How should net metering affect your electric bill?
One thing that&#x27;s missing from this is that with current California net metering, for new solar customers, you can&#x27;t dump a kWh on the grid at noon and then swap it for one at 7pm at the top of the duck curve.<p>New plans are all time-of-use rated, meaning that you can only swap kWh within the same time of use band.  At least, that&#x27;s how it&#x27;s been explained to me, I have not yet been able to find any explicit rules on PG&amp;E&#x27;s site explaining how time of use and net metering interact. (And for that matter, PG&amp;E goes to nearly excessive length to avoid describing how anything works, what the actual rates and charges are, or generally putting the most useless pablum on their website.)<p>I think that all of these market designs and pricing schemes need to be made with an eye on getting to the lowest cost zero-carbon grid. Current best models are coming from Christopher Clack at Vibrant Clean Energy, and all his modeling shows that if we deploy lots of distributed solar and storage at meters, and upgrade distribution, we end up saving massive amounts of money over the decades. The reason is that by having distributed solar and storage, you can massively reduce other fixed cost parts of the grid as they age out.<p>So really we need net metering policy that encourages that sort of capital investments today, and not just in the wealthiest neighborhoods that have good credit scores or $20k to spend on home improvement on homes occupied by owners, but all over the grid, including rentals.<p>That&#x27;s going to take not only good net metering policy, but also new innovation in financing and entrepreneurship. Figuring out how to convince landlords to let you install solar and storage all over, and integrating that into a virtual power plant is a nut that somebody needs to crack. Maybe it won&#x27;t be entrepreneurs, maybe it will be cities making municipal Virtual Power Plants to meet their own ambitious climate goals. But there are a few key pieces missing from the best possible, most economical efficient, energy transition. And if we just let the utilities dictate policy, we will <i>not</i> be getting anything like the most economically efficient grid, we will get grids where they can make maximum profit.