Debate begins over updating California’s rooftop solar rules
The debate below is unfolding and there may be significant changes, but California is a very pro-solar state. Most importantly any changes made will not affect customers who have installed solar prior (solar owners will be grandfathered in 2021 and before), so if you are thinking of going solar or adding onto your current solar array, now is the time to act and to contact us.
Later this year, the California Public Utilities Commission expects to update the rules over how owners of rooftop solar systems are compensated and if the past is any indication, the debate will be a fierce one between the state’s utilities and the solar industry. Click here for more background on the current metering plan.
Monday marked the day the two sides — as well as other interested parties in the debate — had to turn in proposals to the commission concerning net energy metering.
The big three investor-owned utilities — San Diego Gas & Electric, Southern California Edison and Pacific Gas & Electric — turned in a joint proposal that looks to resolve their complaints that net energy metering results in a “cost-shift” that unfairly burdens customers who do not have solar installations at their homes and businesses. “The structure to compensate solar customers is in desperate need of reform,” said Scott Crider, SDG&E’s chief customer officer.
Advocates of solar filed their own proposals Monday, saying the changes the utilities want will undercut the industry’s growth. “The real issue at hand isn’t so much a ‘cost-shift’ as the utilities claim but a ‘power shift’ from utility to consumers and small businesses” who install solar, said a statement from the Save Solar Campaign, a group that includes the California Solar and Storage Association and the Solar Rights Alliance.
Proposals
The joint proposal submitted by SDG&E, Southern California Edison and PG&E calls for changes that would affect only new solar customers, not existing net metering customers.
Among the suggestions: While the existing system allows solar owners to “bank” the credits they get from producing excess solar over the course of a year, customers would “true-up” their accounts on a monthly basis instead. Also, the credits for new customers could only be used in roughly the same time period of the day that the solar was actually generated.
“We are still providing a compensation to customers if they have credits if they are over-generating,” Crider said, “but it’s much more closely tied to the actual cost of power.”
The proposal also calls for reducing fixed charges for lower-income customers who want to go solar.
The California Solar and Storage Association’s proposal to the CPUC included measures to increase the pairing of solar with battery storage systems, which allows customers to save up excess energy and release it when electricity prices are at their peak, such as the 4 p.m. to 9 p.m. period.
The group blasted a pair of other items in the utilities’ proposal. The first is a proposed Distributed Generation Successor Tariff that would work out to about $24 a month for an SDG&E customer. Plus, a proposed Residential Grid Benefits Charge that would charge an SDG&E customer about $11 per kilowatt on a solar system.
With an average 6-kilowatt system, that would work out to $66 per month, said Brad Heavner, CalSSA’s policy director.
“Sixty-six plus 24, that’s 90 bucks,” Heavner said. “We allow the room for (battery plus storage) to develop without a monthly charge. Ninety bucks a month, just to be a solar customer is going to prevent that from happening.”
Consumer groups, such as the Public Advocates Office and The Utility Reform Network, or TURN, also filed NEM 3.0 proposals Monday.
As for the timeline on a decision, workshops and hearings will be held and briefs will be filed in the coming months to debate the various proposals. A proposed decision is expected by the end of the third quarter, which will go before the CPUC’s five commissioners for a final vote.
Read the entire article on SDGE here.
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