Re:Tesla Energy
by fancyketchup on Friday May 01, 2015 @11:21AM
(#9471991)
That doesn't really make sense.
Electric utilities require capital investment proportional to peak usage, but only earn returns on average usage. This will only increase the ROIC of an electric utility by reducing the peak:average ratio.
Additionally, electric utilities are in a constant cycle of capacity upgrades to keep up with increasing demand. Customers adding distributed storage allows utilities to delay capital investment (which makes the company look better in the near-term).
I think they're saying that the investment in peak capacity may be already made, whereas the returns on use are ongoing, so creating incentives to save electricity may not be valuable to the companies.
Don't know if that's their actual cost-structure, but it's plausible in the abstract.
I would not expect the utility companies to be allies in this transition period to clean energy. It requires major capital outlays from them, it invalidates previous investments that have not fully depreciated, and in the end they will probably make less money.
This is not to throw a wet blanket on solar and storage, I just think we need to be cognizant of the idea that in all likelihood utility companies are both required to change for this whole thing to work and will be very resistant to that change. There might need to be changes to incentives or regulation to get the utility companies moving in the right direction faster.