According to http://www.nbcnews.com/business/less-juice-home-electricity-use-falling-2001-levels-2D11820933 home energy use in the U.S. has been dropping the last three years, with use in 2013 set to drop to the lowest level since 2001. The article attributes the drop to better building codes, more efficient appliances and air conditioners, and replacement of incandescent bulbs with CFLs and LEDs.

Way to go all!

No wonder they are getting a 12% rate hike here in RI.

Yes, I guess my title of "Good News..." may not apply to the electrical energy suppliers.

It depends on their business model, and how the utility gets compensated under the regulatory framework. CA has had dead-flat electricity consumption for over three decades, with both investor owned and public utilities. None of which have gone out of business since CA regulations decoupled their profitability from per-kwh sales, structuring it around revenue and reliability targets. Many states have now done this, and compensate the utility a higher rate for negawatts (efficiency, on either side of the customer's meter) than for increasing capacity with new generation. The particulars of the state policies in the decoupled state vary somewhat, but they are more similar than divergent.

The bigger existential threat to the utilities than slow or negative demand is the growing tsunami of cheap distributed photovoltaics: If simply net-metered in a rough-justice "run the meter backwards" way is shifts the costs of maintaining the grid to the non-PV customers, rates get raised, making adding PV even MORE attractive. There is a real potential for a rapidly escalating feedback on this once the cost of PV is sufficiently below the retail costs of electricity (which it already is in many places), and more sophisticated compensation methods are starting to appear. Austin TX invented one approach with a value of solar tariff which includes things like the offset in peak-demand costs, the raw energy costs, the reduction & delay of grid infrastructure updates to more fairly apportion the costs and benefits of small scale distributed solar, with a decidedly progressive approach to increasing solar development. Arizona recently took a cruder tack, and applied a per-installed-kilowatt fee to their solar customers- the utilities were openly referring Net Zero Electricity customers "freeloaders", ignoring the value of the PV output, which occurs primarily during higher-demand hours, and lowering the marginal cost of that peak power for all customers.

Different states with different regulatory structures will have different approaches, but the net metering discussion is going to become even more shrill as the declining demand is met with even more distributed PV that is outside the utility ownership & control.

My electric co had the nerve to send me a letter telling me I am using XX% more electricity then my neighbors.

Well of course I am, it's an all electric house. So I called them and told them I may have used more elec but had no oil or propane use.

No piped gas in my area.

I looked into PV 3 yrs ago, no net metering, no incentives like my neighbor Dana in MA.

Chris

Posted By ChrisJ on 31 Dec 2013 11:54 AM
My electric co had the nerve to send me a letter telling me I am using XX% more electricity then my neighbors.

Well of course I am, it's an all electric house. So I called them and told them I may have used more elec but had no oil or propane use.

No piped gas in my area.

I looked into PV 3 yrs ago, no net metering, no incentives like my neighbor Dana in MA.

Chris

They aren't being critical or on your case. It is most likely that the utility subscribed to the popular behavioral-efficiency program set up by a company called OPower.  Apparently when utilities run that program for a year or so they reap about a 3% cut in overall energy consumption, for a small upcharge in printing and postage.  The cost of the 3% nega-watt gain achieved by those means is miniscule compared to the cost of gaining 3% via any existing generation plants or new generation.

The panel-cost of PV has dropped by more than 70% in the past three years, and installers have become more streamlined and competitive. Crude net metering of some form is mandatory in most states. As of a year ago only 7 US states did not have a statewide net metering policy, and some utilities in 3 of those states had their own net-metering offering.  It's a moving target, and a 3 year old data point might as well be the middle ages in this fast-moving market:

 http://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.cfm?id=6190

http://www.dsireusa.org/documents/s...ng_map.pdf

Incentives vary by state & utility, but there is a 30% US Federal tax credit available to sub 10KW PV installations in the US.

Some states also allow third party ownership of rooftop PV, where the solar company owns and maintains the PV, cuts the homeowner a sub-retail rate on their power consumption, selling the output at spot-market to the utilities, and cashing in on any renewable-power production credits, etc.  Clearly they make better deals and mo'-money-fasta in states like NJ, CA, MA where the local incentives are richer, but it's possible to get some sort of deal from them in most states where it's explicitly allowed.  That too is a rapidly evolving market, where even 6-month old datapoints can be wrong, and the deals vary from leasing to rent-to-own to simple third party ownership, usually with an option to buy out after some time period.

The raw un-subsdised installed cost is continuing to crash.  As little as 8 years ago residential rooftop PV was running $9-10/watt for small scale grid-tied, but as of Q4 2012 it has hit the $3-3.50/watt range in markets where the regulatory bodies and utilities are streamlining it, including parts of TX, IA, and CA.  At that price point it's dramatically cheaper than a subsidized system from 3 years ago that cost on the order of $6-7/watt, installed.

The panel cost is now on the buck a watt range, widely expected to hit below 40 cents by 2017. The largest cost factors in the US for small scale solar is currently customer acquisition (marketing and hand-holding through the sign-off), and cumbersome multi-layers of utiltity/county/state inspection & permitting. The same goods using the same racking systems & inverters  in Germany are about $2/watt, installed, due to a mature and streamlined industry.  This IS coming to the US too.  One large contractor in TX was estimating that in 2014 their average residential system would be about $1.75/watt, all-in cost before subsidy. That (and not flat or falling kwh sales) is what has the utilities scrambling to re-structure their business models. 

In 2012 the average cost for rooftop grid tied PV in the US averaged about $5-5.50/watt, but was much cheaper in the more competitive more subsidized states. But on the cusp of 2014 that price point is already looking pretty dated.  It might be time to look into PV again- as long as you have SOME reasonable compensation for the power you put onto the grid, it can be compelling at some price point.  The 30% tax subsidy is scheduled to lapse in 3 years, but by then it probably won't much matter- the details of the net metering deal can be a more important factor than whether you paid the full $1.50/watt vs. a post-subsidy $1.05/watt, a price point guaranteed to be met in at least some US markets before 2020.

So, keep your ear to the ground and pay attention to changes in your state regulations. PV is bound to become affordable for almost anyone within a reasonable time frame, and it can turn faster than I would have thought possible even 5 years ago.  At a buck a watt, even sub-optimal orientations and shading factors can make sense in high-price electricity markets.

Considering a significant percentages of homes in urban areas are abandoned and razed, I think it is more attributable to simply less homes powered up than in the past. Housing is going through a change.

People have inlaws and more kids living with them. In Chicago, strip malls are 30% vacant. It takes half the energy to light/heat one home in Chicago with two families living in it than two homes with each family. or one home with two kids in it vs one home with parents and each kid in his/her own apartment. On my corner here, the strip mall is 50% vacant (big strip mall) and Dominicks (large grocery chain) has just shut down, so now it is probably 70% vacant. That's a lot of energy saved.

In Chicago, our panels installed are about $5.25 per watt. I will rebid it in March hoping to catch a price drop on panels but it will prob remain the same since it is mostly labor and taxes... sigh.

The total number of occupied homes in the US has not gone down during the past 5 years- the numbers have increased! (Sounded good in theory, but not supported by facts.) The energy use PER HOUSEHOLD has been declining, not just the sum total residential power use. And this is in spite of the increased plug loads from DVRs and game machines. Quoting Lee's referenced article:

"The Energy Department predicts average residential electricity use PER CUSTOMER will fall again in 2014, by 1 percent. " (emphasis mine.)

The fraction of lighting sockets filled with compact fluorescents has soared, and the number of higher-efficiency appliances trudges on ahead. The background power use of the big flat screen TVs (with the exception of plasma display types) is lower than the CRTs the have displaces. Utilities that put out $50 bounty on old refrigerators lanquishing out in the garage or basement keeping the beer & bait cool has also reaped significant well-documented savings.

BTW: The national average all-in unsubsidised cost for residential rooftop grid-tied in 2013 was $4.93/watt according to a recent Georgia Tech/RMI investigation breaking down the substantial soft-cost differences between US and Germany.  (The ~$2.70/watt just in soft costs for the US exceeds the total cost for similar systems in Germany, and they're digging out the reasons why.)

It's just like geo, new and green and not much competition . I hate to say it but the contractors are taking advantage and charging labor rates thru the roof!!

Maybe you skimmed past the part in the analysis where the entire installation labor from prep to cleaning up added up to a whopping 49 cents  of the $4.93/watt? Take a peek of how the labor breaks out, starting on page 33.  

The sample size was too small to be absolutely definitive of the industry as a whole, but these were installers charging the going rates, not highballers/gougers. Even if they marked up the labor 100% (which isn't how it breaks down in the analysis) it's still less than a buck out of the five.

Posted By robinnc on 03 Jan 2014 07:28 PM
It's just like geo, new and green and not much competition . I hate to say it but the contractors are taking advantage and charging labor rates thru the roof!!

Why is it that everytime that the numbers seem high, the contractors get the blame?
Many of these type of project are done at under cost just to try get something on the market. Geo simply isn't cost effective in many areas, but it certainly is not the labour part of the cost that is making it so. That the labour portion of pv installs is only 10% of the cost means the poor guys aren't making any money.

If you want to look at gouging, look at the cost of this study!!! $5.8 million!!!

Why you think $5.8 million is a gouge for a three year study involving dozens of people on two continents micro-accounting the minutae of 26 installation for every second of labor, every screw and wire nut, and develop 132 separate design concepts?

Is it your impression that Georgia Tech or RMI padded out the travel & lodging expenses, or the staffing & overhead costs?

Or is it that you consider the whole approach a useless and unnecessary analysis, a waste of the US taxpayer's money?

The whole 68 page report is barely more than the executive summary of the actual work done, the details of which may or may not be published elsewhere in extremely extruciating detail, but somehow a a run rate shy of couple million /year on a widely ranging research project doesn't seem outrageous. Professors and post-docs don't make a ton of money, but they're paid more than farm labor (and have privately paid employer health care benefits too) and work in facilities that have to be powered heated/cooled and lit. Just the un-burdened salary and benefits cost of ten full-time post-docs & professors comes in over $1M/year, and that's without the infrastructure overhead costs and any travel & lodging costs, etc.

Maybe the $5.8 M was a gouge, but it's not obvious to me on the face of it- I'd need more information to figure that out.

Research grunt work may not look like rocket-science, but it's not the same as construction grunt work (which also is not and should not be super-cheap.) Whether this one was well managed compared to others isn't really clear.

But of course, everybody feels they deserve the 6 figure salary, but don't want to pay the help that much, eh?