When you come to a fork in the road, take it. – Yogi Berra
As an accompanying post on this page indicates, Utility companies fear that their business model can’t compete in a solar and renewable energy world. They have good reasons for that.
Problem is, just trying to oppose or suppress new technology has never been effective. If the recent history of Internet and cell phone adoption has shown us, when technologies are compelling enough, they reach a certain critical mass and become an overwhelming force. Sometimes reaching criticality takes a while, but with renewables, we are there.
In recent years, the growth of the rooftop solar market has been astounding. According to the Solar Energy Industries Association, the growth rate for at-home solar has been above 50 percent for three years running (2012, 2013, and 2014).
But if a new study is to be believed, the changes have only begun.The way we get power is “at a metaphorical fork in the road,” says the new report released today by the Rocky Mountain Institute, an influential energy policy think tank. The reason is not just rooftop solar but, beyond that, the growing feasibility of home electricity systems combining solar panels with batteries for storage of energy.“Grid-connected self-consuming solar will become economic for nearly all customers imminently, with grid-connected solar plus-battery systems following soon after,” notes the study, which was co-authored by Homer Energy.
Customers will chose these options, the study finds, because they’ll save money on their bills. And once they can not only generate their own power from the sun, but can also store it until they need it (including overnight, when there’s no sun shining), the old model of buying all your power from a single utility company could be strongly challenged.
The new report agrees with another recent study, just out in the journal Energy Policy, that people will not be abandoning the grid en masse. But over time, more and more of the electrons that they use to power their homes and lives could. While most people will stay connected so that they’ll always have backup power, they’ll increasingly generate and store more and more of their own, and potentially sell it back to the grid (a key reason to remain connected).
Forget the threat of solar- and battery-equipped customers defecting from the grid. The real threat for utilities unwilling to adapt to grid-connected customers installing ever-cheaper solar and energy storage technologies is “load defection” — and that future will come whether or not utilities and regulators support it with net metering regimes and customer-grid integration, or try to fight it with fixed customer charges and other roadblocks.
These are some of the top-line findings from “The Economics of Load Defection” report released Tuesday by the Rocky Mountain Institute, CohnReznick and Homer Energy. Calculating the economics through 2050 for median commercial and residential customers in five U.S. markets, the report shows that grid-connected solar-storage systems are already more cost-effective than grid-supplied electricity in expensive electricity markets like Hawaii, and will be more economic than grid power in three of five U.S. geographies studied, including California, New York and Texas, within the next 10 to 15 years.
That, in turn, could lead to more and more customers shifting their energy load from utility-delivered electricity to their own self-generated and stored power — thus, the term “load defection.”
Tuesday’s report is the long-awaited sequel to the “Economics of Grid Defection” report released last year, and it looks at the same five cities modeled in the previous report: Honolulu, Hawaii; Los Angeles, California; Louisville, Kentucky; San Antonio, Texas; and Westchester, New York.
Using Homer Energy’s modeling software and U.S. Energy Information Administration data, the new report modeled grid only, grid-plus-solar, and grid-plus-solar-plus-battery configurations to find the lowest-cost options over time, based on systems’ per-kilowatt-hour levelized cost of energy equivalents.
But unlike the “Grid Defection” report, which projected when solar-plus-storage systems will become cheap enough to convince large numbers of customers to disconnect from the grid, the new report analyzes at what speed these technologies will start to become economically attractive enough to start significantly eroding the profits that utilities make by selling electricity to their customers.
Because grid-connected customers don’t need to buy nearly as much PV and battery storage to provide their full electricity needs, the load defection scenarios will proceed more rapidly than the grid defection ones, the new report finds. While these customers will still be buying utility power, they’ll be buying less and less of it as time goes by.
That will equate to “substantial utility load loss well within the economic life and cost recovery period for major assets” like central, fossil-fuel-fired power plants and transmission and distribution grid infrastructure, the report states. For example, by 2030, Northeast U.S. energy sales could be cut in half for residential customers and cut by 60 percent for commercial customers, adding up to a combined $34.8 billion in lost utility revenues.
Millions of people live in cities where going solar would cost them less than their current utility rates — and most of them don’t even know it.
According to a new report by the North Carolina Clean Energy Technology Center, backed by the SunShot Initiative, a fully financed solar PV system costs less than the energy purchased from a residential customer’s local utility in 42 of the 50 largest cities in the United States.
Among single-family homeowners in those 50 cities, the Center estimates that 9.1 million live in a place where solar would be cheaper than their utility bill if they bought the system outright. Nearly 21 million would be better off going solar if low-cost financing is available.
“Right now, buying an average-sized, fully-financed solar PV system costs less than electricity from their local utility for 93 percent of single-family homeowners in America’s 50 largest cities, and in most places, is a better investment than many of the stocks that are in their 401(k),” said Jim Kennerly, project manager for the Going Solar in America report. “Nevertheless, most people are unaware that solar is this affordable for people of all walks of life.”
Many customers mistakenly think going solar requires having a lot of sunshine. The report points out that solar’s value to the customer is more about how much grid energy it can offset.
The research aligns well with the views of NRG Energy CEO David Crane, who recently remarked that “the distributed future will be utterly destructive of the utility model that we now have. No one wants to spend more on electricity than they have to.”
But the Rocky Mountain Institute study suggests that if utilities can’t beat them, they can still join them. It describes the possibility of an “integrated grid” in which lower carbon emissions and more customer choice have economic benefits that strengthen the system as a whole. Meanwhile, utilities could get in the business of helping consumers finance these new home electricity systems, or could even own some of their components.
Whatever happens, the report notes, the business and policy moves made today will be pivotal. “Decisions made in the short-term can set markets down extremely different paths,” the study concludes.
Battery storage technology is greatly advancing and making up for the early disadvantages of solar, interesting article in Renewable Energy suggesting that battery storage could make gas-fired peaking plants virtually redundant:
“Battery storage is already being deployed at network level in Australia, with the likes of Ergon Energy and others finding it a cheaper option that to upgrade poles and wires, with the added benefit of improving grid stability and allowing more locally-based renewables to be incorporated.”
It’s just swell that AUS is such a LEADER in the war against AGW!
Oh, by the way, how are the plans coming to make Abbot Point into the WORLD’S LARGEST coal exporting port? Have they dredged a deep enough channel through the middle of the Great Barrier Reef to accommodate the ships yet?
And if those AUS batteries are the “high tech” type that need rare earths, China will be glad to trade them for AUS coal. (That video clip you posted on another thread was a waste lagoon for a rare earths mine in Inner Mongolia). One hand dirties the other, so to speak?
I will again bore everyone to tears with my chant of CHINA-INDIA-COAL and HUMAN POPULATION DYNAMICS. Yogi would be smart enough to look at that metaphorical lead picture and see that the biggest “roads” there could be China and India, and the two smaller tracks are the US and EU in one and the rest of the world in the other (roughly, but good enough for navel-gazing).
Any good news is welcome, but talking about battery storage in “42 of the 50 largest U.S. cities” is wishful thinking when there are almost as many people in India with NO access to electricity as the entire population of the U.S.
Looking at the 50 largest cities in the world, only THREE are in the U.S.—8)–NYC, 17)–LA, 28)–CHI
China with TEN and India with SEVEN make up over 1/3 of the total (17/50), and those two countries contain TWENTY-NINE of the top 100. The top 20 non-U.S.cities combined contain more people than the entire U.S. The list is populated with many cities in southeast and south Asia, Africa, and South America as well, places where the “grid” and battery storage are far in the future. Since we DO use so much energy and do release so many GHG, it IS important that we make progress here, but the solution to the GLOBAL problem is elsewhere. We are whistling past the graveyard yet again.
Thanks for reminding us once again,(yet once again) and I will remind you who is the #1 oil and gas producer (by far), is it Saudi, Russia ? No it’s the same country who recently used to be the #1 industrial co2 emitter.
Too-shay! Did I put a knot in your grundies again? No doubt the USA and Europe bear the greatest share of the blame for AGW and adopting the economic/social model that made it all happen, but we’re picking on COAL here and AUS is vulnerable. Some numbers—-rounded off and maybe not the latest, but close enough.
The US produces ~1000 million tons of coal a year and exports ~100 million of that (10%)
AUS is the FOURTH largest coal producer (after US, China, and Russia?), and produces ~500 million tons and exports 300 million of that (60%). Fully 1/2 of all AUS export income comes from coal. Since 2000, AUS coal production has gone up by 33% and AUS coal consumption at home has gone down 15% (that’s good for AUS). And how about LNG? AUS is the world’s 4th’ largest exporter and has increased exports by 60% over the last ten years.
Not bad for a country of 23 million people. ~1/14 the population of the US and digging up 1/2 as much coal and sending 3 times as much of it abroad as the US.
And did you know that AUS has 75 million sheep—3+ sheep for every human? And NZ has 34 million sheep—-7+ for every human? Can’t you just export sheep and make money there rather than on coal?
Too-shay! Did I put a knot in your grundies again? No doubt the USA and Europe bear the greatest share of the blame for AGW and adopting the economic/social model that made it all happen, but we’re picking on COAL here and AUS is vulnerable. Some numbers—-rounded off and maybe not the latest, but close enough.
The US produces ~1000 million tons of coal a year and exports ~100 million of that (10%)
AUS is the FOURTH largest coal producer (after US, China, and Russia?), and produces ~500 million tons and exports 300 million of that (60%). Fully 1/2 of all AUS export income comes from coal. Since 2000, AUS coal production has gone up by 33% and AUS coal consumption at home has gone down 15% (that’s good for AUS). And how about LNG? AUS is the world’s 4th’ largest exporter and has increased exports by 60% over the last ten years.
Not bad for a country of 23 million people. ~1/14 the population of the US and digging up 1/2 as much coal and sending 3 times as much of it abroad as the US.
And did you know that AUS has 75 million sheep—3+ sheep for every human? And NZ has 34 million sheep—-7+ for every human? Can’t you just export sheep and make money there rather than on coal?
Too-shay! Did I put a knot in your grundies again? No doubt the USA and Europe bear the greatest share of the blame for AGW and adopting the economic/social model that made it all happen, but we’re picking on COAL here and AUS is vulnerable. Some numbers—-rounded off and maybe not the latest, but close enough.
The US produces ~1000 million tons of coal a year and exports ~100 million of that (10%)
AUS is the FOURTH largest coal producer (after US, China, and Russia?), produces ~500 million tons and exports 300 million of that (60%). Fully 1/2 of all AUS export income comes from coal. Since 2000, AUS coal production has gone up by 33% and AUS coal consumption at home has gone down 15% (that’s good for AUS). And how about LNG? AUS is the world’s 4th’ largest exporter and has increased exports by 60% over the last ten years.
Not bad for a country of 23 million people. ~1/14 the population of the US and digging up 1/2 as much coal and sending 3 times as much of it abroad as the US.
And did you know that AUS has 75 million sheep—3+ sheep for every human? And NZ has 34 million sheep—-7+ for every human? Can’t you just export sheep and make money there rather than on coal?
This may come through twice—-WordPress is acting up—-apologies.
Too-shay! Did I put a knot in your grundies again? No doubt the USA and Europe bear the greatest share of the blame for AGW and adopting the economic/social model that made it all happen, but we’re picking on COAL here and AUS is vulnerable. Some numbers—-rounded off and maybe not the latest, but close enough.
The US produces ~1000 million tons of coal a year and exports ~100 million of that (10%)
AUS is the FOURTH largest coal producer (after US, China, and Russia?), and produces ~500 million tons and exports 300 million of that (60%). Fully 1/2 of all AUS export income comes from coal. Since 2000, AUS coal production has gone up by 33% and AUS coal consumption at home has gone down 15% (that’s good for AUS). And how about LNG? AUS is the world’s 4th’ largest exporter and has increased exports by 60% over the last ten years.
Not bad for a country of 23 million people. ~1/14 the population of the US and digging up 1/2 as much coal and sending 3 times as much of it abroad as the US.
And did you know that AUS has 75 million sheep—3+ sheep for every human? And NZ has 34 million sheep—-7+ for every human? Can’t you just export sheep and make money there rather than on coal?
Instead of having our electricity come to us as part of a publicly-owned, universal, low cost, well-regulated, and egalitarian system, now we can look forward to individuals being responsible for their own energy (the rest of us can jump in a lake), at full retail prices, with corporate profits unregulated because of lobbying, and no central planning.
I am reading the RMI report on future grid defection. The chart in Figure 41 is a good one that illustrates the two possible pathways. Path 2, the inefficient and wasteful one of two separate systems, is a real danger. It could happen. The recent experiences in Arizona are a case in point where large utilities simply cannot face reality.
I have installed solar panels twice. The first time (8 years ago) was with a city utility and I had battery backup for when the grid was down. The second time was with a rural electric coop and at that time (3 years ago) I had learned that batteries do not really provide much value for grid tied systems–at least in my state. (Both installations involved net metering.) Now it is obvious that local storage will soon become a economical alternative to selling your power back to the utility.
I intend to forward this report to the rural coop managers and tell them what I think they should read. The rural coops are an example of how cooperatives can work in a capitalist society, and because that are owned by the users they are much more open to user input than the large for-profit utilities. Some of the most economically conservative people I know are electric coop advocates. They don’t see the contradiction–Go figure. I think the coops can lead the way along what the RMI report refers to as Path 1, the integrated grid, and maybe the large corporate utilities that are now being pulled kicking and screaming toward paying customers for renewables can be convinced of the rationality of Path 1. Actually, I would like to see the demise of the large utilities and their replacement by cooperatives. That could happen but not, or course, with the current crop of corporate kowtowers in Congress.
Anyway, I am ready to install batteries. Get to work E. Musk!
Can I ask you a question? Let’s say you have just successfully managed a loan for a really primo home solar set-up, and you are looking at a 12 to 20 year payback on a quite substantial loan. Financially, you are stretched, but optimistic, although a little worried about the scale of your new investment?
How receptive would you be to supporting a huge Federal initiative to actually solving the [CO2} problem which would require a $10.0 trillion investment by the U.S.A., considering that your taxes might be raised for a decade or two to pay it off?
Not sure how to respond to that question. Is it related to the question of electrical generation by individual home owners? So, I will respond to your earlier comment. The Rocky Mountain Institute’s report is a warning about the inefficiency and duplication involved in two separate systems: one involving off-the-grid home owners generating their electricity privately and the other composed of public utilities with fewer and fewer subscribing consumers as the cost of private electrical generation continues to decline. The report advocates an integration of private and public electrical generation. In other words they agree with the basic sentiment of your earlier comment, but they are saying that on our current path public utilities will go into a decline as more and more individuals discover that they can generate electricity at a lower monthly cost than their current electric bill.
April 8, 2015 at 5:31 am
Battery storage technology is greatly advancing and making up for the early disadvantages of solar, interesting article in Renewable Energy suggesting that battery storage could make gas-fired peaking plants virtually redundant:
“Battery storage is already being deployed at network level in Australia, with the likes of Ergon Energy and others finding it a cheaper option that to upgrade poles and wires, with the added benefit of improving grid stability and allowing more locally-based renewables to be incorporated.”
http://reneweconomy.com.au/2015/why-battery-storage-may-put-peaking-gas-plants-out-of-business-39696
April 8, 2015 at 5:33 am
And eagerly awaiting Tesla’s new product to be released on April 30th ……
“It is widely assumed that the “new product” to which Elon Musk was referring will be a residential energy storage system.”
http://reneweconomy.com.au/2015/power-storage-game-revs-up-as-electricity-grids-face-strain-86725
April 8, 2015 at 8:48 am
It’s just swell that AUS is such a LEADER in the war against AGW!
Oh, by the way, how are the plans coming to make Abbot Point into the WORLD’S LARGEST coal exporting port? Have they dredged a deep enough channel through the middle of the Great Barrier Reef to accommodate the ships yet?
And if those AUS batteries are the “high tech” type that need rare earths, China will be glad to trade them for AUS coal. (That video clip you posted on another thread was a waste lagoon for a rare earths mine in Inner Mongolia). One hand dirties the other, so to speak?
April 8, 2015 at 9:18 am
I will again bore everyone to tears with my chant of CHINA-INDIA-COAL and HUMAN POPULATION DYNAMICS. Yogi would be smart enough to look at that metaphorical lead picture and see that the biggest “roads” there could be China and India, and the two smaller tracks are the US and EU in one and the rest of the world in the other (roughly, but good enough for navel-gazing).
Any good news is welcome, but talking about battery storage in “42 of the 50 largest U.S. cities” is wishful thinking when there are almost as many people in India with NO access to electricity as the entire population of the U.S.
Looking at the 50 largest cities in the world, only THREE are in the U.S.—8)–NYC, 17)–LA, 28)–CHI
China with TEN and India with SEVEN make up over 1/3 of the total (17/50), and those two countries contain TWENTY-NINE of the top 100. The top 20 non-U.S.cities combined contain more people than the entire U.S. The list is populated with many cities in southeast and south Asia, Africa, and South America as well, places where the “grid” and battery storage are far in the future. Since we DO use so much energy and do release so many GHG, it IS important that we make progress here, but the solution to the GLOBAL problem is elsewhere. We are whistling past the graveyard yet again.
http://www.worldatlas.com/citypops.htm
April 8, 2015 at 3:03 pm
Thanks for reminding us once again,(yet once again) and I will remind you who is the #1 oil and gas producer (by far), is it Saudi, Russia ? No it’s the same country who recently used to be the #1 industrial co2 emitter.
http://www.climatecentral.org/news/u.s.-leads-global-oil-and-gas-production-18867
April 9, 2015 at 12:08 pm
Let’s try again.
Too-shay! Did I put a knot in your grundies again? No doubt the USA and Europe bear the greatest share of the blame for AGW and adopting the economic/social model that made it all happen, but we’re picking on COAL here and AUS is vulnerable. Some numbers—-rounded off and maybe not the latest, but close enough.
The US produces ~1000 million tons of coal a year and exports ~100 million of that (10%)
AUS is the FOURTH largest coal producer (after US, China, and Russia?), and produces ~500 million tons and exports 300 million of that (60%). Fully 1/2 of all AUS export income comes from coal. Since 2000, AUS coal production has gone up by 33% and AUS coal consumption at home has gone down 15% (that’s good for AUS). And how about LNG? AUS is the world’s 4th’ largest exporter and has increased exports by 60% over the last ten years.
Not bad for a country of 23 million people. ~1/14 the population of the US and digging up 1/2 as much coal and sending 3 times as much of it abroad as the US.
And did you know that AUS has 75 million sheep—3+ sheep for every human? And NZ has 34 million sheep—-7+ for every human? Can’t you just export sheep and make money there rather than on coal?
April 9, 2015 at 3:02 pm
Try yet again.
Too-shay! Did I put a knot in your grundies again? No doubt the USA and Europe bear the greatest share of the blame for AGW and adopting the economic/social model that made it all happen, but we’re picking on COAL here and AUS is vulnerable. Some numbers—-rounded off and maybe not the latest, but close enough.
The US produces ~1000 million tons of coal a year and exports ~100 million of that (10%)
AUS is the FOURTH largest coal producer (after US, China, and Russia?), and produces ~500 million tons and exports 300 million of that (60%). Fully 1/2 of all AUS export income comes from coal. Since 2000, AUS coal production has gone up by 33% and AUS coal consumption at home has gone down 15% (that’s good for AUS). And how about LNG? AUS is the world’s 4th’ largest exporter and has increased exports by 60% over the last ten years.
Not bad for a country of 23 million people. ~1/14 the population of the US and digging up 1/2 as much coal and sending 3 times as much of it abroad as the US.
And did you know that AUS has 75 million sheep—3+ sheep for every human? And NZ has 34 million sheep—-7+ for every human? Can’t you just export sheep and make money there rather than on coal?
April 10, 2015 at 7:19 pm
Too-shay! Did I put a knot in your grundies again? No doubt the USA and Europe bear the greatest share of the blame for AGW and adopting the economic/social model that made it all happen, but we’re picking on COAL here and AUS is vulnerable. Some numbers—-rounded off and maybe not the latest, but close enough.
The US produces ~1000 million tons of coal a year and exports ~100 million of that (10%)
AUS is the FOURTH largest coal producer (after US, China, and Russia?), produces ~500 million tons and exports 300 million of that (60%). Fully 1/2 of all AUS export income comes from coal. Since 2000, AUS coal production has gone up by 33% and AUS coal consumption at home has gone down 15% (that’s good for AUS). And how about LNG? AUS is the world’s 4th’ largest exporter and has increased exports by 60% over the last ten years.
Not bad for a country of 23 million people. ~1/14 the population of the US and digging up 1/2 as much coal and sending 3 times as much of it abroad as the US.
And did you know that AUS has 75 million sheep—3+ sheep for every human? And NZ has 34 million sheep—-7+ for every human? Can’t you just export sheep and make money there rather than on coal?
April 9, 2015 at 9:47 am
This may come through twice—-WordPress is acting up—-apologies.
Too-shay! Did I put a knot in your grundies again? No doubt the USA and Europe bear the greatest share of the blame for AGW and adopting the economic/social model that made it all happen, but we’re picking on COAL here and AUS is vulnerable. Some numbers—-rounded off and maybe not the latest, but close enough.
The US produces ~1000 million tons of coal a year and exports ~100 million of that (10%)
AUS is the FOURTH largest coal producer (after US, China, and Russia?), and produces ~500 million tons and exports 300 million of that (60%). Fully 1/2 of all AUS export income comes from coal. Since 2000, AUS coal production has gone up by 33% and AUS coal consumption at home has gone down 15% (that’s good for AUS). And how about LNG? AUS is the world’s 4th’ largest exporter and has increased exports by 60% over the last ten years.
Not bad for a country of 23 million people. ~1/14 the population of the US and digging up 1/2 as much coal and sending 3 times as much of it abroad as the US.
And did you know that AUS has 75 million sheep—3+ sheep for every human? And NZ has 34 million sheep—-7+ for every human? Can’t you just export sheep and make money there rather than on coal?
April 9, 2015 at 12:44 pm
Isn’t it great?
Instead of having our electricity come to us as part of a publicly-owned, universal, low cost, well-regulated, and egalitarian system, now we can look forward to individuals being responsible for their own energy (the rest of us can jump in a lake), at full retail prices, with corporate profits unregulated because of lobbying, and no central planning.
Now, that’s progress! Buy “Murrican, you all!
April 9, 2015 at 2:14 pm
I am reading the RMI report on future grid defection. The chart in Figure 41 is a good one that illustrates the two possible pathways. Path 2, the inefficient and wasteful one of two separate systems, is a real danger. It could happen. The recent experiences in Arizona are a case in point where large utilities simply cannot face reality.
I have installed solar panels twice. The first time (8 years ago) was with a city utility and I had battery backup for when the grid was down. The second time was with a rural electric coop and at that time (3 years ago) I had learned that batteries do not really provide much value for grid tied systems–at least in my state. (Both installations involved net metering.) Now it is obvious that local storage will soon become a economical alternative to selling your power back to the utility.
I intend to forward this report to the rural coop managers and tell them what I think they should read. The rural coops are an example of how cooperatives can work in a capitalist society, and because that are owned by the users they are much more open to user input than the large for-profit utilities. Some of the most economically conservative people I know are electric coop advocates. They don’t see the contradiction–Go figure. I think the coops can lead the way along what the RMI report refers to as Path 1, the integrated grid, and maybe the large corporate utilities that are now being pulled kicking and screaming toward paying customers for renewables can be convinced of the rationality of Path 1. Actually, I would like to see the demise of the large utilities and their replacement by cooperatives. That could happen but not, or course, with the current crop of corporate kowtowers in Congress.
Anyway, I am ready to install batteries. Get to work E. Musk!
April 10, 2015 at 9:31 am
Can I ask you a question? Let’s say you have just successfully managed a loan for a really primo home solar set-up, and you are looking at a 12 to 20 year payback on a quite substantial loan. Financially, you are stretched, but optimistic, although a little worried about the scale of your new investment?
How receptive would you be to supporting a huge Federal initiative to actually solving the [CO2} problem which would require a $10.0 trillion investment by the U.S.A., considering that your taxes might be raised for a decade or two to pay it off?
April 10, 2015 at 10:55 am
Not sure how to respond to that question. Is it related to the question of electrical generation by individual home owners? So, I will respond to your earlier comment. The Rocky Mountain Institute’s report is a warning about the inefficiency and duplication involved in two separate systems: one involving off-the-grid home owners generating their electricity privately and the other composed of public utilities with fewer and fewer subscribing consumers as the cost of private electrical generation continues to decline. The report advocates an integration of private and public electrical generation. In other words they agree with the basic sentiment of your earlier comment, but they are saying that on our current path public utilities will go into a decline as more and more individuals discover that they can generate electricity at a lower monthly cost than their current electric bill.