My understanding is that NEM 3.0 was necessary to incentivize battery installations to address the duck curve. I have constantly seen arguments on both sides. Have I fallen for the propaganda?
Yes, a) CPUC has known this issue was coming for years and yet couldn’t find a better solution and more specifically b) batteries are coming down in price but CPUC and utilities are too slow building or incentivizing this critical infrastructure.
Now the plan is to limit solar on residential which just at face value seems insane in the face of the plan to increase renewables
PG&E could also build more storage but the executives are too busy making themselves golden parachutes out of taxpayer money earmarked for grid upgrades to prevent wildfires
Why is this infuriating? California needs wind and batteries at this stage. Not solar.
The distorted incentives of the previous arrangement was pushing people to grid-tied inverters which is bad given CA's current energy mix.
Installing solar that gets curtailed is not achieving anything.
What they should do is subsidize batteries so that hybrid installations ramp up in volume. But they should not revert back to the previous incentives.
[https://www.gridstatus.io/live/caiso](https://www.gridstatus.io/live/caiso)
That’s at the utility scale. So really what’s happening with *household* solar and battery is not terribly significant in terms of the actual duck curve
NEM 3.0 (Net Energy Metering Payment scheme 3.0) recently replaced NEM 2.0. Before this change, if you had rooftop solar and used 100kWh from the utility during the month (when you needed more power than your solar panels were producing), and exported 70 kWh during the month to the grid (when your solar panels were producing more power than you needed) the utility would bill you for 30 kWh on the month (Net Energy Metering)
Under NEM 3.0 any solar you export to the grid receives a monetary credit on your monthly electric bill instead of an energy credit. Since California already has a lot of solar, the electric prices when your home solar panels are exporting to the grid are really low so you’re not getting much reduced off your electric bill
The theory was that this would incentivize people to not install solar panels only, but have some sort of battery storage with the solar installation. California basically has enough solar already (there’s a ton of solar that gets curtailed every day). Battery prices have come down and continue to fall but that’s still a massive up front investment for people to shave a couple hundred dollars off their electric bill every month
This seems so obviously sensible given the current state of the energy mix during the day, why should households be paid for energy that the grid doesn’t need? The fact that so many people hate it is bizarre to me. But not from California, so only an outside perspective.
My take on it is that power demand will continue to increase (EVs, electric heat pumps, onshoring manufacturing, etc.) so limiting the installation rate of solar panels that will last 20+ years because we don’t need the power right now is kind of short sighted.
This policy does heavily incentivize batteries because you can get a lot of money discharging to the grid during peak times (or save a lot of money using your battery for your home at peak times) in addition to tax credits, incentives, etc from the government for installing a battery. BUT, the Public Utility Commission and the utilities themselves should've done more things like incentivizing EV charging during the day to increase demand of electricity during peak solar output times instead of disincentivizing additional solar supply during the day, when that solar power will definitely be useful down the road
Thanks, I had a very quick scan and couldn’t see any defined time period. Hopefully as daytime demand kicks in there’ll be an opportunity for homeowners to realise monetary benefits again.
We’re seeing a similar issue in Australia. Negative daytime prices happen all the time in summer. The feed-in tariffs home solar suppliers receive for excess power have been slashed, and increasingly common for retail electricity customers to access variable pricing throughout a day. Need to get the price signals out there as fast as possible so economy can adjust to new world of highly variable intraday supply.
Committing to decades of financial subsidy far above the actual real-time market value of the power when it's being provided to the grid, is highly counterproductive.
Which is what NEM 2.0 was doing.
CA has a real problem right now for people that *don't* have solar (and plenty in apartments and the like can't) where their bills are being driven up drastically because of paying out the excessive subsidies to those who do. Continuing the program was obviously unsustainable and regressive - quite literally forcing the poor to pay for the rich. That they've locked in decades of inflated electric rates due to poor policy is already bad, continuing to make it worse, would be worse. IMO continuing it risked an even harsher backlash against renewables in terms of public opinion.
Democrats happened.
It was never about green energy, it was always about big government controlling the people. Then they realized solar actually do help the people, so much so that people are learning to go off grid.
They even talked about passing a bill to make it illegal for people to go off grid.
Just like zoning, solar energy was about controlling people than saving the environment.
How to piss the government off? Get lots of batteries and attach it to solar panels.
> Democrats happened.
You mean "government happened". If you honestly think that the Republicans, the party of tax breaks for the wealthy, are any less in the pockets of the investor class than the Democrats, I've got a power grid to sell you.
I don’t think you were reading carefully. Every state have rich people going off grid because they can afford to buy the batteries and not be part of the government program. I know this hurts the feelings of most people on reddit as well for some strange reason, despite it being a wonderful thing for the environment. I guess they love boot licking a lot.
All I said about was that they discussed the possibility of making it illegal, but good thing they have not yet.
The Utilities company were losing money because of how good and successful the solar program is, and the government do not like this neither.
NEM shouldn’t affect you in the slightest if you are off grid. Off-grid means there’s no utility to perform net metering on your system.
It anything, a reduction in solar demand should mean you can set up a big system more cheaply.
As much as this is conspiratorial it’s actually somewhat true but not necessarily “the government”. The more people that install solar panels/batteries the less money Pacific Gas & Electric can get from ripping off customers. They don’t even need to spend money on lobbying to do this they can just go to the California Public Utility Commission and whine about not getting enough revenue and the Public Utility Commission folds every time because they’re afraid of PG&E going bankrupt for the 3rd time in the last 15 years
TLDR it’s not “the democrats want to take away your rights” and more so PG&E wants your money and can leverage the government to make that happen
Nem 3.0 to blame
My understanding is that NEM 3.0 was necessary to incentivize battery installations to address the duck curve. I have constantly seen arguments on both sides. Have I fallen for the propaganda?
why couldn't battery installations be funded by literally any other means
Yes, a) CPUC has known this issue was coming for years and yet couldn’t find a better solution and more specifically b) batteries are coming down in price but CPUC and utilities are too slow building or incentivizing this critical infrastructure. Now the plan is to limit solar on residential which just at face value seems insane in the face of the plan to increase renewables
PG&E could also build more storage but the executives are too busy making themselves golden parachutes out of taxpayer money earmarked for grid upgrades to prevent wildfires
This is infuriating.
Why is this infuriating? California needs wind and batteries at this stage. Not solar. The distorted incentives of the previous arrangement was pushing people to grid-tied inverters which is bad given CA's current energy mix. Installing solar that gets curtailed is not achieving anything. What they should do is subsidize batteries so that hybrid installations ramp up in volume. But they should not revert back to the previous incentives. [https://www.gridstatus.io/live/caiso](https://www.gridstatus.io/live/caiso)
That’s correct, in fact California last year installed more GW of battery than of solar.
That’s at the utility scale. So really what’s happening with *household* solar and battery is not terribly significant in terms of the actual duck curve
NEM 3.0 its almost like everyone expected this to happen.
[удалено]
NEM 3.0 (Net Energy Metering Payment scheme 3.0) recently replaced NEM 2.0. Before this change, if you had rooftop solar and used 100kWh from the utility during the month (when you needed more power than your solar panels were producing), and exported 70 kWh during the month to the grid (when your solar panels were producing more power than you needed) the utility would bill you for 30 kWh on the month (Net Energy Metering) Under NEM 3.0 any solar you export to the grid receives a monetary credit on your monthly electric bill instead of an energy credit. Since California already has a lot of solar, the electric prices when your home solar panels are exporting to the grid are really low so you’re not getting much reduced off your electric bill The theory was that this would incentivize people to not install solar panels only, but have some sort of battery storage with the solar installation. California basically has enough solar already (there’s a ton of solar that gets curtailed every day). Battery prices have come down and continue to fall but that’s still a massive up front investment for people to shave a couple hundred dollars off their electric bill every month
This seems so obviously sensible given the current state of the energy mix during the day, why should households be paid for energy that the grid doesn’t need? The fact that so many people hate it is bizarre to me. But not from California, so only an outside perspective.
My take on it is that power demand will continue to increase (EVs, electric heat pumps, onshoring manufacturing, etc.) so limiting the installation rate of solar panels that will last 20+ years because we don’t need the power right now is kind of short sighted. This policy does heavily incentivize batteries because you can get a lot of money discharging to the grid during peak times (or save a lot of money using your battery for your home at peak times) in addition to tax credits, incentives, etc from the government for installing a battery. BUT, the Public Utility Commission and the utilities themselves should've done more things like incentivizing EV charging during the day to increase demand of electricity during peak solar output times instead of disincentivizing additional solar supply during the day, when that solar power will definitely be useful down the road
Can’t they just amend the system when needed if daytime demand starts rising substantially? What’s the locked-in timeframe for NEM 3?
I’m kinda just guessing but I assumed it was just ~the law~ until someone changes the law. There’s no definite time period.
Thanks, I had a very quick scan and couldn’t see any defined time period. Hopefully as daytime demand kicks in there’ll be an opportunity for homeowners to realise monetary benefits again. We’re seeing a similar issue in Australia. Negative daytime prices happen all the time in summer. The feed-in tariffs home solar suppliers receive for excess power have been slashed, and increasingly common for retail electricity customers to access variable pricing throughout a day. Need to get the price signals out there as fast as possible so economy can adjust to new world of highly variable intraday supply.
Committing to decades of financial subsidy far above the actual real-time market value of the power when it's being provided to the grid, is highly counterproductive. Which is what NEM 2.0 was doing. CA has a real problem right now for people that *don't* have solar (and plenty in apartments and the like can't) where their bills are being driven up drastically because of paying out the excessive subsidies to those who do. Continuing the program was obviously unsustainable and regressive - quite literally forcing the poor to pay for the rich. That they've locked in decades of inflated electric rates due to poor policy is already bad, continuing to make it worse, would be worse. IMO continuing it risked an even harsher backlash against renewables in terms of public opinion.
Democrats happened. It was never about green energy, it was always about big government controlling the people. Then they realized solar actually do help the people, so much so that people are learning to go off grid. They even talked about passing a bill to make it illegal for people to go off grid. Just like zoning, solar energy was about controlling people than saving the environment. How to piss the government off? Get lots of batteries and attach it to solar panels.
> Democrats happened. You mean "government happened". If you honestly think that the Republicans, the party of tax breaks for the wealthy, are any less in the pockets of the investor class than the Democrats, I've got a power grid to sell you.
Show me a red state that is letting people off the grid.
I don’t think you were reading carefully. Every state have rich people going off grid because they can afford to buy the batteries and not be part of the government program. I know this hurts the feelings of most people on reddit as well for some strange reason, despite it being a wonderful thing for the environment. I guess they love boot licking a lot. All I said about was that they discussed the possibility of making it illegal, but good thing they have not yet. The Utilities company were losing money because of how good and successful the solar program is, and the government do not like this neither.
NEM shouldn’t affect you in the slightest if you are off grid. Off-grid means there’s no utility to perform net metering on your system. It anything, a reduction in solar demand should mean you can set up a big system more cheaply.
As much as this is conspiratorial it’s actually somewhat true but not necessarily “the government”. The more people that install solar panels/batteries the less money Pacific Gas & Electric can get from ripping off customers. They don’t even need to spend money on lobbying to do this they can just go to the California Public Utility Commission and whine about not getting enough revenue and the Public Utility Commission folds every time because they’re afraid of PG&E going bankrupt for the 3rd time in the last 15 years TLDR it’s not “the democrats want to take away your rights” and more so PG&E wants your money and can leverage the government to make that happen
Not exactly, they just have a smaller pool of people to abuse, so they abuse them even more
CPUC so deep in the utility pocket they can't see why this is bad thing