CMP behind Solar Kill
Posted Feb 2, 2018, 2:57 PM UTC
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Power and water should be nationalized.
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Like Puerto Rico or Venezuela?
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Like Sweden or Washington state. Washington has the cheapest power and the some of the most reliable of any mountainous state. Venezuela is not relevant to ANY discussion of united states politics.
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It doesn't have to be a surprise to be news.
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I hope that one day the corrupt will face true justice.
I believe that corruption should be punishable by death, starting with these fuckers
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Government being used as a tool for personal gain? Color me shocked.
You know it would cost these fucks nothing to use meters that were ready to accept grid-tied solutions so that you wouldn't need an electrician to hook up solar panels or even a generator?
Maybe you retards will someday figure out the government isn't there to help you, it's there to help whoever wants to pick your pocket.
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I feel like everyone needs to take an actual look at cmps arguments here. I am incredibly pro solar, enough so that I am hoping to install panels when my wife and I move. However 1:1 ratio net metering is simply not sustainable long term.
The cost of the electricity we buy is mainly due to grid maintenance and transmission losses. The cost of generating a kwhr of electricity for the power plant in 2011 was $0.0323. For which I get charged $0.157.
What net metering does is effectively force companies to buy the kwhr your panels made at $0.157, while they could have make it themselves for $0.0323. Seems to me like that is unfair and will screw our whole transmission system eventually. Transmission losses will be a bit lower due to non localized production but it does seem fair that if they can make the power for 3 cents we don’t charge them more than 6 cents for it.
Now I don’t think we should move there right away, but I do believe eventually that’s where we have to be able to get. And I think sticking with a straightforward 1:1 system until we have problems is short sighted.
CMP's parent company projects nearly a billion dollar in profits for 2020. While I'd be fine if the 1:1 net metering were lowered to account for maintenance of lines and so forth, this hardly seems like a big issue for them.
We're talking about Maine. How much can CMP really be paying out to excess solar generation output from residents? Mainers already pay above the national average for electricity per/kw anyway.
This seems more like a way to discourage solar adoption, their primary future competitor, than it is financial issue.
This whole thing got started because solar hit 1% of use and is continuing to go up. I have not done the math yet, but since I’m curious I’m going to type it out.
Maine annual generarion 2016: 11,000,000,000 kwhr
So 1% of that is 110,000,000 kwhr
Which at my electric rate is $17.2million. Which they could have made themselves for $3.5million. So solar directly costs them $13.7 million a year and is only expected to go up.
Now I have no problem with them reducing their profits, however unless we legislate them to that point we can assume they will increase rates to compensate for it. Effectively offsetting the extra cost onto all the consumers who don’t have solar, which I believe was their argument. It may not be a problem with solar at 1% but what if it hits 40%? That offset cost would be $550 million, which in a stat of 1.5 million is roughly $350 for every resident that is getting put towards effectively subsidizing solar.
The way I hope it will go in the eventual future is that we net meter at the cost of generation rate, and that people up their savings with home battery kits to have delocalized generation and storage of electricity. Then also require the utilities to put a percentage of profits towards battery farms to stabilize the grid.
Edit. I forgot to address your last point. It may be a way to discourage solar, but that doesn’t mean all their points are bad. I think the big problem is that solar is delocalized so there is no one group that is responsible for the power grid. That’s the role I see in the future for utilities. Grid upkeep and guaranteeing there is always power when we need it.
Thank you for your informed, reasoned, and politely-stated thoughts on this topic.
And thank you for the courteous discussion. To be honest that was as much thinking out loud as anything else though. Doing it in writing helps others catch if I made a mistake.
Where do you live where you pay 15.7 cents for electricity supply or are you combining supply and delivery costs per kwh? Does CMP really pay solar users the full amount (supply AND delivery) per kwh?
I live in Trenton. And yes I was counting supply and delivery. It is my understanding that at the moment the way net metering works is literally getting billed for the difference between your usage and generation.
I would also like to see an answer to this question.
I tend to agree with this. If a utility is going to be forced to buy power from residential solar ala net metering then they should be able to buy it back at a wholesale rate, not the retail rate. The problem is that most utilities, CMP included, don’t want to have to buy it back at ANY rate, ever. If they have to buy it back then that means that whoever is generating it has a surplus of it. While there is a surplus of it then they don’t have a customer who needs to purchase electricity. Once battery storage technology has matured and the prices for it drop, then they will have lost a customer permanently. Which is why none of the solar kill bills introduced and passed around the country ever mention net metering at wholesale rates. It’s not about the rates, it’s about killing solar adoption.
The only way this argument ends is if the financial model can be flipped to make the shift to solar financially feasible without the need to net meter.
That is a good argument for why cmp feels threatened. I certainly see where you are coming from and don’t know enough about if any bills lowering net metering rates have been proposed and where cmp stands on them.