[JshWright]

> It's to the point where they're charging people for being hooked up at all

That's a completely reasonable thing to do... You're saying you would expect them to be ready to provide electrical service at a moment's notice, 24/7, but you should only pay for the actual power you use, but not for the standby capacity?

[msandford]

Yes, of course I agree it's reasonable. But it does serve to illustrate the point that utilities aren't necessarily happy about people being able to generate and store their own power. I'm refuting the idea that utilities will be happy about this, not trying to prove that they're evil bastards.

I'd also be happy to sign a contract whereby I'm only allowed X watts of draw and no more than Y watts of feed-in such that they don't need to have much standby capacity for me. But if I do that I want to get real-time pricing on power so that when it gets cheap or negative that I can charge batteries or make ice or whatever.

To me it kind-of feels like the utilities are pushing for a heads-they-win-tails-we-lose kind of situation where you get paid "base load" wholesale for your solar even if it's at peak times, but then have to pay retail for everything.

I know a guy who used to run a power company here in Houston (we've got a utility owned grid with many retailers making use of the "last mile" to sell power) and he said that $50/MWh ($0.05/kWh) was the normal rate but on very hot days it might go as high as $1500/MWh ($1.50/kWh) as everyone scrambles to buy enough wholesale power to meet the demand of their customers.

I'm not necessarily saying that I should get the $1.50/kWh that the utility is paying the marginal producer. But it doesn't feel exactly fair that someone who is peak-shaving their load and saving the utility company from buying power at $1.50/kWh and selling it at $0.08/kWh should also have to pay a connection fee for even having solar at all.