Nathan Perry

Solar Energy Advocate | Policy Consultant | Customer Education Specialist

[Nathan Perry @nathan2grid]

@itsalexvacca Content

[Nathan Perry @nathan2grid]

@xiaowang1984 Businesses are already dealing with high rates now and still operate.

Lower the cost to manufacture, transport, store, and sell during a big part of daytime business hours and the economic advantage is massive.

But utilities care more about maintaining their monopoly power.

[Nathan Perry @nathan2grid]

This is why we can’t have nice things. 🤦‍♂️

In this example, the utility is paying for the Netflix sub and passing on the costs.

The economics of them reselling 20 minutes or 20,000 hours of streaming is enormous!

[Xiao Wang @xiaowang1984]

Well they paid for 150mw regardless. That is how much they are going to be forwarding their bill to their ratepayers. So it's a constant cost .

So analogy here. If you buy a Netflix subscription that is $20 a month does it matter from the point of view of how much you spend if you watch 1hr or 200hrs

[Nathan Perry @nathan2grid]

@xiaowang1984 I didn’t ask for free.

Let’s pretend you’re right. Wouldn’t cutting rates midday even if rates in the evening & night need to rise to compensate be better for everyone?

It would attract high energy businesses.

Wouldn’t it help the utility get lower PPA rates in the future?

[Nathan Perry @nathan2grid]

@xiaowang1984 You whine about the rules but still cannot tell me why servicing a 1 MW load is better for the customer or the utility than a 100 MW load is the PPA is already signed and the ratepayers are having the costs passed down regardless?

[Nathan Perry @nathan2grid]

@xiaowang1984 That concretely explained nothing.

Explain to me the utility economics of preferring to have a 1MW load vs a 100MW load.

Because the economic benefit to businesses being able to add 99MW of additional load, even if only for a few hours, at the same cost as 1MW is huge.

[Nathan Perry @nathan2grid]

@xiaowang1984 Yes, please educate me. I need a run down of the math behind why high prices and low demand for midday grid power is better than low prices and high demand?

Seems like the definition of insanity to keep raising midday prices, encouraging more solar, EE, and demand reduction.

[Nathan Perry @nathan2grid]

Where is this happening in CA and how can I get in on this? Link me to the interconnection agreement that allows this.

[Xiao Wang @xiaowang1984]

@loganb So if you were a California CCA that decided to pay for a PPA for $60 when gas marginal is $40 that gives the price opportunity for a battery to come in an charge at $10 so that it can come back and sell it to you again later in the day for $150. Who paid the difference here

[Nathan Perry @nathan2grid]

@xiaowang1984 The majority of the time those anchor tenants are the ones that own the system. They get to monetize their warehouse rooftops or church parking lots.

[Nathan Perry @nathan2grid]

@xiaowang1984 For about two years solar farms located in right places were able to recoup over 100% of all their costs in 3-4 months as long as they kept the total project cost under $4m without selling a single kWh of electricity.

Nothing stopped the utilities from doing the same thing.

[Nathan Perry @nathan2grid]

@xiaowang1984 Cool. Allow prosumers to participate in energy market price swings. Do that and people will design their systems in a way that more closely aligns with benefiting the grid at large as well also saving money themselves.

Also reform the utilities profit motive.

[Nathan Perry @nathan2grid]

@xiaowang1984 There are no PPAs. If the number of subscribers drops, the solar farm doesn’t get paid for that power. Pretty utility friendly if you ask me. Also improves local grid resilience.

Not everything is a zero sum game. Innovation, better tech, & better regs can lead to cost savings.

[Nathan Perry @nathan2grid]

@xiaowang1984 Well you know what they say about making assumptions.

I’m buying cheap solar power from a MW scale farm a few miles away rather than from natural gas, coal, hydro, and wind generation, most of which is located about 161 miles away.

I get a 3-5% discount on my bill.

[Nathan Perry @nathan2grid]

@xiaowang1984 You love moving goal posts. Really it’s not about cost but control.

Think about the renters!

Oh wait, not like that.

[Nathan Perry @nathan2grid]

@xiaowang1984 Utility execs make more in annual compensation than entire rooftop solar companies.

Yes! Who is standing in the way of community solar for renters?

As a renter who is part of a community solar program myself, it’s great! But my state forced the utilities to allow it.

[Nathan Perry @nathan2grid]

@xiaowang1984 I never said I want to revert to NEM 2. In fact for CA, a better option would be to fix TOU rates. Fix the price signals. Encourage battery adoption. Better utilize the grid. Increase consumption of power. That solves a lot of your volumetric woes.

[Nathan Perry @nathan2grid]

@xiaowang1984 Sure! Utilities love status quo. Because they did so great with keeping up the grid when we had 3 decades of stagnant load growth.

[Nathan Perry @nathan2grid]

@xiaowang1984 So they shouldn’t be liable for not replacing a transmission line hook that was nearly a century old, failed, burned down a city and killed over 80 people?

Have they been experiencing a solar cost shift since the 1930s?

[Nathan Perry @nathan2grid]

@xiaowang1984 On no! A crazy profitable industry with a government monopoly and guaranteed returns needs to solve a hard problem so they can continue to be massively profitable!