What Replaces 1:1 Net Metering?

One recent area of interest to me is net metering of homeowner-installed energy generation systems - and what’s likely to replace it in the long term.  I’m in the process of designing a solar and energy storage system for my property, and I like to design for the long term - a 20-30 year design life of the installed hardware, with a refresh around then (hopefully) to carry the system for the rest of my life.  I optimistically have another 60 years to live, and I don’t plan to move at any point in those 60 years (or, at least, will have an operating home base here), so designing long term systems is an interesting challenge.


This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://www.sevarg.net/2019/11/10/what-replaces-net-metering/

(Comments from Blogger)

2019-11-13 by EugeneGTI

As a guy with rooftop solar and industrial tariffs afficionado: great post. Looking forward to your thoughts on state of small scale grid-tied battery storage to battle the duck curve… or price-driven IFTT large loads (e.g. vehicle charging)


2019-11-13 by ToddG

I’ve been following your blog for years now, love it. Thank you for the excellent articles. I’d love to hear your thoughts on OpenADR vs. IEEE 2030.5. I spent the summer building a data pipeline to pull data from CAISO and generate Sqlite3 databases. The goal is to accelerate research and development into how to de-carbonize the grid both rapidly and cost effectively.

Project Home Page (GPL3)
Energy Dashboard • Enviro Software Solutions, LLC.

Background on the energy sector
energy-dashboard-tutorials/energy-dashboard-presentation-nov-14-2019.pdf at master · energy-analytics-project/energy-dashboard-tutorials · GitHub

Tutorial on how to use these datasets
energy-dashboard-tutorials/tutorial-01-caiso-oasis-renewables.pdf at master · energy-analytics-project/energy-dashboard-tutorials · GitHub

I’ll be presenting at a meetup here in Seattle tomorrow, and I’ll add a link to your blog in my notes.

Thanks again,
-ToddG


2019-11-14 by Russell Graves

In general, I don’t expect small scale battery storage to make that much sense for most people simply for load shifting. It’s going to be cheaper and more effective for substation-scale batteries to be deployed around the power grid - and, importantly, that helps power companies with their peak transmission issues. Lines have to be sized for peak annual demand, which is typically a matter of a few hours a year. Being able to service those loads without having to upgrade lines is worth a /lot/ to them.

For home scale car charging, I don’t think they’re likely to be that large a problem beyond “shifting evening peak.” Yes, you “need” 50 terrawatts to charge a long range Tesla in 15 seconds, but in reality, most people just don’t drive more than 30-40 miles a day. That’s 10kWh, spread out over hours of charging. I still don’t have 240V charging at home for our Volt, because we just don’t really need it. I’ll do it at some point, as it would reduce our winter gas use a hair, but… practically, even with a longer range BEV, we’d be fine on 120V charging 99% of the time.

Large loads are already covered under demand schedules, and I expect large facilities to use batteries to help buffer that and smooth it out, because if you can cut your demand charges, that pays for a large battery in a hurry. Throw in some rooftop solar, and for a big warehouse, I think we’ll be seeing a lot of creative approaches to reducing their power draw to a steady load.

Now, we will see a lot of small scale home batteries, but only in places with failing infrastructure like rural CA.


2019-11-14 by Russell Graves

Todd -

I’m not familiar enough with OpenADR vs IEEE 2030.5 to have an opinion on them. It looks like an interesting project, though a bit CA-specific at the moment.

Feel free to get in touch with me via the contact form if you want to talk about this sort of thing more, though!


2019-11-18 by Unknown

Check out www.levll.com
I made it to help fine tune your electrical consumption for a variety of case uses… Demand, TOU, off-grid etc.

No batteries. (Solarwonk/renewables4life)