2022 Solar and Storage Predictions

Jim, I've been anxiously awaiting the mythical exodus of millions of customers from utilities since the 1970s, when the Church of Renewables faithful first starting making the threat. More recently the website "Utility Dive", in 2012, predicted the approaching end of utilities with its name - now,  stuck with the name, it serves as a nagging reminder of the futility of their simpleminded dreams.
 

They're still whining about it, while doing nothing. I fervently wish they would disconnect from the grid, and make good on their threats, though. They'll quickly be taught a hard lesson in the value of reliable electricity. And maybe, shut up for a while.

Barry, though transmission maintenance and improvements haven't run up prices much in the past, those costs will increase dramatically - up to $10 billion for PG&E customers in coming years. CPUC is trying to get out ahead of them to assure they're equitable - especially, given lower-income customers are already footing the bill for solar's lucrative federal tax credits and line losses.

The 10% annual price increase trend over the last decade, however, is mostly the result of integration costs for intermittent renewable energy, both solar and wind:

"Integration costs include balancing costs (to manage unpredictable intermittency), transmission costs (to reach high-quality resources or ease grid congestion), backup and residual generation costs (to manage predictable intermittency), and curtailment costs (reflecting wasted solar and wind power when it cannot be used on the grid)."

Not included are the following non-trivial costs:
• ancillary services - voltage and frequency stabilization necessary to synchronize thousands of distributed sources of AC power
• negative pricing - the cost of paying neighboring states to take CA electricity when mid-day overgeneration threatens grid stability.

Many don't realize the supply of electricity on an electrical grid must match demand within small tolerances (±4% steady-state voltage), or breakers trip and the grid goes down. When a cloud passes over Topaz Solar Farm, for example, 100 MW of supply can disappear in a matter of seconds. That requires gas generation in spinning reserve (gas turbines that run constantly) to begin generating electricity quickly so stability can be maintained.

Gas plants in spinning reserve can afford to provide this service because they're bidding into California's 5-minute wholesale market, the most lucrative of all, where prices can be hundreds of times higher than its day-ahead market. And of course, all of these costs are passed on to retail customers.