Solar Net Energy Metering in California: From Rosy Inception to Rocky Realities
California’s journey with solar net energy metering (NEM) is a case study in the complexities of energy policy. What began as an ambitious drive to boost solar energy has evolved into a contentious battleground of policy shifts and market reactions. The recent developments, marked by job losses in the clean energy sector as reported by the Environmental Working Group (EWG), are a testament to these complexities.
California initiated solar net energy metering in the 1990s to encourage solar adoption. Under NEM, solar users could sell surplus electricity back to the grid at retail rates, offsetting their electricity costs. This policy aimed to stimulate solar energy use, reducing reliance on traditional energy sources.
The policy lead to a significant increase in solar installations. California’s solar industry saw a surge in growth, heralded as a triumph of renewable energy policy, but saddling utilities and non-solar customers with an additional cost burden.
As solar adoption grew, these concerns grew. Utilities argued that NEM shifted costs to non-solar customers, as maintaining the grid became increasingly funded by a shrinking base. These concerns led to policy revisions aimed at balancing the incentives for solar users with broader economic impacts.
In recent years, California has seen further adjustments to its NEM policies. These include reducing the rates paid for excess solar power and introducing new charges for solar users. These changes were designed to address the cost shift to non-solar users and ensure the economic sustainability of the energy grid.
These policy shifts have had a tangible impact on the solar market. The reduction in incentives has made solar installations less financially attractive, leading to a slowdown in new installations. This EWG report bemoans this downturn, noting widespread job losses in the clean energy sector as generous subsidies are being removed.
SAN FRANCISCO – California’s once-thriving residential solar industry is in ruins after state officials slashed rooftop solar incentives, causing thousands of job losses, said clean energy advocates and solar industry representatives during a recent virtual briefing.
The incentives played a crucial role in outfitting solar panels on approximately 2 million homes, establishing the state as the leader in the clean energy revolution. But the California Public Utilities Commission, or CPUC, bowed to demands from Pacific Gas & Electric, Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric to roll back those incentives.
https://www.ewg.org/news-insights/news-release/2023/12/california-clean-energy-industry-rocked-widespread-jobs-losses
The policy changes, essentially attempting to distribute costs fairly across consumers, appear to have dampened the growth of the solar sector, a critical component of California’s renewable energy strategy.
That decision has now led to the loss of over 17,000 solar jobs in California, says a new analysis by the California Solar and Storage Association, or CALSSA, discussed during the briefing. Many more layoffs and bankruptcies are likely by the end of the year and beyond.
https://www.ewg.org/news-insights/news-release/2023/12/california-clean-energy-industry-rocked-widespread-jobs-losses
Critics of the recent policy changes argue that California is undermining its own renewable energy goals. They contend that the state is backtracking on its commitment to clean energy by making solar less accessible and attractive. This perspective ignores the increasing costs to consumers of NEM subsidies.
“The volume [of solar installations] has dropped by 80 to 90 percent of the volume of activity, the volume of interest,” said Beccar. “Because it just doesn’t make any sense for a homeowner who goes solar and does it overwhelmingly to save money.”
Speakers during the briefing strongly condemned the CPUC for acquiescing to the monopoly utilities’ demands to eliminate their only source of competition: families with rooftop solar.
They made clear their ire toward state lawmakers and Gov. Gavin Newsom for permitting such actions to happen in a state that, until a few months ago, had been the unmatched leader in advancing clean energy and climate policy. In particular, they blamed Newsom and the CPUC for the decision.
https://www.ewg.org/news-insights/news-release/2023/12/california-clean-energy-industry-rocked-widespread-jobs-losses
California’s experience with solar net energy metering is instructive. Initial policies fueled rapid growth in solar adoption, with accompanying rises in electricity rates, subsequent adjustments in response to economic and infrastructural challenges have led to a cooling of the market. The state now faces the reality of fostering renewable energy with excess subsidies, while finally having to balance economics, and grid stability. This situation serves as a reminder that energy policy is a complex ecosystem, where changes can have far-reaching and sometimes unintended consequences, and the road to hell is usually paved with good intentions.
H/T Steve R
It would help if all Parties got together to create and publicise the range of real costs to people thinking about going solar.
Citizens cannot invest wisely in any type of energy when costs are (criminally) misrepresented. Geoff S
There are several solar cost estimater sites. Tesla’s is probably the easiest one.
The problem is that solar energy is approximately worthless. Adding solar doesn’t reduce the number of power plants or transmission lines you need to maintain reliable service. Adding solar only reduces fuel consumption. And fuel is dirt cheap.
RE apparently increases the number of Green Energy jobs. Adding jobs to a maintain a lower level of service is the worst kind of inefficiency. It just increases cost for no societal gain. Stupid idea from the beginning.
The ‘to create jobs in the glazing industry, just employ teams of men to break all the windows’ fallacy.
Unfortunately, most politicians in the West have never heard of Frederic Bastiat’s “Broken Window Fallacy”.
Fuel is cheap, and because of the shale/fracking revolution natural gas will stay that way for at least a100 years. The original idea with wind and solar was as a needed replacement for exhausting supplies. All W&S subsidies should have ended 15 years ago.
The first large (utility-scale) wind farms in the USA were installed in California in 1980..
The first solar farm to be connected to the grid in the USA was built by Arco Solar at Lugo near Hesperia, California, at the end of 19821
California should continue to show “leadership” and be the first state to abandon this unnecessary and failed misadventure. N2N, Natural Gas to Nuclear.
In the UK, the shale revolution has been banned in favour of “cheap” unreliables.
I wish I had a funny riposte.
Fuel is not cheap in Europe mate.
Not cheap in the UK, especially, since they’re hell-bent on closing down refineries, and outsourcing everything to the rest of the world. At some point, the UK, will reach a position, where it produces nothing, consumes everything, and won’t have any money to pay for anything.
We are already at the stage where manufacturing is only 20% of the economy and 80% is services.
All economies produce something. Manufacturing economies produce products, service economies produce servants.
Service economies produce services that producers and consumers need. Not servants. Geesh, get real. The US has been a service dominated economy for more than 5 decades, and is still the largest and most powerful economy in the world bar none.
That America’s economy is driven by services and consumers is a false belief. It is created by the silly GDP equation that purposefully undercounts business to business expenditures and washes them into consumption.
And that to eliminate what all the flavors of Keynesian economists call double counting. There is also the tricky business of defining “services”.
Government, for example, is always a service, it performs very expensive tasks but creates no wealth. But a web-page designer who creates sites for businesses (and termed a service) is more properly considered as participating in the marketing of products and therefore a direct contributor to production.
Ultimately, all economic growth is underpinned by mining, agriculture, drilling, and manufacturing. Nothing else can exist without them.
In the basic GDP equation, government spending is also considered GDP growth but government spedning is a function of tax intake and debt financing. Taxes are direct reductions from all the other GDP inputs so in reality any ‘growth’ from government spending is accumulated debt. Once debt service is added to this calculation government spending becomes a pretty big contractionary activity.
Also, very observant that skilled trades are not services. They convert one good into something of greater value that is used further in the economic change.
People only pay for “service” when it will cost them less than doing it themselves. That system automatically devalues the service provider ….servant still holds. The US has been a service economy about as long as the middle class has been shrinking..replacing it with a servant class.
Those in service jobs typically do not add “wealth” to products. They are a “cost” which only adds to the price of goods but doesn’t add any actual value. This is why service jobs are generally paid less than the actual producer of the goods. The incentive is to cut “costs” to make the product more attractive to the potential purchaser. On the other hand the actual producer is incentivized to produce a higher quality product, i.e. one with more value to the consumer.
The middle class was always the “producer”, adding value to something. As we have fewer and fewer producers the middle class has shrunk, being replaced by the “servant” class, i.e. those with lower paid service jobs.
It is truly dismaying how poorly basic economic theory has been taught over the past twenty-five years. Far too many of the populace today think service jobs should be paid more than actual producing jobs. They think the retailer selling jewelry made by a metalsmith should be paid more than the metalsmith – never understanding that it is the metalsmith that adds value to the product while the retailer only adds cost to the product.
My Grandfather was a Jewelry Store owner. As far back as 1920 the the mark up on jewelry has always been double to triple the metalsmith’s selling price. That is the reason those “Big Box” Jewelry stores sell their merchandise for what you think is a 50% discount. Same also applies to Kitchen Cabinets, fine furniture, and most other high end products.
Actually you are wrong. Solar energy is produced exclusively during daylight hours, especially the middle of the day. That happens to perfectly coincide with peak power demands on electric utilities. Daytime demand is far higher than night time demand, due to the fact that that is when most people are awake and doing stuff, including busines and organizational stuff as as personal stuff, as compared to night when most people are sleeping.
Utilities that use variable metering rates on smart meters charge higher rates for daytime use than for night time use in order to try to reduce the peak demand loads during the day. That is why utilities encourage EV owners to install their own charging stations at home and set them to charge overnight and not during daytime hours. Most EV owners do in fact install home charging stations.
By adding supply during peak demand hours, solar production DOES in fact reduce the number of power plants needed, otherwise known as “peaking plants” that only come online or produce full power during daytime peak demand periods. The need for peaking plants greatly reduces the efficiency of the entire grid, adding capital costs to the utility, and resulting in inefficient operations because the peaking plants are either shut down altogether or are cut way back in production during period of lower demand such as at night. Electrical generating stations operate at peak efficiency only at or very near to 100% capacity.
Huh? Solar can only provide “peaking” when the sun shines. What happens to solar “peaking” when the sun doesn’t shine, e.g. thunderstorms on a hot summer afternoon over an entire state? Blackouts? Brownouts?
The electric grid has to be *reliable*. That means having the capability of meeting peak demand REGARDLESS of weather conditions. Gas fired peaking plants aren’t weather dependent, solar *IS*.
All you’ve really done with your post is to show that gas fired peaking plants aren’t needed AS OFTEN when solar is working. That does *NOT* reduce the need for the gas fired peaking plants to exist or reduce the number of them that are required.
All solar power is produced during daytime hours, so any contribution whatsoever addresses peak demands. Most places where solar is common are in the sun belt where well more than 300 days of sunshine prevail. If you put solar up in a place with little sunshine, sure, you’ll get less power generation.
Florida is one of the largest solar generation parts of the US – ranked #3 in the US. Our nickname is the Sunshine State. Last year solar energy produced a little over 9,000 MW of power, enough to power over one million homes. Every bit of that was produced during peak demand times. So yeah, that avoided building peak plants to supply that power.
In other words your solution is not a GENERAL solution as you implied!
My in-laws lived in Florida for a time. FL may get a lot of sunshine but 300 days per year isn’t enough! What happens the other 65 days of the year? You still need the gas fired peaking plants!
You are being willfully ignorant. Stop it!
Duane, you are incredibly ignorant about electric power demand. Peak demand in California occurs around 7PM, which is when solar generation is about to reach zero.
That was true at an earlier point in time, not now.
Look up the duck curve and you will see that the peak is now between 4-9 PM. More solar just deepens the sway in the duck’s back and requires MORE extreme ramping.
Solar was, and is, good for doing just what you said – taking the edge off the peak load of 10-2 PM. Once you have accomplished that any more just moves the peak load. We now have a situation where plants have to ramp down mid day and ramp back up again in the evening.
All new residential construction requires solar in CA, so the situation will only get worse.
Nothing has changed about peak demand hours, it has remained a constant, because people sleep at night and most businesses, factories, and organizations are only open during daylight hours. Per EIA data peak demand occurs between 10 am and 6 pm, consistently. The sun shines during nearly all of that time, with a falloff in shorter winter days after 5 pm.
These are immutable facts. You can hate on solar all that you want, but it does not change these immutable facts.
Solar power falls off big time after 12 noon. If you have a peak at 6pm how is solar going to help?
Here in Sunny Central Cali, my 9.5KW panel array has dropped below my 6.8KW inverters. A cloudy day drops my output by almost 75%.
sheesh… it drops below by 2PM. It crosses the clipping threshold around 10AM.
posted to soon and don’t know how to edit.
Per California ISO data, peak demand is about 7PM coincident with people home from work, turning up the A/Cs and preparing dinner. As Ann pointed out, the “solar duck curve” is a real problem, and the source of that curve was the Cal ISO, which is THE AUTHORITATIVE SOURCE on electrical demand in California, NOT the EIA.
Back in circa 1976, when PG&E’s chief engineer was asked about the potentials of solar power, his reaction was to point to the PG&E demand curve and state that there was a lot of energy used after sunset.
If solar requires government money, then it doesn’t work. Basically the smart meters would have to charge MORE for solar-only customers for nighttime use to cover the cost of maintaining dispatchable power. I think if homeowners were paid peak prices during the day, and paid the real cost of having stand-by power at night, they’d still come out ahead on an expense basis. However it would not cover the capital cost of installing the solar.
Dispatchability is only an issue if the power production occurs outside peak demand hours of the day. Solar produces 100% of its output during peak demand hours which are 10 am to 6 pm.
Producing 100% of its output isn’t the proper metric! If the peak continues or occurs after noon local time, solar can’t provide peaking. It’s physics, immutable physics.
Problem is, CA produces twice as much as can be used when it does reach that peak and the utilities have no way to store it. For the The cost of a storage system is twice that of a new plant and the cost of that “Free Electricity is three times as much as the utilities cost to produce their own electricity. The nuclear power plant I worked at was selling its electricity to a ethanol producing plant for $0.03 per Kwh, Meanwhile the utility is forced to pay a “Customer” $0.15 to by his “Excess” Solar power.
Do the math – the utility will go broke with that arrangement. Then you will be stuck with “Unreliable Energy” And CA’S mandatory solar panels on every new house will hasten that bankruptcy.
And renewables are the cheapest source of energy? Trolls comments on this kind of issue show that they have swallowed this stinker hook line and sinker, even though a moron can see how illogical this nonsense is. Surely the subsidies, the back-up power, the special connection costs and even the reduced efficiency of standby fossil fuel power needed should be entered on the renewable cost side of the ledger.
Proper costing of renewables makes them 3-5 times more costly than, say, gas fired power alone. Even a quadrupling of the price of gas and coal can be laid at the feet of idiotic wokey policy designed to ruin the fossil fuel industry that, to their surprise, was indispensable to make renewables work at all!
All the leaves are brown
And the sky is gray
I’ve been for a walk
On a winter’s day
and the solar panels were contributing nothing.
California dreamin’
All the leaves are green
And the sky is blue
There’s too much solar
to know what to do
California dreamin’
The Babylon Bee might be able to use you
California is also behind in its’ budget and can’t afford to hand out money any more. It went from $B in an excess to $B in debt in two years. Typical Progressive run government giving away taxpayer money to illegal immigrants, bullet trains to nowhere, expensive homeless projects that failed, and other do nothing pet projects. Covid lockdowns and business/people flight from the state reduced tax revenue to where they don’t know how they will finance the government going forward. CA is like our federal government.
$68 billion hole right now. Raise taxes, drive more people out of the state, dig bigger hole. They are going to have to reign in their profligacy—and that is the end of Newsom.
Newsome is the heir apparent replacement for Biden. Enjoy the current “low” inflation, it’s going to change.
My wife’s niece, a long-time California resident, great grand mother, plus 18 of her 20 descendant, pulled up stakes two years ago, and settled in Idaho.
She told my wife, we should have done this 10 years ago
ITYM rein in... They are already reigning, in their profligacy
China virus free money delayed the inevitable.
Yeah, they blew threw $100 Billion in the blink of an eye. Pretty amazing. I think Newsom did stash about $30 Billion in the reserve fund, but that doesn’t even cover half of the budget hole.
They can probably fix it all with a little more diversity!
I wouldn’t install Rooftop Solar if I had a choice. Unfortunately new construction in Ca requires Rooftop Solar installations. So I would install solar and a Tesla Powerwall back-up battery. I would use the solar exclusively to (re)charge the powerwall battery during the day. Then I would switch to battery power during the evening peak and switch back to Grid sourced power after the battery is nearly depleted. Only using Solar to offset Peak Pricing and only needing a powerwall battery sufficient to supply those evening peak KWhs.
That’s a very expensive system.
To collect my 24hr daily need using Solar and Battery storage I figured would cost $80,000 to build a structure for the panels (they can’t sit on my roof) more if I needed to rebuild my roof to support panels. Then the cost of replacing panels every 15 years would be additional so $5500 per year or $475 per month. Less to just replace peak usage 4pm – 9pm.
I never said it was affordable just a Ca requirement to have them for all new construction
A neighbor installed Tesla PV panel roofing along with two Powerpacks. $90K US.
How much of the household’s electricity does this setup supply?
Good ideas, me too. Looking at all the options, it still appears to me that the best investment we have in California is the vote. We’ve got to rest control from the democrat party. They are on a suicide mission.
Yes, the Democrat Party and their delusional ideology is the real problem.
Whenever Democrats get control, things go to hell. Like now.
Until the wheels fall off the cart and there is total chaos, your best bet is to suck it up or leave. As long as there are Progressive centers of greater voting population the rest of the state has no chance of change. None.
Way to go California! Foist an expensive and unnecessary green-virtue solar mandate on the housing industry and kill even more jobs, on top of the ones lost to high electricity rates chasing away industry.
Genius!
What next for the leader of the green revolution? Probably bann jobs – no jobs means no industries nor commuting to work, no ability to fund those evil fossil fuel companies! Simples.
I would normally, if I remembered, put a /sarc tag here, but the situation in California, Canada and any other woke and stupid jurisdiction means I don’t have to.
This is exactly what I have. I have a ground mount 9.5KW panel capability over 6.5KW of inverter (there is a pretty good cost justification for panel oversizing). This system generated about 45KWh of energy per day over the last month and the powerwalls are capable of 27Kwh of storage. Configuring them to keep 40% in reserve in case of outage; I’ve drawn from the grid twice in the last 4 months. Total Installed system cost $61K. BUT THERE ARE SOME HUGE CAVEATS!!!
1) I live rural, just north of Paso Robles CA so I have a LOT of clear weather and full southern exposure on my panels so they do a lot of work. FYI: A solid day of clouds and rain in Nov dropped it to 10KWh output.
2) I have a small house (1300sqft) and ironically my highest power use is my split system heat pump in January where I pull close to 30KWh of energy per day. I have propane for water heat, clothes drying, intend to go to a propane cooking stove and have just added a nice woodstove to the living room (yeah s@ck it Gavin).
3)The batteries were subsidized because i live on well & septic in a high fire zone ($26K). So I can continue to pull water (at a tiny rate but hey, my local firefighters will take it) when the fire knocks out power poles a couple miles away and our grid block goes down). There is still a 30% tax credit on installation. So total out of pocket system install was about 22K.
4) PG&E can’t keep the power on here and we have 3-5 power outages a year ranging from 15min to 5 hrs.
5) Grid cost for power(when it’s on) is either .44 or .41 per KWh here and going up.
6) I intend to live in this house for the rest of my life (hopefully 20 -30yrs).
Solar PV has a place, but not at grid scale installations and certainly not as a panacea of all our energy needs because without the subsidies it be a 30+yr payback. People need to do a whole lot of thinking before they go there.
Wait a minute! . . . what about California’s mandates for solar energy installations??
In 2018, California created a mandate that new single-family homes and multi-family dwellings up to three stories high must install solar panels. The California solar mandate took effect on January 1, 2020, and is part of California’s building codes.
Solar power systems on new construction projects must be able to generate all of the electricity on an annual basis. Because these properties haven’t been inhabited in the past, builders estimate the electricity needs of the home based on the climate zone and square footage.
A more recent change to the California Energy Code required many new commercial buildings to have solar panels and battery storage, effective in 2023. The commercial buildings included in this change include high-rise residential projects, hotels, offices, medical offices, health clinics, retailers, grocery stores, restaurants, schools, and civic spaces.
There are some exceptions to these mandates (see: https://www.energysage.com/blog/an-overview-of-the-california-solar-mandate/ ), but this whole cl***er-f*** should have insured growth in solar rooftop installation jobs for decades to come.
What went wrong?
Mandating stuff doesn’t mean the mandated stuff can work in the real world. California dreaming is hitting the hard wall of reality.
Some of my other favorite recent CA green mandates that cannot work:
California outlawed all gasoline engines below 25 hp. The end of small gasoline engines means the end of illegal immigrant gardening services. The end of chainsaws means the end of effective firefighting too. Of course, you can still buy all these items in Nevada and import and use them. I expect a revolt to happen shortly and a big backpeddle next year as wealthy Californians will no longer get cheap lawn service.
Hitting them where it hurts! 🙂
“All new class 7-8 big trucks EV starting 1/1/24. That means no new truck sales starting January, since there are no class 7-8 EV trucks commercially available anywhere in the world.”
I guess the California Democrats didn’t think this all the way through to the end. They are real bad about doing such stupid things.
No new truck sales after Jan. 1, 2024, does seem to be the inevitable conclusion to mandating trucking companies to buy EV trucks that don’t exist.
Alarmist Climate Change Fanatics and Democrat Bureaucrats need to keep their noses out of private business, if they want those businesses to thrive. Unfortunately, having a thriving business is not their first priority. Their radical ideology comes first, and damn the consequences. That’s what we have here.
The same thing that happened to my health insurance rates, which I paid myself as a self-employed person, when I lived in Washington. The state mandated more and more benefits to policies each year, and my rates spiraled out of sight in no time.
Not a problem, don’t build anything new ever again. Once the libs see the problem, they will have the perfect solution. Require existing retroactive retrofit to encourage new construction. Too costly? not a problem, raise taxes and award grants and subsidies. Saving the planet from plant food requires bold creative solutions.
They mandate installation, but what it they simply don’t happen to work?
Some years ago I did a long analysis of solar, including CA rooftop solar PV, over at Judith’s, using Palo Alto as the specific rooftop example. It did not make any sense then absent ‘hidden’ subsidies like NEM. This just says that fact is still true and becoming more exposed as the underlying problems multiply with increased penetration.
And California is a very favorable solar location compared to UK and Germany. Rooftop solar PV there is completely nuts. Defies common sense, proving that greenies have none.
There is no economic harm in CA solar jobs lost that should never have been created in the first place.
Doesn’t stop them trying though. Here in cloudy, damp NE Wales I’ve had one phone call and two letters in the past month trying to sell me solar panels.
Yes! And one has to wonder how many jobs have been lost because of the exorbitant electricity rates and onerous green regulations?🤔
This may have been done with the best of intentions, but it amounted to violating one goal of public utility regulation which is to produce tariffs that are “just and reasonable” across classes of customers. It was bound to eventually blow up.
“What you subsidize you will eventually get too much of.”
This was predicted and inevitable. It made no sense for utilities to pay retail rates for piddling amounts of power in the middle of day when they had plenty. And when they could buy wholesale at a fraction of the price.
Existing customers are upset claiming they were lied to, which, of course, they were. Like most “sustainable” programs, this was completely unsustainable.
I would like to have a solar power, but my house is three stories tall and has a roof of inclined wavy red ceramic tiles. It also sits just 100 meters from the Hayward fault. No solar installer has offered any kind of earthquake insurance.
Anthony had solar panels on his house in California, I think he reported the performance and costs.
Command economies don’t work. There really isn’t much more that needs to be said.
“They just haven’t run a command economy the proper way, yet!”
— All Communists that have never actually watched their own family starve under Communism
Indeed, over a century of abject failure, yet Western politicians still haven’t learned the lesson.
This article is not complete. Customers who went online with their solar before April 2023 (I believe) have a 20 year contract at the promised feed in tariff. They are golden. Now, you need to install battery backup along with solar to get the better feed in tariff. This is logical and good. For grid scale battery, CA now requires you, if you want subsidies, you have to pair your battery with wind or solar production. This is really an improvement. The state doesn’t need more electricity at noon. It needs it in the late PM and evening, and battery backup will provided that. This is an amazing nod to reality, but, that has to happen as more wind and solar go onto the grid.
Don’t ask about the cost, though.
Don’t ask about the cost, though.
So it’s a nod to unreality.
Yes, don’t ask about the cost, not like the good old days when wind and solar only doubled the cost of electricity.
Trebled.
Cry me a river. It would help if everyone spoke plain English. California tax payers are forced to give their money to people who install solar. When solar doesn’t perform the rest of us are expected to keep a system in place for the solar users to fall back on. If solar over performs we are forced to buy their surplus. If they produce surplus they need to store it themselves. There is no reason for the rest of us to be forced to buy it and then foul up our grid. That is insane.
You kinda hit it with the ‘language’ part.
No-one here even understands the word ‘net’
Net Metering was is or should be where you only have one electricity meter and it is allowed to count backwards
So you instal solar (or wind or hamsters in wheels) and they make electricity
Electricity being = electricity will always follow the path of least resistance….
… so if you are using electricity in your own house (your side of the meter) the electricity you make will go to the appliance(s) you have switched on and the meter wont move
if your appliance demands more electricity than your hamsters can make, power comes in through the meter and it counts forwards
if your solar hamsters are making more power than your appliance(s) are using, the power will leave your premises through the meter and it will count backwards
Hence the term ‘net’
The meter records the difference (net) amount of what came in and what went out and you pay the utility company for the net amount you used
Where it all unravelled is where another meter was installed (the Total generation Meter) to record the amount of power your hamsters made and some monetary value was attached to that
They should NEVER have done that.
OK ok ok, you installed the solar and it was expensive and here you are a lot of the time watching your meter run backwards and ‘give power away’
But why not say that that ;’give away’ was a payment for your connection to the grid = your ‘standing charge’ if you like.
The utility could hardly complain. You were giving them free electric and all it was doing (following path least resistance) was flowing into your neighbour’s house and running their meter forwards. For which the utility company would send them a bill
The company had nothing to do very much, no separate billing department, no extra meters to read, no nothing except import free electricity, move it 50 yards to next door and sell it at full retail price.
But Government went into full headless chicken panic mode about Climate Emergency and nothing could be done fast enough.
Hence the folks who bought domestic hamster wheels were paid for what the Total Generation Meter recorded as an encouragement for installing hamsters
But the scheme was, as all governments schemes are, far too transparent and the suppliers, manufacturers, wholesalers and installers could all see with crystal clarity what sort of money the people who bought hamster-wheels would be making, over the guaranteed time interval (25 years typically)
it was a task that spreadsheets were made for and everyone in the supply chain adjusted their prices so as to get their ‘fair share’ of this revenue stream…
the rest is history, not least as prices, once they’ve gone up, very very rarely come back down again.
(It was exactly the story of what happened here in the UK with solar and is happening now on much grander scale with offshore wind)
Esp when there is only really one supplier of most the tackle need to install hamster wheels = China.
And they ain’t stupid or dumb, in fact, they are the only people with their heads properly screwed on these day.
One problem, that midday moderate temperature spring and fall surplus rooftop electricity has negative value and the utility should not be required to take it. Everything about roof top solar is bad, somethings worse than others.
The solution isn’t battery storage, the solution is ending the wind and solar insanity. N2NNatural gas to Nuclear. California has a lot of abandoned natural gas fired steam generation plants that could be refitted with combined cycle gas turbines and simply hooked up to the existing natural gas piping and existing powerlines. Beginning in 2030 NuScale SMR’s will be available to begin a 60-year no carbon replacement program.
I am with you, if people want solar that is fine but they have to pay all the expense. We damn sure shouldn’t be made to purchase any excess they create so it is up to them, store it or lose it.
Rooftop solar is one of the stupidest things ever invented, in a sane world they wouldn’t be allowed to connect to the grid without a substantial monthly fee. Signing up for the “sell surplus to the grid at retail” ended here in California April 15,2023 but existing program participants are “Grandfathered”. I saw the end coming so I had a system installed in 2022. I think solar is idiotic, especially rooftop, but I don’t make the rules, I just play the game.
Dennis, I did the same thing here in Las Vegas, NV, only much earlier than you. As a former GM/CEO of an electric utility company I caution everybody that the State can change the “Grandfathered” rules any time they so choose. Although not politically feasible at this time, future energy problems (of the governments’ making) may override that consideration.
Bait and switch is the normal operating procedure for California. What ever they tell you will happen when you make a long term investment and capital outlay, which solar is, will change and not in your favor. California has eliminated it’s solar tax credit subsidy, the ability for homeowners to sell their carbon credits on the market they created and raised NEM administration fees while reducing excess power sale pricing.
The net result for grid tie NEM is longer payoff of costs to install. I installed solar in 2014 with the payoff figured at 7 years. 10 years later, it still hasn’t happened yet as I keep track. All the while the solar panels and supporting infrastructure continues to age and reduce in output efficiency.
Yes, CA tells us every day that EV’s are cheap to run.
Only a fool believes it will stay this way when the state needs to recoup all of those lovely gasoline taxes.
BTW, just received my PG&E bill. The average price per kWh was $0.392. And they have a least two more price increases in the works right now. I’m expecting $0.50/kWh by early next year and $1 within 2-3 more years.
Rising electricity rates take more money out of people’s pockets and this leaves less money they can spend in the general economy, and this means the economy will slow down.
The same for rising gasoline prices. It is estmated that for every 80 cents the gaoline price increases, the US GDP drops by one percent.
I haven’t seen a GDP estimated drop connected to increasing electricity prices but you can bet there is a drop in GDP associated with the rising electricity prices.
The Net Zero derangement is causing tremendous economic damage to California and the United States and the Western World.
All this economic damage is going on while there is not one shred of evidence that Net Zero is required.
Is that $0.392/kWh price including everything – ie: total bill ÷ #kWh?
I want to compare with my bill in Southern Ontario – but along time ago, to hide the true cost per kWh the costs for distribution, administration and so on were separated out.
https://alectrautilities.com/rates-service-charges
All-in, my last bill, up to early December worked out to $0.1998 CDN/kWh
I have a time of use rate plan with PGE here in centtral california. My off peak electrical rate charge is .41/KWh USD and my on peak is .44.
THEN all of the service, delivery, and connectivity charges are added.
FYI, those rates go up during the summer months.
same here in california. The bills are a mess of spaghetti logic. I believe as well that the purpose is to be deliberately confusing.
“A survey of California solar and storage companies found 17,000 jobs have or will be lost by the end of 2023 due the recent net metering changes. The massive job loss represents 22% of all solar jobs in California.”
I suspect these “green” jobs are installers of panels and systems, much like a local pre-solar electrician that once installed lights and ground fault circuit interrupters, but started on panels to get the subsidizes. Now they can go back to installing lights and ceiling fans.
🤔Massive job losses in an industry that caused much more massive job losses, across all industries and businesses in California, and increased poverty levels by causing electricity rates to skyrocket – not feeling any sympathy.
Rates will still be high even without net-metering in place because the government is still moronic, but it’s a small step in the right direction.
What the world needs is a sealed for (60 year) life nuclear combined heat and power installation to power their homes off.
And larger ones for factories and supermarkets etc.
If it sucked CO2 and water out of the air and used any organic waste like food and made diesel when it wasn’t doing anything else, that would be a bonus.
Too bad none of this was predictable when the policy was proposed <sarc>
Not only predictable but in 1979 and 2000 we directly told the California Legislature, California Energy Commission and California PUC that all of this and more would come to pass. Also in 1979 we told them that the electric system would collapse in 1999. The Governor hid the collapse until 2000.
Statists have no concept about conservation laws, e.g. conservation of energy.
Speakers during the briefing strongly condemned the CPUC for acquiescing to the monopoly utilities’ demands to eliminate their only source of competition: families with rooftop solar.
No, you can still purchase solar and use it. However it has to pay for itself.
Regulated monopolies, i.e. the electric utilities, EXIST FOR A REASON. The statists of today have no knowledge of history at all! Regulated monopolies aren’t supposed to have competition! That’s why they are regulated! If you want competition in the electric grid then get ready to have lot more pole lines on your street and available to feed your house. Because electricity from different competitors can’t share the same feed lines like the telephone companies do – you wind up with all kinds of duplicated infrastructure! What an eyesore that would be! I’m sure the Cali elites would just love it!
Somebody tell the money handlers that the rooftop solar numbers don’t work.
story tip
Solar energy and its cheaper bills are coming to more disadvantaged communities – Stateline
What a joke:
1) Energy costs are higher because of Bidenomic’s inflation and the climate lies and crony capitalist profiteers driving up the cost of all energy.
2) These solar installations are provided by taxpayers and borrowed Federal monies. In 15 year’s time who will be providing the monies to replace them? Another multi-trillion dollar Federal boondoggle? The Big Guy 10% Dementia Joe “Biden Brand” Brandon aka Robert L. Peters aka Robert Ware aka JRB Ware will be long gone.
Fairness giveth, and fairness taketh away.