That was always going to happen.
To be fair to the power companies ( i can't believe I'm saying that
), excess generation into the grid is problematic and would require them to spend money to counter it. Those costs would just come back to the consumer either way.
Of course it could be a sneaky way to disincentivize domestic solar as competition but I reckon that ship has already sailed.
Looking at it another way, it is a good incentive for people to install batteries and buy an ev. Instead of giving the money to power companies, you invest it in yourself which will result in lower household energy bills. According to Saul Griffiths, ice fuel is more than half of a household's energy budget. So, by installing a battery and buying an ev can seriously offset a household's energy bills which will fund the upgrades.
I can see community batteries becoming very popular for those that can't afford the individual upgrades.
Poles and wires are about half of the cost of electricity. So, the less you need the grid, the less is spent on them.
If the power companies are going to charge you for your excess, then they need to pay you more when they want you to use a bit of their excess energy from their production . In the UK and parts of the US they have a much more dynamic electricity market where people are charging cars for free overnight if it's particularly windy.
That also opens up the behind the meter system more which means the power companies will buy power off you when they need it .
It will be interesting to see how that pans out.
One positive is that now we've state and federal governments paddling in the same direction, hopefully we can get some decent rules in place to manage this energy market transition so that it is fairer for all in the future.
We seem to be consistently hitting over 50% of east coast grid power during the day lately. In other posts I have extrapolated the numbers out a decade or two when most of the domestic solar will be built out. That plus the available warehouse roofspace that is currently under utilised. It is blindingly obvious that we will be producing way more electricity than we need during the day and it will need to be managed accordingly.
