[4d4m]

I mean, what power grid provider makes it easy to work with them to sell solar back to the grid? Bogus fees, negative rate metering, and lobbying against the consumer drives consumers to ever-cheaper solar and storage options.

This is self inflicted behavior from monopolies that ignore user research.

[strken]

What's wrong with negative electricity pricing? Are utilities meant to let consumers overvolt the grid and use their industrial customers and utility-scale generators to counteract it without any compensation or disincentive?

[snailmailstare]

I have no roof but I would happily have a day of battery around in the bad weather and use it to drastically cut my electricity costs in good weather. In a world with competitive grids or grids that couldn't charge negative, I think some regulatory complexity would suddenly evaporate and someone much like the paradoxical utility sponsored energy saving consultant might show up to help me do that.

[rstuart4133]

We are going through the same thing in Australia. In fact I suspect it's happening everywhere with solar.

The current solutions look to be market based, which boils down to getting rid of "one fixed price per kWh" and moving to something closer to paying whatever the wholesale market is charging. Not exactly that as the wholesale market is wild. It can varying by over a factor of 1000 during the year. What has happened is time of use charging which boils down to different fix rates for different times of the day. Controlled loads, which translates to the supplier being able to forcibly turn off things in your house. If you agree to that for your car charger for example, you get to pay about USD $0.05/kWh to charge your car. And there are demand charges, which means you don't pay per kW/h used but rather your peak draw in kW over a 3 month period.

Net metering was never a thing here, but now they can forcibly turn off the feed-in. In return they where used to set the maximum feed-in very conservatively based on how much the grid could absorb form every panel in the suburb at the worst possible time, now they will take the maximum your wiring supports.

Finally they now allow households to form themselves into power plants, that sell the power they generate / store directly on the wholesale market.

Meanwhile, the story is talking about grids disallowing net metering as a big step. It ain't a big step. It wasn't even a first step for Australia, as the distortions it caused were obvious so it was never allowed.

It looks to me like Australia has largely solved the day to day "grid instability" problem the article talks about. We do have places whose yearly average is 70% renewable, and they are fine. I'm not so sure about how them solving the "sun hasn't shined and the wind hasn't blown" for a week issue. It's not insurmountable as even on cloudy days, solar outputs 20% of peak. However, right now the solution in that 70% state is gas peakers.

[DCH3416]

It depends on the utility company. Some are better than others.

The grid is a utility. They weren't originally built with the idea of customers sending power back at a small scale. So it's tricky to maintain power fluctuations when you have all these extra data points. Plus considerations for the quality of consumer hardware. So naturally companies would prefer to have solar installations at scale as opposed to by residential basis.

[flyinghamster]

ComEd, the main electrical provider in northern Illinois, actively encourages homes and businesses to install solar power and offers net metering to solar-equipped customers.

https://www.comed.com/smart-energy/my-green-power-connection...

[conradev]

> After ComEd receives confirmation that the project has passed municipal inspection, it can take anywhere from 6 to 18 weeks to complete the permanent residential electric service and up to 6 months for a permanent industrial electric service, depending on the amount of work required.

6 month turnaround sounds pretty weak.

https://secure.comed.com/MyAccount/MyService/Pages/RequestIn...

[sanderjd]

Six months for "permanent industrial electric service" sounds pretty reasonable, actually.

[conradev]

Oh, yes, I misread. 6-18 weeks still is a high enough barrier to drive a lot of people away.

[sanderjd]

The residential one seems a bit high, but the industrial one doesn't seem crazy to me.

[conradev]

Yep, very reasonable

[mrguyorama]

If 6-18 weeks turns you off from an investment that will fully pay itself off in 5-10 years, what are you even doing?

[0_____0]

How long do you expect it to take?

Related: I've been trying to get my electric company to register the meters they installed in August so I can get billed properly. It's been months of back and forth. I just want to pay them money for electricity, it's all I want from them.

[pests]

Had a similar situation back in 2018/2019. Electric company offered a flat rate for electric vehicle charging but you needed to install a second meter. Took them forever to install the actual meter (it had been jumped by the electricians and covered by cardboard) and then months of not being billed for it.

[conradev]

California can permit standard residential installations same-day with SolarAPP+

[0_____0]

That's fantastic, I wish simple things could be permitted that fast here. It takes weeks for simple stuff to get approved here.