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Existing California solar customers may get blindsided with net metering cuts (pv-magazine-usa.com)

submitted 3 months ago by Brkdncr@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

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[–] SacralPlexus@lemmy.world 15 points 3 months ago (1 children)

No going off-grid is a substantially larger investment than most people can afford. To be off grid you have to be able to make enough electricity even on cloudy, short winter days. That means your system must be massively oversized for your needs during most of the year. You also need adequate batteries to store energy for overnight.

Instead people get enough solar to offset some or all of the electricity they use - but on average over time. So they produce a ton during the day and then draw from grid at night.

[–] Humanius@lemmy.world 5 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Correct, but that also comes to the main reason why paying people for roof solar isn't sustainable in the long term.

As solar panels keeps getting cheaper, more and more people will put solar on their roof. Since they get paid / reimbursed for feeding power back into the grid. And they don't need a battery because they can just draw from the grid. This causes two problems:

During the day far more power is produced than needed, since everyone has solar on the roofs
During the night there is a lot of power draw from the grid, which cannot come from all the available roof solar.

Paying people for their roof solar is a good strategy short-term, but as more and more people have solar on the roof you cannot really keep doing that.

[–] nivenkos@lemmy.ml 6 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, this is exactly the point of the "problem" OP complains about. Charge people for overproduction, so they're encouraged to buy a home battery and contribute in the night.

Eventually home batteries will become a standard part of such installations.

[–] tabular@lemmy.world 0 points 3 months ago

If you want to encourage purchasing of storage then contribute to making that an easier task. Charging for overproducing is spiteful and mostly encourages resentment. I wouldn't blame these people for finding a cheap way to avoid the "charge" (and if there is a law that prevents that, it is disgusting).

[–] osaerisxero@kbin.melroy.org 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Sure, but it's 'free' generation capacity, and storage works far better at grid scale

[–] Humanius@lemmy.world 3 points 3 months ago (1 children)

But someone still needs to pay for that storage investment (as well as for maintaining the grid), and if noone (or nearly noone) is paying for their power then there is no money to invest in these things

[–] osaerisxero@kbin.melroy.org 2 points 3 months ago

Agreed, but I don't think anyone here is arguing against split bill for generation vs grid maintenance and improvement, just that they want return on the power they put back into the grid, if for no other reason than to offset their own investment