Given my updated schedule for work and my continued desire to provide value to you on a daily basis, there will be days that I’ll write one extended paragraph instead of the multiple topics. I don’t mean to cheat you out of good content but until every single reader is a customer of Quick Mount PV (not sure why that hasn’t happened yet), I will be pounding the pavement to get you to switch. Hope you’re all on board with this message and I appreciate the understanding. For the other (one person) that thinks the content has gotten to spammy since I joined Quick Mount, thanks for playing along!
Future Of Energy Savings. If you play out the game plan and use New Mexico’s demand charge as a sample, you can see a tricky future for the ‘rate design’ 3.0 era, especially in markets where solar doesn’t gain enough strength to thwart any of these attempts. Storage is going to drop costs much like solar dropped from $2.50 to $0.75 per watt perhaps even faster. With storage becoming a standard part of solar, cheap solar, any utility costs may become an added savings to the solar install. That would leave the utilities to move from solar NEM fees and demand charges to minimum bills and increasing those to make up for the lost revenues. However, if the system is completely isolated, what would the argument be? With net metering, the argument is that the solar generator has access and is using the grid during overproduction. In non-export systems, it would simply be a lost revenue argument where the fight would be that some customers don’t have access to solar or that the grid was built for all customers and they must pay for what was built in the past. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this.

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Yann

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent

Recently, President Donald J. Trump yet again riffed on how much wind power kills birds and opined that if the wind doesn't blow (for wind power) or the sun doesn't shine (for solar power), "we have a problem." Well, according to the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, EVs could be the way to solve renewable energy's intermittency problems at a fraction of the cost of what widespread stationary battery use would cost. That's what a report by two writers at the National Resources Defense Council discuss in a fascinating article at the Microgrid Knowledge website. As usual, California is the overriding example of a state that could do it absolutely right. As the authors write:

A study recently published by researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) shows that the electric vehicles (EVs) expected in California in 2025 could be used to meet the majority of the Golden State’s energy storage mandate that calls for 1.3 gigawatts (GW) of battery capacity by 2024.

The keys from the Berkeley paper are as follows: Let’s sum up the findings from the paper on how the expected number of California EVs can help to ensure grid stability and fulfill the intent of the storage mandate:

• Without hindering drivers’ transportation needs, smart charging or V1G can easily provide 1 GW of storage, or about three-quarters of the 2024 storage mandate.
• V1G and V2G combined can offer an astounding 5 GW of storage, dwarfing the storage mandate, and enabling the integration of much higher quantities of renewable energy.
• Crucially, while V1G may require a system-wide investment of around $150 million, that’s substantially less than the $1.45-$1.75 billion that equivalent stationary (non-EV) storage would cost. (The paper used stationary storage costs from 2015, the latest available at the time of its writing, but even with the substantially lower storage costs of today, V1G implementation remains far cheaper.)
• Using a similar approach, the value of grid services associated with V2G in addressing the “duck curve” is equivalent to $12.8 to $15.4 billion in equivalent stationary storage.

In other words, Tony Seba could well be right when he said at Intersolar North America that if we just electrify everything, we can stabilize the grid and meet 100% of our electrical needs from renewable energy in the next thirty years. Sorry, President Trump - those are just the facts More: Study: Using EVs Instead of Stationary Batteries Could Save Billions

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent

An ongoing controversy in New Mexico over stand-by fees on solar customers may finally becoming to an end, according to an article in the Santa Fe New Mexican.

A hearing officer recently recommended that regulators make Southwestern Public Service Co. stop collecting a “standby fee” from customers with solar systems, saying a study the utility used to justify the fees is “riddled with errors and unreliable.”

Color me shocked (not shocked): A utility is using flawed materials to justify treating solar customers like separate-class citizens. Sounds an awful lot like the "cost shift zombie myth" we spend a lot of time debunking around these parts. Wait, the zombie lie is part of this bad information? Of course it is. As hearing officer Carolyn Glick wrote in her finding suggesting the fees be done away with:

the company failed to demonstrate the surcharge “appropriately recovers the costs of ancillary and standby services” used by solar customers or that the fees are “based in any actual difference in costs the company incurs to serve [solar] customers.” Glick wrote that Southwestern Public Service can’t show it “provides distinct ‘standby service’ for [solar] customers that it does not already provide to all full-requirements customers.” She also said the utility can’t show that solar customers “are not already paying their proportionate share of system costs.”

Solar advocates like Vote Solar and the Coalition for Clean Energy blame the fees for stunting solar growth in the state, which goes against other efforts by the state to encourage solar growth, including requiring utilities to include storage in their long-term resource plans and the creation of a disclosure form that makes installing solar much safer for consumers. At the end of the day, these "stand-by" charges are just fixed charges by another name. Here's hoping the New Mexico Public Regulation Commission recognizes them for the price-gouging they are and eliminates them from solar customers' bills. More: PRC asked to end fee charged to Eastern New Mexico solar users

SB 700 Advances In CA. After a great day of lobbying by the 200 solar pros in Sacramento, SB 700 came out of the House Appropriations committee with a positive vote on Thursday evening. This means that the bill heads to the House floor and is expected to come to a vote. If successful, the bill may head to the Senate before going to Governor Brown. This is a fantastic bill that extends the SGIP funding for 5 years and lays the groundwork for future Governor Newsom to lead solar further down the road. A 5 year SGIP is key to solar’s growth given the importance of storage within a solar value proposition in time of use rates. California would lead the volume that drives the cost of storage down for States that are a bit more aggressive on net metering than pro-solar markets.
SC Utility Board Ousted. As I often do, I go to Twitter to see what is happening and a story made its way through energy Twitter on Saturday. A shareholder meeting of a co-op utility in South Carolina was gathering a crowd that was far bigger than any before it. When it was all done, shareholders voted to fire the board by an overwhelming margin for abusing their positions and excessive pay amongst other things. It’s an incredible story that could be a precursor for utilities across the Country if they abuse their positions.
Module Costs Decline. I’ve stopped guessing what happens to the stocks, especially solar stocks but this review of First Solar takes the view of module costs which is interesting. What happened to the pricing after tariffs and where is it going? I’ve heard not only Chinese pricing but all module prices dropping consistently into a market favorable way. Let me know what you’re seeing.
The Impact Of Policy. Utah is a strong solar market and has shown great residential solar growth. Some of the largest residential solar companies are based there. But with limited local advocacy support there was a change in net metering that has caused a bit of a reset. I’ll be looking at the State chapters a year after speaking with many of the State chapter directors to see how the industry can prop them up.
Solar Compared To Homebuilders. Homebuilders have national brands but for the most part they are quite fragmented like the solar industry. Jon Carson uses homebuilders as an example of a market that does very well in DC. Here’s my discussion with him.

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Have a great day!
Yann