Tesla is going to be leasing battery packs not selling them. They are leasing them with their solar electric leases. Like the Tesla cars, much of the revenue from the product is most likely going to come from other sources. CA has some very generous incentives for grid electric storage and on top of that there is most likely 5 minute capacity payments that they can grab. The battery may be in someone's basement but Tesla can be pulling all sorts of strings generating revenue in addition to what the homeowner is paying, Unfortunately this means unless you want the strings attached its going to be awhile before you will be able to get a hold of cheap Lithium powerpacks
What was your interconnection fee??
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OK, don't rely on Tesla. GM will sell a Volt pack retail now. The point is the price is coming down and will continue to as more large battery packs flood the market.
If they would just throw a little money and brains at it like with military technology we would have probably been there already. But then like you said, we'd have to lease the batteries and equipment from someone wanting to make another empire for themselves.
A solar lease, or PPA is actually a smart way for many folks to gain the benefits of a grid tied solar electric system without coming up with a big chunk of cash and waiting several years before the system pays for itself. To me a good business model is one where both parties gain from the relationship. Whether the solar lease/PPA model can be parleyed into something that works with battery backup remains to be seen, but Elon and his two cousins, the Rive brothers, are wicked smart with a ton of forward vision. I wouldn't bet against them coming up with a palatable offering.
It is illogical to consider PV (to include storage soon) as an expense in many locations. PV certainly is no more an expense than a furnace in a house situated in a cold climate, or AC in a hot climate. All meet a genuine need. And unlike the furnace and AC, which both depreciate to $0, have maintenance and repair costs, and have energy costs to obtain the benefits, PV provides a return in excess of cost which can be sold for $ and PV costs next to nothing to receive the benefit and the return. Storage is the puzzle piece that we can't quite see where it fits, but soon will be an edge piece which falls right into place.
I don't disagree with any of this, what I'm saying is that a cash purchase doesn't work for nearly as many people as a lease or ppa will. More than anything else, those instruments are responsible for mainstreaming solar in areas with high electric rates. The next most popular way to go solar is with a loan product that offers monthly payments in the same range as the monthly savings from producing your own electricity.
Storage will happen because it will have to be in place as net metering caps are reached. Without it, the residential solar market will dry up and the industry is not going to sit back and watch that happen.
Lease or ppa are certainly ways to finance PV. Are there any grid utilities now making available lease or ppa?
(broken link removed to http://www.kpcoop.com/communitysolar/)
From their website...I can't see how anyone would think this is a good deal...other than spending money to feel good. This is about 15 miles from me, but a different utility than the one I'm on.
"Q: What is the cost? It is $1,250.00 per panel output. This lease/contract with KPC is good thru the fall of 2039. The estimated annual output is approximately 480 kWh. The actual amount may vary from month to month, and season to season. The output credit will appear on your electric bill as a line item."
I doubt any of the bigger players are doing residential lease/ppa business in Minnesota. Sorry, I wasn't thinking about where you are when I posted about that as a good option. A good program includes annual production guarantees and a fixed cost on a twenty year agreement.
I just thought its kinda funny how solar is finally getting affordable, but then you see a program like that and people will still think its unaffordable and impractical.
Then when I drive by their test site they have panels angled away from the South...I can't see how they are getting any direct sunlight to those panels this time of year. They set them up like a roof /\ running east to west. Don't understand why you would do that, half of them are shaded right now.
Seriously? If half of them are facing north, that half of the array is always going to be shaded.
Yep, they have pics on the website...sometime I would like to stop there and ask why they set it up like that. I'll get a pic someday from the highway, but I just can't for the life of me see why a solar installer would do that.
Where2
Feeling the Heat
Where else do you propose to store the backup pallet of panels to replace the ones that go bad? At the wrong tilt, you'll still get some output, just not nearly as much as a panel facing the right tilt.
Yep the $5000 fee is correct after all. The solar guy is working with them, trying to get them to see that their fee is outrageous. I guess they are just not knowledgeable of solar systems herehere in town or something. The solar guy is confident he can get them to lower the fee because state law is behind Solar right now and they seem to have gone out of the way to make it unaffordable.
A lot of politics going on with the utility in town nowadays. Sat in on one meeting and the new sewer treatment plant they just build doesn't meet standard's for salty water discharge per EPA...seems it will cost tens of millions more to fix that. It just never ends....
There may be a logic to facing panels to the SW on an experimental basis. The grid gets pretty heavy demand in the mid-afternoon to early evening, and extra PV during that time may be worth more to a utility than getting higher production from S facing panels.
No, these are set like a roof line, half facing South and the other half facing North.
Where2
Feeling the Heat
I'd say your utility is doing a remarkable job at making solar unaffordable! I just checked, and the next PV install I plan to do will cost $50 to interconnect since it is less than 10MW and inverter based. At $50, I consider the fee reasonable since someone has to stop by the house, review the system connections, and swap the meter.
Do you have to pay any other monthly fees once hooked up? Such as a "net metering fee", monitoring fee or anything else other than your usual meter fee?
TonyVideo
Feeling the Heat
Utilities hate the fact they have to credit you what they sell it to you per kwh. They want to charge more to connect to offset and not make it attractive. It has been a novelty until now. It now is a longterm threat as prices drop. My opinion.
Where2
Feeling the Heat
No, there may be a group of people who believe a modern set of PV panels will fail before I reach retirement age, but I'm not one of them. I tend to believe the college professor who taught my "Intro to Solar Energy" class in 2011 who said he'd worked on 25+ year old PV systems on islands in the FL Keys (off-grid systems). At 25+ years, a PV panel will still generate power. Even a broken fraction of a PV cell will generate power, that was a lab experiment one evening in class.
At our house in FL, we pay nothing more than the same $7.57/mo base metering fee the guy next door without PV pays. My neighborhood's smart meters call home all the time, including my net meter. For the first ~12 months we had a net meter, the power company had to send someone by to manually read the net meter every month, because the neighborhood smart meter infrastructure was setup for GE i210+ meters. When they replaced my GE with a Landis & Gyr smart meter programmed for net metering, the Landis & Gyr couldn't call home. They've finally updated their infrastructure and I can now see hourly energy tracking data >24 hours old for the last 6+ months. (I had that ability previously when I had the GE i210+).
I'm not seeing any evidence of monthly surcharges for PV system interconnection in the documents from the utility where my next PV install is going to go. Doesn't mean things might not change in the future, but there are plenty of properties with small scale wind setups in the utility coverage region where my next PV setup is going.
Some may feel it is a threat, but the same utility that may consider my PV system a threat still credits me up to $9/mo for 6 months out of the year for the ability to disconnect my A/C compressor unit at their whim to shed 3kW of base load. Still looks to me like my utility appreciates additional generation capacity that works on the sunniest of days. In the middle of summer, I usually can't collect the full $9/mo credit for my A/C disconnect, because my electric use averages less than 400kWh/mo. Ironic, my PV system works against my credit for helping the power company...
Note: My 4.4kW PV system only generates ~60% of the energy our 53 year old all electric home uses. We still bought ~4MWh from my electric company in 2014. My utility continues to add new customers, so they already found a new customer to buy that 6MWh I used to buy.
Just received this email today!
"Good news! Willmar Municipal Utilities engineer agreed with us on the huge fee cost. I told him all utilities in MN are around $250 and some are even free. I don't know what they are going to change the fee to but he said he will update me next week. He said it may take a couple weeks for it to go thru their commission approval. Well a step in the right direction!"
"Good news! Willmar Municipal Utilities engineer agreed with us on the huge fee cost. I told him all utilities in MN are around $250 and some are even free. I don't know what they are going to change the fee to but he said he will update me next week. He said it may take a couple weeks for it to go thru their commission approval. Well a step in the right direction!"
So we finally heard back from Willmar Utilities about the new interconnection fee..."they changed their policy to $1,000 up front application fee and refund in fee if the application does need that much engineering time/resources."
While still way high, I figure its much better than the $5,000 they originally wanted. Shooting for a May hookup if I can get everything installed and up on the roof. Going to be a busy summer!
Where2
Feeling the Heat
Yes, indeed it will be a busy summer. I'm still waiting for snow to melt and fortunately my wife just arranged for additional technical assistance around our property where my next install is going. (she has friends who want to help with the PV install so they can attack their own house some day.) On the house in FL, it took me over a week to just get the 102 mounts and 6 rails installed and the decra metal roof reassembled. Looking forward to photos.
I wonder how many they pushed off grid with their fees? If you can buy the volt battery for half of their fee I'd be off grid pretty quickly in that scenario. Then they would get zero cash flow out of me.
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