Awful: Dominion to charge fee to heavy users of solar power

jaggedben · November 2011

Saw this on another forum. Pretty bad.

http://hamptonroads.com/2011/11/dominion-charge-fee-heavy-users-solar-power

BB. · November 2011

Re: Awful: Dominion to charge fee to heavy users of solar power

More or less, I expected this to happen (charging reservation or standby charges for solar PV systems).

About 1/2 the cost of power delivered to your home is the cost of energy--The other 1/2 is the cost of transmission/distribution/etc. of power.

And this mirror's both commercial billing (at least in California) where large users pay about 1/2 their bill for power, and the other 1/2 of their bill is based on their 15 minute (over the last year) peak energy usage (or even generation--as I read the plans). Also, our rate plans include "charges" for people that generate their own power--Those fees (in California) are waved for <10kW renewable energy installations, but they are still there ready to be used by PUC/Utilities if they wanted.

Will this hurt the solar business... Yea. But as solar becomes more and more popular (California is around 1% of generation capacity--of apparently mostly small solar installs), companies are going to have to make up the revenue somewhere. Either on the backs of GT Solar owners (like me) or on the "rest" of the customer base (--my peak metering plan is $0.51 per kWH pdf download during summer peaks and for heavy power users of >~1,000 kWH per month).

I look at $0.11 per kWH billing from the linked article--and think of the "good old days". :roll:

-Bill

solar_dave · November 2011

Re: Awful: Dominion to charge fee to heavy users of solar power

That is pretty bad, his excess goes right into his neighbors house and they get to sell that for profit.

The right way for power companies to do it is like AZ. kWh credits 1 for 1 and at year end pay a generation avoidance amount back the owner. It is fair and it makes money by selling those electrons at the premium generation and transmission rates without adding anything in infrastructure.

mike95490 · November 2011

Re: Awful: Dominion to charge fee to heavy users of solar power

"looks like your roof might be able to hold some solar PV, we'll tax you for that option...."

sub3marathonman · November 2011

Re: Awful: Dominion to charge fee to heavy users of solar power

One of the comments was interesting: "PS if you want to conform to code in VA Beach you MUST connect to the grid." I don't see how that can be required. Is that really true?

mike95490 · November 2011

Re: Awful: Dominion to charge fee to heavy users of solar power

sub3marathonman wrote: »

One of the comments was interesting: "PS if you want to conform to code in VA Beach you MUST connect to the grid." I don't see how that can be required. Is that really true?

True in most cities, or the house will be red tagged. Tap water and sewer service are also red tag items.
Something the "$200 make a PV from a junk pile" scammers forget to tell their clients.

Blackcherry04 · November 2011

Re: Awful: Dominion to charge fee to heavy users of solar power

All the Utilities are hedging their bets. My Gas Company added a $12.50 a month service fee this year. They know once you start producing, they know we'll be using less gas.

solar_dave · November 2011

Re: Awful: Dominion to charge fee to heavy users of solar power

Blackcherry04 wrote: »

All the Utilities are hedging their bets. My Gas Company added a $12.50 a month service fee this year. They know once you start producing, they know we'll be using less gas.

Yeah my gas company nicks me for about 16.50 just to be attached. Most of the year we are down to 2-3 therms or less.

niel · November 2011

Re: Awful: Dominion to charge fee to heavy users of solar power

what a load of crap.
a standby charge????????????:grr
i thought that was the connection fee they all charge for on a monthly basis.

that really should be a stay connected fee as they don't come out to connect you every month. use is optional and you are billed for that in a separate category on your bill.

yes, they say only 1 person fits into that area of capacity, ---for now as they just want the initial foot in the door to scam and scare people away from having a real and viable option from their monopolies.

they are making off grid look better and better every day.;)

drees · November 2011

Re: Awful: Dominion to charge fee to heavy users of solar power

BB. wrote: »

More or less, I expected this to happen (charging reservation or standby charges for solar PV systems).

SDG&E is trying to do the same thing (search news.google.com for "SDG&E solar" - PG&E won't be far behind. The crazy thing is - I can't figure out exactly what the billing structure they've proposed to the PUC so there is no way to estimate how the one's bill will change.

FWIW - SDG&E wants to eventually impose this billing structure across all customers - not just solar. After all - Grandma who spends most of her time reading and goes to bed shortly after sunset but does a load of laundry a week and has an electric dryer must pay her fair share - that 5 kW demand her weekly load of laundry imposes must be billed accordingly! Never mind that her bill will go up $20-40 / month.

BB. wrote: »

And this mirror's both commercial billing (at least in California) where large users pay about 1/2 their bill for power, and the other 1/2 of their bill is based on their 15 minute (over the last year) peak energy usage (or even generation--as I read the plans).

Demand charges are common on all medium/large commercial connections across all utilities as far as I can tell. The cost per kW of peak demand (typically measured over 15 minutes in a billing period) is anywhere from $7 / kW to $20 / kW that I've seen.

So if you have an office building that needs a lot of AC and will pull 100 kW during peak loads and your demand charge is $10 / kW, your demand charge will be $1,000. Don't forget to add on energy charges which are typically somewhere between $0.04 - $0.10 / kWh.

It's a huge incentive to do load management to avoid high peaks.

solar_dave · November 2011

Re: Awful: Dominion to charge fee to heavy users of solar power

APS in AZ has demand charge billing as well!, but the per kWh charge is much reduced if this plan is your choice.

http://www.aps.com/main/services/residential/rates/rates_29.html#super

This page shows how all available plans compare.

rollandelliott · November 2011

Re: Awful: Dominion to charge fee to heavy users of solar power

wow this sucks if I was the the guy with a 12kw array I would remove it to be a 9.99 kw array to avoid the stupid fees. or call up my senator /reps and see if anything could be done to change this junk

niel · November 2011

Re: Awful: Dominion to charge fee to heavy users of solar power

rollandelliott wrote: »

wow this sucks if I was the the guy with a 12kw array I would remove it to be a 9.99 kw array to avoid the stupid fees. or call up my senator /reps and see if anything could be done to change this junk

as i said, that is just to get their foot in the door on this as that will, without a doubt, open a pandoras box and that will eventually blanket that to all later. it boils down to greed and no real government overseeing in the interest of the consumer is taking place as they are Pretty Utterly Corrupt and i'll drop this with that as i'm sure many get what i'm saying.

BB. · November 2011

Re: Awful: Dominion to charge fee to heavy users of solar power

Then there is what California PUC is doing to the utility customers:

PUC secrecy on solar power costs puts users in the dark

The latest act of secrecy by the five-member PUC (commissioners are appointed by the governor to five-year terms, but he can't fire them) came in mid-November when it approved a contract that will see Pacific Gas & Electric Co. buy 617 gigawatt hours of electric power yearly from the yet-to-be-built Mojave Solar development in the high desert of San Bernardino County. That will be enough juice to power a medium-sized city.
....
In none of the cases have utility customers been told how much they'll pay for each solar kilowatt hour. All we know for sure is that short of installing rooftop solar panels, the greener power becomes, the more it will cost. For the most part, the big projects are backed by federal loan guarantees totaling almost $10 billion.

... The PUC has publicly said energy from Mojave Solar will cost consumers at least double the price of power from a conventional gas-fired generating station. Will that be 2.5 times as much or 200 times as much? We don't know.

The PUC cites a rule it adopted in 2005 as the reason for its secrecy. That rule allows price confidentiality to last between three and five years when it's "essential to avoid a repetition of electricity market manipulation" like what caused the energy crunch of 2001-2002.

-Bill

sub3marathonman · November 2011

Re: Awful: Dominion to charge fee to heavy users of solar power

niel wrote: »

as i said, that is just to get their foot in the door on this as that will, without a doubt, open a pandoras box and that will eventually blanket that to all later. it boils down to greed and no real government overseeing in the interest of the consumer is taking place as they are Pretty Utterly Corrupt and i'll drop this with that as i'm sure many get what i'm saying.

They have said exactly that, just buried among all the other "information." Another couple of interesting things are that they are requiring all small businesses to go to TOU rates, originally in 2013 but they compromised and said 2014, and that they were going to implement conservation rates of $0.99/kWh on days of high demand. I don't know if these two proposals have actually been adopted yet.

TnAndy · November 2011

Re: Awful: Dominion to charge fee to heavy users of solar power

BB. wrote: »

"All we know for sure is that short of installing rooftop solar panels, the greener power becomes, the more it will cost."

Well, uh, yeah, that's pretty much a given.

But doing your own ain't gonna be much cheaper, unless you factor in tax credits and such ( we have an infeed rate that is 12 cents/kw/hr over retail for the first 10 years ).

My system will produce about 6,000kw/hrs/yr......assume it does so for 25 years with zero maintenance ( not likely ), and the cost was 30k (w/o tax credits/infeed tariff). Tht works out to 20 cents/kwhr for my power for the next 25 years......little over twice the current retail rate of 9 cents.

James · November 2011

Re: Awful: Dominion to charge fee to heavy users of solar power

I was wondering when we would start seeing this.
I had a conversation with a buddy about a year ago and I said we were a long way off from this....maybe ten years or so.

Another example of how I'm wrong more often these days.
That is, what I might go as far as saying, an infringement of our basic civil rights.

I'm not net metering, but if they are going to get away with this charge, it won't be long before the"Solar Police" will be at my door.

niel · November 2011

Re: Awful: Dominion to charge fee to heavy users of solar power

solar police? yes, i guess that's possible, but they would be utility company rent a cops i would think.:roll::p

this brings to mind a question seeing as how i have some pvs pressed into off grid service even though my home does use utility power. now upon seeing the pvs, would they automatically assume a gt connection, legal or not, and just go ahead and charge you the extra based on the pvs they see on the roof or wherever one would have them mounted? it wouldn't be a case of innocent until proven guilty as this isn't the real police charging you with a crime and they may charge you extra $ until you prove no connection to their power lines. that would suck, but isn't beyond the realm of possibility.:grr

BB. · November 2011

Re: Awful: Dominion to charge fee to heavy users of solar power

In California, we are required by law to buyout the utility of its fixed asset costs before we can disconnect and generate our own power. As the utility has made investments based on "our"commitment to always be a utility customer.

GT Solar/RE less than 10kW is the only exemption.

-Bill

XRinger · November 2011

Re: Awful: Dominion to charge fee to heavy users of solar power

niel wrote: »

solar police? yes, i guess that's possible, but they would be utility company rent a cops i would think.:roll::p

this brings to mind a question seeing as how i have some pvs pressed into off grid service even though my home does use utility power. now upon seeing the pvs, would they automatically assume a gt connection, legal or not, and just go ahead and charge you the extra based on the pvs they see on the roof or wherever one would have them mounted? it wouldn't be a case of innocent until proven guilty as this isn't the real police charging you with a crime and they may charge you extra $ until you prove no connection to their power lines. that would suck, but isn't beyond the realm of possibility.:grr

Here's why it's good to live out in the deep woods and hide your PV,
so it can't be seen by visitors (or sneaky county employees).

Yeah, I see this as sales deterrent. Who is going to invest big bucks in PV,
when it could cost you more than it's worth a few years from now.?.
We know that cost per kwh is never going down over the long run.

Sorry, but your break-even date has been moved up to July 2081..

solar_dave · November 2011

Re: Awful: Dominion to charge fee to heavy users of solar power

Just thinking out loud,

I wonder since this is going to be a demand charge system if some smart electronics at the the consumer end and a battery bank to absorb those demand peaks wouldn't make sense, while still being grid tied.

This sounds like an opportunity to game right back at them. If the rates are based an a lower per kWh charge with a demand premium, a control system that prevents more then a couple of kWh peak should be possible. Don't demand peaks usually have to run for a fixed amount of time before they trigger the demand charge?

Just a rambling but it seems viable to me. I was thinking this with the link to the AZ rates posted earlier. You can buy some pretty cheap power from them if you can keep the demand peaks under control.

drees · November 2011

Re: Awful: Dominion to charge fee to heavy users of solar power

solar_dave wrote: »

This sounds like an opportunity to game right back at them. If the rates are based an a lower per kWh charge with a demand premium, a control system that prevents more then a couple of kWh peak should be possible. Don't demand peaks usually have to run for a fixed amount of time before they trigger the demand charge?

Yes, demand charges are usually the highest amount of load you pull (or push) to/from the grid in a 15 minute interval.

It definitely gives you incentive to reduce your gross demand on the utility - then what will happen is that they will just inflate the "grid connection fee".

BB. · November 2011

Re: Awful: Dominion to charge fee to heavy users of solar power

Yes, it is a valid method of controlling your use (adjusting your peak demand)... But not cheap to do this with batteries (at least these days).

And, if people figure out how to reduce their bills (such as with GT solar), then the PUC and Utilities will figure out how to get them back up again (demand/reservation chargers).

Same thing just happened with our garbage bill... New company when with full on recycling (green waste takes food, soiled paper; and more recycle can go in the blue recycling bin)--Now, they have to raise rates, too many people are going to the 1/2 sized "garbage" can and they have to raise rates (the "green and recycle" was "free" on our bill).

Who knew the cost of picking up trash (trucks, fuel, labor, separation buildings, etc.) was more than the dump fees. :roll:

-Bill

solar_dave · November 2011

Re: Awful: Dominion to charge fee to heavy users of solar power

drees wrote: »

Yes, demand charges are usually the highest amount of load you pull (or push) to/from the grid in a 15 minute interval.

It definitely gives you incentive to reduce your gross demand on the utility - then what will happen is that they will just inflate the "grid connection fee".

Yeah they always have a way to get ya.

I sort of do this now but for different reasons, I generate enough excess on peak most days that I have moved loads to on peak midday to take advantage of it and reduce my off peak purchases. But his only is good in AZ where they don't give you direct dollars for the net metering, but a kWh credit within the billing time period, ie on peak generation can only be applied to on peak demand.

XRinger · November 2011

Re: Awful: Dominion to charge fee to heavy users of solar power

drees wrote: »

Yes, demand charges are usually the highest amount of load you pull (or push) to/from the grid in a 15 minute interval.

It definitely gives you incentive to reduce your gross demand on the utility - then what will happen is that they will just inflate the "grid connection fee".

This kind of billing is going to cause a demand for clothes driers that use less
peak power, because they run 3 times longer per load..

Of course your drier motor takes a beating..

Yeah, I can see it now.. A little green button marked "Eco Mode"..

Yikes!! It's already on washers!!
washer+controls+1.jpg

drees · November 2011

Re: Awful: Dominion to charge fee to heavy users of solar power

XRinger wrote: »

This kind of billing is going to cause a demand for clothes driers that use less
peak power, because they run 3 times longer per load..
Of course your drier motor takes a beating..

Yeah, I can see it now.. A little green button marked "Eco Mode"..

Yikes!! It's already on washers!!

Heh - yep, it sure is. People will stop using the high-heat setting and opt for the low-heat setting. Or worse - use clothes lines and get rid of the dryer!

Awful: Dominion to charge fee to heavy users of solar power

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