Here is another bad analogy: You are a farmer that grows tomatoes amongst other farmers with very little capital so you give them access to your trucks, equipment, and roads that you paid millions for for free so that they can get their tomatoes harvested and to market for free. You will eventually be overwhelmed by your “poor” neighbors as you infrastructure deteriorates over time. Your spouse smacks you on the head and says” We should be selling those tomatoes, that is what we do!”

It should be that small generators can effectively buy transportation on the grid like natural gas producers buy transportation for their product from a pipeline company. This transportation must be reasonable such that all parties can still make a reasonable amount of money on the transaction.

The second problem is the roll out of digital meters, the older meter with the spinning disk the disk would go backwards and forwards depending on your energy consumption, the new meters have a input register and output register so if your generation exceeds your consumption it does not zero out the input register. With the old meter it would run backwards effectively paying you the rate you paid to move the meter forward, with the digital meter any excess (more than your house is currently using ) goes out to the grid for free, talk about socialized systems. The PUC is hoping the reps will pay a fair price for the output but its not going to be near what you paid for the input.

David

Also, is there any limit on how much power the company has to buy, or could one sell as much as they can produce?

I’m curious about how this works anywhere in the US, so any info about any state is welcome.

.

please look at my youtube my solar install and the problems I have had with Texas net metering

Thanks,
Gerald Freeman

You’re also assuming something that your analogies don’t pick up: a kilowatt of electricity is the same whether it’s generated on a rooftop or at a power plant. A car you buy goes under certain depreciation once you drive it off the lot. If I grow a tomato in the backyard, I might be able to sell it for the same price as retail– have you not been to the Farmers’ Market?

What you’re advocating for is a monopoly on selling electricity by retailers– like HEB and Whole Foods mandating that you can’t sell your tomatoes to your neighbor, only to them, and only at wholesale prices that other large growers and selling at.

And let’s be frank– baseload wholesale power rates are drastically below peak rates. You shouldn’t be able to buy a kW of electricity for 2 cents from distributed solar generator during peak and then sell it to their neighbor at 8-12 cents. Likewise, I would say it was a raw deal if you had to be forced to pay peak prices for a kW produced off peak.

Let’s be fair to consumers and treat them like retailers. It is, in fact, the CUSTOMER who is always right.

.

Net metering is NOT like a customer returning a used car. Net metering IS like banking valuable electricity on the grid. Like a bank, the utility allows the customer to withdraw an equal amount of power at another time. And like a bank, the utility uses the valuable peak solar electricity to meet the demands of other customers.

Net metering is NOT akin to your neighbor trying to sell you his extra tomatoes at an inflated price when you clearly don’t need tomatoes. Net Metering IS like your neighbor offering you home-grown juicy tomatoes in the summer – when you are really craving tomatoes, in exchange for some of your home-grown corn in the fall.

Net metered customers are never offered a “fair price” for surplus electricity. Instead, net metering customers receive “fair credit” for their clean, peak power sent to the grid. Net metering is a solar energy bill arrangement – the utilities won’t be cutting a check to you if you go solar.

If you put solar on your house in Colorado, Florida, Nevada, Kentucky, Illinois (just to name a few of the 40 states with net metering), your utility will only charge you for your net consumption of electricity. Meaning that your bill will be calculated as follows: the total energy delivered to the customer minus any energy delivered by the customer to the distribution system for use by other customers.

And make no mistake, the power that Texan solar systems are delivering to the grid is incredibly valuable. The sun shines brightest when air conditioners send local power needs through the roof. Rather than building up expensive new centralized power plants, solar offers a quick and easy (not to mention, non-polluting) way to ensure the rest of the community can keep their lights on through periods of highest demand.

Right now retail electric providers (REPs) in the ERCOT region are not required to offer this solar energy bill arrangement. Which means that many solar customers are currently giving their REPs free solar power, and often at time when the REPs would be shelling out the most to buy pricey power. We don’t think that is a fair billing arrangement, and thus we have been advocating for years, with our friends at Environment Texas and others, for true net metering for the state.

Representative Galleo’s original amendment (CSHB 1243), as Luke mentioned, was not a true net metering bill, but it was a serious step in the right direction. We heralded his efforts to create a more equitable billing arrangement for solar customers.

Unfortunately, the latest iteration of the amendment is stripped down, and would only require utilities to offer net metering credit at some unspecified value greater than “zero.” I suspect that if Mr. Stewart was offered anything less than blue book for that used car of his, he would call the deal a scam. Why should REPs be allowed to credit solar power generation at a fraction of the price that they’re going to use to resell it?

Annie Carmichael
Federal Policy Director/Texas Lead
Vote Solar
http://www.votesolar.org
annie@votesolar.org

But, requiring retailers to purchase power back at a retail price simply doesn’t make sense. Let’s use an analogy. If you purchase a brand new car and decide to trade it in to the dealer, do you get to sell it back at a retail price? No, you don’t.

If you grow organic tomatoes in your back yard and sell what you don’t eat to your neighbors, do you get the same price as Whole Foods? No, you don’t.

H.B. 3693 establishes a floor price for unused power sent back onto the grid. That’s a reasonable state policy to encourage more consumers to use distributed solar and wind power systems. We support that. We also support the part of Senator Fraser’s S.B. 545 that creates a roughly $100 million solar rebate program.

The Sierra Club and the Environmental Defense Fund also support the amendment to H.B. 1243 that Mr. Metzger writes about. Unfortunately, his explanation of it isn’t completely accurate regarding our point of view.

The issue is whether state policy should require retail electric providers, in a competitive market, to purchase power back at an artificially inflated price. Our view is that it should not. That doesn’t mean we don’t support the intent of this bill. It simply means we have different point of view on how to accomplish it.

TXU Energy supports solar power and will buy surplus at a fair price. If the Legislature wants to provide an additional subsidy, then it can appropriate funds or find some equitable means to spread the cost of that subsidy to all customers.