New payment system needed for utilities....

Today's post: Wednesday, 7-1-2009

We need an 80% reduction in fossil fuel use by 2050 to avoid the worst global warming effects. And, practically speaking, we need to also double our electricity generation and double the useful work done per unit of electricity & other energy sources as well during that same time to have a decent economy.

As I’ve posted many times and many other people have said, correctly I think, we need a massive increase in renewable energy, particularly electricity generated by renewable energy to come anywhere near to the increases we need so badly.

So reasonable incentives for every kind of solar or wind generated electricity are, I think, absolutely imperative.

One of those incentives is for anyone who is both on the grid of their local utility and has solar electric generation, particularly from photovoltaic panels, or who has wind energy powered electric generation to be able to sell ALL of any excess they generate above their own use to their local utility either on a feed-in tariff that pays better than the rate the utility needs to pay for electricity generated in other ways – OR – to at least pay the same price.

Further, this is particularly important in the American Southwest for California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, and the western part of Texas. And of those, it’s most important in California due to its unusually sunny summers with no rain.

Why? Because the peak loads in this area are for airconditioning use during exactly those days that are sunniest. So the times when more solar built to make money from selling electricity back to the utilities and the weather is sunny, these solar sources will allow the utilities to avoid needing to build new power plants for this peak demand. It also will allow the utilities to more often avoid rolling blackouts and the like. The solar electricity they’ll get will mostly prevent that since it will peak at those exact same times.

So, I have been quite displeased to know that the utilities in California will only allow you to cut your electric bill to zero if you feed them back as much electricity when you can as you take from them at other times. If you feed back more than you use, you get nothing for it. Oops!!

Then at first I was both astonished and angry to learn that both PG&E and Southern California Edison are lobbying AGAINST even allowing everyone who installs solar to get the deal they have been offering. They want to limit the number of people who can use it or even stop doing it.

Given the value of that solar electricity that I’ve just described to the utilities and how badly we need more incentives we to build more solar electric generation and wind, this is extremely unfortunate. We need them to do the exact opposite.

HOWEVER, they have a legitimate concern that I completely agree with that is driving their resistance.

In fact, it’s one of the reasons I had my family stay with PG&E when for a time I could have paid a “greener” electricity provider.

Utilities have considerable infrastructure costs to build and maintain their grid. If they suddenly begin to make no money generating electricity they will have no money to pay these costs – or too little. Since we need them to build more of the grid to connect larger renewable energy sources to their users and to install more of the “smart grid technology” to best manage and be efficient in delivering the electricity over the grid, this concern is not only valid, it’s correct and very important to address it.

In conclusion, I think they have a completely valid concern but a horribly dangerous and terribly wrong method of addressing it.

Clearly we need for our utilities to charge us two fees instead of one.

We need them to charge a certain minimum to be connected to the grid plus a charge for providing the grid that is adjusted for the size of the demands a given customer puts on it. Then we need a separate charge for the net electricity they generate and provide to customers.

By setting this up well, they would then be enabled to BOTH pay to build and maintain the grid AND pay for electricity customers give them from renewable energy sources.

THAT is what they should be lobbying for instead.

Why aren’t they doing so?

Just in case they haven’t thought of it or have been told it can’t be done, I thought I’d suggest it in this post.

Not only is it likely doable and definitely the right thing to do, they can get a lot of support from the people who know how badly we need more renewable sources in really large numbers. And, mercifully, today that includes the Federal Government and the President.