Column: California strikes another blow against rooftop solar
www.latimes.com
We need to stop arguing and start working together on a crucial climate solution.

But critics insist the costs of those solar panels are beginning to outweigh the benefits.

Incentive payments to homes with solar, they say, have led to higher electricity rates for everyone else — including families that can’t afford rooftop panels. If so, that’s not only unfair, it’s damaging to the state’s climate progress. Higher electricity rates make it less likely that people will drive electric cars and install electric heat pumps in their homes — crucial climate solutions.

The solar industry disputes the argument that solar incentive payments are driving up rates, as do many environmental activists. But Newsom’s appointees to the Public Utilities Commission are convinced, as they made clear Thursday.

“We need to reach our [climate] goals as fast as we can,” said Alice Reynolds, the commission’s president. “But we also need to be extremely thoughtful about how we reach our climate change goals in the most cost-effective manner.”

When I am having a stroke, I don’t stop and calculate of the most cost effective treatment options. I go to the emergency room. We could have done this calculation in 1970 and acted, but that ship has sailed.

  • Delta_V
    2·
    8 months ago

    This particular proposal is trying to end the mandate for the utility to purchase electricity from rooftop solar owners at times when there is no demand for it and no existing infrastructure for storing it.

    To cover the expense of having purchased goods they can’t sell, the utility needs to increase their rates, and that cost increase hits people who don’t own solar panels harder than it hits those who do. That makes installing solar panels more financially appealing to people who can afford them, but it also increases costs for the people least able to pay.

    And it seems like the utilities are pretty attached to the idea of keeping maintenance fees proportional to actual usage. If I’m reading the article correctly, there was an earlier proposal to require rooftop solar owners to sell 100% of what they produce, and buy 100% of what they use, presumably with a % surcharge for maintenance attached to the purchase. Assuming the utility would pay the current market rate for solar power at the time it was produced, it could be a fair system that would adjust itself automatically based on market forces so the government would not need to update pricing regulations every time a new gas or nuke plant is added to the grid.

    Circling back around to the initial point though, we wouldn’t have this problem if more storage infrastructure were built, allowing the utilities to sell the solar power they’re currently mandated to buy. I suspect that energy storage via home appliance usage patterns will only cover part of our storage needs.