Mon Sep 09, 2019 7:27 am
Agree, in most U.S. places PV excess can and should replace fossil choice, and this should not be protected by contract or otherwise.
Most States (unfortunately) have a long way to go before PV is crowding out other non-renewables on the duck curve. Places with coal and non-peaker natural gas are probably among the worst. States with lots of hydro also probably have a way to go as they can throttle back hydro generation somewhat during peak PV generation and function more as a battery to export more hydro electricity to neighboring States.
In CA, we have no coal and most NG is peaker plants, so the rest is non-CO2 generating and almost all of that is renewable. I can't speak to the contracts peaker plants have, so there may be work to improve here.
CA by far leads in PV installations and we're already at ~20% total system electricity generation (including home "being the meter" generation"). In less than 4 months all new houses in CA have to come with enough PV for net zero solar generation and this will happen in the near future in commercial buildings as well. So I think it make sense for the benefit of the home PV consumers and grid to continue to allow annual net metering but shift everyone to more grid sensible TOU plans.
The CPUC should promise home PV users a certain minimum number of years on a rate plan so they can make economically informed PV purchases. I did not read the fine print, and not sure there was any on our current generous E6 TOU plan we signed up for in 2012, but we will get ~10 years on that before we are un-grandfathered. On the E6 rate plan, they started notifying customers a few years ago that it would be terminated as such.
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