[glenstein]

The trouble with this logic is that public utility commissions across the country have measured the impact that solar has on the grid, and found that not only does it not impose a cost, but it confers a benefit, in some studies up to 33 cents per kilowatt hour.

I completely agree with your core point, which is that there need to be costs associated with impact on the grid, to make sure that there's no incentivization of freeloading in either direction. Whether utilities owe solar owners a one time payment, an ongoing payment, or should be contributing to the financing of new construction of solar panels is an open question imo.

[sephamorr]

Source please? I'm aware of the large costs in the opposite direction due to the freeloading you mention:

https://energyathaas.wordpress.com/2024/04/22/californias-ex...

[glenstein]

This is from the Maine PUC, other PUCs across the country do their own studies. Maine is on the high side, but all but one PUC that I'm aware of have calculated positive values.

https://www.utilitydive.com/news/maine-puc-study-values-sola...

[pfdietz]

That link is from 2015, so I suspect it's talking about benefits at very low penetration.

Clearly things become very different at very high penetration. I mean, if everyone is net metering, who is consuming the excess power? Who is paying for the power plants that these people use when not providing their own power? The economics would go all to hell.

[rtkwe]

I think we'll have to go to floating rates for bought power to solve that. If there really is no where for the power to go the price of power from solar should fall to zero or below. The economics of your night load plants/storage gets tricky then though because you're losing time when you would currently be making money to solar but they still need to exist to provide power during the night or when there's bad weather all day and you don't get much solar power.

[rtkwe]

I think the utilities are moving very early with their flat rate charges but I don't think they're wrong in the long term that a flat rate will be required to fund the grid in the future. I'm thinking about the point where a large majority of customers have sufficient solar generation to cover their entire energy usage for the day on average, those people still need generation or storage of power during the night when solar doesn't work so somewhere they'll need to continue paying for power generation or storage during the night. This is probably doable with time based rates instead but we'll have to see and even then we'll probably need some flat rate to account for people with local storage because they also exist as a cost to service.

[glenstein]

So as I mentioned in my previous comment, public utilities commissions across the country have all run their own independent studies of the value of bringing solar on the grid measured against its costs and generally found it to be a net positive rather than a negative. Those studies encompass things that you're talking about such time base rates, cost of mobilizing peaking and base load production, efficiencies from consuming power on site instead of having to send it through the transmission and distribution system, etc

[rtkwe]

I'm not talking about now. I thought I made that clear enough but I'm talking about in the future with extremely high levels of solar self sufficient customers. All of those need power during the night so absent huge grid storage you'll need nuclear or hydro to provide reliable night time power all of which costs money.

I'm all for massive solar investments it's a great path forward but there are issues we'll have to address.