How so?
California slashes residential solar feed-in rates
- Thread starter OVERKILL
- Start date
It's called a duck neck load curve. The solar power comes on line in the morning so fast, floods the grid with power forcing thermal plants off line and the opposite happens in the evening all the solar drops off line faster than thermal plants can come on line. The only power source that can react fast enough is hydroelectric, followed by gas turbine.
For example in Australia there are people claiming their utility provider gives away free power for a few hours at solar power peak, but then a few hours later power jumps up to 44cents a kwh.
The green energy simps claim this is "progress". I say it's a system on the verge of failure. But what do I know I only have a 2 year degree in power plant and grid operations.
OVERKILL
$100 Site Donor 2021
I don't think it's percentage-based as much as it's when it starts to create a duck curve, you are creating a problem that then requires further complicating the grid to resolve. In grids where over-penetration is displacing nuclear or hydro, this is particularly stupid, because both have lower lifecycle emissions than solar.
Liability and in the swing of power it produces as you got to cut it or get some from somewhere else.
Illinois and my rural coop make it near impossible to sell back. Cost is close to $1000 just for approval and inspection. And you need a Million dollar liability insurance policy. When you do sell back you get the wholesale rate they pay currently around 3 cents a KWH.
Illinois and my rural coop make it near impossible to sell back. Cost is close to $1000 just for approval and inspection. And you need a Million dollar liability insurance policy. When you do sell back you get the wholesale rate they pay currently around 3 cents a KWH.
OVERKILL
$100 Site Donor 2021
Which is how it should be. Solar being sold into the market should not be paid a premium, be it a FIT, retail (many NEM versions)...etc. If you have enough of it to reduce the market value, then that's a signal that you are approaching market saturation. California blew way past that point because they were paying folks full-retail. Now, with NEM 3 the've pulled that back, paying wholesale value, but the damage is already done, they need a ton of storage now, which also isn't free, and is going to add to system costs.
I would say cost is relative.Depends on the unit design, lol. AP1000's SHOULD be cheaper now, with Vogtle basically complete and that experience gained. Probably cheapest is the Korean 1,400MWe units that were just built in the UAE, the Barakah NPP. Despite there never being one built there before, the cost is less than Vogtle for more than double the capacity:
Barakah nuclear power plant - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
$24.4 billion for 5,380MWe; or, per your query, $48.8 billion for 10,760MWe.
How many dead birds and much of the country side are the green simps willing to ruin with wind?
Nuclear uses the least amount of land, the least concrete, the least steel, the least copper, virtually no glass, virtually no helium, virtually no silicon, doesn't release methane like hydroelectric.
Then the green simps ignore the huge cost of completely reengineering the power grid to work around intermittent power sources that work when they want to and take breaks for days at a time.
Nuclear wins every which way, except it may cost more.
If they really care about the environment, it should be worth the cost.
I get that it is expensive to sell back, but why 1M liability insurance policy?
OVERKILL
$100 Site Donor 2021
You are preaching to the choir!
Jacobson, clearly not understanding how hydro-electric works, in his "100% VRE" fantasy modelling massively expanded existing hydro-electric sites, having absolutely no concept of flow and head limitations and how close to those existing sites already are. It's absolutely insane assumptions like these that underpin the fantasy that wind and solar are:
1. Cheaper (despite it all being subsidized via REC's and other schemes)
2. Capable of completely eliminating fossil sources from the grid in anything that even remotely approaches an affordable manner. Assumptions include massive hundred-gigawatt scale transmission corridors connecting not only one side of the country to the other, but into Canada where it is assumed places like Quebec (who are facing their own capacity shortfall) will have unlimited hydro to "firm" this gong show.
There might be ways around the "selling back at wholesale" depending on how the municipal utility does it. Local municipal can group together and buy/sell/charge based on where and what kind of rate they get. They could by default put people into groups that buy from each other locally then only buy from duck curve and then sell back. Unless people read the fine prints they may end up paying for it differently. It is all in the fine print of course. Still, as long as ideology is involved there will be no free market, whether it is pride, religion, patriotism, etc.
Still wondering why nobody is building more ice based storage to compensate for duck curve.
I think if you look at a dictatorship with no energy security, you will see the best energy grid management. Look at China and Japan, they basically have to import coal, gas, oil, and they are still building massive amount of nuclear and solar but not relying on just one. I think even if China is deploying nuclear like tomorrow they are hedging with solar just in case, and coal, and ultra high voltage powerline between regions.
I am not sure how much loss they take when they transmit solar from Gobi to Shanghai and Beijing, but at least their time difference would offset the duck curve. The only thing California and Nevada solar can do to avoid duck curve is probably sending those power to Texas in Pacific Time morning, and then take excess midnight power back from Texas, but it only works if Texas is connected to the national grid.
OVERKILL
$100 Site Donor 2021
The vertically integrated's in Canada were arguably fantastic for grid management, no dictatorship required, just centrally planned and publicly owned. We see that with Hydro-Quebec currently, and we saw that with Ontario Hydro back when it was still intact. Before OH was broken up, we were paying around $0.04/kWh. Even post Ontario Hydro, before the GEA, rates were only approaching $0.05/kWh.
The component missing in this discussion is, at least here in my area, the PG&E power company monopoly. Profits through efficiency is not a characteristic of monopolies.
Give me a little competition through capitalism. Efficiency will be the road to profits and the consumer will benefit.
My views on PG&E are well documented.
Give me a little competition through capitalism. Efficiency will be the road to profits and the consumer will benefit.
My views on PG&E are well documented.
Most systems going in are 10K-20K KWH by farmers and grain elevators. It's so you can pay for those you electrocute if improperly managed.
If anything, the new rate should be at a 1:1 rate, and any existing customer should be cut to the same rate. They’ve reaped their benefit 50 times over by now for being an early adopter. Rather than a set rate, I am fine with the rate paid to match the prevailing rate being charged; I.e. if the rate flexed to say .15/kW, so would the rate for solar. If a customer has a large enough system to essentially “disappear” from the grid, congrats to them.
Granted, my knowledge of the grid and all its intricacies is tiny compared to Overkill & MVAR & the others.. but this seems fair.
Yeah we ain't building any meaningful numbers of dams in the US. But hydroelectric output does increase about 1 to 2% each year from efficiency improvements on existing dams and adding hydroelectric to existing low head dams.
Only way the US can get more hydroelectric is buy it from Canada.
Rural Electric Coops get low interest loans. About all the subsidy they get anymore. Can't say the cost is cheaper as it's about twice what urban people pay through Ameren. Any wind or solar big scale that goes in is someone else's logistical problem. They will buy some of it though to make the greenies happy.
Why aren't they paid whatever rate they are charged? Use it, pay X. Provide it, receive X. Seems like the fair way to do it.
California regulators unveil new rooftop solar plan that cuts payments to homeowners
The CPUC’s scaled-back plan eliminates consumer fees. The original was abandoned after...www.sfchronicle.com
The revised rules would:
- Remove a proposed $8 monthly fixed charge, a so-called solar tax, on new residential systems.
- Reduce utilities’ payments to homeowners for excess power they sell by as much as 75% compared to current rates. The change would not apply to residents with existing solar systems.
- Fund $900 million in new incentive payments to help purchase rooftop solar systems, with $630 million set aside for low-income households.
- Encourage the installation of solar panels plus battery storage.
- Set lower rates in an attempt to shift consumers’ use of power to the times of day that improve grid reliability.
The CPUC is required under state law to update its net metering rules, which triggered a prolonged, complex and politically thorny process.
Bernadette Del Chiaro, executive director of the California Solar & Storage Association, said the 75% reduction in credits to new solar customers means utilities will pay residents less for the power their rooftop systems provide to the grid.
The proposed rules “would really hurt,” she said. She estimated that new customers would be paid a base rate of 5 cents per kilowatt-hour for power they generate but don’t use, compared to about 30 cents now.
This is in-line with the changes we are seeing in Australia. Once solar penetration hits a certain level (and it's arguable that California has already blown-past that) its capacity value tanks. Ultimately, solar should be paid market (the value of the power at the time it is produced, dictated by the needs of the system) but $0.05/kWh is pretty close to that point, even if it is a firm mandated price.
Of course legacy NEM contract holders are not impacted by this, but it will (or should) have an impact on uptake rate going forward.
Lawrence Berkeley labs did a comprehensive study on the effects of NEM contracts in the US and found that the feed in cost to everyone else is really negligible .03 at worst, but the threat of the socialization is a perfect boogeyman to completely change up the industry to better benefit the giant monopolies and builders - now they basically get all the daytime power for free while charging a much as .40 for it all the while not buying maintaining or feeding any additional infrastructure.
It's a giant win for builders, and shareholders of the power companies, and a total lose for first time homeowners who now have to pay for solar they wont see anything from for almost 2 decades while the power companies gleefully mark up their production 10-20x simultaneously gouging poor people.
It's the biggest win ever for big power.
It's a giant win for builders, and shareholders of the power companies, and a total lose for first time homeowners who now have to pay for solar they wont see anything from for almost 2 decades while the power companies gleefully mark up their production 10-20x simultaneously gouging poor people.
It's the biggest win ever for big power.
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As a staunch capitalist one of the very few areas where socialism actually works is electricity.
I thought I’d report in on the Travers solar project which I believe is the largest in Canada. It happens to be near Vulcan, Alberta. ( the home of Spock). It’s name plate is 465 MW and it had no problem achieving that today. Here is the list of commercial solar projects in Alberta. Travers is the largest by far. It covers about 5 square miles of scrubby grazing land. TNG is the current output.
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