Comment by whitehexagon

Comment by whitehexagon 14 hours ago

It's an interesting thought exercise, but the quick short term solution would be a 5kWh buffer battery just for the evenings to save buying at peak times.

I started that way before going fully off-grid to avoid subsidising the fossil fuel industry here. Plus ~70% of my bill was fixed charges, and they wouldnt pay for excess solar generation above what I used.

I think this sort of mega home battery bomb could be avoided through legislation by offering free grid connections. So I 'pay-in' 10kWh today, and maybe my account is credited with '5kWh' for later use. I'm sure we would see a much bigger uptake of home solar with such a scheme.

belorn 13 hours ago

10kWh during periods where the energy market price is at the lowest will not pay for 5kWh for periods where the price is at the highest. It will be closer to 0.1-1 kWh for every 10 kWh.

The alternative (the current model where I live) is to have the government be responsible for grid stability, in which they will add taxes and fixed grid connection fees to pay for that service. Crediting overproduction won't make the costs lower for the government, so any such credits will just be a form of subsidy.

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whitehexagon 12 hours ago

I'm happy to sell my solar power at night.
A couple buffer batteries in each home should eventually help even out pricing with everyone trying to sell during peak demand times. But yeah, grid stability might be a fun challenge.

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hamdingers 10 hours ago

Suburban homes capable of overproducing power also have by far the highest per user grid maintenance costs due to simple distance. I agree you would see an uptick in solar adoption with your scheme, but only because apartment-dwellers are being conscripted to subsidize your grid connection.

Early subsidy plans were short sighted and came from politicians, not grid operators, and gave homeowners a massively inflated sense of the usefulness of the meager kWh they produce. Power is cheap, infrastructure is not. It's far better deal for the commons if you use all the kWh you produce (via storage) and pay what it costs to deliver a grid connection when you fall short.

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Taek 14 hours ago

Look up "net metering" or NEM, this is already a thing in many jurisdictions.

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porridgeraisin 11 hours ago

Yes. (In India) we recently converted our SFH into a 4 storey building. We were forced by building code to
A) add solar panels covering 1/3rd of the terrace
B) use it for all non-floor-space electricity (lifts, common areas, pumps, parking lots)
C) Give the rest for deductions as part of NEM.
Once we move in, I'm interested to see the tariff for the export and how much it will save us.

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Loughla 14 hours ago

And in many jurisdictions they're putting time limits or just straight up eliminating net metering and replacing it with net billing.
So instead of 1:1 credits, the power company buys it from you at what they would pay their producers (read, several times less than what they charge you).
It's a fucking scam.
My power company limits the size of panels and time limits net metering (they don't even do it anymore for new solar installs). So you can either not do solar or go completely 100% off grid with only one step.
It's a fucking scam. The engineer justified it to us when he was signing off on our solar install as "well when we do 1:1 credits c that's like you stealing from your neighbors. They don't want to pay your the full retail cost. They want to pay you what we pay the power producers."
When I asked if that meant my neighbors would have the ability to pay less, he just sort of looked flatly at me.
An absolute scam.
Edit;
Sorry, I forgot to add;
1. They also won't allow battery storage while connected to the grid. If they wanted to buy surplus but allowed my to store my own production, I would be fine with it.
2. They also net bill daily. So while I may produce extra within the billing cycle, they zero out excess production daily.

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- Taek 13 hours ago
  
  Well, in some cases it's scam, but its genuinely the case that power at different times of the day has different value, and most NEM agreements completely ignore the cost of transmission, which itself is quite hefty.
  So it is plenty reasonable that you wouldn't get 1:1, especially if the grid is already able to satisfy all demand during peak sunlight by using just base load + solar. Some power companies turn it into a scam anyway and set grossly disadvantaged prices for consumers, but just because it's not 1:1 doesn't mean that it is a scam.
  
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  Dylan16807 10 hours ago
  
  Well, infrastructure costs money.
  But talking about the cost of transmission sure does highlight issues with this billing model. Because if it's going to the neighbor there's negligible transmission. The engineer's argument was very stupid.
  
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  belorn 13 hours ago
  
  The energy market has many similarities to the stock market. People also bet on the prices going down or up by contracting themselves to produce a set amount of energy at a given time for a given price. There are companies which only do trades and has no own production, earning their profits only through market predictions.
  
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- oangemangut 13 hours ago
  
  isn't it logical though that the power company would buy power for less than it sells? and paying the same rate that it buys from larger producers seems fair.
  
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  Loughla 13 hours ago
  
  Sorry, I forgot to add;
  1. They also won't allow battery storage while connected to the grid. If they wanted to buy surplus but allowed my to store my own production, I would be fine with it.
  2. They also net bill daily. So while I may produce extra within the billing cycle, they zero out excess production daily.
  
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  dv_dt 13 hours ago
  
  The principle is fair, but the specific price can be unfair. Especially if the home as provider could be supplying into spot or other markets. Thats where a neighborhood or coty consortium/ cooperative of community users could make sense to maintain a better pricing deal from the utility.
  
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