That's why these independent counsels are pretty important such as the Maryland agency mentioned in this article. Since utilities at least on the distribution side are pretty much monopolies people have no choice but to pay the agreed rate.
I think you are being far too charitable here and in most cases it is weaponized ignorance at best.
Why dig into the minutia of the actual rules when you can just have the people donating money to you while benefiting from you not really fixing anything just tell you what you should do...?
In power grid dominated by solar production the value of MWh of electricity is highest at night (because the supply from solar is zero), the value MWh of electricity is lowest at noon (because the supply from solar is maximal). So the residential grid-tied PV system is supplying power when the value of electricity is low and consuming power when the value of electricity is high.
Better solution than fix rates are digital smart meters which calculate using variable rates from electricity market.
It doesn't make economic sense to push for more solar in a grid dominated by solar without additional investments into electricity storage and these investments have to be paid by someone.
Rollout of digital smart meters for households makes sense, so that people can make use of cheap electricity at noon. Large customers of electricity already now buy electricity either on electricity market at variable raters or have specific long-term contracts with electricity suppliers.
The pressure onto normal citizens will push and increase renewable energy build out (E-Car, Balcony solar/roof solar), to get away from these companies faster. Their utility will increase further, the pressure increases even more.
But people like Elon Musk are also very ignorant: He populates going into space to fix the energy topic, but apparently can't do math because it would be a lot cheaper to use batteries and solar and potentially also sell the heat the DCs produce instead of doing any of it in space.
It would even be easier to just buy something in new mexico, building out the energy infrastructure in a non livable area because latency doesn't matter that much with AI (not all use cases, but for that you have edge locations).
The richest and smartest people (excluding here elon musk) are not able to do a fast proper buildout? ... They could even just build a whole town with DCs and combine this with other energy intensive industries and sharing the prorcess heat reuse.
> Here in Nevada, (Warran Buffet owned) NV Energy already has approval for a "Demand Charge" that will increase rates for everyone, and further reduce the ridiculously low amount of money that consumers get for selling their excess solar power back to the grid.
Excess solar power generated by ordinary consumers is probably being priced correctly - excess solar power generation happens during the day when the sun is high, which means there's a glut of power because everyone with a solar panel generates a lot then. Solar power is scarcer and therefore more expensive when the sun is not shining bright, and this is not the time when customers are selling excess power back to the grid. Generous rates for buying power from customers were an effective subsidy to get people to install home solar panel systems, and that subsidy works less and less well as more and more power on the grid gets generated via solar panels and the difference in grid-wide power availability at different times based on the height of the sun becomes more and more important.
Do you have any evidence for this position? Is this just regulations giving you bad vibes? I’m pretty sure everyone was quite aware the sun doesn’t shine at night whenever the previous rules and regulations were written. Your analysis isn’t breaking new ground.
As the amount of solar increases, the supply during the day goes up, so the daytime price starts going down. Meanwhile the highest demand period is just after sunset, so that's going to be when the price is highest because not only is that the highest demand, that's when solar generation is zero. And it's when people selling solar during the day are trying to buy power back. But now they're selling low and buying high.
And because they knew, the regulations I've heard of set some sort of statutory price that consumers get. This is because it's been fairly likely from the start that if the price is set by the market with reference to the value of the electricity, consumers won't get anything. Because their contribution is largely worthless and occasionally value-destructive.
I am A YIMBY too. But no, big money is not on your side. Big money wants to make money, not make your life better. It would like to build as much as possible for as little as possible, at the lowest quality possible, and sell it for an extremely high price. This isn't good for any of us.
Small money also wants to work as little as possible and sell it for an extremely high price. Selling maximal ROI is mostly a human thing. Also, there are “big money” developers building higher quality houses at higher prices, just like any other business.
Just take a look at ERCOT's website: https://www.ercot.com/gridmktinfo/dashboards/supplyanddemand
Peak demand is 6 PM when everyone gets home from work and turns on the air conditioning.
EDIT: Your chart shows the same thing? Demand is highest at 6 pm, not noon.
People regularly use the demand being supplied by solar to argue that solar isn't delivering when people need electricity.
The yearly peak grid demand in California is moving later in the day and later in the year due to this effect.
https://www.eia.gov/electricity/gridmonitor/expanded-view/el...
https://www.rte-france.com/en/data-publications/eco2mix/elec...
Batteries are cheaper every week.
Time to build kWh Victory gardens.
That’s not how it’s going to work in Nevada. It will be the highest 15 minute period of each day, so if you spread out your power usage you have room to game the rates and save money. And if you have a bad day it will only cost you a dollar or two and the next day is fresh.
Plus it’s not on top of the total consumption. The consumption rate is getting cut so that people should be paying roughly the same amount as before.
Doesn't it? Suppose you have a battery system which has access to the current price, so it charges when it's cheap and discharges when it's expensive. Then you don't pay the $19/kWh, you run on batteries then -- or sell at $19/kWh. And thereby turn a profit from installing the battery system, creating the incentive to reduce consumption when the price is high.