A battle over where California will get its renewable power is poised to heat up in coming months as the flourishing rooftop solar sector faces off with the countries strongest electric utilities. At stake is the degree to which solar power will be created atop homes and businesses, as opposed to using massive solar arrays from the desert and other distant locations.
Experts say the result could dramatically influence the price of power in the country and, by extension, the speed at which residents adopt electric appliances and automobiles. Ratcheting up the tension, private purchases of solar panels have outpaced expectations over the last decade. Former governors Jerry Brown and Arnold Schwarzenegger celebrated this week the installment of a million solar roofs throughout the state.
We always have big goals here in California, and we go after it and construct it
Arnold Schwarzenegger
Advocates said the milestone has come despite escalating efforts by utilities to undermine rooftop solar installations. They said those strikes comprise everything from hefty fees on ratepayers to calling for dramatic cuts to the credits taxpayers receive for producing energy from the sun. Electricity providers throughout the state, from San Diego Gas & Electric to Redding Electric Utility, have stated that they are not against rooftop solar in principle.
But, power companies have confessed their efforts to claw back cash from residents with solar panels asserting the nations program to compensate owners of rooftop solar, called net metering, has resulted in higher prices for everyone else. “The long term consequences for our non-solar clients are serious, because they’ll continue to see yearly bill increases on account of this solar subsidy, We will seek out sensible solutions that continue to encourage solar power but dont adversely affect working families that cant afford solar systems” said SDG&E spokesman Wes Jones
Advocates have said that utilities are fueling the challenges that rooftop solar creates and downplaying the value it provides to the overall system.
“They trot this out cost-shifting argument that appears on the face of it like they care about equity, but actually the opposite is true”, said Dave Rosenfeld, executive manager of the Solar Rights Alliance, a new consumer rights group financed by ratepayers and rooftop solar businesses. Should you do the numbers right, solar is leading to a decrease in the cost of operating the electricity grid now and in the future.
Many electric service providers in California have, in recent years, adopted or recommended coverages thatve increasingly drawn the ire of the rooftop solar sector. For example, SDG&E recently proposed increasing its minimum invoice from $10 a month for $38 a month. Officials were frank about their aims to target solar clients. State regulators may consider the proposal in coming months.
The Sacramento Municipal Utility District floated a similar fee earlier this year but walked it back after a public outcry. The utility also caught flak from advocates after it suggested a workaround into the nations mandate that many new home construction include solar panels beginning in 2020. Regulators have so far declined to approve the utilitys notion, asking for more information on the proposal.
Together with SMUD in Sacramento, they are extremely hostile to rooftop solar,” stated Benjamin Davis, a policy associate with the California Solar & Storage Assn.. Back in March, they strove to put a $40 to $50 per month fee on rooftop solar, which would have killed the cost effectiveness.
The Imperial Irrigation District went so far as to stop offering net metering reimbursement in 2016 to all new solar clients. The move was to make sure that everyone pays their fair share for their use of their energy grid, according to the utilitys site. The Merced Irrigation District approved this past year a $65-a-month fee on power customers who install solar panels beginning in January.
At precisely the same time, a Solar Bill of Rights that would have, to a certain extent, illegal such fees died earlier this season at the state Legislature after being heavily criticized by utilities.
In the shadow of solar
Californias net metering program which decides how homeowners and businesses with solar panels have been paid is more than two decades old. Under the rules, clients essentially run their meters backwards based on the solar energy that they placed on the grid.
The program was appealing to Cindy Lingard, who recently installed about $29,000 of solar panels and battery storage on her home in El Cajon. She said she had been inspired by her mother, who set up solar a few years back.
Sullivan Solar Power, which did the installation, estimated that its normal client can pay off such an investment in about seven decades, given state and federal tax credits. Customers typically install only enough capacity to pay their use because utilities provide very limited cash rebates for any excess power generated. Sometimes, homeowners may take a loan with monthly payments approximately equal to what they pay for power , stated Tara Kelly, a spokeswoman with Sullivan Solar Power.
People saving money is the number one reason people are moving solar now, ” she explained. SDG&E regularly has among the maximum energy prices in the continental U.S., also SDG&E frequently has speed increases. Those reasons drive people to explore solar. When the program first began, state and utility officials werent too concerned about the financial implications of this program. Solar panels were prohibitively costly, and the share of electricity generated has been minimal.
However, the cost of residential solar is now about a third of its cost two decades before, according to the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. And rebate programs in the state and federal authorities have continued to provide robust savings. Since Schwarzenegger signed the Million Solar Roofs Initiative in 2006, the state has gone from having about 130 megawatts of rooftop solar ability to almost 8,000 megawatts currently accounting for about 14% of the countries total renewable power generation.
One of those customers was Mark Hughes, 63, who installed panels in 2015 and then inserted a battery in March.
The California Public Utilities Commission made modest changes to the net metering program in 2016, mostly at the behest of utility businesses, such as Pacific Gas & Electric and Southern California Edison, that had by this time been raising concerns about cost shifting. Power providers expressly argued that homeowners with solar panels werent paying their fair share of the expenses related to building, maintaining and managing the countries extensive energy grid as well as fees related to state-mandated energy efficiency and other applications.
Throughout the past century, the price tag of expanding the states electrical infrastructure to support remote communities and hook up to new power plants has largely been socialized, spread evenly across the customer base through rate increases approved by the utilities commission.
All those prices get baked into electrical bills, but because the net metering program credits rooftop solar at the retail rate, rather than the wholesale rate, utilities state people with solar panels are receiving some thing of a free ride. Utility officials have said that as a result they have had to change those costs onto clients without solar.
Officials stated that the added costs for a typical residential customer with solar panels are rising quickly about $130 a year for c customers, $36 annually for SCE and $200 a year for SDG&E. They said the technology, particularly when paired with all batteries, will finally bring down the cost of electricity for everyone specifically by reducing the need for expensive upgrades to the power grid.
They contended that investor-owned utilities oppose rooftop solar because it’s going to eventually suppress the expansion model that companies have long used to reward shareholders and pay out large gains. SDG&E and many others have an incentive to build out solar in the desert because it requires building long power lines, that can be then utilized to justify rate hikes. The motivation is transmission. Transmission lines have received higher rates of return (for utilities) than any other steel-in-the-ground project. As we include more and more rooftop solar it is driving down the cost of power. They have an incentive to build as much material as possible, and thats exactly what they do. Their profit motive is completely on capital expenditure.
Bill Powers, a prominent electrical engineering consultant and consumer advocate.
However, many experts agreed with the utility companies that ratepayers are currently seeing higher bills as a result of the states rules for compensating people with solar.
