Debate switching to solar power

[RJSakowski]

Our current energy rate is $.124/kwh plus a $.55/day user charge.

 

[bill70j]

California has multiple rate plans to chose from. They all have a lower base rate that quickly rises depending on how much electricity you use and in all but one plan the time of day that the electricity is used. I believe that most meters in California are now reversing and time of use meters. I can go online and see how much electricity I used during any given hour during the day. This is updated every day.

Why does California have such high rates? Remember reading about all those wild fires and the huge settlements that were paid. Those settlements didn't come out of PG&E's pockets. PG&E like all utilities is guaranteed a small profit. They were allowed to raise the electrical rates to cover those losses. PG&E's customers paid those settlements through higher utility rates.

Agree. Plus home rooftop solar is estimated to have added 5 - 6 cents/kWh to the rate. (In the current net metering program (NEM2.0) homeowners are reimbursed at the fully costed rate of up to 40 cents/kWh vs. a much lower rate for incremental electricity, and that's why that program dies on April 14 this year -- to be replaced by a more reasonable NEM3.0.)

The intense drive to go green has forced the California utilities to dedicate significant capital and expense to solar and wind, which has squeezed their repair and replacement maintenance budget. The wildfires that @mickri mentions put a spotlight on that so they are now doing catch-up maintenance work which is also causing rates to go up.

And lastly, the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant is a very costly plant to operate. And if allowed to continue into the future, will be forced to spend $billions retrofitting their once-through cooling system to be self contained. I am unsure why that's been mandated - but it's a popular subject, and it's just money.

 

[mickri]

A good friend of mine is retired from PG&E. He worked for over twenty years at Diablo. Was the head of procurement for the plant. Bought everything from toilet paper to uranium. Crazy California laws required him to buy a certain amount of stuff from minority owned businesses. A lot of these businesses would often not deliver what was ordered or had long delays. He suspected that they never had anything in stock and when they got an order they then went looking for a place to buy the stuff.

If my kids and grandkids weren't here I would move in a heartbeat.

 

[Boswell]

When we installed our panels, our local electrical coop had a net metering system that trued-up at the end of each month. Late last year they ditched that for a in-out system. We buy at one price and sell at another. NO NET METERING. If I had Batteries then this would be a good deal but I don't and as a result of this change, my electric bill increased about 40%. It was a little like a bait and switch. I would not have purchased panels under the current system. But there is still the positive environmental aspects. My panels generate about 60% of our overall electrical needs.

 

[Shotgun]

IMHO, the big cost in solar is the batteries and installation. The path to making the panels pay is to eliminate the need for batteries, and install in a cheap way.

• skip the solar roof. Build a car port, gazebo or awning topped with panels. Used panels from some place like SanTan Solar will be less than the cost of plywood and shingles. Rooftop requires special mounting systems, inspections, and other expensive add-ons that don't produce electricity.
• tie a few of the panels into the water heater. It's the single biggest electricity eater in the house, and has a second heating element that isn't doing anything most of the time. Store the energy in water instead of batteries.
• I tied just a few house circuits into my inverter. My office, which I use mostly during the day. The upstairs which has a small, high-efficiency window AC. The spare room, which has the freezer. All small, constant draw loads used mostly during the day.

I only have 1500W of panels, an all-in-one inverter/charger, and 100AH of battery at 24V. Paying for itself in 2yrs.

 

[sycle1]

We have had our 3 Kw solar array for 12 years and it has paid for itself twice over.
We just added solar hot water to help bring the costs down.

The power companies and local government keep changing the pricing of power, we are just starting to get power bills again as the price of power skyrockets.

 

[Flynth]

I got ground mounted solar last year (almost exactly a year ago). Only 2.5kW as a test and also to get grandfathered into net metering(with annual accounting so you can "store" energy from the summer for winter!) they were doing away with around here unless one had an existing system(the grandfathering period is 15 years).

I built everything myself so I saved a lot of money (half of the cost of the system around here is installation costs). I used to work as an electrician's mate many years ago so I knew how to do it and I know a couple certified electricians so I had one check my work and rubber stamp it. Also I made my own frames/stands.

The panels I got are special frame less panels held with glass clamps so buying special frames would cost a lot. That's one of the reasons why I got panels very cheap. Another reason was the manufacturer went out of business so no warranty. However, the cost was so low it made sense.

Here in my part of Poland my electric rate (including all variable costs) is about $0.17 per kWh plus $20 or so bimonthly in static charges. Even though my system is only 2.5kW from May till September last year I paid almost no variable cost on my electric ($1 or so).

There is an EU sponsored website one can use to predict a solar system energy generation here(one can use it for US too) https://re.jrc.ec.europa.eu/pvg_tools/en/tools.html it is rather complex, but with it one can experiment with different systems in one's location (on grid, off grid, different panel tech, one axis rotators or two, or none etc) and one can see annual production, monthly, daily, even average hourly throughout the year(this is based on last few years of weather data, one can select different past years to compare I think). My production last year came out within few % of predicted.

So I was pretty happy until winter came and I started getting $200 bills again (bimonthly).

Personally I'm not sure I would get solar if I had to pay full price and I had to use non net-metering system. That's the system you buy electricity at one price and sell it at another depending on current demand. It remains to be seen what those prices will be in the peak of summer when everyone has a big energy surplus to sell. I realise the kind of net metering we have here with annual accounting is not sustainable if lots of people get solar so they had to get rid of it. Still I'm pretty lucky being locked into it for remaining 14 years and I can always up the size of my system later.

 

[ddickey]

And lastly, the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant is a very costly plant to operate. And if allowed to continue into the future, will be forced to spend $billions retrofitting their once-through cooling system to be self contained. I am unsure why that's been mandated - but it's a popular subject, and it's just money.

Do you know why it is so costly?The answer starts with a g and ends in a t.

 

[Flynth]

Do you know why it is so costly?The answer starts with a g and ends in a t.

At least you have a nuclear power plant. Here in my part of the world they started planning a nuclear power plant in 1960s. We still haven't got it, the project has been cancelled and restarted a few times. Now we have 3 plants planned and a bunch of micro reactors. It is all great tech, but I start to question if all the red tape we decided to add on top of the already complex development process means it is even possible to build a new nuclear power plant anywhere in the general West (that's EU+North America).

It's not only the environmental studies required (oh, you want a cooling pond here? There is a rare frog living in this swamp, we need a 5 year relocation feasibility study before the environmental impact statement can be made). At the same time everyone in a 100 mile radius tries to sue for loss of property value, everyone nearby who is entitled to have his/her input in the planning process throws tons of wrenches into the works(no, you can't have an access road here, buildings? Yes, but not too tall, development traffic? Only in certain hours of the day and depending on sound screens installed and on and on). There are so many "stakeholders" that can voice their opinions and the project has to take their input into account... Also both enemy governments (around here mainly Russia) and various industry interest groups have been caught funding a lot of those "concerned organisations".

This applies not just to nuclear, but any large scale projects that matter to national security. For one small example when my gov was building a new gas/oil pipeline through Denmark to Norway(as an alternative to you know whoose oil and gas) , a "rare" species of field mouse was found in Denmark where the pipe was supposed to go. It delayed the project by 6 months. Later it transpired an "environmental" organisation linked to a husband of a prime minister of a German state that has a competing pipeline built through it(nord stream 2) was instrumental in filling lots of such claims. When German federal gov under immense media pressure started probing the funding of that environmental organisation further there was a fire and all donor records were lost. What a coincidence!

Im not saying we should disregard everyone nearby and just build it, like they do in some places. We should compensate people and care for the environment, but common sense has to be applied...

Coming back to nuclear, it seems all modern nuclear projects in The West are delayed, over budget and unfinished. From Finland, through France, to US if I'm mistaken please do give me an example of a new nuclear power plant that was built anywhere in the West recently. BTW, we can include certain Asian countries such as Japan, South Korea, Taiwan at least mentally in "The West". Also Australia, New Zealand... I use that term from lack of a better one to describe like-minded countries around the world. It is not meant as a geographic description.

 

[bill70j]

@Flynth :

All true, in my opinion. As @ddickey says, "gosh-darned-it."

As I see it, our Federal safety and healthy agency (OSHA) and our multitude of California State environmental agencies have done a masterful job of forcing improvements onto industry, really gearing up in the late 60's. To me they deserve a lot of credit for sweeping improvements- which I saw happen first hand, having grown up in a hazardous manufacturing industry.

However, to me there is a diminishing return to all of this, and we've hit that point in a number of areas. Unfortunately, when risk analyses are done on new laws we've lost the ability to consider probability along with worst case scenario consequences. Consequences are easy to understand (though putting a value on human life makes all of us shudder) but probabilities not so much. Many stakeholders struggle with mitigated risk and insist on zero risk, which often leads to long delays, ultimately killing projects, new technologies, etc.

I hope we make some progress getting consensus on supplying power with new nuclear power plant technologies. Though much of Europe and Japan are going the other way, maybe the latest green debates will sway popular opinion(?)