Electric vehicle mandate in California
California has a mandate for electric vehicles in the future. Just read with the extreme heat PG&E will have rolling blackouts because of power shortage. Noticed this in previous years as well. Do...
Forum Discussion
There are no free lunches when it comes to electric rates. Southern California Edison has changed it's rate structures several times over the past few years. Not only have rates increased, the peak demand/peak rate periods have been changed to reflect the effects of Solar and Wind. Peak periods used to be mid day, when it was the hottest. Now they are evenings, when the winds die down and solar panels cease to generate power. They have also changed the way the charge and credit solar usage. It used to be they would balance out your account once a year and your usage from the grid was offset by your solar input into the grid. All your usage was at the lowest tier price and your input credited at wholesale.
Now, new solar services are settled quarterly and billing for grid usage is at the tier rates when it is used. The net effect is two fold. One, you don't balance out yearly, since Summer usage is generally higher than the amount you generate due to air conditioning. So you pay a bill for the summer months. In the winter, your usage goes down, but so does solar generation, so that quarterly bill is close to flat. More important, since it is no longer lower tier to wholesale, you pay a lot more for power drawn from the grid, since net draw is highest in the evening when rates are the highest yet you are credited with only the wholesale value when you generate more than you draw.
I have a home with solar on the original year net metering and friends who got their solar on the newer metering plan. We have similar sized homes and similar solar systems. I get a small net check annually, they paid nearly $1000.00 in total bills last year. That is a big difference, almost all attributed to the changes in billing structure. The way around these changes are the power wall systems, so you use your solar exclusively and do not use grid power, but that adds multiple thousands to the cost of the solar making the payback period for the investment much longer. And the power walls have a limited life span.
The power providers have a problem. They can continue to invest in, maintain and operate power plants that are now only needed part of the time, increasing the costs or they can take a leap and start investing in huge battery farms to store the solar and wind power. Both of those cost multiple billions upon billions and are going to be reflected in higher rates. The blackouts are going to continue because the power companies cannot justify spending those billions to only provide power a few days a year when peak demand exceeds capacity. That is one of those "unintended" consequences the California governor spoke about when he talked about the blackouts and California's move to renewables that do not generate power on demand.
Now, new solar services are settled quarterly and billing for grid usage is at the tier rates when it is used. The net effect is two fold. One, you don't balance out yearly, since Summer usage is generally higher than the amount you generate due to air conditioning. So you pay a bill for the summer months. In the winter, your usage goes down, but so does solar generation, so that quarterly bill is close to flat. More important, since it is no longer lower tier to wholesale, you pay a lot more for power drawn from the grid, since net draw is highest in the evening when rates are the highest yet you are credited with only the wholesale value when you generate more than you draw.
I have a home with solar on the original year net metering and friends who got their solar on the newer metering plan. We have similar sized homes and similar solar systems. I get a small net check annually, they paid nearly $1000.00 in total bills last year. That is a big difference, almost all attributed to the changes in billing structure. The way around these changes are the power wall systems, so you use your solar exclusively and do not use grid power, but that adds multiple thousands to the cost of the solar making the payback period for the investment much longer. And the power walls have a limited life span.
The power providers have a problem. They can continue to invest in, maintain and operate power plants that are now only needed part of the time, increasing the costs or they can take a leap and start investing in huge battery farms to store the solar and wind power. Both of those cost multiple billions upon billions and are going to be reflected in higher rates. The blackouts are going to continue because the power companies cannot justify spending those billions to only provide power a few days a year when peak demand exceeds capacity. That is one of those "unintended" consequences the California governor spoke about when he talked about the blackouts and California's move to renewables that do not generate power on demand.
