Jed— My rooftop inverters do not work unless there is a signal from the grid of the appropriate frequency and voltage. That technical feature and expense was mine not the Utilities. In fact its an undesirable situation, since I cannot use the power I might generate during an outage without getting a signal generator to fool my inverters into producing energy. And install a separate ibreaker in my system to isolate the grid at no cost to the utility.
The utility makes a good deal of money off me, since I produce most of my energy during the May thru September time frame when the wholesale electricity costs are greater because hydro power is less available. I use very little electricity during that time. The utility gets from me about 3000 kw hrs net input to their grid during that time frame. That amounts to about $300 clear profit to the utility. The utility loves that kind of margin. You would make a good state utility commissioner in the eyes of the utility IMHO. Bob Cook ________________________________ From: Jed Rothwell <jedrothw...@gmail.com> Sent: Monday, March 5, 2018 7:52:56 AM To: Vortex Subject: Re: [Vo]:Amazing and overlooked: the big picture of Grid Energy in the USA bobcook39...@hotmail.com<mailto:bobcook39...@hotmail.com> <bobcook39...@hotmail.com<mailto:bobcook39...@hotmail.com>> wrote: The utilities love that combination of lower cost and higher profit margins, with no competition. The utilities do have a valid point regarding electricity from rooftop PV installations. It costs them money to accept this electricity and to integrate it safely into their grid. For example, the incoming power from a rooftop PV installation has to be metered, and during a power failure, the power a PV installation would be dangerous, so it has be cut off. This means the power company meter and other equipment has to be more complicated. The power company gets very little electricity from a rooftop installation, and I doubt they make a significant profit from it. It is probably not worth it to them. This is not like asking Amazon to sell 10 copies a year of an e-book. Amazon can do that profitably because that business scales down and it is profitable even at a few dollars per year. It does not require Amazon to install something like a hardware meter at your house. - Jed
