The top comment from u/theysayso on the same Reddit thread seems to put things in a good perspective:<p>Other posters have already noted that you can still have the solar panels, you're just not going to get paid for net metering. What people typically want is the best of both worlds, to charge onto the grid when the produce more than they use (and get paid for it) and have the grid available to supply power when they generate less than they use. But maintaining the grid also costs money. If all your ratepayers split, it makes it more expensive for those "left behind". Who gets left behind? Typically people with less money, that can't afford the systems in the first place, apartment dwellers, etc. The other noted challenge are battery systems. You can go completely off the grid but installing the batteries is WAY more expensive, takes and takes up a lot of space. The technology is disruptive, which the article really didn't go in to. For PV to push electrons onto the grid it needs to be at a greater potential. So if your local grid is 120v the PV needs to adjust to 120.1v. Then your neighbor installs one, and this her/his neighbor. If you're on a long radial line the voltage at the head end might be 126 just to get it to be 118 at the tail end. Normally a utility will install capacitor banks to adjust the voltage. Now you have PV going in everywhere totally screwing with the voltage so it becomes a bit of a grid management challenge. You need to know where all that is going in, what its rate of power is at any given moment (clouds/rains suddenly everything changes and the utility has to compensate). So yeah, a sticky problem that could get out of hand pretty quickly.<p><a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/1tey5l/a_solar_boom_in_hawaii_proved_so_successful_that/" rel="nofollow">http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/1tey5l/a_solar_b...</a><p>credit: <a href="http://www.reddit.com/user/theysayso" rel="nofollow">http://www.reddit.com/user/theysayso</a>
Just an anecdote, but I had a conversation with a statistician who worked for the electric utilities here in Australia, and he said that solar subsidies had been so successful that it has caused a large and completely unanticipated net drop in power consumption over the summer months. Further, the situation is embarrassing for the authorities because they negotiated massive electricity price rises on the basis of needing large infrastructure improvements to handle future load. These price rises have been very politically sensitive as they are asserted to be part of the cost of the "carbon tax". It is now clear there's no need for even a fraction of the infrastructure they're building, and one consequence has been that there's been a rapid scaling back of solar subsidies to try and make all parties look a bit less foolish.<p>I think the moral of the story is that people are way more enthusiastic about installing this kind of thing than rational analysis would estimate.
Hawaii has the highest cost of electric in the nation. I used to live in Hawaii, and working from home, my monthly electric bill was $500-$750. Hawaii also has year-round sun, being close to the equator. The state also has rebate programs for solar panels. When I was looking into it, if you got a 5-year loan, it would be cheaper to buy the panels than pay your electric bill.<p>There's no (legitimate) reason Hawaii's electric should be so high. They just have no incentive to reduce prices, and they have to keep their 6-figure salaries. I knew plenty of people that wanted to build solar/wind farms, but the electric company either wouldn't accept their electric at all, or would give them pennies on the dollar.
There is always the even more expensive choice of going off grid entirely. But that requires a power storage facility of some form.<p>If we are fortunate and can get to reasonable "supercap" sort of technology this will become easier.<p>I note with some interest though that most roof top systems put only enough out that they could, in theory run a Tesla Super Charger to a Tesla battery supply. You could then pick a point in the afternoon where you did the 'switch' and switched over to inverters running off the Tesla battery pack. Providing electrical load from that point until it got below a set charge point on the batteries. Some days you'd probably go from 4PM to 9 or 10PM, others only until 6 or 7. But you would get the benefit of not having to pay for that power when you were running off the Tesla. Elon if you're reading this you should figure out how to make that happen, you'd get better volumes on the batteries with Tesla (better economics of scale) and people could do this without utility participation.
I've just had panels installed (in the UK)[0] and we use a hot-water converter [1].<p>If we're generating 2kW, and only using 600W - the excess of 400W is <i>not</i> fed back into the grid; it goes into an immersion heater and gives us hot water.<p>That saves us on burning natural gas, and prevents problems with the grid.<p>Now, depending on where you live, hot water may not be the most pressing problem. But it's slightly more practical that spinning up a fly-wheel :-)<p>[0] <a href="http://shkspr.mobi/blog/2013/12/free-money-from-the-sky/" rel="nofollow">http://shkspr.mobi/blog/2013/12/free-money-from-the-sky/</a>
[1] <a href="http://www.solariboost.co.uk/" rel="nofollow">http://www.solariboost.co.uk/</a>
One of the big problems with PV and wind power is that they don't offer any inertial load on the grid. This means that once the percentage of these sources increase the grid frequency stability decreases.<p>When using renewables you must still generate a majority of your supply from a big rotating generator. The inertia of the spinning generator keeps the frequency from straying from 50/60hz.<p>In Ireland they broke a record a few years back for having 50% of the electric generation coming from wind power. This was at the upper limit set by the grid operator (eirgrid) because above this level the frequency of the grid becomes unstable. Even though more wind power was available they didn't add it to the grid.
I think ultimately this will cause people to install these systems to run non-essentials, with automatic switchovers, and optional battery backup fed by solar. And yeah, the switchovers and batteries will be expensive, but once utilities start doing this en masse people who want this bad enough will suck it up and get their personal benefit from using "free" electricity and possibly doing the planet good, rather than from selling electricity back.
How do we reconcile the fact that base-load generation (e.g. coal, nuclear) is hard to throttle, yet PV is increasingly sapping the profits from peak generation hours (i.e. mid-day) resulting in economic disruptions and perhaps ultimately in off-peak electricity disruptions as base-load generators become increasingly expensive to operate?<p>I personally think that that's the reason the brakes are being put on PV, and not the populist "robber baron" explanation offered by the article.
Typical transmission design is a loop for redundancy. Distribution lines will have loops, for the feeders, with an open point such that it is actually a radial system but one that can be fed from 2 substations/circuits. Laterals are the lines where there are no redundant circuits. The other option is networks, which are much more expensive but have much more redundancy.<p>Lateral design: typically a load curve is used to calculate the maximum load for each service point. The system is typically designed to handle close to that amount. If a house has a 200 A main breaker then it can use up to 160 A of current (unless the NEC changed since I did this type of work). Typically a house will never use 160 A even at peak load, but better safe than sorry so a 37.5 kVA transformer is probably used.<p>The power is designed to flow from upstream (substation) to downstream (point of service). The system protection (reclosers, fuses, circuit breakers, etc.) are designed to interrupt over-current from the downstream headed upstream. The exception to this is a network design where protection is designed to protect equipment in both directions. Network design does not happen much at the distribution level, although it is used in major cities.<p>If customer(s) are(is) adding power to the system then at a certain point you will have reverse power flow. And if the system is not designed for this, then bad things could happen and customers are not happy when the electric company causes damages. So the utilities want to be careful.<p>If the rate payers (customers) want a reliable system with the ability to feed power back onto the system then there will be a cost associated with it.<p>For the most part utilities have a monopoly granted by the state and are good at lobbying to protect their interests. What is best for the customer might not be best for the utility.
Today, there's another thread on the front page [1] related to the Google Fiber "no servers" clause.<p>So, be it information or energy I can't help but notice the similarities there. Our networks were essentially designed, decades ago, for mass production and consumption, I have no doubt we'll end with more distributed energy production and storage means similar to what happens with the rise of fast, symmetric Internet connections but in the meantime we'll see a lot of these stories while the evolution finds its way.<p>Regarding the electricity consumption, we have access to the French realtime data online [2], I don't know if there's the equivalent in the U.S., I'll be curious to see the data for Hawaii. It's interesting to note how the daily consumption patterns differs between summer and winter (we have a lot of electric heating in the winter and little, albeit increasing, AC in the summer). Obviously there's a limit to how much PV you can plug on the grid without proper storage but it doesn't seem that's already a problem.<p>[1] <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6949326" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6949326</a>
[2] <a href="http://www.rte-france.com/fr/developpement-durable/eco2mix/consommation-d-electricite" rel="nofollow">http://www.rte-france.com/fr/developpement-durable/eco2mix/c...</a>
There is no technical mystery here. We just need the right legislation to awake utilities from their century-long sleep on infrastructure investment. Americas grid is an embarrassment.
I don't know about net metering, but you can build a serviceable system with 12 volt PV cells, recovered UPSs, and some lead-gel batteries (which you should store outside). You can use car alternator diodes for overvoltage protection. Should I draw a schematic?
What is completely unnecessary is connecting your solar power equipment to HECO's systems.<p>Buy some good deep cycle batteries and store your own power off grid.<p>I live in an area which HECO has chosen not to serve, so that solar is a no brainer.<p>$0.49 per Kilowatt Hour is what HELCO (Hawaii Electric Light Company, HECO's Hawai'i County subsidiary) charges, which is the highest price for electricity in the USA.<p>I certainly don't need a $35,000 solar power system, I'm getting by on a system which cost me about $5k.<p>My basic needs are refrigeration and lights, as well as power for small electronics.<p>For high draw appliances I use a gasoline powered generator. (washer, propane dryer, power tools, etc)<p>Screw HECO!
What is the power utilities number one priority? Profit? Supplying power? Providing reliable power? Serving its customers? Buying back power from PV arrays?<p>If you answered any of these, you're wrong. The number one priority (at least in the utility I contracted at) was safety. Safety was front and centre in almost all design decisions related to power system control, and was the dominant company culture. Even "low" voltage distribution of 230v is dangerous without the correct equipment and training.<p>Let's put aside the issues with local transformers and substations - at the end of the day, AC power are relatively straightforward systems (though they are far from simple). The control of those systems is, actually, quite complex, and deals with multiple failure states. Adding PV supply into the mix is problematic. Though well studied, it appears that without better electical signalling (for example, overlaid at the local sub/transformer), Islanding will continue to be an issue.<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islanding" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islanding</a>
My ConEd bill is broken up into delivery and generation charges. I think it is fair for you to be able to sell power back to the grid, but either at the whole sale generation cost; or alternatively the generation cost less the delivery cost. Allowing you to sell it wholesale like any other power producer seems like it could be a reasonable compromise. That amount might fluctuate too much to be something understandable or usable. If the distribution cost is deducted from the amount you net meter, that would also compensate the utility for having to build the infrastructure to handle the reverse power flow. This second alternative, of course, has the disadvantage that the power is "delivered" twice (and thus charged twice).
This is nothing new, Germany had similar issues several years ago:<p><a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-09-29/utilities-giving-away-power-as-wind-sun-flood-european-grid.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-09-29/utilities-giving-aw...</a>
I saw a whole house natural gas electrical generator at Costco for only $2000 I think.<p>If the grid wont take you I wonder if someone could use solar panels during the day and use the generator at night. Wouldn't that be cheaper than batteries?
Unless the energy companies get to make a profit on solar power they will fight it tooth and nail with lobbying and legislation, no matter how good it is for the environment.<p>Why not set up a system where energy companies install and maintain solar panels on peoples' houses and then charge for the maintenance as a service (as opposed to individuals paying for their own panels in order to reduce their power bills)? That way they will be incentivized to not only offer solar power, but to invest in technology to also make it more efficient. Also individual home owners will not need to outlay such a large initial cost.
I'm a little late to this game but I've heard similar stories years before (maybe California and Germany?)<p>Does anyone know if utilities are changing their installation design books? To me that would be the first place to start. I don't know about Hawaii but I know in other parts of the US massive subdivisions are being put in on a regular basis. I would hope that those new subdivisions would be geared to support this use case.
It must be nice to have the option of solar panels, at present I have a metre of snow on my roof and that's on the south side.<p>And that's after I spent three hours shovelling off as much as I could before the ice storm hit us today.<p>It snow 15cm before the ice storm now I'm back to square one.<p>I'd like to have solar panels but I can't see how I could keep them from being covered in snow without shovelling them off off at least once per week Dec to Feb.