“We simply cannot expect to run fossil generation around the clock. Energy storage can be scaled to use in the local community as a micro-grid, in switching stations to help island an entire community during high demand or weather events that some times take down the grid with surges or sags. Energy storage is generation neutral, distributed along the grid can regulate the grid during high demand times of the day and store energy making online generation more efficient. You’ve missed the point on so called, wasteful storage spending. How does one bring down the cost of a technology, YOU use it and stop talking about how much it ‘costs’ to store energy while pondering “…why everyone is so concerned with pricing of electricity…” to be 100% renewable electricity powered sometime in late 2020. Another Buffett-owned utility, MidAmerican, will be the first utility in the U.S. NV Energy, a Buffett-owned utility in Nevada, has recently pushed forward some of the largest solar and energy storage projects in the country. He has stated that in deregulated markets this could be a challenge against long-term predictable earnings.īuffett is not against renewable electricity. This increase in rates would then lead to more defections, which would spiral upward - much like the land line telephone business experienced as mobile phones took over.īuffett has argued that in regulated markets, like Utah, where electricity generation is fully monopolized by the utilities – this spiral can be managed via aggressive anti-net-metering lobbying. The term was used to describe how rates might increase as more individuals effectively defected from the power grid by generating their own electricity via solar power. This phrase was coined in an Edison Electric Institute report from 2013. This type of action, aggressively attacking the value paid to individual’s exporting electricity to the power grid, is a Buffett marching order to combat a potentially existential threat – the “death spiral.” Utah’s duck curve is a natural occurrence, not caused by solar power, as the state’s total distributed solar generation is well under 1% of all electricity. During the winter, both a morning and evening peak is seen, while summer electricity shows a massive evening electricity peak. The billing structure was calculated based upon the utility’s varying summer and winter electricity demand, as well the daily use profile. If 52% of a solar system’s electricity is dropped by 80% in value, the total revenue generated will fall by around 30% based upon current tariff rates. In the filing, the utility noted that roughly 52% of all electricity generated by an individually-owned solar system was exported to the power grid. The utility has also requested that two new fees be implemented – an interconnection application fee of $150, and a meter fee of $160. The utility charges between 10.7¢ and 14.5¢/kWh for residential electricity.

The current value for net metered solar electricity is 9.2¢/kWh. The values vary based upon month of the year, and whether the electricity is generated during an on- or off-peak period. The Warren Buffett-owned utility, in a docket filed with the state’s public service commission, has proposed that net-metered solar electricity is worth between 1.1¢ and 3.8¢/kWh – with annual averages being just over 2.0¢/kWh. Utah’s Rocky Mountain Power, a publicly managed monopoly electricity provider, has proposed a new rate for net-metered solar electricity that will effectively destroy the value of the program.

Rocky mountain power net