Net metering does create stranded assets if everyone does it. But not everyone does. Further, the idea that the utility gains NO benefit from net metering is wrong.
The corresponding view that rate payers are subsidizing solar by paying additional grid costs is wrong. Solar reduces grid demand. This reduces required generation capacity. Capacity is very expensive.
When you do net metering, the utility has to pay on top: They have to sell the power that you produce on the spot market, but the price they get for it is less than what they have to pay to you.
It's not a scalable approach.
There’s many ways to do net metering, but regulations are setup to maintain profitable local utilities. Utilities hate it because they make less money by selling less electricity not because it’s ever going to drive them to unprofitability.
However, that’s ignoring the home actually uses electricity during that period it’s demand simply isn’t something the utility can make money from.
Similarly, transmission losses increase as temperatures rise which requires more production to offset those losses. From the perspective of a natural gas power plant that load is just as real as actual customer demands because utilities need to pay for it.
Finally, time zone boundaries and suburbs being on the east or west of cities on the coast make a noticeable difference. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2572317/Are-...
But that's not true in how PG&E prices power. The very highest rates start when the day is just past warmest and sunniest (3pm) when there's tons of solar power available to feed into the grid. The cheapest rates start at midnight when solar contribution is obviously zero.
- when you use power, the grid is forced to produce it for you at that specific moment.
- on the other hand, solar panels produce energy at random times, regardless of whether it's needed or not.
Net metering forces symmetric pricing into a fundamentally asymmetric situation, which is not scalable.
You could think of similar asymmetries in other contexts where the unfairness is obvious. Imagine making a deal with a restaurant for them to deliver pizzas to you whenever you order them, and in exchange you'll give them back the same number of pizzas at a time of your choosing (or at random times). This is obviously not a fair deal for the restaurant.
Imagine if you will there’s a peak demand for pizzas (dunno maybe Super Bowl?) and the pizza company is struggling to deliver enough pizzas. You come in and say hey Mr Pizza Company I’ll help out with that demand and make pizza for you, and so will my other neighbors and we’ll help you supply pizza. Mr Pizza Company takes your pizza and sells it but only pays you a fraction of what they charged their customers. And on top of that charges you for making pizza for them. This is what you get in return. Except you’re making pizza everyday and giving it to the pizza company so they can sell your pizza out in the market first before they sell theirs. The greatest trick played.
I joked with my neighbour that we should wire up our homes and sell my excess to him at mid point and we would both be better off.
I've been looking at this but not as a joke and you run into some fairly interesting problems when you start paralleling after the meter. Long story short: don't do this unless you have a lot of electrical engineering chops or you might end up create a liability in case of a leak to ground or an overcurrent situation. This needs some special handling. The best way would be to just create an extra circuit and use a waterproof extension cord to power it, that way all GFPs see their real current and not a fraction of it and you can't accidentally feed into a distribution panel at more current than the breakers see, which is an excellent way to start a fire.
Absolutely no clue about legal issues though.
Without knowing anything about this or any context... that does not seem unreasonable to me.
Note that OP didn't even require net negative at all to have it still totally be a great investment. He only offest a portion of his actual usage. So net negative paid only at wholesale rate seems like it should still be functional economically and leave plenty of incentive. Wouldn't have effected OP at all, for those who do go net negative and it effects, it seems like it shouldn't tip the scales.
AFAIK, most home solar is not set up this way. You don't use the energy from your solar panels. The solar panels feed directly into the grid, and your usage comes directly out of the grid.
So if you use 100kwh, and generate 100kwh, then you will pay 100kwh at retail rate, and receive 100kwh at wholesale rate.
The Solar out actually runs your meter backwards, so does actually reduce the amount the meter shows you owing to charge you at the retail rate. There is no metering present to make it possible to charge you for the 100kwh you used at one rate, but then you pay you for the 100kwh you generated at a different rate. The electricity you generate runs the meter backwards, and reduces what you are charged for consumption -- which monetarily means you are "being paid" for it at the retail rate.
But if your meter goes negative in a given time period, they can tell at the meter you actually generated more than consumed, and could pay you out a different rate for that. (Or as OP notices, in some places, they allow you offset your use, but don't actually pay out for net negative at all. )
This is why the metering is called "net", it's your "net" use, consumption minus generation. I believe that's how it works for my friends here in Baltimore who have solar panels.
Are there other places in the USA where they install more sophisticated metering capable of separately metering out and in, and charge different rates for it?
Or, anyway, since we're talking about California, if anyone wants to clarify how it actually is going to work in CA, rather than speaking in hypotheticals based on our theoretical understanding of how things work, that would be even better!
What would seem logical to me would be a base charge, they net meter you to zero, but then you sell power at the wholesaler rate. If that wipes out your connect charge you still have them the value that they would have paid for the power you made.
Maybe the base charge would have to be higher for net metered houses, it might have some subsidy built into it based on expectations of selling power to the client.
Net metering is as good a subsidy for green energy which we DIRELY need as any.
Making perfect the enemy of the good is bad enough as a general principle but is 100x worse when the future of the planet is at stake.
Subsidizing solar is a perfectly good policy choice, but net metering is ultimately an unsustainable way to implement it.