Net Metering Debate

They charge you for feeding excess power back into the grid?

Essentially you don't get paid to take the energy of their hands; you get paid to use energy so the grid doesn't overload. Crashing the grid is expensive as it means you won't be able to sell power (at 52Hz or so the grid operators start disconnecting larger power sources like nuclear power, above and the grid may have to be collapsed). So it's in the best interests of the power generator sites to sell energy at a loss if there is too much in the grid to push consumers (ie, b

Any reasonable grid would also be wired such that the power you generate will first go to your neighbors, if they need it, instead of 'round-tripping' to the utility and back. So, the utility is taking a huge cut even though it isn't really a factor in the transaction.There are of course large-scale infrastructure costs (you get to fail-over to nuclear/coal/gas/wind/other), but it seems like all of those things should be accounted separately instead of all b

For a couple of reasons.- They aren't transmitting it, which has a cost. They aren't providing value add like the power company.- They could pay wholesale if they figured out a way to get the electricity from the power plant to their house, which is the value add that the power company provides.- They have a choice in how much they buy, by turning things on and off. The power company, being a regulated utility, does not have that choice. They must buy as much as is demanded

Joe Six Pack already pays a basic charge for his access to the grid.The issue seems to be that PoCos have decided to mix all the infrastructure costs into the variable price of the energy you consume. When your solar power makes you a net producer of energy, that scheme no longer works. But I don't see why we have to institute a new tax to fix their broken pricing model.

You are misunderstanding the wholesale price that the utility companies pays with the price they ultimately charge the consumer. For the consumers, the electricity was not free nor negative. They were charged their regular rate.But yes, negative prices incentivize large scale batteries or other ways to make the supply and demand match up better.

It's really simple.Every grid user should pay retail price for power at the spot retail price when they buy it from the gridEvery grid user should be paid retail price for power at the spot retail price when they send it to the grid.Every grid user should pay a grid connection fee.So sure, the grid is a "free battery", but time of use is taken into account.If there's a huge spike in electricity prices just after sundown that's fine. People will have an in

Marginal rate for power is small, yes. But the grid consumers are paying for the whole grid. Of course they are, somebody has to.

If they charged the true cost of the grid and dropped kw pricing to the true cost, people would have little incentive to conserve the limited resource that is electricity generated.It is more like the supply/demand has set a price for KWs and the margin the electricity companies make on it is used to subsidize the cost of the network.

1) They go down but not to zero. Consider a hypothetical person with excess solar and a large power bank, they still cost money to serve and build reserve capacity for when events require them to pull from the grid.2) They don't and there was a LOT of complaining about not getting paid full rates by early solar adopters.3) I'm fine with it. The power grid is one of the natural monopolies where state operation makes more sense than the weird quasi private marketless mess we have n