming public demand for affordable, clean energy options", said Lynn Jurich, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of Sunrun. "Thanks to the hard work of Governor Sandoval and Nevada State Legislators, we can now say with confidence that Sunrun is coming back to Nevada."
Nevada's solar industry came to a halt in late 2015 when new rules limited the credit rooftop solar customers would receive for the clean energy they provide to the grid. The abrupt shift in regulations forced Sunrun to cease operations in the state, leading to the elimination of hundreds of local jobs.
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Nevada Regulators Reject Request to Halt New Rooftop Solar Rules
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 08 2017, @11:09PM (17 children)
If they generate as much as they use, do they pay nothing, despite making use of costly infrastructure? This causes a death spiral for the utility companies.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 08 2017, @11:36PM
And that's bad...why?
(Score: 3, Informative) by bryan on Thursday June 08 2017, @11:41PM (2 children)
No. Net metering normally only works until the break even point, while any over production is ten cents on the dollar (or less). For example: if I use 1000 kWh and produce 800 kWh, I get charged for 200 kWh at the normal rate ($0.08 * 200 kWh = $16.00); but if I use 800 kWh and produce 1000 kWh I only get a reduced rate ($0.0165 * 200 kWh = $3.30)
Localities without net metering legislation normally screw solar adoption by crediting all of the electricity production at the drastically reduced rate.
Also, your electric bill has a rather large number of fixed cost fees that are not dependent on the amount of electricity used. For me, the fixed costs are normally around $25 a month, so even in "negative" months, I still have to pay a (small) bill.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Friday June 09 2017, @12:04AM (1 child)
Without getting into an argument about exact details of your example, (rates may vary) that seems pretty reasonable to me. After all, why should the power company pay you retail rates to use your power, when they can get it at wholesale rates elsewhere.
Many states originally mandated the utilities to buy excess power at the "avoidance" cost.
Avoidance cost was the cost of last resort, or the most expensive power source the utility had. Where I first heard about this was when micro-hydro was all the rage in Alaska. But it turns out Avoidance Cost was often firing up the jet engine turbines when their large scale hydro when down.
So household producers were using micro-hydro to feed power grids at a rate the utilities were paying for the most gas turbines, which was a rate they were loath to pay.
Its no wonder the utilities (many of them in Alaska were smallish coops) were balking at the Avoidance Rate regulations.
There may come a time when we can eliminate the grid entirely. Seems far off if you ask me. Seems undesirable as well. So that Grid interconnect fee is likely to be around for a long time and seems reasonable enough.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 09 2017, @03:24PM
To be fair, the people are often required by law to be attached to the grid, so paying them retail for their power up to their usage seems pretty fair since if they could unattach legally they'd be able to avoid all that cost.
(Score: 2) by darnkitten on Thursday June 08 2017, @11:45PM (2 children)
So credit 'em with wholesale rather than retail or don't pay 'em for net credit over actual usage, and put the difference toward infrastructure maintenance. Add an external cost.
The existing utilities are already being subsidized, and in my state at least, seem to be playing financial games with their revenues rather than investing in improving said infrastructure. I have no sympathy.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Friday June 09 2017, @12:33AM (1 child)
How so? Junkets? Stock Market?
More likely vague complaints about having to pay for electricity I suspect.
The only games I see being played where I live (Western Washington) is lack of right-of-way maintenance. They call out the crews when the wind starts blowing down trees, rather than ahead of time.
This is far different than it was in Alaska, when I lived there. Every summer there was extensive brushing and cutting of power line right of way because doing repairs during a winter storm is out of the question, and entire city sewers have frozen and needed replacement due to not enough hot water flowing during a major power failure.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by darnkitten on Tuesday June 13 2017, @04:31PM
They sold off producing assets (hydro dams etc) to a third party and while enjoying the dividends, used having to purchase electricity from the third party as an excuse to keep rates up; now, they are buying back those same assets at a higher price, and are trying to argue the regulators into allowing them to raise rates to fund it. This after being caught inflating their stock price, etc.
Meanwhile last winter, my area (several towns plus surrounding rural area) was without power for almost 12 hours in -20F weather; the previous winter, also in the -20s without power for 2 days, (among other shorter outages).
Interestingly, due to the telecom company replacing the copper lines with fibre (normally a good thing), we also had no communications, even with emergency services during the outages.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday June 08 2017, @11:47PM
Eventually, we'll get to a system where you pay grid tie, and the local utility buys solar electricity at market prices in real time (except when negative, maybe).
But there is a strategic interest in incentivizing people to install solar, so the local monopoly takes one on the chin on behalf of each state, and PUC allow price hikes to maintain profitability.
Rich and middle-class people put solar if they own their place (and pay taxes used for subsidies), poor people can't pay anyway, but their sons will die in fewer oil wars, lower-middle-class get shafted as usual...
(Score: 4, Interesting) by edIII on Thursday June 08 2017, @11:50PM (4 children)
Good. They're run like fucking crap. In California, those fucking cocksuckers at PG&E get over $35 million dollars per year in top level executive salaries. Anytime I see bullshit like that, they're fucking solvent and cannot bitch and complain about having no money. The answer should always be, "Well, let's take $1 million from the CEO". Rightfully so, that fucker was responsible for deaths in a gas explosion, it's a huge problem with servicing old pipelines, and they were fined nearly a half a billion fucking dollars. That TAXPAYERS pay for, not him. Bastard still got paid for what is objectively piss poor performance bordering on criminal negligence.
I agree with paying for the grid, but that can be charged separately from usage, and should. Who cares if somebody is getting paid for having solar on their roof. That means that residential is largely powering itself, and the excess can now be used for business. Subsidized power for residential areas is a damned good thing. By subsidized, I don't mean taxes, but solar subsidies where the Sun itself is giving them the money.
If I'm producing power and selling it on the grid, then fuck them. I get fucking paid too.
That whole industry needs to get shaken up, and shaken up badly. At this point I say just socialize the whole grid (not privatize) and tax everyone who connects to it, the utility companies as well. Then the infrastructure is paid for, and we have an energy market where residential areas can sell their power.
In the end that is the real issue. Normal average people able to profit in the energy markets. Can't fucking have that now can we?
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by NewNic on Thursday June 08 2017, @11:56PM (3 children)
It's also important to recognize that solar panels on someone's house, while they are producing a surplus, are also powering the neighbors' houses, reducing the load on the grid.
Here in PG&E territory, we have a monthly minimum charge of about $10/month for grid connection. It's a minimum, so in winter it gets rolled into the usage charges.
lib·er·tar·i·an·ism ˌlibərˈterēənizəm/ noun: Magical thinking that useful idiots mistake for serious political theory
(Score: 2) by edIII on Friday June 09 2017, @12:25AM (2 children)
Excellent point. That's such a good thing to have the load on the grid reduced, that I have no idea why Nevada is fighting it. In Nevada, air condition is life. Period. During the summer in some places it can get to near 120. Neighborhoods simmer at 100-114. So much concrete and asphalt, that heat is retained that bleeds out during the night to the extent there is no relief at all. That's what I love about Northern California. I can be hot during the day, but will cool off at night. In Las Vegas, you need to have A/C on at 1am during the really hot times. They've been pushing discounts very, very hard for anyone willing to install a thermostat that can be controlled by them. Which allows them to raise it to 79-84 in your house, or possibly up to 90. If that doesn't indicate load problems, I dunno what does.
The minimum connection charge is very reasonable too and solves their primary complaint, while allowing home owners to realize ROI on their investment. Not to mention all of the good things that happen to the environment since we have clean energy entering the grid. It's a win-win-win-win-win for everyone except the shareholders and executives of the monopolies we have now apparently. Right now the greedy bastards just want free clean energy to sell on the market themselves, which is why I claim the primary motivation against the net metering is avarice. It's about who gets to make the money.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Friday June 09 2017, @01:22AM
Well read the story and links there in.
The utilities (some of which are state agencies) were seeking to raise the interconnect so high and pay nothing for surplus roof top power. Some of that was justified and some of it wasn't. The state got in a pissing match with itself and for a while the utility side carried the day.
That's over now. The utilities are horked in Nevada in a lot of different ways. Vegas is two arrow shots and a tomahak throw from Hoover dam, and it only last December started getting its power [popularmechanics.com] from there.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 09 2017, @01:33AM
I made sure to include that in the dept. line.
(The incumbents don't like to lose even the appearance of total control.)
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by fyngyrz on Friday June 09 2017, @12:26AM (3 children)
Aside from the fact that the utilities make a considerable profit on any extra power produced via grid-tied local production, and that most industrial customers and most individual households are probably a very long way from self-supply, you've raised an interesting point.
So looking back, we could have said "If ICE vehicles don't require horses, then this causes a death spiral for saddleries, stables, buggy whip manufacturers, blacksmiths, tack manufacturers, wagon manufacturers, carriage manufacturers, feed suppliers, veterinarians, etc. so we'd better not allow ICE production." But we didn't. The reason we didn't? ICE vehicles were a (much) better idea, economically speaking. And better WRT transport rate. And comfort. And available power. And so on. Lots of benefits horses couldn't provide, or provided at a much reduced level.
There's an assumption being made that home production (basically solar, wind... and production as opposed to installation manufacture) is cleaner than utility production. Inasmuch as a lot of utility production is non-green (coal, petroleum) there's some truth to that at this point in time (and the regulatory hurdles for nuclear power are such that in the US, anyway, new nuclear's really not happening.) There's also the fact that distributed production is both harder to hack to failure, and considerably less prone to large scale power failures. There's also the fact that "the grid" is a huge consumer of land and right-of-way, and telephone poles, and transformers, and both low- and high-energy transport systems/support, and wire, and insulation. And street lights as implemented now have taken the sky from us, so I'd just as soon they'd die anyway. Just as an aside.
On the other side of the coin, there's also the fact that self-supply doesn't have to be grid connected at all, other than "because it's the rule" in some jurisdictions. Utility company can't make a profit off installations like that, so that's a net loss of customers. OTOH, they don't have to concern themselves with that connection. Small compensation. To some extent, power supply can be tax-supported, and I expect it will be near the end of the move to non-distributed power. And also right now, energy storage in non-production regimes is seriously expensive, has a short lifespan, and is a polluter all on its own. The utility companies could attempt a move into storage, which should work as long as no one figures out a convenient, reliable, cost-effective way to store energy at home (ultracaps might step in there, for instance. Or some currently unknown mechanism.) Of course, that leaves everyone still vulnerable to widespread failures. But barring a new storage+redistribution based economic model, eventually, too few customers will indeed result in failure of the existing power company economic model. But by then, the writing will have been on the wall for some time, and power production will be part of the assumed costs of getting any installation, commercial or private, up and running.
Also thrown into this is the question whether any particular industry or business model deserves artificial support. I've set up and run a number of businesses. No one came out of the woodwork to help or protect me when tough times came about. Some of those were fatal. Amazon killed my bookstore, for instance. (I'm not complaining, just noting that it happened. I'm an Amazon Kindle fan, frankly.) What's the argument that protection should be provided indefinitely for Big Power Inc.?
Aaaaand, automation is going to throw a monkey wrench into all this eventually, and that could be very disruptive, just depending on how far and how fast it hits. If it doesn't cost anything to make power and maintain the system, will that change the picture in time to save the grid itself? Or will it kill the grid that much faster?
Long term, my feeling – and it's only a feeling – is that we'd be better off if the economic process is allowed to proceed. If the people want local power, then that doesn't seem unreasonable based on the obvious benefits to them, and so I am of the opinion that legislators should support that insofar as such is reasonably possible. I'm very interested in arguments that we should not move in this direction. I really haven't heard any good ones as yet.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 09 2017, @08:41PM (2 children)
Fixing your ICE/horse vehicle comparison, which was really horse or not (there existed early electric vehicles and steam vehicles), you need to cause unpaid expenses for the horse farms and/or horse vehicle manufacturers.
For example, horse births get taxed to pay for carriages, and then the carriages are given out for free. Every time you buy a horse, you're supporting the provision of carriages via the tax. Somebody invents a way to operate a carriage without a horse. (ICE, steam, electric...) People start buying engines and attaching them to the free carriages. Since the carriages still need to be supported by the horse tax, we have to increase the horse tax, but then horses become even more unpopular due to the increased expense. Pretty soon nobody can afford a horse, nobody is paying the tax, and there is no way to provide free carriages.
That is the problem with grid-connected solar. The cost of maintaining the grid is traditionally built into the utility rate. If you don't buy electricity, then you aren't paying a share of the cost to maintain the grid. That cost must be split be the people still without solar, so their cost goes up. They then convert to solar. Eventually everybody is on solar, the utility goes bankrupt, the grid is not able to be maintained, the grid fails, and thus there are blackouts every night.
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Friday June 09 2017, @09:35PM (1 child)
I think that's a little simplistic. Here's why:
There are plenty of non-per-KWH costs on my electric bill. If I'm grid connected, I'll get to pay those no matter what. And if the grid cost, which is relatively constant, is reflected in a constant fee, I have no problem with that. It certainly shouldn't be folded into a per-KWH rate, inasmuch as that has little bearing on the grid cost, so I outright expect it to be a separate fee. Zero power consumption, grid-connected... you'd still pay for that.
Seriously, there are many ways to do this without being unreasonable to any party. I still think we should let it happen.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 10 2017, @02:06AM
Your electric bill is not normal.
If you actually pay the full cost of your share (one house worth) of the grid maintenance, then things are at least sort of fair. You also shouldn't be getting retail rates when you generate.
Most people don't pay a separate fee. They don't even have a single power rate. There is a base rate, intended to let poor people at least run a few small appliances cheaply. That rate is severely subsidized. There is the normal rate. There is the heavy-user rate, intended to rake in the profit from rich people and to discourage waste. The more you use, the higher your rate will be.
Details vary by location, obviously. There might be 2 rates or 5 rates. Normally, residential rates ignore time-of-day and power factor. ("power factor" has to do with loads that are unbalanced between capacitance and inductance, incurring an extra charge for industrial power customers)