Jay, residential demand charges are becoming a big thing. The argument as I’m sure you know, is that solar customers aren’t paying their share of the expenses in generation and distribution. So our utility, Westar, has a rate increase before the corporation commission “decoupling” their fixed costs from energy costs. And from that they are proposing to charge new solar customers a high base fee for the use of the grid (~73% of the total bill) and a lower energy charge…plus a demand charge for capacity required for the highest fifteen minutes of use each month. This is becoming common across the US as utilities try to assure their long term rate base. How it plays out for us is that a high fixed charge leaves not much that solar or efficiency can change. A 50% reduction of the 27% left for the energy charge leaves only 13.5% that’s variable. When they add in the demand charge, it kills the investment incentive that solar offers. Now it would be possible to deal with high demand charges in the same ways we used in trying to keep the loads from overloading old and relatively expensive inverters…timers and lockout relays and such to keep large loads from coming on simultaneously. Continuous cat and mouse game with the utilities.
Bill Dorsett Manhattan, KS From: RE-wrenches [mailto:re-wrenches-boun...@lists.re-wrenches.org] On Behalf Of Jay Sent: Friday, May 01, 2015 7:06 PM To: glenn.b...@glbcc.com; RE-wrenches Subject: [RE-wrenches] Demand charges for residential Hi all A different question. The tesla sites makes the claim that " often power companies charge for peak rates " My question is where is this happening in the us for residential customers? Thanks Jay. Peltz power.
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