California Renewable Energy Legislation / Progress

[bkp_duke]

The original NEM 3.0 proposal was $8 per AC kw rated (not PV, but your inverter), not sure why everyone is saying $10 now.

I think that you are an outlier with only 2% of your imports which means if your total usage last year was 10,000 kWh you only imported 200 kWh. I am a net generator yet during the last 12 months I imported 3,109 kWh, exported 6,781 and my house consumed 6,195. I could have reduced the amount of imports by going to self-consumption, but I don't think that I would get down to the 2% number that you have. Right now there is no incentive to really do that as with the current Minimum Daily Charge and Non-Bypassable Charge rates I can import 10.3 kWh/day or 3,760 kWh/year and not pay anything more than the annual MDCs.

A lot of residential solar is net consumer and people owe when their annual true-up(s) come around. I think that there are two reasons for this, the first is solar installer pushing for lower number of panels so the project cost is lower and more people will install with them and the second is a push from PG&E to keep installs at 100% (was 110%) and as we move to EVs and electric HVAC this will be even worse.

Even if you are net generator, then most are treating the grid as a battery for night versus day (this is my mode) or for winter versus summer.


These view is being pushed by multiple groups and economic professors. They may be fronts with grants form the IOU that influence their advocacy.


The current NBC is $0.02666/kWh, so very close to 3c that you find reasonable, but it isn't enough since the NBC amounts are going to mostly non-grid programs. IMHO, all IOU customers need to move to a fixed connection charge that applies to both solar and non-solar customers to cover the "grid". This is a revenue structure that is used by many utilities to cover the fixed costs uniformly along with a reduction in the current rates to make it a neutral price change for most customers.

That seems unlikely to occur, so the next best option is to raise the cost to import. If NEM3.0 import transmission and distribution costs (which include the NBCs) were no longer offsettable with export that would raised revenue to pay for the grid (and the CPUC programs) this would in turn modify the behavior of customers with ESS to switch to self-powered and encourage more adoption of ESS for future installations.

I am not an outlier. I was 4 years ago when I went this direction, but after SDG&E put our area through a 36h forced grid outage for high winds, over 20 of the 40 houses in my neighborhood have come by my house and replicated my setup. They all now have between 2 and 4 power walls mated to large solar systems. Without fail, every last one of them said something along the lines of "never again will I be beholden to SDG&E".

When you talk to the installers in SD County, they are installing a LOT of powerwalls. Tesla won't sell powerwalls without solar anymore, but they are selling them to 3rd parties to do the installs. Baker Electric, Stellar Solar, and about a dozen others are doing tons of retrofits in the area to add battery to existing solar systems.


One of the largest advocates for "equitable solar" in SD County was Lorena Gonzalez (yes, the one that said "F--- Elon Musk"). She pushed HARD under the guise of "this is a subsidy for the rich". She is the legislature that originally got us on this NEM 3.0 mess. Like all arguments, there is just a sliver of a grain of truth enough to it to make people believe the argument. But the devil really is in the details. She resigned from the CA legislature after it was uncovered that her largest campaign contributors were . . . the 3 investor-owned utilities in the state. She resigned to "take a job elsewhere" . . . guess where that is? As a lobbyist for a consortium backed by . . . the 3 investor-owned utilities.

Corruption at it's finest.


No, the only way to "solve" this "problem" is to open up the system for competition. Break up the utilities so that they are in charge of the polls and wires, and regulated what they can charge for that service (since it would be a gov-granted monopoly by region), and then allow anyone that wants to feed power into the grid to sell at market rates (with a protections against price gouging like what happened in TX when they had that super-cold spell nearly 2 years ago). This would allow companies like Tesla to aggregate their installed userbase and sell power, forcing competition on the traditional utilities. It is this scenario, the "disruptor scenario" that keeps the execs up at traditional utilities. They want to fight traditional solar and make it non-viable economically to protect their monopoly long-term.

SDG&E has the highest power rates in the country (we passed Hawaii last year). There really is no good reason why power+grid charges are 4-8X here what they are on the east coast or in middle-america. Those areas have their own natural disasters that they deal with nearly every year, but you don't see them jacking up the power rates to the same level. In Cali, we are seeing what happens when:
1) there is no competition (i.e. a government-granted monopoly), and
2) there is rampant corruption with the entity designated to oversee the utilities (CPUC)



I do disagree with your "fixed" connection charge scenario. If you increased the fixed charge, all that does is encourage you to use the grid as a battery MORE, not less. A NBC scenario, and up the price, make it 6c/kwh, encourages 1) self consumption and 2) the deployment of more residential battery storage (which makes the grid even more resilient).

 

[Redhill_qik]

I am not an outlier. I was 4 years ago when I went this direction, but after SDG&E put our area through a 36h forced grid outage for high winds, over 20 of the 40 houses in my neighborhood have come by my house and replicated my setup. They all now have between 2 and 4 power walls mated to large solar systems. Without fail, every last one of them said something along the lines of "never again will I be beholden to SDG&E".

Just to be clear, I meant that only imported 2% (or roughly 200kWh) from the grid over a year was an outlier. I think that solar+ESS is still in the minority of installations, but the percentage is growing and it should become the majority choice within a couple of years.

 

[bkp_duke]

Just to be clear, I meant that only imported 2% (or roughly 200kWh) from the grid over a year was an outlier. I think that solar+ESS is still in the minority of installations, but the percentage is growing and it should become the majority choice within a couple of years.

I understand that's what you meant. My counterpoint was that it's rapidly moving from outlier status to within two SDs of normal.

 

[RubberToe]

Being down to your last option, such that if it doesn't work, you have to order rolling blackouts, is planning, but it's not good planning.

There will also be more air conditioners, especially after the last heat wave. It used to be that houses only had AC in the consistently hot inland areas. Most people in places like the SF Bay Area did without it, because it was expensive and in some of the microclimates, you only need AC 1-4 weeks a year. As the coastal areas have become more wealthy and the cost of AC units adjusted for inflation has come down, even people in places like Redwood City, Belmont, and Millbrae are installing AC units. Some are replacing their gas furnaces with heat pumps too, which gives them a cooling system by default. And all of those new AC units in places like San Francisco, Belmont, Millbrae, Hillsborough, etc., will basically be running only when there's a really nasty heat wave. Whenever an AC unit gets installed in a hot inland location, it's typically a newer one replacing an older, less efficient one, which helps reduce peak demand. But whenever an AC unit gets installed in the coastal areas, particularly San Mateo, San Francisco, and Marin counties, it's typically going into a house that had no cooling system at all, and probably offsets between 2 and 5 more efficient AC units in the inland locations. Also, people in coastal regions generally aren't going to install anything except the least efficient single stage AC units because they use them so infrequently, and there are a lot more people who live in the coastal regions than in the hot inland areas. So it's a race between how quickly we can install batteries vs. how quickly people can install air conditioning. And if the Pacific Northwest ever has a devastating heatwave at the same time as all of California, we're still screwed, because we're not making up a 7 gigawatt shortfall in one year.

Here is a shocking statistic (this guy is a CAISO board member):

https://twitter.com/x/status/1565473488902582272

Apparently, ~20 gigawatts of the increase in load on the grid on hot days over regular days, a whopping > 60% increase, is all due to air conditioning.

STS,
Yes, this all makes sense. But there are also many other things at play, two come to mind. The amount of power being consumed in California is decreasing over time. I have been tracking the CAISO reported data since 2014 and it's a definite trend. And yes, if we have another string of very hot days and more people in the Bay Area install A/C then the peak could very well reach new levels. I already mentioned both utility scale battery deployment as well as the Tesla VPP which is 1/300th of the commercial battery power available, but it will no doubt be growing too. The second thing is the recently passed legislation which includes many energy conservation incentives. No telling how fast any of that will come about, but that should also lessen power consumption by some amount.

I think the bottom line is that CAISO has all the relevant data, and is running the system with no issues so far this year, successful hail mary passes notwithstanding. There is every reason to believe that by the summer of 2023 that they will be ready to handle another surge like the one that just happened. Time will tell obviously.

RT

P.S. I agree with others down thread who support the idea that utilities should get out of the power generation business over time, or have to compete with other power providers. Let a monopoly take care of the infrastructure (wires and poles), and let anyone sell power into the grid in a regulated manner.

 

[mspohr]

Rich people don't want to pay for clean air. They've bought off the governor.

 

[RubberToe]

Rich people don't want to pay for clean air. They've bought off the governor.

Somebody with a better understanding of English and ballot language please explain to me how Proposition 30 benefits Lyft, to the exclusion of all other EV users? I just read the 27 pages and see no specific way that Lyft, Tesla, Electrify America or any other company benefits more than any other company. The law even sunsets prior to 20 years if the GHG emissions are reduced below 20% of 1990 emissions levels. So Lyft donated $15,000,000. If Tesla donated $15,000,000 would it be a "huge taxpayer funded subsidy" for Tesla?

Looks like this would collect between $3b and $4.5b per year from high income individuals.

California Proposition 30, Tax on Income Above $2 Million for Zero-Emissions Vehicles and Wildfire Prevention Initiative (2022)

Ballotpedia: The Encyclopedia of American Politics

ballotpedia.org

RT

 

[Redhill_qik]

Somebody with a better understanding of English and ballot language please explain to me how Proposition 30 benefits Lyft, to the exclusion of all other EV users? I just read the 27 pages and see no specific way that Lyft, Tesla, Electrify America or any other company benefits more than any other company. The law even sunsets prior to 20 years if the GHG emissions are reduced below 20% of 1990 emissions levels. So Lyft donated $15,000,000. If Tesla donated $15,000,000 would it be a "huge taxpayer funded subsidy" for Tesla?

Looks like this would collect between $3b and $4.5b per year from high income individuals.

California Proposition 30, Tax on Income Above $2 Million for Zero-Emissions Vehicles and Wildfire Prevention Initiative (2022)

Ballotpedia: The Encyclopedia of American Politics

ballotpedia.org

RT

Lyft is spending $15M in support of Prop 30, so they are likely thinking that they will get a return on that outlay. Scanning through the Prop 30 text (why is this a scanned copy and not a text searchable PDF???) I see multiple instances of the phrase "passenger ZEVs for high-utilization purposes" which seems to be code for "ride share usage" and that is Lyft's business.

Edit: In the Ch5 definition section "high-utilization purpose" means a use of a ZEV where the purchaser can provide documentation that such use is likely to result in more than 25,000 miles per year on average. Sure, some road warriors might high this, but it really means ride-share.

 

[RubberToe]

Nice high level story about the batteries response during the heat wave...

Op-Ed: California's giant new batteries kept the lights on during the heat wave

This technology has just proved its value in a crisis, and the more capacity we add, the more it will save us from high bills and blackouts.

www.yahoo.com

 

[bkp_duke]

Somebody with a better understanding of English and ballot language please explain to me how Proposition 30 benefits Lyft, to the exclusion of all other EV users? I just read the 27 pages and see no specific way that Lyft, Tesla, Electrify America or any other company benefits more than any other company. The law even sunsets prior to 20 years if the GHG emissions are reduced below 20% of 1990 emissions levels. So Lyft donated $15,000,000. If Tesla donated $15,000,000 would it be a "huge taxpayer funded subsidy" for Tesla?

Looks like this would collect between $3b and $4.5b per year from high income individuals.

California Proposition 30, Tax on Income Above $2 Million for Zero-Emissions Vehicles and Wildfire Prevention Initiative (2022)

Ballotpedia: The Encyclopedia of American Politics

ballotpedia.org

RT

California for the past few years has had a budget surplus. I just don't get why we raise taxes (and notice, there is no provision for inflation adjustment over time on this - granted most of us will never hit 2mil/year in income), when there is already money in the CA bank that is not allocated and spent. Mind-boggling.

 

[STS-134]

California for the past few years has had a budget surplus. I just don't get why we raise taxes (and notice, there is no provision for inflation adjustment over time on this - granted most of us will never hit 2mil/year in income), when there is already money in the CA bank that is not allocated and spent. Mind-boggling.

CA's income sources are extremely unreliable, as it relies too heavily on income and sales taxes, which vary dramatically based on economic cycles. It can't spend the money in the bank because when there's a downturn, it needs the money to make up for revenue shortfalls. A more reliable source of revenue is property taxes, which continue to be collected regardless of economic ups and downs, but CA cannot raise those because Prop 13 modified the Constitution to disallow it.

 

[bkp_duke]

CA's income sources are extremely unreliable, as it relies too heavily on income and sales taxes, which vary dramatically based on economic cycles. It can't spend the money in the bank because when there's a downturn, it needs the money to make up for revenue shortfalls. A more reliable source of revenue is property taxes, which continue to be collected regardless of economic ups and downs, but CA cannot raise those because Prop 13 modified the Constitution to disallow it.

I would agree with that if they were seeing deficits some years and surpluses others. But CA has had a surplus for many years running. It was 75 billion in 2021, and expected to be 100 billion in 2022. To put it in perspective, that's enough money to buy 2 million Tesla Model 3s and hand them out to constituents, if Tesla could build that many in a year. It's a STAGGERING surplus.

 

[STS-134]

I would agree with that if they were seeing deficits some years and surpluses others. But CA has had a surplus for many years running. It was 75 billion in 2021, and expected to be 100 billion in 2022. To put it in perspective, that's enough money to buy 2 million Tesla Model 3s and hand them out to constituents, if Tesla could build that many in a year. It's a STAGGERING surplus.

I mean it's been over a decade since the last recession so...

 

[ItsNotAboutTheMoney]

CA's income sources are extremely unreliable, as it relies too heavily on income and sales taxes, which vary dramatically based on economic cycles. It can't spend the money in the bank because when there's a downturn, it needs the money to make up for revenue shortfalls. A more reliable source of revenue is property taxes, which continue to be collected regardless of economic ups and downs, but CA cannot raise those because Prop 13 modified the Constitution to disallow it.

However, the problem with property taxes is that they suck in principle.

 

[STS-134]

However, the problem with property taxes is that they suck in principle.

I wouldn't say that. What sucks is this idea that property taxes should be based on a percentage of the fair market value of the property at any given time instead of (gasp!) the cost of providing services. If property prices double, does the cost of providing services double? Yeah, thought so. Then there's the idea that people should pay for the electricity grid based on how much energy they use from it, which means that large users get penalized while small users don't pay their fair share. And that's how we ended up with the NEM 3.0 proposals...

 

[CrazyRabbit]

Agree, Fair market value; and if you don’t agree with their valuation you should have the option of selling your house to the tax jurisdiction for said valuation! Put up or shut up…

 

[iPlug]

Wonder if California in the not-to-distant future might mandate new BEVs to have V2G readiness to be sold in the State.

Would certainly help stabilize the grid. Manufacturers would not likely be excited about having to warranty such additional cycling of the battery and some have argued manufacturer(s) prefer to sell their home battery products instead for those that offer such things.

Vehicle warranties typically have a time and mileage component. It should be also straightforward to track and warranty a certain number of kWh that can be exported from the battery.

 

[Dave EV]

Vehicle warranties typically have a time and mileage component. It should be also straightforward to track and warranty a certain number of kWh that can be exported from the battery.

Yeah, the car already tracks how many kWh goes into and out of the pack. It would be pretty trivial to simply make this number visible and add it as a metric for warranty numbers.

Probably easier to just use the total number including energy used for driving - this would allow people who drive less to use more V2G and stay within warranty and vice-versa, for example.

 

[RubberToe]

Long duration and multi-day storage tech will allow California to put surplus renewable energy to good use

California's rapid transition to renewables presents challenges that energy storage can solve, write the team from Form Energy.

www.energy-storage.news

 

[iPlug]

California regulators are poised to outlaw the sale of natural gas-powered furnaces and gas-powered water heaters in the state by 2030....​

​

The California Air Resources Board (CARB) is expected to take the step as part of a far-reaching plan to shrink the state’s carbon footprint and reduce nitrogen-oxide pollution. That greenhouse gas is a key ingredient in the creation of smog.​

​

The panel is widely expected to approve the 2022 State Strategy for the State Implementation Plan which updates California’s strategy to meet air quality guidelines set by the Environmental Protection Agency.​

California could ban gas furnaces and gas water heaters

 

[RubberToe]

All,
Thought I would start this new thread since there is periodic news made concerning this, and it would be good to track this so that we can collectively have some idea of what implications these laws will have going forward. The current RPS (Renewable Portfolio Standard) was first established in 2002, and modified several times since then. It requires 33% renewable energy by 2020. I periodically post in the "Solar Happenings" thread about the almost daily increases being seen in the renewables % of total electricity generation. I'll start posting that information here since it is California specific, and includes more than just solar. For program details see this page.

The L.A. Times had a recent story, seen here about some recent State Senate and Assembly action to codify into law some things the Governor discussed in his recent state of the state speech. The extent of it is pretty significant, even by California standards, so I thought I would detail some of the items. I think that some of these will absolutely impact large scale energy storage going forward. There was another link I saw for Tesla news that showed that one of the companies that was supplying utility scale energy storage selected Tesla as their battery supplier, due to the enormous cost advantage. See that story here. Thats for 500MWh of storage. The storage requirements per year as identified here are: 2014=200MW, 2016=270, 2018=365, 2020=490. Those numbers each represent additional "added" capacity, not total capacity.

The legislation highlights are:

SB350: Increases the 33% by 2020 renewable mandate to 50% by 2030.
SB350: Also decreases gasoline use by 50% and doubles energy efficiency in older buildings.
SB32: Reduce greenhouse gas emissions 40% below 1990 levels by 2030, and 80% below 1990 levels by 2050
SB185: Requires the two state pension funds, the countries largest public funds, to divest from coal.
AB1288: Eliminates the expiration date for the cap-and-trade program.
SB788: Bans new offshore drilling in the Tranquillon Ridge in the Santa Barbara Channel, existing rigs allowed to continue producing.

One of the opponents of the renewable mandate said: "We have a very lofty and noble goal," said Senate Republican leader Bob Huff (R-San Dimas). "But other than feeling good about it, what does it accomplish?"

I would answer that what it is going to accomplish is that it is going to spur development of new technologies to not only vastly reduce the amount of fossil fuels being used, but also to start moving in the direction of allowing for more decentralized power generation and distribution. As the cost of these systems comes down, as it absolutely will with scale, the number of places where it can be economically deployed will skyrocket. There are so many places in the world where electricity is either not available, or extremely unreliable. This will allow many of those areas to implement a solar/storage solution that is able to provide 24/7 reliable power. That is a complete game changer from a business standpoint, which is why Tesla is going "all in" in the energy storage business.

Opponents can't seem to understand that while there are going to be jobs lost drilling for oil, running refineries, and running filling stations, the new technologies being developed will create entire new industries. It's all about looking past the next quarterly report. We are not going to be burning oil "forever", so whats the point in waiting to start making the transition? Those same people who are losing their jobs will find better work building solar panels, working in the Giga-Factory, and designing and installing the micro-grid systems that we will be seeing more of in the immediate future. Hmmm, what pays better, pumping gas or designing micro-grid energy solutions? Either we do it, or someone else will do it, and we will be paying them for the technology.

In the California Legislature, the opponents of what is happening cannot stop the train. No way, not now, not ever. They can cry and moan all they want, but they are outgunned, and will remain so for the foreseeable future. They need to start being part of the solution, and by doing so maybe can once again become a relevant factor in running the state. At some point, because of the legislation mentioned above, the economic benefits and the social benefits will start significantly impacting the bottom line. Everyone understands the bottom line. Thats the tipping point. It's just a matter of when we reach it, not if.

RT

Responding to the June 2015 first post in the thread, since one of the milestones has been met. The first post said that SB350 mandated 33% renewable energy by 2020. Well, in 2022, using the CAISO data only, the year ended with over 33% renewable.



Monthly solar production still climbing, hitting 4TWh for the first time in June:



And a chart showing daily demand and the renewable generation by wind and solar:



Here we see solar monthly increase over the previous year. Anything above the line means we are generating that much more power versus the previous year.



Total power (demand) 12 month moving average was going down slightly over time, and seemed to level off during the pandemic, and ticking up slightly now. You would think that as the number of EVs on the road keeps getting larger, that this is going to start going up quite a bit. Presumably, the generation being added from solar, wind, and eventually offshore wind will more than overcome the increased use:



Someone upthread was asking about how the next summer would fare given the recent case where the emergency alert went out to the whole state. I was checking the EIA website a couple months ago and added up the amount of batteries being deployed in California before the summer of 2023. I seem to recall there being 530+ MW being added. A decent sized power plant that can run for 4 hours. Solar and onshore wind can be deployed pretty quickly, and when combined with batteries, should get us through next summer. Diablo Canyon is also staying online for another 5 years, which will allow the renewable trends seen in the above charts to more than compensate.

Looking forward to the recently approved off shore lease areas off Morro Bay and Humboldt to progress through the approval phase. Floating turbines will be tricky, but the East coast is showing that once approval is in hand, it takes about two years to get a wind farm built. Vineyard Wind is laying the cable as we speak, and all the turbines will be in place and working by the end of this year. Those Haliade-X turbines will be quite a sight when they start getting installed.

RT