It would be nice if this cost was actually all broken out; the grid operator should charge for connectivity, the various energy providers should charge for the energy itself.
Net metering could still make sense; your residential solar installation might make enough to cover the gap.
I'm sure it varies by locality, but if I look at my electric bill, I see charges for energy, transmission, and maintaining a connection to the grid. Transmission and generation are variable, connection is fixed.
I doubt the $8.50/month is the "right" charge for maintaining a grid connection, but it's what MidAmerican Energy has gotten approved in Iowa. Presumably their charges for transmission and energy cover everything adequately.
This is exactly what happened in California recently with Net Metering 3.0 -- the utilities cut the value of the electrons you export back onto the grid, and they even broke that value out into a supply chunk and a transmission & distribution (which effectively cuts the total export value even more because they argued that the marginal electron is worth a tiny amount as far as the t&d line items go).
What's happening in California is new rooftop solar doesn't pencil out unless you pair it with batteries (ie you self-consume all your excess), and even then it gets iffy.
There's also the trend where operators charge fixed costs for connectivity. So even if you self-consume everything, you still pay $15-$50/mo just for the connection. That gets trickier because it punishes low-usage users like apartment dwellers and small households because that looks the same as a solar house that self-consumes most of their electricity.
What is needed is charging not just for a connection, but for connection of a certain maximum dependable capacity. This would be best be coupled with some ability to force limitation on the instantaneous consumption, a kind of demand dispatch.
That’s an interesting idea, because it matches the physics of the situation pretty well; on-demand capacity costs the grid something just to have it (batteries, or whatever), so it would be good to make that price visible to users and let them decide if they need it.
It might also push people more toward smart-grid tech, which is a desirable outcome. You might pick a dishwasher that can actually help shave the peak, if it saves you money.
oh, don't worry, there are tons of incentive structures like this already out there. It's sophisticated energy management, though, so it's only in the Commercial & Industrial world (for now)
In C&I land, you have things like demand charges (billing by your max kW, not just kWh), demand-eligibility tiers (your electric arc-furnace plant is going to have very different charges than your warehouse), and even fun things like many flavors of demand ratchets (you have a fixed charge based on your maximum kW in last 3, 6, 12 months, or your maximum kW during the most grid-strained periods last year, or a million other variations).
C&I billing gets very creative.
Some utilities are even today experimenting with demand charges in the Resi space (don't run your dryer while charging your EV!)
This is how it has been before net metering in NL. You are charged by size of the connection: How many A you can consume. Then there is a separate tariff for the transport costs (fixed per day) and then the costs per kWh. With net metering the transport/connection costs stayed. Currently kWh is about €0.28.
That’s how it is in Texas. The company that owns the power lines to your house is unrelated from the company you buy the electricity from. (The latter of which you have dozens of options to pick from)
Net metering could still make sense; your residential solar installation might make enough to cover the gap.