[epistasis]

My frame of mind is that residential solar has the potential to dramatically reduce transmission and grid costs, but there is no way to force the utilities to shift to that model, because they will make less money. And regulators are asleep at the wheel and beholden to the utilities they regulate.

Grids are sized for peak, and without solar that peak is midday in most places, meaning that distributed behind-the-meter solar makes the grid cheaper.

Utilities, when they argue that solar is worth less, are not arguing on the merits of the issue but only selectively advancing arguments that benefit them. They will never present the totality of the issue.

It is up to others to push back against utilities' narrow views with a more complete view of the picture and what's possible.

[jerkstate]

I think you've still got too much of an "us vs them" mentality about the utilities, its not so much that they are refusing to shift to that model per se, these shifts are ongoing and happening today (which is why you're getting paid 10c per kwh for unreliable solar, IMO definitely more than it's worth), but I think a lot of people have unrealistic expectations with how far things can be shifted without addressing the implicit assumptions, such as the reliability of the power. Like, if we downsize the transformer between your subdivision and the grid by too much, that subdivision will have brownouts on cloudy days. In order to avoid that, we could deploy industrial scale battery packs, which also costs a ton of money and requires ongoing maintenance; at that point, it's probably cheaper to just use a bigger transformer to connect to the greater grid, where we have nuclear, hydro, wind, commercial solar, and hydrocarbon generation, which can all be used in different situations to match the grid demand with supply on a larger economy of scale.

In conclusion, the retail price of your electricity includes the engineering and infrastructure required to make your power delivery reliable most of the time, which is much more valuable than the raw kilowatts coming off of your solar panels.

[epistasis]

I think you are giving the utilities far too much credit. They were bemoaning solar being even 5% of the grid, complaining that it would bring down everything. Seriously!

And if you didn't know that, and think that I'm too "us vs. them," then you should go look at the arguments made in regulatory proceedings and IRPs etc.

The utilities invoke preposterous technical arguments all the time. Yes, the grid should be reliable, but making it more decentralized and adding storage all over will make it far more reliable.

Industrial scale battery packs are quite often cheaper than new transmission lines. And we're going to need a lot more transmission or transmission alternatives in the future as more of our energy needs are electrified.

I don't dispute that some distribution might need to be upgraded to fully take advantage of the cost savings that distributed solar and storage present.

But you'll never find the utilities making the case for engineering a more reliable cheaper system, if that system is cheaper, because they will make less money. It would be financially irresponsible for them to make that case, and in fact they must try their hardest to increase the amount of money that is spent on fixed grid assets, that they can directly rate base.

This is not being overly "us vs. them" this is simple economics and incentives of regulated monopolies. Utilities are great at responding to the financial incentives put before them. Sometimes those financial incentives are making the grid reliable. But I don't know of a single regulated monopoly that has been financially incentivized to lower grid costs.

[ThatPlayer]

Peak is not usually midday; peak is in in the evening when people get home from work. So in places like California and Hawaii, you get the opposite problem where the solar drops off right before peak demand and you have to ramp up other generators to make up for it. It's called the duck curve problem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck_curve

The United States electric grid data is freely available and pretty neat: https://www.eia.gov/electricity/gridmonitor/dashboard/electr... Choose a grid or a state to get regional time and you can see that region's peak will usually be 4-7pm. You can even see that weekend peaks are a bit lower, and that there's a second peak at ~10am when people get to work.

[epistasis]

My sentence was "and without solar that peak is midday in most places." Remove the solar and California has a huge midday peak. Watch it shift over the years into the evening as more residential solar was added to the California grid:

https://www.caiso.com/Documents/CaliforniaISOPeakLoadHistory...

(Note also in your visualisation that all times are Eastern and should be adjusted for different localities. And if you go to a summer week rather than a winter week, you'll find the true peak, which is much higher, and which has a pretty standard curve with a peak that overlaps sunlight hours.)

[ThatPlayer]

That's why I said choose a region to get regional time. California's chart shows the time in Pacific time: https://www.eia.gov/electricity/gridmonitor/dashboard/electr...

They have this summer's data too, though no way to link directly, and it still peaks at ~7pm: https://i.imgur.com/16mssuH.png . Using the 16th as an example, a peak demand of 44,008 megawatthours @ 20H PDT. Comparing that to their generation graphs, which you can separate into sources, like solar. On the 16th, peak solar generation is at 11 @ 13,201 megawatthours. By 6PM, it's down to 853 megawatthours. By peak time, it's nothing. My own residential solar matches that curve on that date.

[secabeen]

Peak load without solar is not midday. Here's an NYT article from 1975 about introduction of Time of Use billing describing peak rates being in the morning and evening:

> Mrs. Wells changed her housework habits because for part of the year it costs her more than six times as much to use electricity from 8 A.M. to 11 A.M. and 5 P.M. to 9 P.M. as it costs during the rest of the day.

https://www.nytimes.com/1975/06/29/archives/experimenting-wi...

Current CAISO data shows that overall demand still peaks in the late afternoon to early evening. I picked a day in mid-august, and demand at 7pm is 40% higher (39GW) than at solar noon of 1pm (29GW).

https://www.caiso.com/todays-outlook

[epistasis]

You're making a blanket statement about peak time which is incorrect.

Historically in Califorinia, peak load has been in the afternoon, which I count as midday. At least, it's when solar panels are still pumping out a ton of power:

https://www.caiso.com/Documents/CaliforniaISOPeakLoadHistory...

You're posting a random day in winter in California, where overall consumption is low even at its highest, because there's very little demand for cooling. True peak for the California grid is ~50GW, not 25GW like today. You're also omitting all the residential solar that never gets on the grid that drives down midday demand in that graph.

Texas also has midday peaks, here's today and you'll see that even though its winter and very little AC is needed, peak is midday:

https://www.ercot.com/content/cdr/html/loadForecastVsActualC...

My statement was qualified with "most places." There will undoubtedly be some places with other peaks for which solar will not shave the peak. But in most places distributed solar will shave the peak.

[secabeen]

> You're posting a random day in winter in California, where overall consumption is low even at its highest, because there's very little demand for cooling.

You're just seeing the data for today. You can select any day you want.

Let's look at a really generous day for you, the peak annual usage from 2020: 47,121 MW on August 18 @ 15:57. On this day, the peak was indeed at 15:57. However, the demand remains high for hours past that. Demand is above 99% of peak until 5:30pm and above 90% of peak until almost 9pm. Solar production is down to under 1000MW by 6:45pm. Thus we have over 2 hours of near-peak demand when solar is not helping at all. No amount of additional solar (without batteries) will ever cover that 6:45-9pm period of high (if not peak, but it's close) demand.

https://www.caiso.com/todays-outlook

[vel0city]

> peak load has been in the afternoon, which I count as midday

Mid day is the middle of the day, as in noon. You might as well be arguing that you define three as five.

5PM is not "mid day". So you're cherry-picking time frames, making up definitions for things, and still not showing a mid day peak energy use, you're showing a late afternoon energy use.