From Guest Blogger Brian McGowan: Defection from the Grid?
There have been several articles about defecting from the grid talked about here as well as reshaping what the grid means to us and what it should now do for us. While defecting from the grid may not seem likely, I find with things like this happening it may become more frequent if things described in the article linked above continue.
I know my first thought was that I would buy batteries and get right off the grid if this happened in my state. I would certainly not tie my system to the grid. I would leave it as it is right now, a separate system in my house which I can connect to any appliance I need to whenever I need to.
The push back by entrenched interests is gaining momentum especially in states dominated by one particular political party which owes it’s allegiance to the fossil fuel industry and big business. These politicians and business owners are only worried about the bottom line from a dollars and cents perspective and not about the indirect costs they are pushing out onto the average citizen. I can only hope that the citizens of states like Oklahoma, Arizona and Hawaii as well as other states that are considering moves like this push back by voting the politicians that think this is a good idea out of office in favor of politicians who will repeal these bills and work for the people instead of the fossil fuel industry and big business.
Perhaps it will take a mass defection of people who are willing to install this equipment for the utilities to understand how much they are hurting themselves by asking for things like this. Perhaps electing politicians who will enact greater renewable energy portfolio requirements for power utilities will cause the utilities to wish for these taxes to be repealed in order to entice the people who have gone off the grid in protest to return and give the utilities the renewable energy they will need to meet these requirements. Unfortunately, once people have invested in the equipment to get off the grid and realize how free that makes them, they will be reluctant to return much before their equipment reaches end of life.
In any event, it will be interesting to see how this plays out.
And it is now law.
Maybe I’m missing something in these several articles. It seems to me Craig has been talking around this subject in several blogs as to what compensation the grid infrastructure companies should get.
The electrical companies appear to be trying to get some money out of the solar customer to connect to the grid. Yes in the one case the company asked for a significant amount but settled at somewhere around 70cents/ installed kw/month. That would be $7 a month for a 10kw system. I have solar panels on my roof in Ontario and I pay $6/month total to remain connected. I don’t think this is an extreme amount. I believe the electric Co. deserves some compensation for having my panels connected to the grid.
Perhaps you are or things are different in Canada.
I believe this article details what the company in Arizona was going for before the legislature told them they would get $5/month if I recall correctly.
http://news.yahoo.com/no-free-sun-why-arizona-wants-tax-solar-204324381.html;_ylt=A0LEVznSeFhTWTUA4ahXNyoA;_ylu=X3oDMTEzZjBrcmdpBHNlYwNzcgRwb3MDNARjb2xvA2JmMQR2dGlkA1NNRTMzOV8x
The certainly did not “settle”. I should point out that $100/month is 1.6 times my average monthly bill.
Let’s run the numbers on my February bill bearing in mind that this is their time period description not the actual month.
31 days in the billing period
426kWh
13.74kWh/day
Charges as follows:
$8.84/month just for having an account so almost 2.1 cents/kWh. This is the fee I pay for being connected to their grid so I can buy electricity from them whether I have solar panels or not. If I use less power it costs me more per kWh because this is a fixed charge per month and most months I use less.
.8 cents/kWh for transmission charges
5.94 cents/kWh for distribution charges
Total non generation charges is 8.84 cents/kWh
Cost for actual electricity is 8.94 cents/kWh so a tenth of a cent more than all the non electricity charges.
So half for electricity and half for their infrastructure since that is how they justify those non-electricity charges to the public utility commission which oversees the utilities.
Net metering works this way. Any energy I would generate will reduce the amount of my bill to zero based on a yearly settlement period. This amount does not include the monthly fee with is charged no matter what so that would be 15.68 cents/kWh. If I generate more than I use in a year they will pay me the generation charge only for the excess so that is 8.94 cents/kWh. They can then take that power which is generally put on the grid during peak hours relieving them of having to burn more fossil fuels to meet their load making their carbon output smaller which allows them to meet their carbon cap and sell it to customers that are pure consumers for the price of 15.68 cents/kWh.
As far as I am concerned they have plenty of ways to make money off of me being attached to their grid without charging me an extra giant fee just to have solar panels on my house. This was truly an attempt to kill solar in AZ. Since the fee has not yet been specified it remains to be seen what Oklahoma will charge.
Also remember that this only applies to grid tied systems which will not work when the grid goes down. If you have batteries so that you have some back up when the grid goes down you are not allowed to attach that to the grid at least not here.
For what it’s worth I just check and they would not pay me the 8.94 cents/kWh for energy put onto the grid in excess of my usage as I stated. They would pay me the “price to compare” which is the price they set every quarter and for this quarter that price is 8.77 cents/kWh so not as much as they charge me.