> PG&E wants to charge solar power users $80+/month just for the privilege of connecting to the grid even if they are fully self-powers through solar

If you're "fully self-powered through solar" just disconnect from the grid.

If you're using the grid as a battery where you feed power into it at 4PM and draw power from it at 4AM, that costs money.

▲ secabeen 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

This. 100%. The ability to draw 200Amps from the grid at no notice, 24x7 has real value, and costs real money to provide. If you want that ability, you should pay for it.

We really need to separate the reliability and grid maintenance costs from the usage costs. Bundling them together worked when electricity was a true monopoly, but it isn't that anymore.

▲ inferiorhuman 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

  If you're "fully self-powered through solar" just disconnect from the grid.

That's likely illegal.

▲ defrost 3 days ago | parent [-]

Somehow I doubt walking out to your breaker box and throwing the main switch is illegal.

I can't see any prosecution or charge resulting from never throwing it back on again, a day off is OK, so is a week, ...

Where there might be a problem is refusing to pay any connection charge for the X-monthly bill that now shows 0 units consumed.

Sounds like they'd need to throw the breaker and cancel any existing contract.

▲ inferiorhuman 3 days ago | parent [-]

  I can't see any prosecution or charge resulting from never throwing it back on again, a day off is OK, so is a week, ...

Who said anything about prosecution or charge? A building inspector will happily red tag your residence and the sheriffs will happily escort you out. Easy peasy.

In California it's going to vary city by city but there are typically interconnect requirements for single family homes and ADUs. You're welcome to go full sovereign citizen and the city or county is welcome to deem your house uninhabitable and use force to evict you.

▲ defrost 3 days ago | parent [-]

> A building inspector will happily red tag your residence

For what? For not having power connected?

Are people not allowed to have (say) propane only homes in California?

Are you able to cite any relevant law here that requires a building to be connected to a power grid?

▲ inferiorhuman 3 days ago | parent [-]

> For not having power connected?

Yes.

And folks in Florida. And Arizona. And Colorado. And wherever else. Building codes and HOAs exist and absolutely have their own standards for habitability. It's not that hard to turn up news articles of folks who run afoul of this.

In California it is/was the energy code that required connection to the grid. In Arizona where a house could easily reach unsafe temperatures without working A/C there's almost certainly a safety aspect to requiring a grid connection.

▲ defrost 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

Weird.

I guess I'm glad I don't live in the US, I've built, bought, sold, renovated, and helped out others renovating a number of times in the past four decades and never run into such restrictions.

> In Arizona where a house could easily reach unsafe temperatures without working A/C there's almost certainly a safety aspect to requiring a grid connection.

Odd, given one doesn't follow from the other; you can have working A/C without a grid connection .. and it's better to build to the environment than waste power in any case .. the Pilbara easily matches Arizona temperatures and people have lived there for millennia w/out A/C - in more recent times rammed earth walls and high roofs with wide verandahs work to beat the heat w/out draining power.

▲ inferiorhuman 3 days ago | parent [-]

   the Pilbara easily matches Arizona temperatures

That's a bit apples to oranges. Pilbara is sparsely populated, Arizona's had much larger urban centers since the 70s. Karratha (the largest city in Pilbara) has a population of about 17,000. Phoenix? About 1.6 million. Phoenix also sees hotter summers with daily average max temps around 45 versus 35 or lower for Karratha. A couple years ago Phoenix saw daily highs of over 43 for a month straight.

Arizona also famously prohibits collecting rain water. It's an unforgiving environment, and while there were people who lived there in pre-Columbian times they didn't do so in large cities.

	▲	defrost 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		Awww, look at you comparing temps on the cool coastal fringes of the Pilbara. The interior gets hotter, Marble Bar for example. > Pilbara is sparsely populated, Arizona's had much larger urban centers since the 70s I fail to see how this is relevant to the design of individual buildings and the choices regarding passive Vs active cooling. > A couple years ago Phoenix saw daily highs of over 43 for a month straight. That occurs roughly every five years or so in interior (not coastal) Pilbara locations. This year a W.Australian wheatbelt town much further south (cooler, and not in the Pilbara) saw a month of ~ 40 temperatures peaking at 45 .. a month of over 40 in the interior is expected yearly. > It's an unforgiving environment, and while there were people who lived there in pre-Columbian times they didn't do so in large cities. Much like the Pilbara, save for the "pre-Columbian" marker - before European colonization people lived in all parts of Australia, including the Pilbara, the Tanimi, and other desert regions, for tens of thousands of years.

▲ DaSHacka 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Man, Californians have it rough.