Regulators in California have commissioned the best utilities of the state to offer dynamic electricity prices, which, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA), said that the renewable limitation and lower costs will lower.
The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) has ordered The three most important electric utilities of the State to develop and offer all customer classes requires the flexibility rates in which prices change at least hour in response to the changing wholesal costs of electricity and other factors.
The new rates are expected to reduce the solar limitation, because when the solar generation is high, the wholesalers in the wholesaler are lower and customers who choose flexible rates can move part of their consumption to lower hours when the sun shines.
Certain devices for electricity customs can dynamically shift consumption in response to price signals, using software and communication capacity and More of such devices They are expected to enter the market.
SEIA argued for the flexible component for wholesale price, and CPUC required it and said it would reduce the renewable limitation.
SEIA also argued for a price component that will support the efficient use of the distribution network, to possibly reduce long-term distribution-upgrade costs and save customers money. The CPUC also required that price component, which is based on the marginal costs for expanding distribution infrastructure.
The CPUC said that these price components and various others will “offer accurate price signals that promote economically efficient tax shifts and support the net reliability.” A primary objective of the requirements is to reduce the limitation of renewable energy and to reduce CO2 emissions related to complying with the future system load of the state, the committee said.
Customer protection
The three utilities affected by the rule – PG&E, SCE and SDG&E – must choose one of the different customer protection options to make broader acceptance of flexible rates possible “without creating large structural billing effects,” CPUC said.
One customer protection approach would use two -part subscription rates. These rates include a customer-specific subscription in the field of load form that is invoiced at the otherwise applicable rate percentage.
CPUC employees quoted a Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Study Fearing that this approach would minimize the impact on customer accounts and the recovery of the income of utilities, while stimulating the behavior of tax sharing.
Edward Cazalet, CEO of Dynamic Pricing Consultancy Temix, has described two -part subscription rates by analogy against Baseball season cards.
The three utilities that are subject to the CPUC order have the option to include energy export compensation, such as from batteries, in their demand flexibility rates. If the export rates were included, those rates would be lower than the input rates.
Fundamental work
There have been several in California utilities pilot studies From dynamic prices.
The five largest utilities of the state are already needed Post and update At least every hour their existing and newly assumed time-dependent rates in the Midas database of the State.
Nationally, achieving flexible demand for electricity with dynamic prices would yield an annual system Savings of $ 33-50 billionFound a study from 2022 by Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.
This content is protected by copyright and may not be reused. If you want to work with us and reuse part of our content, please contact: editors@pv-magazine.com.
