[ghouse]

To be clear, net metering was never "paying" customers, but instead providing them a credit for the energy they delivered during the period they delivered it. So, export power during the "off-peak" period, you build a credit at rate slightly less than the retail rate which you can then debit from the "off-peak" bucket later. Generally (with some exception), any remaining credit at the end of an annual billing cycle is lost.

So, the characterization of paying exports for useless power and then getting it back during the 7 PM system peak isn't quite correct.

Strongly agree with you that price signals are important to impact behavior (human or system) which will result in a lower overall price for society, so long as regulators do their work (align price with cost).

[joshjob42]

From the perspective of the grid/utility it is fairly accurate though. They pay for electricity to be made at wholesale rates at every instant of time to meet demand. During the peak of the day in CA, wholesale electricity prices are near zero, and sometimes even go negative due to overproduction. Then in the evening they shoot through the roof. So they're getting power that can be even worse than useless during the day and having to provide it at the most expensive times to those same customers. The grid operator experiences this as basically buying useless trinkets (daytime solar) for massive amounts of gold (peak power demands that require capital intensive plants that hardly get used).

[ghouse]

Yes, that can be accurate in the spring, though with more than 2 GW of batteries now in CA, it's less common. One solution would be for them to charge less for electricity in the middle of the day (as the grid is awash) and thus provide a reduced credit for export in the middle of the day. Fundamentally, it's about aligning price with cost.