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Jeff Cook-Coyle's avatar

Great point at the end about smart meters and unlimited consumption.

If you have controllable generation, it can match to load, and a flat fee works. The problem is that there are significant variable costs (such as fuel) for that generation.

But if you have significant uncontrollable resources, you need load flexibility, because something has to give so that they can balance.

The case being made to the CPUC is that renewables are (finally) too cheap to meter, and so the flat fee works. But the smart meter advocates were right. You need to have significant demand-side controls to allow for renewables.

The biggest example of this will be electric vehicle charging. Most (95%) distribution circuits can only handle a little without coordination or serious upgrades.

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