The danger of solar after grid parity
German utilities organization BDEW says that the trend towards "direct consumption" of solar power by homeowners is simply going to make the grid – which everyone on the grid, including owners of solar roofs, still needs – more expensive for those without a solar roof.
Ever heard of "guerrilla photovoltaics"? Grid parity has been far, far surpassed in Germany; electricity from the grid now costs around 27 cents per kilowatt-hour, but the feed-in tariffs that take effect (see the Excel file here) on April 1 for the smallest solar arrays in Germany (up to 10 kilowatts) will drop to an astonishing 15.92 cents per kilowatt-hour.
What could be better than a switch to solar power now? As a German journalist Matthias Brake recently pointed out, the German Solar Energy Society (DGS) recently argued that everyone can go "guerrilla solar" by hooking up a single panel with a capacity of 245 watts and a module inverter to their home power socket – the term "guerrilla" apparently meaning that you shouldn't even bother going through the normal approval process for PV, which generally only takes a few days in Germany anyway. The original article (PDF in German) stops short of suggesting, however, that you should do everything illegally and not even tell your power provider that you have solar: "And just so everything is official," the article ends, "tell your grid operator that you now have a single-panel solar array and are thus helping to take a load off of the distribution grid."
Essentially, as the DGS puts it, "your meter runs backwards" from your own guerrilla solar panel, so we are talking about US-style net-metering. Feed-in tariffs provided a potential return of 5-7 percent on solar investments back when net-metering would have gotten you nowhere in Germany because the retail rate was so much lower than the cost of solar power. But now that grid parity has been surpassed, the solar sector would rather toss out feed-in tariffs, which still offer a 5-7 percent ROI, in favor of net-metering, now that grid power costs roughly two thirds more than solar.
The BDEW has another way of looking at it. In a press release published yesterday (in German), the organization points out that homeowners with solar roofs are not required to cover the cost of the grid when they consume their own power directly. Nonetheless, the grid still exists unchanged and with the same old costs to be covered – in this case, by everyone else who consumes a kilowatt-hour of power from the grid. The result will be that everyone who has not invested or cannot invest in solar (either for a lack of money or, in the case of solar guerrillas, because the only balcony they have faces north) will have to cover an inordinate share of the cost of the grid.
Nonetheless, as Renewables International has repeatedly pointed out, practically none of these people with solar roofs are completely off the grid, and they all still need the grid and all of its dispatchable capacity on those November evenings, when solar reliably supplies zero percent of German power and the country's overall power demand peaks for the year.
Granted, if each of Germany's approximately 22 million households followed this advice and went "guerrilla solar," all of the panels would merely add up to 5.39 GW (the country currently has more than 32 GW). What's more, only a quarter of the apartments and homes in Germany face the south, and many of those will already have solar roofs, so the impact of this advice – if heeded by most people – would be negligible. On the other hand, it would be nice if the solar sector would stop focusing on itself and start discussing with everyone else what a transition to more renewable energy requires – even if that means we need to slow down solar.
Furthermore, Germany provided a safe investment environment for photovoltaics for years back when it cost 3 to 5 times the retail rate, and ratepayers will continue to pay that bill for the 20 years of guaranteed feed-in tariffs for these expensive systems. Now that solar has become far cheaper than the retail rate, it would also be nice if the solar sector would refrain from advising citizenry to break the rules. (Craig Morris)
The Bavarian public TV channel on so called guerilla-pv:
http://sonnenseite.com/Aktuelle+News,Strom+vom+Balkon,6,a25259.html
Well, 1 individual PV-panel per household means only 150-200 Watts difference in electricity consumption per household. And this certainly won't blow the national electricity suply into bits and pieces. Guerilla plug-and-play is only restricted in Germany since 1930something when Nazis created monopolies for the preparation of war. Plug-and-play is legal in most countries as far as I know. In Switzerland these things are available in the DIY markets. Similar to fridges, TVs or power tools. It simply doesn't matter to the local or regional or national grid stability if 200 Watts are consumed more or less per consumer. There is enough capacity to cover for this.
Here a sample of the common Swiss/German/230V AC plug-and-play solution:
http://www.minijoule.com/en/?setstore=en
Here a sample of a legal 'German' plug-and-play solution:
http://www.suninvention.com/index.php/en.html
Since these plug-and-play solutions are not designed to charge batteries or to get a net-metering reduction on the electricity bill (a misconcept!) they should be installed producing as much electricity when needed: eastwards for mornings,westwards for evenings.
Only full-time housewifes and -men would install them south facing. See the happy granny (24 hours at home), a typical costumer for a south facing plug-and-play solution:
http://www.laudeley.de/index.php/26-01-2012-strom-vom-balkon/
The simplicity of installing these things knock out the expensive installers, reducing household PV costs by more then 50%. Propably of concern to some installers and as mentioned in the article: to the power traders.
Another important technical detail: A standard electricity meter as used by European utilities for household purposes ( Ferraris meter) is usualy not capeable to spin backwards. Plug-and-play installations feeding into the grid do so for free. At no cost to anyone. But at the saving of the power traders, utilities. All they have to do is to forecast clients power usage (they are!) and the weather charts (they are!).
The only ones losing out here are power generators and to a very small degree PV-installers as well. Only 1 in 5 suitable roofs in Germany is now employed for solar energy usage, PV and ST combined. There are plenty roofs left, roofs are no plug-and-play-ngfields for the average householder.
You should not asume the utilities are arguing in good faith. They have a vulnerable business model and huge sunk investments in obsolete technologies to defend, and will use any method - good arguments, bad arguments, backstairs lobbying - to protect their position. Climate safety requires the destruction of the fossil fuel industries over the next 20 years. Renewables advcates should not play nice either.
You should not asume the utilities are arguing in good faith. They have a vulnerable business model and huge sunk investments in obsolete technologies to defend, and will use any method - good arguments, bad arguments, backstairs lobbying - to protect their position. Climate safety requires the destruction of the fossil fuel industries over the next 20 years. Renewables advcates should not play nice either.
The inventives in the German market are such that a rational self-interested party will build a system with a high usage factor to maximize their value. Self-interest together with accurate consumption information actually tends to improve access because everyone is going to be trying to minimize backfeeding which will in turn minimize the loading on the circuit.
Do you not see that the FiT is going to work it's way down below the cost of production before too long?
That fire risk needs of course to be addressed, as with all electrical appliances. That is something the makers would need to worry about. The link you gave notes some safety standards that need to be observed.
I have written more on this question at my own blog.
KFL, I understand the desire to have plug-and-play PV, but you will be interested to know that another member of the DGS wrote a follow-up article essentially telling people not to do this on their own lest they cause a fire. Essentially, you are putting power generation and consumption behind the circuit breaker, which can no longer trip up if a line is overloaded. The result would be a fire. http://www.sonnenenergie.de/index.php?id=30&no_cache=1&tx_ttnews[tt_news]=254
And those are just the safety issues. I stick by what I say above about the need to focus not on your own personal budget or solar independence, but on everyone's. There comes a point when one person's solar will come at the expense of someone else's grid access. If the energy transition is, as the German government reiterates, a national effort, then we need to start sticking together.
Which "rules" are you talking about in the last sentence? It is actually difficult to say if there is a duty to "tell your grid operator" that you bought a 200W plug & play panel. There has been extensive discussion on that question at Photovoltaikforum.
I for one don't see any need for reporting, and certainly not for getting "approval", except for general security standards. Plug & Play solar needs to be legal. As far as it may be not right now, the law needs to change.
In case of community heating there is no problem to charge power and energy seperately. In case of electricity this should also be possible. A nice side effect would be that people think more about power reduction and we could see modified busines models.
In case of PV systems with battery storage you get an incentive to think harder about charging with net electricity during periods of low demand.
On one hand it's true that solar makes the grid more expensive for everyone else but so do high efficiency refrigerators, LEDs, double pane windows and Zero Energy Buildings - same effect at work there. But consider that with PV the effect is slow to materialize. Even at 7 GW per year installation rates we've "only" seen Germany work up to a 5% penetration. Best guess right now is for PV to hit 4.5 GW or so this year so things are moderating which is good for planning. If my basic math is correct, even with 60 GW of PV you'd only be looking at an extra .5 to 1 cent/kWh in grid fees to the average customer. These grid fees should be balanced against several benefits that PV provides. 1. You may be able to hold off on some T&D upgrades. 1.5. If you leverage the reactive power capabilities of inverters you can optimize voltage at the distribution level leading to lower losses and thus lower costs. A 1% reduction in losses should roughly make up for the extra grid fees at a 60 GW penetration. 2. Less pollution 3. PV should lead to lower wholesale electricity prices. 4. PV encourages on-site consumption so you can expect appliance manufacturers to build appliances capable of talking to Smart Inverters and/or an energy management system. Non-PV system owners should benefit from these smarter appliances if rate cases are built such that consumption is better harmonized with production. Basic idea is the utilities offer TOU type rate schedules that encourage people to use power during certain times and avoid consumption during others. No other renewable energy resource provides this sort of incentive - at least not broadly.
I agree with the silliness of guerrilla solar though. I also agree that net metering is a bad and greedy idea for Germany. You want policies that encourage balance. You want fair price signals.
My expectation is for grid fees to be partially moved to a fixed charge. Let's say the current T&D charges are 5 cents/kWh and annual consumption is 3000 kWh/year. This means grid fees are .05 * 3000 = 150 Euro/year for the hypothetical average customer. You could move all the extra costs to a fixed monthly charge of 12.5 Euros and reduce electricity rates by 5 cents/kWh or you could move some fraction of the T&D charges to a fixed charge. Really doesn't matter because PV is well below grid parity.
I think it's a good idea to start gradually reconfiguring rate cases. You could phase in gradually escalating fixed grid fees over the next 10 years. Seems like it would work.