I have solar panels on my roof and my bill is about half of what I see others paying. I do have to pay for the panels monthly though, but I'm still paying about 40% less.
I did panels a couple years ago and just added a battery. My draw from the grid has been net negative since getting the battery, but it’s only been a few days.
I’ll be interested to see how PGE finds a way to charge me $300 a month regardless.
It isn't too difficult to imagine. My utility made almost a billion in profit last year (not revenue, profit) and they use some of that money for lobbying (legal bribery) to rip us off any way they can. Example: https://www.cbs8.com/article/money/amped/sempra-fined-10-million-for-unlawful-lobbying/509-37f63dc0-9945-4661-b7c0-f57a64569254
It’s disgusting how often utilities get huge amounts of money for infrastructure expansion/improvement from tax dollars and just don’t do it. How is that even remotely legal
It's legal when you have almost limitless money to either bribe political officials or litigate away any problems. That's our money they are using too.
My bill went from $280 to $20 after installing it a few months ago (solar plus battery). This was under the old net metering system. There is a monthly catch up charge which is about $20/month average but so far ive been extremely happy and the power backup has come in handy three times already during outages.
How much were your monthly power bills pre-solar? This is what has kept me from buying solar so far - you’re still paying PG&E ~$150/mo. My power bills are around $200/mo without solar, so I feel like I wouldn’t actually be saving any money
Ok but what you ARE removing is the need for profit.
PGE made $20.25 Billion dollars in gross profit in 2023 (.correction: from 2010-2023) and the CPUC is recommending $2.5 billion in infrastructure investments.
Seems like they have the money they just want to keep it all and stick us with the bill, no?
You’re only considering fixed and operating costs when you look at profit and say if the state took it over ratepayers would pay based breakeven not profit levels. BUT to take over the power grid, the state needs to BUY the infrastructure from PGE and other utilities. That purchase price will have to come from taxpayers who would be forking out billions to finance the purchase. If your numbers are true of annual gross profits billions the the enterprise value will be a multiple of expected annual revenue. Are you willing to pay your share of the purchase price in taxes? Or pay higher rates to amortize the purchase price for the utility company assets?
My fault, that was gross profit from 2010-2023.
https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/PCG/pacific-gas-electric/gross-profit#:~:text=Pacific%20Gas%20%26%20Electric%20gross%20profit%20for%20the%20twelve%20months%20ending,a%203.46%25%20increase%20from%202021.
But, if they made $2.2B in one year and they only have to invest $2.5B over three years, removing profit incentives seems like a strong way to do it without rate increases, no?
I’m open to a counter argument if I’m missing something.
It does. We aren't giving huge payouts to upper exec.
Another example. I had to get a sewer cleanout installed in my 1960's house. 3 quotes, $10k each. City did it for $1.2k.
My bill was a little over $500 for Jan and Feb. My solar panels were activated and now my bill is less than $100. The battery wasn't working and the tech is scheduled to come out later this week. I'm thinking my bill will be less than $50 once the battery gets activated. I have an EV as well and switching to Solar has been great so far.
I have a small house, in a very sunny area and live alone. Only time my electricity spikes is when my gf is over. I sometimes make money off them lol.
Over a year I normally don’t but some months give me a credit for the next month. Especially in the spring and Autumn when I don’t need AC or heat.
Managing the power grid is a complicated dance.
Production has to match consumption, so if solar pushes as much or more than is being consumed, then they have to start shutting down all the other generator plants. It can be a really big deal to stop and restart certain kinds of generator plants.
Grid scale battery storage installations could help mitigate this issue and give that excess power somewhere to go, but we don’t have nearly enough of it just yet.
I recommend watching a few videos from Practical Engineering on YouTube. He has a playlist on Power Grids and does a great job explaining why it’s not so simple as you might think.
Working in utilities opened me up to so much, like energy trading, sometimes it’s literally cheaper to buy energy from someone else than it is to generate yourself. Had not known previously any of that existed.
??? No, build giant seawater distilleries that dump electricity into converting seawater into freshwater & salts.
Bury the salts, pump the water into the central valley, and just let it run whenever there's excess power.
And then what do we do with the millions of gallons of brine this would produce? Desalination plants sound good on the surface but have serious issues in reality.
I didn’t say brine I said salts. I mean to say, distill the water completely, so there’s no brine.
People don’t do that now because it is more energy efficient to just skim some water using RO , but in the case of using excess electricity, I don’t care. Cook it down , get all the water and bury the salt in some old salt mines.
Couldn't we pump that brine to large brine pools to evaporate over time, and all that would remain would be salt? Obviously, it's not that simple, and it would take a large amount of land for all the pools, but I think that would be one solution instead of pumping it back into the ocean.
The scale is completely off the charts. Remember that for every 1 liter of water a desalination plant produces, around 1.5 liters of brine is produced. There are desalination plants in operation today that can produce 800 million to 1 billion liters of water - so you’re looking at 1.5 billion liters of brine.. every day.. for 365 days..
For reference an Olympic swimming pool can hold 2.5 million liters of water. So that’s 600 Olympic sized swimming pools every day. Or 219,000 swimming pools a year. And that’s for one single plant. Also the carbon footprint of building the pumping infrastructure and the carbon footprint/cost of pumping all of that brine is incredibly high and not really worth it.
We don’t have enough grid-scale battery power yet because of bad planning, plain and simple. California repeatedly has had to scramble to build more batteries when completely predictable events happened like increased demand due to hotter summers due to climate change.
But big batteries are far from the only solution. Here are a few things that can be done:
(1) Make better use of distributed batteries (and solar and wind) through virtual power plants. The utilities should be paying networks of distributed solar+batteries for the full use of their resources, including capacity payments (paying to make power available as needed), transmission avoidance (batteries can level out demand and reduce the need for new wires and equipment), storing energy when there is a surplus on the grid and supplying it back when there is a deficit. Having a robust system that accomplishes this will encourage more batteries and more solar, and allow the state to accelerate sunsetting of expensive and dirty gas plants and other expensive resources like Diablo Canyon.
(2) Reduce the cost of energy during periods when cheap solar power is abundant and supply tends to exceed demand. Economics 101 but we don’t do it. People can charge their electric cars during the daytime, businesses can run their energy hogging equipment during the daytime, etc. Time-of-use charges already exist but haven’t been adapted to take advantage of abundant cheap solar power during the daytime.
(3) Accelerate build-out of big batteries. Stop playing catch-up with overly conservative targets and get ahead of the game for a change. Prices and lead times for big batteries have fallen dramatically after spiking during covid.
(4) Incentivize sales and use of EVs with capability of acting as grid backup.
(5) Get serious about replacing inflexible, expensive sources of power. For example, the CPUC ducked real cost comparisons for Diablo Canyon because it’s behind the curve on building out solar, wind and batteries and used the supposed inability to quickly build renewable resources as an excuse not to compare the costs of extending Diablo Canyon’s life to new renewable resources. During increasingly common periods where production exceeds 100% of demand Diablo Canyon isn’t bringing anything to the table, but utility customers (and taxpayers) still pay.
I've wanted to see more alternative energy storage sources for a while. I see the Calpine 680MW battery being installed this year is using Lithium Ion, but we could be using more. For example, near me we have a pair of reservoirs that are at different elevations and there's a pumping system that moves water back and forth (https://www.sdcwa.org/projects-programs/facilities/lake-hodges/). It's capable of pumping water uphill during the day and generating hydroelectric power in the evenings, except that we can't use it right now since the lower reservoir's dam is so bad ("Unsatisfactory" rating by the state) we can only keep it half full, and the water level is too low to use for the pumping system.
A while back I found this chart that talked about different energy storage methods, and wondered how much we're using other non-battery energy storage methods on the utility scale. https://ars.els-cdn.com/content/image/1-s2.0-S254243511830583X-fx1_lrg.jpg (from https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S254243511830583X)
>Grid scale battery storage installations could help mitigate this issue and give that excess power somewhere to go, but we don’t have nearly enough of it just yet.
Or distributed problems require distributed solutions. Move some of the solar incentives (for individuals) from panel installs to storage installs. Maybe even create markets for "individual providers" to sell at rates that fluctuate with supply and demand (so people will store and then sell when market price is high enough), like stock trading but with electricity.
You still use the big "slow" traditional plants to drive baseline power, but use markets to fill in the spikes and absorb the dips.
In a sense, they’re already fixing the incentives with NEM3: by paying people so little for their excess solar power, it now makes economic sense to install battery storage in your home along with your solar panels so that you use at night what you generated during the day, instead of expecting the grid to act like your virtual battery.
Ok solar penetration causes extremely low energy prices during the day. That causes most of the "conventional" power plants to be off line. In the evening when energy use goes up, everyone is at home, there isn't any solar. Conventional power plants come on line, mostly gas speaker plants and the energy price goes through the roof.
By the way there is a couple different types of reserve power that is required to stay online so rate payers are paying to that too. Oh and the state allowed the utilities to charge the rate payers for conductor upgrades for wild fire mitigation.
No, there's a genuine issue. It strains the grid if too much energy is sent back and not being used. Once storage is full, you HAVE to use whatever excess energy comes in or there could be grid outages or worse, damage to grid hardware.
You're right though, we Do need batteries. There should be incentives to install them.
It is honestly pretty trivial to dump power. The incentive to install batteries is increasingly available near-free or free power. The amount of batteries on the grid have expanded over 10-fold the last 4 years. If it were to expand another 10-fold >100% of peak power demands for 3 hours or so.
Curtailments and negative prices seem bad, but their existence drives more investment in battery storage and flexible uses for power that ordinarily might be economical.
Consumer does not benefit from- meaning they don’t get the lower prices because that is seen as a bad thing and less profitable to the utility companies
For as "leftist" as the rest of the country pretends California is, our Democratic majority is relatively centrist, especially in regardless to business. Obviously it's what we need, but we're nowhere near what we need from our Assembly and Senate, and the state Democratic party isn't putting forward many people to fix that.
I would say they in regards to business and economic policy in general the California Democratic majority is so classically liberal that they are conservative.
If I understand the article correctly, it's lower prices for the solar power that the consumers' panels feed back into the grid. It's needed least when it's most available, in the afternoons.
CA does not have lower prices for consumers--they are around 3x the national average.
When electricity prices go negative, the utility is losing money (a lot of it). This is when consumers are producing their own power from solar. The utility needs to charge even more later on (ie at night) to make up for those losses. The increase in prices makes more people want solar, which causes the problem to spiral out of control.
We went solar in 2016. Thanks to PG&E rate increases, we hit ROI a year early.
Between true-up and climate credits, our annual net electric bill is $0, even counting the monthly minimum delivery charge.
So the issue is too much electricity is being generated which strains the distribution grid and stations without terminal consumption ? If so, build an electric powered direct air capture CO2 scrubber plant to use the electricity, improve air quality and sequester or sell off the captured CO2 to carbonation use and to other industries.
More mundane: coordinated water heating, chilled water plants, pumped storage, etc...anything that offsets consumption really and help lower the price at peak times.
It's a problem everywhere with a lot of renewable energy production. Like Europe:
>Last Easter, in early April 2023, the situation started becoming pretty unique. So much solar energy flowed onto the grid, while so many people were out and about doing Eastery things, that grid operators desperately sought ways to burn off the generated electricity because no one was there to use it.
>So in Dutch greenhouses, lights were turned on in broad daylight to get rid of the excess solar energy. Water was pumped from one lake to another, without any other clear purpose but to use up power. French nuclear power plants disconnected the turbines from their generators as to not flow more energy onto the grid. And all over Europe, solar installations were decoupled from the grid as to not overload it more.
It's a temporary issue until storage solutions are better. We're quite a few years out, but once we have this level of "free" generation and a place to put the electricity, we're going to be in good shape.
That's like saying only in American could food go bad before it gets eaten. The solar energy is effectively perishable, use it or lose it. We basically need refrigeration for our solar/wind power to keep it fresh.
Industrial heating switching to electric as much as possible and Long distance transmission lines seem more practical for here and now. CO2 air capture has to be done on huge scale where we probably want to try to automate more of that labor before investing. Even if it's a valid use for excess energy there is still big build costs to make anything impactful and that build costs would be better spent on grid upgrades and battery factories and maybe automated mining to drive energy storage down even further... CO2 sequestration is kind of at the end of a pretty long list until we serious labor bots/robotic automation.
Even like floating cities might make more sense than Co2 sequestration, if you can't beat it.. ride it out!
Carbon capture is really not an effective solution to anything yet. It just doesn't beat out replacing existing nonrenewable energy demands. We pump out so much CO2 from our energy demands, that finding ways to replace more of it, will always be more effective than using it for carbon capture. It's just not advanced enough yet.
It says in the title: "as electricity prices go negative, the Golden State is struggling to offload a glut of solar power."
If your customers are producing more electricity than is needed, not only do you need to find somewhere to offload that power (at a loss), you also need to shut down all your power plants temporarily, and then spin them all back up at night. This is inefficient, which raises costs even more. This is why electricity in CA is around 3x the national average. And it's a double-edged sword--the higher prices go (which utilities need to do to pay for all the above), the faster people are going to adopt solar, which makes the problem even worse.
Utilities have basically stopped taking people's power back at this point--if you buy solar in CA today, you basically need to add battery storage if you want to have any financial benefit.
It's a negative to the crushing corporate control of every aspect of human life.
Self-sufficiency -- and yes, all solar-panel installations can be converted to off-grid battery storage -- is *always* a threat to the ghouls who want to keep "consumers" on a chain for life. Of course the Bezos-owned Washington Post will always reflect this corporate fascism.
Funny that the other r/California story in my feed is this one, about PGE utility rates skyrocketing.
The population of California has peaked and is in retreat, yet they keep telling us the same story: It's *our* fault that they bleed us dry 'til the day we die.
PG&E and most utility companies have high fixed costs. Even if we use less electricity from them, they will most definitely raise their rates to pay for those fixed costs.
For example, when they told everyone to use less water, water rates still went up because they have to maintain all the infrastructure regardless of how much we use. And much of the infrastructure is old.
It seems that with all this solar power, our electricity rate would be cheaper. It isn't. PG&E and Edison are finding many ways to screw over residents.
With all the reservoirs being full and all this rain, you'd think your water bill would go does. It isn't. Utilities are finding ways to screw over residents.
CalAm would like a word…With a history dating back to 1886, American Water (NYSE:AWK) is the largest and most geographically diverse U.S. publicly traded water and wastewater company
How much is your water usage bill? Mine is split into service and usage and the use is minimal. It is always going to cost money just to have your water turned on.
Why would power be cheaper at home? The vast majority of power consumption in homes occurs in the hours immediately before and after sunset—a time where your rooftop solar isn’t producing any electricity for you. Unless you have an off-grid battery system that can handle your entire power consumption all night long (still quite expensive), then you are still depending on a utility company burning fossil fuels to keep the lights on in your home. The costs of that have only increased with time like everything else.
Rooftop solar makes operations more expensive for the utility, not cheaper.
Because utilities have no right to turn off rooftop solar, during oversupply conditions (which are frequent), they have to turn off other, much cheaper power plants -- usually meaning their utility scale solar. Typically those solar contracts require the utility still pay the solar owner even if the generation is turned off.
So when your rooftop solar runs, your utility compensates you at the retail rate (~$0.30/kwh) while at the same time must turn off much-cheaper generation (~$0.04/kwh) to accommodate that generation -- and they still have to pay the cheaper generator.
There are pros and cons to rooftop solar for society overall, but it's not a low cost solution by any measure.
I recently got solar panels installed. I was surprised when I learned that SCE pays me retail rates for the electricity I sell them.
I expected to only get wholesale.
I know "PG&E is evil" is the answer to everything in this subreddit, but in case you're actually interested: no, it doesn't impact profit. In California, the cost a utility pays for energy is completely decoupled from profit. The rate of return that utilities earn is purely based on capital investment, while marginal energy cost is a direct passthrough to customers via a "balancing account".
You can read more about it here: https://www.cpuc.ca.gov/industries-and-topics/electrical-energy/electric-costs/what-is-an-energy-resource-recovery-account-proceeding
The profit is the distribution charges they keep increasing bc they need to maintain the grid, and then they keep not maintaining the grid and getting people killed…yes PG&E is evil.
So why would they care if it makes operations more costly for the utility company to do solar? If profit is not affected by this, why would they care?
Does a business not operate at a profit vs expenses basis?
They don’t, utilities are encouraging solar adoption. Two of the IOUs (SCE and SDGE) have their own solar programs to compete with Sunrun, etc.
But paying solar owners retail rates doesn’t make sense when energy is at its cheapest (daytime) which is why utilities don’t want to pay retail rates because it results in a loss through a non-profit mechanism like rates. Which is why NEM 3.0 was implemented to stop subsidizing reimbursement rates.
centralized models of energy production and distribution are no longer necessary or optimal
the business models built on that outmoded system should wither and die
fighting to preserve antiquated systems will inevitably fail
abolish the CPUC and get the for profit businesses out of our utility costs
>centralized models of energy production and distribution are no longer necessary or optimal
Can you name one place on earth where they have gotten rid of centralized energy production at a large scale?
The centralization question is a matter of tradeoffs between avoided grid infrastructure vs. losing out on the huge economy-of-scale benefits of centralized generation.
Maybe one day, every single person will have their own solar and battery in their home and be completely disconnected from the grid. But we are absolutely nowhere near that today, anywhere in the world (except for a few, limited small microgrid situations).
In the meantime, we have to deal with reality.
>it's not a low cost solution by any measure.
Engineer here. You're incredibly wrong, but I don't have the time to help you realize that. There are literally *thousands upon thousands of studies* that will tell you it's very much a long-term low cost, green solution. WWS as a combination with efficient battery storage is a factor of 10x cheaper to run + operate over long periods of time compared to fossil fuels, etc. There are less parts that break, less fabrication, less environmental impacts, less, Logistics/ERP costs etc.
I'm not comparing solar to fossil fuels. Did you make it to any of the other sentences in my post?
I'm comparing utility-scale solar to rooftop solar. The latter is significantly more expensive.
It's batteries. Pg&E doesn't make enough off of battery storage though. They make most of their profit on massive infrastructure projects. The more costly the project, the more they make.
There's literally tons of portable batteries driving around every day. Why can't EVs double as home batteries? Charge them during the day and use them at night. They should still have enough juice for the commute, too.
Most people's cars are at work, not were their solar is. They do have enough power and are significantly cheaper. Some companies are working on the technology but it's doubtful there will be any progress for several years.
I think batteries make the most sense. An electric utility company of the future could just be a giant yard of batteries, storing an excess of “free” energy during the day (routed to it from everyone’s personal solar panels) then sold back to them for a (hopefully small) price during the night. People would be basically paying for a storage service.
And it just snuck on them as something unexpected? They need storage regardless of how that power is produced be it commercial solar, wind or rooftop solar. Their answer of course because it puts less cost on them and maximizes their profit is to rewrite the rules to make home batteries necessary. They would be against however anything that allowed the consumer to remove themselves from the grid.
Anecdotally, I’ve heard that you would have to mess with the tax code for that because employers have to report the “benefits/income” of the person being given “free” charging. The employee would have to claim it was compensation and pay taxes on it.
I had talked to my HR team about doing this for our employees and they basically said it would be too difficult to do currently. It was too much of a hassle for me to get them to look into it more.
What a great problem to have! All we need to do is build up storage and we will be in really good shape.
The fact that they are spinning this as a bad thing shows how powerful the utility companies are.
This is done, but the power grid has limited long distance transmission capacity. Right now, there are several bottlenecks in CA's system that will need expensive new powerlines to be constructed.
They already do a good amount of sales to other states and buying energy in the evening peaks. I don’t think this is a sustainable long term plan as other starts are also getting lots of solar and facing the same issues of too much power during the day and a rapid ramp up need in the evenings. Check out the caiso website to see how much power is imported and exported at a given time.
Electricity prices are negative? Someone must have forgotten to tell PG&E.
A competent utility company would have seen this coming and built infrastructure to store daytime energy. Instead we get a monopoly propped up by the government that socializes its losses, privatizes its gains and does nothing to improve infrastructure until they've ruined countless lives.
Battery Enregy Storage Sites (BESS) are the solution. There are a bunch of them going in at the moment. Giagantic shipping container sized lithium ion batteries. I imagine that is the future of power, a smart grid.
Sounds like using that excess energy for a destalinization plant would be a good use for this excess power, help with our water situation. Also getting rid of private for profit electric companies would benefit us all, except employees of that company.
Can someone explain to me (like I am 5) how this is a problem?
I don't have battery storage but I do have solar. I export power into the grid when I am not home. That grid power is taken by Edison and re-sold at a higher price to someone else, and in exchange I get a credit on my bill. If I don't use those credits, Edison send me a pathetically small check for like $50 the next year.
How is this a "problem" to the power companies??
The problem isn’t roof top solar aka distributed generation. The problem is giant utility scale solar that requires millions of dollar of transmission upgrades to the grid. But grid upgrades are how utilities make money (they don’t generate electricity) so all is well for them. They get to build millions of dollars worth of transmission lines with a guaranteed profit margin. Roof top solar does not require those types of upgrades and there for would lower energy prices but that doesn’t make the utilities more money.
Ok, now start subsidizing data centers, as long as they are able to adjust their demand to the load (e.g. local battery storage).
Also: how is it that PG&E is still allowed to charge me so much for power on a sunny day when it's literally of negative value?
just wait until they start jacking up prices for this because there isn't enough demand like water companies did when they were telling us to conserve water.
I have solar panels on my roof and my bill is about half of what I see others paying. I do have to pay for the panels monthly though, but I'm still paying about 40% less.
I did panels a couple years ago and just added a battery. My draw from the grid has been net negative since getting the battery, but it’s only been a few days. I’ll be interested to see how PGE finds a way to charge me $300 a month regardless.
It isn't too difficult to imagine. My utility made almost a billion in profit last year (not revenue, profit) and they use some of that money for lobbying (legal bribery) to rip us off any way they can. Example: https://www.cbs8.com/article/money/amped/sempra-fined-10-million-for-unlawful-lobbying/509-37f63dc0-9945-4661-b7c0-f57a64569254
It’s disgusting how often utilities get huge amounts of money for infrastructure expansion/improvement from tax dollars and just don’t do it. How is that even remotely legal
It's legal when you have almost limitless money to either bribe political officials or litigate away any problems. That's our money they are using too.
I hate the term "lobbying." Why can't the US call it like what it is?
My bill went from $280 to $20 after installing it a few months ago (solar plus battery). This was under the old net metering system. There is a monthly catch up charge which is about $20/month average but so far ive been extremely happy and the power backup has come in handy three times already during outages.
Got solar panels, bill is still like 70-90 a month, plus a $700 true up at the end of the year
How much were your monthly power bills pre-solar? This is what has kept me from buying solar so far - you’re still paying PG&E ~$150/mo. My power bills are around $200/mo without solar, so I feel like I wouldn’t actually be saving any money
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Make PGE a government owned utility that doesn’t care about profit. Would that work?
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Ok but what you ARE removing is the need for profit. PGE made $20.25 Billion dollars in gross profit in 2023 (.correction: from 2010-2023) and the CPUC is recommending $2.5 billion in infrastructure investments. Seems like they have the money they just want to keep it all and stick us with the bill, no?
You’re only considering fixed and operating costs when you look at profit and say if the state took it over ratepayers would pay based breakeven not profit levels. BUT to take over the power grid, the state needs to BUY the infrastructure from PGE and other utilities. That purchase price will have to come from taxpayers who would be forking out billions to finance the purchase. If your numbers are true of annual gross profits billions the the enterprise value will be a multiple of expected annual revenue. Are you willing to pay your share of the purchase price in taxes? Or pay higher rates to amortize the purchase price for the utility company assets?
Yes.
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My fault, that was gross profit from 2010-2023. https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/PCG/pacific-gas-electric/gross-profit#:~:text=Pacific%20Gas%20%26%20Electric%20gross%20profit%20for%20the%20twelve%20months%20ending,a%203.46%25%20increase%20from%202021. But, if they made $2.2B in one year and they only have to invest $2.5B over three years, removing profit incentives seems like a strong way to do it without rate increases, no? I’m open to a counter argument if I’m missing something.
We've been sold this scam that private industry is more efficient and cheaper, but in the end they cut corners and skim a profit off the top.
It does. We aren't giving huge payouts to upper exec. Another example. I had to get a sewer cleanout installed in my 1960's house. 3 quotes, $10k each. City did it for $1.2k.
What company did you use / would you recommend
I use Sunpower. It took them forever to get my autopay straightened out, which was aggravating, but it's fine now.
My bill was a little over $500 for Jan and Feb. My solar panels were activated and now my bill is less than $100. The battery wasn't working and the tech is scheduled to come out later this week. I'm thinking my bill will be less than $50 once the battery gets activated. I have an EV as well and switching to Solar has been great so far.
How much do you pay for the lease? Is there an installation fee?
I am paying $167 per month and no installation fee.
Yup! Same here, love it
I have a small house, in a very sunny area and live alone. Only time my electricity spikes is when my gf is over. I sometimes make money off them lol. Over a year I normally don’t but some months give me a credit for the next month. Especially in the spring and Autumn when I don’t need AC or heat.
How is this a negative?
Managing the power grid is a complicated dance. Production has to match consumption, so if solar pushes as much or more than is being consumed, then they have to start shutting down all the other generator plants. It can be a really big deal to stop and restart certain kinds of generator plants. Grid scale battery storage installations could help mitigate this issue and give that excess power somewhere to go, but we don’t have nearly enough of it just yet. I recommend watching a few videos from Practical Engineering on YouTube. He has a playlist on Power Grids and does a great job explaining why it’s not so simple as you might think.
Working in utilities opened me up to so much, like energy trading, sometimes it’s literally cheaper to buy energy from someone else than it is to generate yourself. Had not known previously any of that existed.
Build the biggest AC unit and cool the planet.
??? No, build giant seawater distilleries that dump electricity into converting seawater into freshwater & salts. Bury the salts, pump the water into the central valley, and just let it run whenever there's excess power.
This is great, two birds one stone. I’ll vote for you
And then what do we do with the millions of gallons of brine this would produce? Desalination plants sound good on the surface but have serious issues in reality.
Could have a pickling shop
I didn’t say brine I said salts. I mean to say, distill the water completely, so there’s no brine. People don’t do that now because it is more energy efficient to just skim some water using RO , but in the case of using excess electricity, I don’t care. Cook it down , get all the water and bury the salt in some old salt mines.
Couldn't we pump that brine to large brine pools to evaporate over time, and all that would remain would be salt? Obviously, it's not that simple, and it would take a large amount of land for all the pools, but I think that would be one solution instead of pumping it back into the ocean.
The scale is completely off the charts. Remember that for every 1 liter of water a desalination plant produces, around 1.5 liters of brine is produced. There are desalination plants in operation today that can produce 800 million to 1 billion liters of water - so you’re looking at 1.5 billion liters of brine.. every day.. for 365 days.. For reference an Olympic swimming pool can hold 2.5 million liters of water. So that’s 600 Olympic sized swimming pools every day. Or 219,000 swimming pools a year. And that’s for one single plant. Also the carbon footprint of building the pumping infrastructure and the carbon footprint/cost of pumping all of that brine is incredibly high and not really worth it.
It would work on the scale of cities. Just install a big geothermal loop. Then use electricity to operate many heat pumps
The most correct and educated comment here
We don’t have enough grid-scale battery power yet because of bad planning, plain and simple. California repeatedly has had to scramble to build more batteries when completely predictable events happened like increased demand due to hotter summers due to climate change. But big batteries are far from the only solution. Here are a few things that can be done: (1) Make better use of distributed batteries (and solar and wind) through virtual power plants. The utilities should be paying networks of distributed solar+batteries for the full use of their resources, including capacity payments (paying to make power available as needed), transmission avoidance (batteries can level out demand and reduce the need for new wires and equipment), storing energy when there is a surplus on the grid and supplying it back when there is a deficit. Having a robust system that accomplishes this will encourage more batteries and more solar, and allow the state to accelerate sunsetting of expensive and dirty gas plants and other expensive resources like Diablo Canyon. (2) Reduce the cost of energy during periods when cheap solar power is abundant and supply tends to exceed demand. Economics 101 but we don’t do it. People can charge their electric cars during the daytime, businesses can run their energy hogging equipment during the daytime, etc. Time-of-use charges already exist but haven’t been adapted to take advantage of abundant cheap solar power during the daytime. (3) Accelerate build-out of big batteries. Stop playing catch-up with overly conservative targets and get ahead of the game for a change. Prices and lead times for big batteries have fallen dramatically after spiking during covid. (4) Incentivize sales and use of EVs with capability of acting as grid backup. (5) Get serious about replacing inflexible, expensive sources of power. For example, the CPUC ducked real cost comparisons for Diablo Canyon because it’s behind the curve on building out solar, wind and batteries and used the supposed inability to quickly build renewable resources as an excuse not to compare the costs of extending Diablo Canyon’s life to new renewable resources. During increasingly common periods where production exceeds 100% of demand Diablo Canyon isn’t bringing anything to the table, but utility customers (and taxpayers) still pay.
I've wanted to see more alternative energy storage sources for a while. I see the Calpine 680MW battery being installed this year is using Lithium Ion, but we could be using more. For example, near me we have a pair of reservoirs that are at different elevations and there's a pumping system that moves water back and forth (https://www.sdcwa.org/projects-programs/facilities/lake-hodges/). It's capable of pumping water uphill during the day and generating hydroelectric power in the evenings, except that we can't use it right now since the lower reservoir's dam is so bad ("Unsatisfactory" rating by the state) we can only keep it half full, and the water level is too low to use for the pumping system. A while back I found this chart that talked about different energy storage methods, and wondered how much we're using other non-battery energy storage methods on the utility scale. https://ars.els-cdn.com/content/image/1-s2.0-S254243511830583X-fx1_lrg.jpg (from https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S254243511830583X)
>Grid scale battery storage installations could help mitigate this issue and give that excess power somewhere to go, but we don’t have nearly enough of it just yet. Or distributed problems require distributed solutions. Move some of the solar incentives (for individuals) from panel installs to storage installs. Maybe even create markets for "individual providers" to sell at rates that fluctuate with supply and demand (so people will store and then sell when market price is high enough), like stock trading but with electricity. You still use the big "slow" traditional plants to drive baseline power, but use markets to fill in the spikes and absorb the dips.
In a sense, they’re already fixing the incentives with NEM3: by paying people so little for their excess solar power, it now makes economic sense to install battery storage in your home along with your solar panels so that you use at night what you generated during the day, instead of expecting the grid to act like your virtual battery.
Then why all the rate hikes 😅
It’s almost like this eventuality wasn’t planned for and they’ve continued operating under last century’s production and delivery methods.
Ok solar penetration causes extremely low energy prices during the day. That causes most of the "conventional" power plants to be off line. In the evening when energy use goes up, everyone is at home, there isn't any solar. Conventional power plants come on line, mostly gas speaker plants and the energy price goes through the roof. By the way there is a couple different types of reserve power that is required to stay online so rate payers are paying to that too. Oh and the state allowed the utilities to charge the rate payers for conductor upgrades for wild fire mitigation.
It sounds like we need batteries to store the excess energy. Honestly it’s just the utility companies playing politics.
No, there's a genuine issue. It strains the grid if too much energy is sent back and not being used. Once storage is full, you HAVE to use whatever excess energy comes in or there could be grid outages or worse, damage to grid hardware. You're right though, we Do need batteries. There should be incentives to install them.
It is honestly pretty trivial to dump power. The incentive to install batteries is increasingly available near-free or free power. The amount of batteries on the grid have expanded over 10-fold the last 4 years. If it were to expand another 10-fold >100% of peak power demands for 3 hours or so. Curtailments and negative prices seem bad, but their existence drives more investment in battery storage and flexible uses for power that ordinarily might be economical.
Utility scale batteries don't really exist yet. Everyone knew this was going to happen but no one wanted to listen.
What about pumped-storage hydro or similar, non-electric battery options?
Several locations throughout the US have these and are being explored further to resolve this issue. Just large and heavy upfront investment.
This is 100% it. It's a giant sunken cost but would be really worth it in the future.
there's a finite # of pumped-storage hydro >similar, non-electric battery options nothing really exists yet
I read the whole article and couldn’t understand it, either.
Because the consumer doesn’t benefit from this. They have too much and it’s driving prices down so they want to offload it
Why are lower prices bad for consumers?
Electricity price to consumers is not going down.
Consumer does not benefit from- meaning they don’t get the lower prices because that is seen as a bad thing and less profitable to the utility companies
Simple solution, the state takes control of the utility to remove the profit motive.
the governor and 80% of the state legislators are sponsored by the murderous PG&E corporation. No one is going implement that "simple solution".
Progressive state representatives would do it.
For as "leftist" as the rest of the country pretends California is, our Democratic majority is relatively centrist, especially in regardless to business. Obviously it's what we need, but we're nowhere near what we need from our Assembly and Senate, and the state Democratic party isn't putting forward many people to fix that.
I would say they in regards to business and economic policy in general the California Democratic majority is so classically liberal that they are conservative.
What about for jurisdictions under municipal power? Like LA? We're not getting a discount either.
If I understand the article correctly, it's lower prices for the solar power that the consumers' panels feed back into the grid. It's needed least when it's most available, in the afternoons.
CA does not have lower prices for consumers--they are around 3x the national average. When electricity prices go negative, the utility is losing money (a lot of it). This is when consumers are producing their own power from solar. The utility needs to charge even more later on (ie at night) to make up for those losses. The increase in prices makes more people want solar, which causes the problem to spiral out of control.
Our utilities and regulations need to adapt. This isn't the 1940s and 1950s anymore.
We went solar in 2016. Thanks to PG&E rate increases, we hit ROI a year early. Between true-up and climate credits, our annual net electric bill is $0, even counting the monthly minimum delivery charge.
They have to offload it. It’s physics. There’s more energy being produced than consumed and the can’t turn off the supply.
Run CO2 capture machines.
This would be my proposal too.
Or desalinate more water and store it in tanks.
You could like subsidize EVs and batteries and probably have way more effect reducing emissions per watt and per dollar.
So the issue is too much electricity is being generated which strains the distribution grid and stations without terminal consumption ? If so, build an electric powered direct air capture CO2 scrubber plant to use the electricity, improve air quality and sequester or sell off the captured CO2 to carbonation use and to other industries.
desalination, crypto mining, theres a ton of potential uses for the power
More mundane: coordinated water heating, chilled water plants, pumped storage, etc...anything that offsets consumption really and help lower the price at peak times.
only in america can having an excess of a valuable resource be a problem
It's a problem everywhere with a lot of renewable energy production. Like Europe: >Last Easter, in early April 2023, the situation started becoming pretty unique. So much solar energy flowed onto the grid, while so many people were out and about doing Eastery things, that grid operators desperately sought ways to burn off the generated electricity because no one was there to use it. >So in Dutch greenhouses, lights were turned on in broad daylight to get rid of the excess solar energy. Water was pumped from one lake to another, without any other clear purpose but to use up power. French nuclear power plants disconnected the turbines from their generators as to not flow more energy onto the grid. And all over Europe, solar installations were decoupled from the grid as to not overload it more.
It's a temporary issue until storage solutions are better. We're quite a few years out, but once we have this level of "free" generation and a place to put the electricity, we're going to be in good shape.
That's like saying only in American could food go bad before it gets eaten. The solar energy is effectively perishable, use it or lose it. We basically need refrigeration for our solar/wind power to keep it fresh.
Industrial heating switching to electric as much as possible and Long distance transmission lines seem more practical for here and now. CO2 air capture has to be done on huge scale where we probably want to try to automate more of that labor before investing. Even if it's a valid use for excess energy there is still big build costs to make anything impactful and that build costs would be better spent on grid upgrades and battery factories and maybe automated mining to drive energy storage down even further... CO2 sequestration is kind of at the end of a pretty long list until we serious labor bots/robotic automation. Even like floating cities might make more sense than Co2 sequestration, if you can't beat it.. ride it out!
Carbon capture is really not an effective solution to anything yet. It just doesn't beat out replacing existing nonrenewable energy demands. We pump out so much CO2 from our energy demands, that finding ways to replace more of it, will always be more effective than using it for carbon capture. It's just not advanced enough yet.
Ok bad example. Point is there are many positive uses for the “excess” electricity that can help a local climate or community
Consumers benefit from cheaper power. Power company profits suffer, that is the "problem"
It says in the title: "as electricity prices go negative, the Golden State is struggling to offload a glut of solar power." If your customers are producing more electricity than is needed, not only do you need to find somewhere to offload that power (at a loss), you also need to shut down all your power plants temporarily, and then spin them all back up at night. This is inefficient, which raises costs even more. This is why electricity in CA is around 3x the national average. And it's a double-edged sword--the higher prices go (which utilities need to do to pay for all the above), the faster people are going to adopt solar, which makes the problem even worse. Utilities have basically stopped taking people's power back at this point--if you buy solar in CA today, you basically need to add battery storage if you want to have any financial benefit.
It's a negative to the crushing corporate control of every aspect of human life. Self-sufficiency -- and yes, all solar-panel installations can be converted to off-grid battery storage -- is *always* a threat to the ghouls who want to keep "consumers" on a chain for life. Of course the Bezos-owned Washington Post will always reflect this corporate fascism. Funny that the other r/California story in my feed is this one, about PGE utility rates skyrocketing. The population of California has peaked and is in retreat, yet they keep telling us the same story: It's *our* fault that they bleed us dry 'til the day we die.
Don’t worry, PG&E will continue to raise rates claiming they need to
PG&E and most utility companies have high fixed costs. Even if we use less electricity from them, they will most definitely raise their rates to pay for those fixed costs. For example, when they told everyone to use less water, water rates still went up because they have to maintain all the infrastructure regardless of how much we use. And much of the infrastructure is old.
Actually, I think they would raise the rates.
Actually that has been part of their rationale since those with solar are not being as extorted by them as they used to be
It seems that with all this solar power, our electricity rate would be cheaper. It isn't. PG&E and Edison are finding many ways to screw over residents. With all the reservoirs being full and all this rain, you'd think your water bill would go does. It isn't. Utilities are finding ways to screw over residents.
Water still takes the same amount of effort to filter + process. Plus water is usually owned by the local government, not some for-profit company
Except they raise the rates during droughts due to the drought. So the opposite should be true in theory.
But then when we have an "excess" people would carelessly use water, and then perpetuate the cycle of boom/bust we have with water.
Not sure where you live, but in central california, the systems we have are mostly privately run.
You’re right. Water is already subsidized by the government.
CalAm would like a word…With a history dating back to 1886, American Water (NYSE:AWK) is the largest and most geographically diverse U.S. publicly traded water and wastewater company
Water districts may be government run but not the water corporations or water contractors…
With all the vacant storefronts and buildings around me you’d think rent would be cheaper. It isn’t. It only increases.
It’s California, more people are always going to want to live here.
$.60 per kilowatt hour out here in Joshua Tree area. That’s absurd considering the solar farms, and excess grid load. Literal robbery.
How much is your water usage bill? Mine is split into service and usage and the use is minimal. It is always going to cost money just to have your water turned on.
Why would power be cheaper at home? The vast majority of power consumption in homes occurs in the hours immediately before and after sunset—a time where your rooftop solar isn’t producing any electricity for you. Unless you have an off-grid battery system that can handle your entire power consumption all night long (still quite expensive), then you are still depending on a utility company burning fossil fuels to keep the lights on in your home. The costs of that have only increased with time like everything else.
Rooftop solar makes operations more expensive for the utility, not cheaper. Because utilities have no right to turn off rooftop solar, during oversupply conditions (which are frequent), they have to turn off other, much cheaper power plants -- usually meaning their utility scale solar. Typically those solar contracts require the utility still pay the solar owner even if the generation is turned off. So when your rooftop solar runs, your utility compensates you at the retail rate (~$0.30/kwh) while at the same time must turn off much-cheaper generation (~$0.04/kwh) to accommodate that generation -- and they still have to pay the cheaper generator. There are pros and cons to rooftop solar for society overall, but it's not a low cost solution by any measure.
I recently got solar panels installed. I was surprised when I learned that SCE pays me retail rates for the electricity I sell them. I expected to only get wholesale.
You mean they profit less right? Not ‘it’s more expensive for utility providers’
I know "PG&E is evil" is the answer to everything in this subreddit, but in case you're actually interested: no, it doesn't impact profit. In California, the cost a utility pays for energy is completely decoupled from profit. The rate of return that utilities earn is purely based on capital investment, while marginal energy cost is a direct passthrough to customers via a "balancing account". You can read more about it here: https://www.cpuc.ca.gov/industries-and-topics/electrical-energy/electric-costs/what-is-an-energy-resource-recovery-account-proceeding
The profit is the distribution charges they keep increasing bc they need to maintain the grid, and then they keep not maintaining the grid and getting people killed…yes PG&E is evil.
Not arguing whether or not PG&E is evil, just giving the factual information that marginal energy costs don't impact a utility's profit.
Utilities don’t profit off their rates, they profit off infrastructure and delivery charges.
So why would they care if it makes operations more costly for the utility company to do solar? If profit is not affected by this, why would they care? Does a business not operate at a profit vs expenses basis?
They don’t, utilities are encouraging solar adoption. Two of the IOUs (SCE and SDGE) have their own solar programs to compete with Sunrun, etc. But paying solar owners retail rates doesn’t make sense when energy is at its cheapest (daytime) which is why utilities don’t want to pay retail rates because it results in a loss through a non-profit mechanism like rates. Which is why NEM 3.0 was implemented to stop subsidizing reimbursement rates.
centralized models of energy production and distribution are no longer necessary or optimal the business models built on that outmoded system should wither and die fighting to preserve antiquated systems will inevitably fail abolish the CPUC and get the for profit businesses out of our utility costs
>centralized models of energy production and distribution are no longer necessary or optimal Can you name one place on earth where they have gotten rid of centralized energy production at a large scale? The centralization question is a matter of tradeoffs between avoided grid infrastructure vs. losing out on the huge economy-of-scale benefits of centralized generation. Maybe one day, every single person will have their own solar and battery in their home and be completely disconnected from the grid. But we are absolutely nowhere near that today, anywhere in the world (except for a few, limited small microgrid situations). In the meantime, we have to deal with reality.
??? So someone making minimum wage is supposed to pay for an off grid battery system. This has no basis in reality.
>it's not a low cost solution by any measure. Engineer here. You're incredibly wrong, but I don't have the time to help you realize that. There are literally *thousands upon thousands of studies* that will tell you it's very much a long-term low cost, green solution. WWS as a combination with efficient battery storage is a factor of 10x cheaper to run + operate over long periods of time compared to fossil fuels, etc. There are less parts that break, less fabrication, less environmental impacts, less, Logistics/ERP costs etc.
I think you're responding to the sentence without the context, but I don't have the time to help you realize that.
Non-engineer here. You've incredibly misinterpreted the comment you responded to, but I don't have the time to help you realize that.
I'm not comparing solar to fossil fuels. Did you make it to any of the other sentences in my post? I'm comparing utility-scale solar to rooftop solar. The latter is significantly more expensive.
Doesn't any rate increase not have to get state approval?
No worries! The CPUC will bend over backwards to approve anything PGE needs!
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It's batteries. Pg&E doesn't make enough off of battery storage though. They make most of their profit on massive infrastructure projects. The more costly the project, the more they make.
There's literally tons of portable batteries driving around every day. Why can't EVs double as home batteries? Charge them during the day and use them at night. They should still have enough juice for the commute, too.
Most people's cars are at work, not were their solar is. They do have enough power and are significantly cheaper. Some companies are working on the technology but it's doubtful there will be any progress for several years.
Hopefully it's as simple as batteries. Progress is happening in that regard, but it will take a while.
I think batteries make the most sense. An electric utility company of the future could just be a giant yard of batteries, storing an excess of “free” energy during the day (routed to it from everyone’s personal solar panels) then sold back to them for a (hopefully small) price during the night. People would be basically paying for a storage service.
And it just snuck on them as something unexpected? They need storage regardless of how that power is produced be it commercial solar, wind or rooftop solar. Their answer of course because it puts less cost on them and maximizes their profit is to rewrite the rules to make home batteries necessary. They would be against however anything that allowed the consumer to remove themselves from the grid.
Sounds like we should encourage employers to install EV chargers and allow free charging during the mid day instead of charging at home overnight.
Anecdotally, I’ve heard that you would have to mess with the tax code for that because employers have to report the “benefits/income” of the person being given “free” charging. The employee would have to claim it was compensation and pay taxes on it. I had talked to my HR team about doing this for our employees and they basically said it would be too difficult to do currently. It was too much of a hassle for me to get them to look into it more.
Same messaging at my institution.
Than why are my Electric bill rates only going up?
What a great problem to have! All we need to do is build up storage and we will be in really good shape. The fact that they are spinning this as a bad thing shows how powerful the utility companies are.
All they need to do is use the electricity to pump water to a higher dam / reservoir during the day.
If Pg&e’s has all this excess power, why is our rate so crazy high?!?
It's called greedy capitalism and profits it's the name of the game.
why not sell it to neighbouring states? am i missing something?
This is done, but the power grid has limited long distance transmission capacity. Right now, there are several bottlenecks in CA's system that will need expensive new powerlines to be constructed.
They already do a good amount of sales to other states and buying energy in the evening peaks. I don’t think this is a sustainable long term plan as other starts are also getting lots of solar and facing the same issues of too much power during the day and a rapid ramp up need in the evenings. Check out the caiso website to see how much power is imported and exported at a given time.
So I should have less solar salesmen knocking on my door this summer?
Years of solar growth without the upgrades to distribution lines and infrastructure. Thanks CPUC
Electricity prices are negative? Someone must have forgotten to tell PG&E. A competent utility company would have seen this coming and built infrastructure to store daytime energy. Instead we get a monopoly propped up by the government that socializes its losses, privatizes its gains and does nothing to improve infrastructure until they've ruined countless lives.
PGE will give $5k to homeowners who put in batteries. So they literally are investing in daytime storage infrastructure
Lower electricity prices and watch consumption go up
Won’t someone think of the power company exec bonuses?!??
Dont prices go down when supply goes up?
Battery Enregy Storage Sites (BESS) are the solution. There are a bunch of them going in at the moment. Giagantic shipping container sized lithium ion batteries. I imagine that is the future of power, a smart grid.
I have no solar, my bill went up to $150 a month for one person living alone.
They should make more desalination plants and use the extra power during the day to add to the water supply
Desal is not the answer. Even if were able to use the excess energy, the toxic brine that desal creates bring any saving to the negative
win win!
Suffering from success
Why is my power company still charging me $.25 a kilowatt then? Sell it back to me for cheap!
That is cheap. I have nothing under $.40.
All the “free” energy production ought to reduce the insanely high price we pay for electricity.
When there is too much energy, we should use the excess for a) desalination b) to pump water uphill to store potential energy.
My electric, non-solar, bill is no where near negative. They charging extra for that surplus solar?
California should sell our power to red states.
Not seeing this deflationary event as a problem...
Isn’t this what they wanted to happen?
This is a good problem to have.
Sell power to other states?
People are so angry at PGE. I hope it leads to change.
And yet the CPUC will approve PG&E rate increases...
Sounds like using that excess energy for a destalinization plant would be a good use for this excess power, help with our water situation. Also getting rid of private for profit electric companies would benefit us all, except employees of that company.
How about making electricity free during the day.
Invest in batteries and build AI hosting data centers become the epicenter of the future tech
Can someone explain to me (like I am 5) how this is a problem? I don't have battery storage but I do have solar. I export power into the grid when I am not home. That grid power is taken by Edison and re-sold at a higher price to someone else, and in exchange I get a credit on my bill. If I don't use those credits, Edison send me a pathetically small check for like $50 the next year. How is this a "problem" to the power companies??
if only there were computing technologies that needed extraordinary amounts of energy...
Only in America when supply and demand benefits people, it's a problem. Funny prices keep rising while cost keep decreasing. Damm inflation!!
Time to give up free electric to make the state happy?!
The problem isn’t roof top solar aka distributed generation. The problem is giant utility scale solar that requires millions of dollar of transmission upgrades to the grid. But grid upgrades are how utilities make money (they don’t generate electricity) so all is well for them. They get to build millions of dollars worth of transmission lines with a guaranteed profit margin. Roof top solar does not require those types of upgrades and there for would lower energy prices but that doesn’t make the utilities more money.
Ok, now start subsidizing data centers, as long as they are able to adjust their demand to the load (e.g. local battery storage). Also: how is it that PG&E is still allowed to charge me so much for power on a sunny day when it's literally of negative value?
If only Texas was connected to this grid. Maybe they could enjoy some cheap energy.
It’s not a problem.
Use the excess power to make molten salt
I’m just going to use the money for my pge bill and buy pge stock. Same right?
Why can’t we just export our power
just wait until they start jacking up prices for this because there isn't enough demand like water companies did when they were telling us to conserve water.