Rooftop solar adds 522 Megawatts to the grid
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Photo from: Gogreenelectricinc.com
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Between 2006-2008, according to the Interstate Renewable Energy Council’s 2006-08 count, consumers added 522 megawatts to the grid. Utility companies, however, added added just 96 megawatts. This is quite a change of direction of where new power is coming from. Instead of utility driven megaprojects (acres of land covered in thousands of solar panels sending energy to the grid), solar rooftops are becoming the wave of the future. This is a good trend – instead of using up precious free space and wild places, we are looking to our existing structures for the space for solar energy. With the costs of solar panels continuing to drop, more and more homeowners and businesses may turn to solar systems to supplement their energy needs.
There is a downside to this increase: utility companies are starting to grumble about the new energy that is being produced from consumers, as they are concerned for their profits and the long term changes of consumer-fed energy. Utilities are now voicing concerns regarding the cost of distributing power and maintaining the electric grid. According to Xcel spokesman Tom Henley, many solar-powered customers don’t have a monthly bill, so they don’t pay embedded costs for things such as power plants, transmission lines, or equipment upgrades at power plants. Utilities also argue that they have to maintain the grid’s power day and night, rain or shine, and so they feel that solar powered users should have to pay a fee for their "back-up" energy they use when the sun isn’t shining.
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Photo from: Solsourceinc.com
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Utilities are now proposing "net-meter" tariffs to be applied solar consumers. Net metering occurs when a customer’s solar panels send extra electricity onto the grid. That energy is ‘netted’ against electricity a customer uses at night or on cloudy days, when the sun isn’t shining. Customers sending more power to the grid than they use roll the net month-to-month and get a check for the balance at the end of the year.
These utility company concerns came to the spotlight in Colorado, when Xcel Energy proposed a “net-meter” tariff to solar customers. The proposal to institute a minimum monthly fee for customers who get most or all of their electricity from solar power panels on their homes or businesses installed after April 2010. The public response was negative. Colorado Solar Industries Association (CoSEIA), along with the Governor’s Energy Office, and other renewable energy supporters mounted a grass-roots campaign to educate consumers, solar supporters and the public about the proposal. In response to the negative public reaction, Xcel Energy dropped its proposed “net-meter” tariff to solar customers. Of course, this is just the beginning of the consumer-generrated power issue. As more homeowners add solar energy to their homes, utility companies and consumers will have to find a solution to managing the costs of maintaining the grid.
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Photo from: Aspensolar.com
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As CoSEIA’s Beth Hart says, “Consumers are becoming more energy efficient and going down the road more and more to be renewable and to put solar systems on their home,” Hart said. “Any time these things happen, Xcel is losing money because their bills drop.
“We want the utility as backup power. That makes the most sense as an Xcel rate payer, as a Coloradoan, and as a nation. We want our utilities to stay viable. The question is how can we do that," Hart said.
"I truly believe this conservation is not rocket science,” she said. “Let’s talk about some flat fees, not convoluted calculations that don’t work.”
We will soon see how utility companies will work with homeowners and businesses to come to an agreement on how to handle the new influx of consumer-generated energy.
Sources: The Denver Business Journal, Pagosadailypost.com, Coloradoenergynews.com, CoSEIA
To find solar rooftop installers in Colorado, go to www.coseia.org
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September 21st, 2009 at 10:39 am
From Linkedin “Think Green” Group Discussion: “A grid fee, tarriff fee or whatever electric utilities want to call it sounds lke a fair compromise to me. The ability to sell “excess” solar,wind or other homeowner generated electricty comes with a cost of the infrastructure to sell the product into. If we expect our less than green neighbors (whether next door or in the next county) to pay the infrastructure cost for our ability to generate and sell into a grid we may not directly support is perhaps a bit presumptious on our part. This will take some time to work out the details. It does seem to me that there will be a point where mass storage of our own energy on site will be demanded in order to balance our excess production in daylight hours with our drawdown of someone-elses power generation at night. The old physics teachers statement “for ever action there is an equal and opposite reaction” certainly seems to apply here.”
Jim Russell
Recruiter/Consultant, Marketing and Sales
September 21st, 2009 at 10:39 am
Photo by Michael Melford, from National Geographic, Sept. 2009
The ability to store energy inexpensively has always been a big pickle to solve. There is a great article about solar energy in September 2009’s National Geographic issue which discusses the idea of storing energy with water. Inspired by the photosynthesis performed by plants, MIT researchers, Daniel Nocera and Matthew Kanan have developed a new process that uses the sun’s energy to split water into hydrogen and oxygen gases. The oxygen and hydrogen are later reunited inside a fuel cell, generating electricity, with no by products other than water, which is recycled for the same process. Amazing. The idea is that households could become solar “power plants” that could charge electric cars and power household appliances at night.
- Idelle Fisher, IJDesign