You need to consider the economics of "grid tie" you generate excess power into the grid and "buy it back" when you aren't generating in excess. So if you generate as much power as your going to use for the entire day from your panels, you pay nothing for that day. Even though you are drawing power at night.
In the Bay Area, there are other things that screw up the numbers but the program "trues up" once a year (rather than monthly) so some months (usually late spring through early fall) I'm generating more power than I use for the month, and fall/winter I consume more power than I generate in a month. The target is to hit it at exactly 0 which was easier to do when PG&E would exchange kilowatts for kilowatts but it is harder now with their system of charging extra kilowatts over baseline. Its screwed up and not fair but I get that they are hurting, if I could get Elon to sell me the battery pack out of a Model S and the inverter infrastructure to go with it, I could leave the grid entirely and that would be easier.
> You need to consider the economics of "grid tie" you generate excess power into the grid and "buy it back" when you aren't generating in excess.
Depends on the state.
Sometimes, you buy at retail prices and sell at wholesale prices. Which honestly, is far more fair. You're basically using the utility's batteries / energy storage at no charge right now (if you're in a state with pure net metering laws)
And yes, purchasing a PowerWall is more "fair". Instead of relying on the service and tax-incentives to give you a free battery pack, its definitely more fair if you got your own.
"Fair" in the context of a heavily regulated utility should have some relation to social benefit.
It's not fair for utilities to force costs onto consumers just because of a differential of political influence. It's not fair that solar reduces grid load at their peaks and saves them money on building out grid capacity and expensive and inefficient CO2 producing gas peaker plants and that benefit is not returned to the provider of that service.
Overall the many benefits of rooftop solar can be calculated and a value assigned. Most seem to come out at net or above, so talk of average wholesale prices is misdirection.
Consumers should pay a fair price for the service.
If consumers are using the utility's batteries and the utility's network, then the consumer should pay for the use of those services.
Peaker-plants can have a very simple solution: carbon taxes. Simple enough, and I support this measure to handle the externality.
Rooftop solar currently is probably a net benefit as long as the storage issue isn't a problem. (IE: the rest of the neighborhood doesn't have solar). But once solar adoption is widespread, someone needs to solve the storage issue (or "energy waste", if there is no more storage)
I'm glad you support a carbon price, because that's another great example of where "fair" becomes a political discussion.
I could say that if a coal producer wants to dump sulphur, radiation, C02 etc. into the air then it's "fair" that they recompense the people who live in the countries they pollute and the people they help to kill. Why should those who don't do this (people who generate their own electricity or pay to have non-coal energy) have to shoulder these costs?
Simple argument right? But no, it's a decades long political fight with no end in sight, because some groups have dispersed interests, while other groups have very direct incentives.
The same is true here, lots more rooftop solar would be of small benefit to most people. But it directly threatens some concentrated interests. And they will happily tell you that solar will destroy the grid, or net-metering isn't fair etc. etc. Not because it's true, but because it's in their narrow and short term interests to lie.
The difference is that I also think that net-metering is an unfair deal to utility companies. Again, someone needs to build the energy storage mechanism. You can't legislate away reality.
In the Bay Area, there are other things that screw up the numbers but the program "trues up" once a year (rather than monthly) so some months (usually late spring through early fall) I'm generating more power than I use for the month, and fall/winter I consume more power than I generate in a month. The target is to hit it at exactly 0 which was easier to do when PG&E would exchange kilowatts for kilowatts but it is harder now with their system of charging extra kilowatts over baseline. Its screwed up and not fair but I get that they are hurting, if I could get Elon to sell me the battery pack out of a Model S and the inverter infrastructure to go with it, I could leave the grid entirely and that would be easier.