solar in California

There was potentially big news for solar in California. The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) decided that PG&E and other utility companies have to pay homeowners for excess solar power. In the past, it's been simple net-metering, and any excess was used to offset their bill. Now PG&E has to pay a market rate for the excess. In theory that means solar panels can be paid off sooner, and eventually even make money.

Why isn't this huge news? Because the price was set based on daytime wholesale electricity rates paid to power plant owners, which fluctuate daily based on market conditions. That means when supply is low and demand is high, all is good for power producers. But much of the day and much of the year, California has an excess of electricity available, which means low prices, sometimes even negative.

Part of my day job is writing software for a small power plant, one piece of which is a program to monitor the energy price through the day. The price is set by the California ISO (CAISO), and is affected by supply and demand, loss, and transmission costs. After deregulation, companies like Enron gamed the market, resulting in power shortages, rolling blackouts and high prices. CAISO is designed to hopefully eliminate that possibility in the future, in part by always making sure there's more than enough power to meet the demand.

This year in particular, prices have been relatively low in part because demand has been low due to cooler than normal temperatures (until last week), and in part because of higher supply. Why not just dial back production if there's too much? Some generation is hydroelectric, and generates 24x7 depending on water flow, which has been higher this year. Even fossil-fuel based plants that can be adjusted up or down usually can't be adjusted that quickly, so there's generally a large excess.

The other factor is that solar is still a tiny portion of the power generated in California. Yesterday, for example, solar in California accounted for 4,142 MW hours of power, mostly between 8AM and 7PM. That's out of total system demand of 602,261 MW hours, or less than 0.7% of the total. A residential solar install is going to be a tiny fraction of that tiny fraction. All that means that with prices set based on market rates, the payment amounts are going to be very small.

As noted in the article, some people think this is fair, while others think the price paid should be higher to encourage further solar development. What's the right answer? I don't know, but in the short-term this doesn't change much, even for most solar owners. We still don't have solar power, but now that our neighbor's big tree is gone, it may make sense.

changing scenery

Yesterday was not a productive day. I wasn't expecting it to be super productive, but I basically got no work done. Our uphill neighbor told us last month that she was going to have one of the big Monterey pines next to her house taken out. I've always been aware of the trees -- the many (non-Eucalyptus) trees are part of why I bought the house where I did. But this particular pine was right next to her house, with a major branch hanging over ours. Over the years, she had an arborist take care of it, but it had become somewhat unbalanced over the last few years. Even before that, K and I worried a bit during big storms or earthquakes that all or part might come crashing down. So I was torn when I heard it was time for it to come down -- it's beautiful, but can be a little scary.

hecka big crane

Taking down a tree that large between houses and power lines is a tricky business. So they brought in a crane. It's a big tree, so it needed a really big crane. (They were also taking out a smaller dead cypress tree near the other side of the house, and the crane would help with that, too.) Between the crane, chainsaws, wood chipper, and general mayhem, I was anticipating a noisy day. I stayed home hoping to work and to deal with any issues that might come up, and K wisely went to the Mercy Center for a day-long retreat. Guess who was more successful?

Friday morning we woke to the sound of a big crane lumbering its way up the hill. We also woke to the news of the massive earthquake and tsunami in Japan. Although we currently don't have family there, K's brother and sister-in-law used to live in Tokyo (their oldest daughter was born there), and I was there several times on business and worked with some software engineers from Toshiba for a couple of years. So I was not only distracted by the mayhem outside, but I was frequently checking the web for news, praying, thinking of former colleagues and was generally very distracted by the events there. Add to that the relatively minor worries about the tsunami striking California, and it was not a peaceful or productive day.

Despite all that, the they did safely bring the tree down. They started by lowering a guy into the tree with the crane. He proceeded to tie off then cut branches, which were then lowered by crane to the ground for others to deal with. This went on all day, and by 6pm or so, it was all over but the cleanup. They did a lot of that last night, and then came and finished up this morning. We haven't counted the rings yet, but it was a very large tree. You can get some idea of how big it is from the picture of the slice in the back of the truck. It's about 5 feet across at the widest point.

We'll miss the tree (not so much during storms), but removing it has already made a big change in the neighborhood. People further up the hill have new views. We have a lot more light on the north and east sides of the house. And I'll have a lot fewer pine needles and branches to clean from the roof and front walk. One downside is that the azaleas along the path will no longer be self-watering. During the summer, the fog would condense on the tree and drip down onto the flower beds below. Now we may actually have to water them some. On the other hand, it reduces the fire risk, and improves our prospects for solar PV panels.

West Coast Green

This week in San Francisco is the annual West Coast Green conference. I'll be covering parts of it for green building blog Jetson Green. There promise to be lots of interesting innovations in the field of green building and design.

I'm particularly excited about seeing the SFH40 from Green Horizon Manufacturing, a self-sustaining temporary building that can be sent anywhere in a shipping container to provide emergency housing. After FEMA's mess with the trailers following Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, this looks to be a major step up. It features solar panels, a fresh waster supply, waste water treatment, and is built from 100% recycled materials.

I'll also be keeping my eyes open for new do-it-yourself friendly materials and technologies. Let me know if there's anything new you've heard of that you'd like me to check out at the conference.

GRID Alternatives

up on the roof

Today I volunteered with GRID Alternatives, a non-profit that installs solar panels for low-income homeowners and provides community members (like me!) with training and hands-on experience with renewable energy technologies. We were prepping some of the Habitat homes for GRID's upcoming solar-a-thon, where they'll install panels, inverters and wiring for 16 homes. It was a short work day because most of the prep work got done last week. We installed a few safety clips on one roof, and others sorted tools and supplies. After a bit, a delivery truck arrived with the solar panels, inverters and cutoffs for the install. We inventoried them to make sure everything was there, then moved them into one of the houses for storage. Pretty much everything is ready to go for the solar-a-thon, which is good, because they're expecting 250+ people for the event.