Are Utility Companies Out to Destroy Solar's 'Rooftop Revolution'?

[eridani]

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/10/09-0

According to reporting by Bloomberg, the state's three largest utilities—Edison International, PG&E Corp. and Sempra Energy—are "putting up hurdles" to homeowners who have installed sun-powered energy systems, especially those with "battery backups wired to solar panels," in order to slow the spread of what has become a threat to their dominant business model.

“The utilities clearly see rooftop solar as the next threat,” Ben Peters, a government affairs analyst at solar company Mainstream Energy Corp., told Bloomberg. “They’re trying to limit the growth.”

According to Peters, as the business news outlet reports, the dispute between those with solar arrays and the utility giants "threatens the state’s $2 billion rooftop solar industry and indicates the depth of utilities’ concerns about consumers producing their own power. People with rooftop panels are already buying less electricity, and adding batteries takes them closer to the day they won’t need to buy from the local grid at all."

Citing but one example, Bloomberg reports:

Matthew Sperling, a Santa Barbara, California, resident, installed eight panels and eight batteries at his home in April.

“We wanted to have an alternative in case of a blackout to keep the refrigerator running,” he said in an interview. Southern California Edison rejected his application to link the system to the grid even though city inspectors said “it was one of the nicest they’d ever seen,” he said.

“We’ve installed a $30,000 system and we can’t use it,” Sperling said.

The utilities argue that customers with solar energy-storing batteries might be rigging the system by fraudulently storing conventional energy sent in from the utility grid, storing it in the batteries, and then sending it back to the grid for credit. The solar companies say there is no proof that this is happening.

[intaglio]

1. Energy companies - making it up as they go along

The utilities argue that customers with solar energy-storing batteries might be rigging the system by fraudulently storing conventional energy sent in from the utility grid, storing it in the batteries, and then sending it back to the grid for credit. The solar companies say there is no proof that this is happening.

So people are paying the ECs a higher rate and installing expensive power storage to sell back to the ECs at a cheap rate. Like I would buy a car, fill it with petrol, go to the supermarket and then sell the remainder back to the garage.

[gopiscrap]

2. that figures

it's like in some cities with private utilities, rain barrels are illegal

[coldmountain]

3. This really is outrageous

Now who is the taker?

[gopiscrap]

4. Yeah but the private utilites

convince pro business council members in those cities to enact those kind of laws

[hunter]

5. For $30,000 of solar why do they even need to be connected to the grid?

They live in Santa Barbara, not someplace where air conditioning or other high load uses are essential. They probably have propane or natural gas too.

We live in a mild climate like Santa Barbara's. I know people here who don't heat or cool their homes. We can get away with that, the pipes won't freeze. Any disaster big enough to take out our power for a long time is going to be the sort where I won't be worrying about food in our refrigerator. There's no meat in there. Eat it until it goes bad and then throw it on the compost heap. (I'm the sort who would live without a refrigerator, but my wife's not buying that...)

In milder climates I'm not convinced residential connections to the power network are cost effective or essential anymore. Homes could be designed or retrofitted so they don't need heating or cooling, and modern well-designed lighting and electronics use very little electricity.

[eridani]

6. The advantage of a grid is that is collects energy of ALL types--

--and dispenses it over a broader area regardless of who is generating how many kilowatts and how.

[hunter]

7. I propose that is a bad thing.

It gives utilities an incentive to build big fossil fuel, nuclear, wind, and desert solar power plants.

Maybe large regional utilities are themselves a bad technology that encourages unnecessary industrialization and economic productivity that is very bad for the natural environment.

Would it be possible to create a technological society where electricity use was so low it would simply be uneconomical to build or maintain large regional power grids or huge power plants?

[PamW]

8. I would bet..

The utilities argue that customers with solar energy-storing batteries might be rigging the system by fraudulently storing conventional energy sent in from the utility grid, storing it in the batteries, and then sending it back to the grid for credit. The solar companies say there is no proof that this is happening.

I would bet that for a margin increase in that $30,000, one could design a connection system that would preclude charging the batteries with power from the grid.

The other concern is that this system needs a way to be disconnected from the grid when the grid goes down. When the grid goes down and the utility sends linemen to repair it, they disconnect the affected part of the grid from their generators in order to be sure the line is de-energized so that their linemen can safely work on the lines.

If one has battery back-up that is not automatically disconnected from the grid, there is the danger that the battery back-up will energize lines that workers are attempting to repair.

With some good electrical engineering, one should be able to engineer a system that addresses all concerns.

The good thing about science is that it is true, whether or not you believe in it.
--Neil deGrasse Tyson

PamW

[coyote]

9. This is easy to solve by following Germany's lead...

You regulate and force the energy companies to buy back the rooftop solar people produce. There is no need for batteries at all. Furthermore, force the energy companies to buy back the energy at 2x their sell price. This will encourage people to invest in solar.

All is needed is the political will, which unfortunately I cannot see coming anytime soon.