By Jeff St. John, Greentech Media
California’s biggest utilities want future net-metered rooftop solar systems to earn less for the energy they feed to the grid and solar customers to pay extra charges to cover the costs of serving them grid power. California’s solar industry has a different idea: keep things the way they are — and don’t believe utilities when they say they and their non-solar customers can’t afford it.
In filings this week, key solar groups The Alliance for Solar Choice (TASC), the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) and Vote Solar have asked the California Public Utilities Commission to retain key features of the state’s net metering regime, including full retail payments for the power that rooftop solar systems feed back to the grid. That’s in stark contrast to proposals from the state’s three large investor-owned utilities, which ask the CPUC to lower payments, impose new charges, and make other changes that would reduce the economic payback of future net-metered solar systems. Utilities say that today’s net-metering regime unfairly slants compensation toward rooftop solar and will impose billions of dollars of cost shifts to non-solar customers if not changed.