Solar green greed in CA will bleed the more needy non-solar electric customers. This is not good public policy.
Go solar in California with your own solar-power system & your non-solar neighbors have to pay for costs you don’t and you can force utilities to buy your solar power. This is not healthy public policy.
Further only about 14% of residences generate sufficient solar electricity to sell it back to the grid. So why engage in an expensive transaction that is costly and benefits who? Of course it benefits the solar industry. What say you?
See more in the WSJ article below.
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SAN FRANCISCO—California regulators approved a plan Thursday to expand a subsidy for rooftop solar power generated by homeowners and businesses, handing a victory to the solar industry.
The plan, adopted by the California Public Utilities Commission, allows more homeowners and businesses that install their own solar-power systems to sell unused power to their utility. The program requires utilities to buy the power.
The program, called “net energy metering” and first adopted in the mid-1990s, has attracted more than $1 billion of investment from banks such as U.S. Bancorp and large companies such as Google Inc. The program has spurred greater development of California’s rooftop solar-panel market, but developers became increasingly anxious about hitting a hard cap that was established to limit the cost of the program.
Solar firms and clean-energy proponents have pressed CPUC to increase the cap and allow more homeowners and businesses to join the program. Utilities, however, have opposed increasing the cap. They argue that the subsidy has saddled their other customers with growing costs, while the customers who sell their excess solar power aren’t contributing their fair share to the costs of maintaining and improving the state’s electric grid.
Sempra Energy’s San Diego Gas & Electric utility, PG&E Corp.’s utility and Edison International’s Southern California Edison have estimated that Thursday’s decision will shift $1.3 billion a year in costs from the utilities’ solar customers to their non-solar customers.
SDG&E and PG&E said the expansion is likely to more than double the number of customers currently enrolled in the net metering program.
Because solar customers don’t pay fees that other customers pay to cover the utilities’ costs of building and maintaining transmission lines, citywide electricity systems, low-income customer assistance and other expenses, other customers end up paying more, which isn’t fair, said Dan Skopec, a vice president at SDG&E.
“If we want rooftop solar to be sustainable and grow throughout the country, we have to have a system where they pay their fair share of the cost of the grid,” Mr. Skopec said.
PG&E supports the program but is “concerned about the cost shifts from solar customers to customers who either cannot afford to or do not choose to go solar,” said Lynsey Paulo, a spokeswoman for the utility.
The solar industry group Solar Energy Industries Association hailed the decision as a “step forward for clean energy jobs, for ratepayers, and for our state,” according to a statement.
Commission members said they were sympathetic to both sides and that the state will need to resolve the dilemma in new legislation expected by 2014. Until then, commissioners said they were compelled to allow the program to continue, to support California’s clean-energy goals and the state’s solar-power industry, which employs tens of thousands of people.
“If everyone was on net metering, who would pay for the grid that we have?” CPUC member Mike Florio said Thursday at a meeting during which the commission unanimously adopted the plan. “On the other hand, it would be problematic for [net metering] to come to an end and provide a major setback to the solar industry that has flourished in this state.”
CPUC ordered the net-metering program to be closed to new customers on Jan. 1, 2015, unless the commission issues new policy rules.
The commission also ordered a study on the costs of the net-metering program versus the benefits provided by electricity generated by program participants.
Write to Cassandra Sweet at cassandra.sweet@dowjones.com
