193
Existing California solar customers may get blindsided with net metering cuts
(pv-magazine-usa.com)
this post was submitted on 27 Aug 2024
193 points (98.0% liked)
Technology
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What happens if you just......don't pay the bill?
Then you get disconnected.
I thought that was the point of paying so much for solar? To be OFF the grid?
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.
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:
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.
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.
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).
Sure, but it's 'free' generation capacity, and storage works far better at grid scale
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
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
That is not the point. Solar provides most of your power and if you need additional power you can easily get additional power from the grid. That power can come from other people that have solar connected to the grid or other sources. It allows people to not have to spend huge amounts of money on batteries while providing power for themselves and others.