New California rules would crush rooftop solar for renters
canarymedia.com
canarymedia.com
Of course, the commissioners still voted for the changes, and they've been in force since mid-April of this year (and I'm no longer considering rooftop solar due to the poor deal available now). I fully expect these changes to pass as well.
How do we get these clowns out of office? Seems our governor is hesitant to get involved at all.
If you look at where the CPUC members end up after their time “protecting the public” you wouldn’t wrong to be infuriated. In fact they have not denied a rate increase in the last 25+ years. They rubber stamp everything for the utilities so they can get their 200k+ jobs with them after!
https://investor.pgecorp.com/financials/sec-filings/default....
Rooftop solar is a "socialist" solution to power. Noncentralized, empowers the end user, undermines large corporations, bypasses government control of power. Oh wait, that's ACTUALLY almost purely libertarian, but of course it's going to be branded as hippy socialism to undermine it politically.
Republicans should (ideologically) be falling over themselves to get rooftop solar pushed out. As if ideology means anything.
I don't think I have ever heard of anyone outlawing rooftop solar. The problem with rooftop solar is that it is very expensive compared to utility grade solar.
>…Rooftop solar photovoltaic installations on residential buildings have the highest unsubsidized levelized costs of energy generation in the United States. If not for federal and state subsidies, rooftop solar PV would come with a price tag between 147 and 221 U.S. dollars per megawatt hour.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/493797/estimated-leveliz...
If we want to subsidize a renewable energy source, why should we subsidize rooftop solar when we could subsidize utility grade solar or wind? Money is fungible and not unlimited - a dollar that goes to subsidize residential rooftop solar is a dollar that would go much, much further if it was used to subsidize utility grade solar or wind. Rooftop solar subsidies are also unusual in that much of the subsidy is often paid by less well-off households to subsidize their wealthier neighbors - sort of a reverse Robinhood scheme.
- I agree grid solar is far cheaper, and it should be aggressively pursued.
- but home solar is weirdly expensive, almost regulatory capture-ish. There's no way utilities should be getting panels that cheap but the rooftop stuff is so expensive.
IMO rooftop solar is simply another path to reduced carbon that should be equally emphasized: you should get solar power anywhere and everywhere it can be placed. The economics will sort them out as solar panels go through the next cost improvement and technology waves (perovskite+silicon, bigger factories, etc).
Rooftop/home solar reduces the grid infrastructure impact of EVs. It aligns with air conditioning / heating peaks on hot days to alleviate brownouts. If you have a disaster that brings down grid power for days, it provides a usable power base for people to survive. If you have home solar + an EV, your household can survive gasoline supply outages in addition to grid power outages.
But I'm a quote-Lazard-LCOE all over the place (btw 150$/kwhr is the low end of nuclear power costs), so obviously home solar needs to be improved. I simply don't see how grid can be one-sixth the cost of home solar. The panels are basically the same. The inverter may be a bit more expensive. I don't think that even includes storage.
Something stinks.
Are there PACs that specialize on CUPC policy? If not, Citizens is likely irrelevant.
Net metering is/was acceptable when solar was a tiny oddity, but at any kind of scale it's a horrible idea. At best it's a regressive tax on the poor, and at worst it's a doom loop that can kill the grid completely. Utilities have massive fixed costs, which have to be distributed over all rate-payers; when wealthy people install solar and get paid back at retail prices, those fixed costs remain the same and power rates have to go up on everybody else not fortunate enough to drop $20K on rooftop solar panels.
The reason you were blown off on the call is because a representative democracy is supposed to represent all voters, including the ones who are harmed by net metering, who- being on average poorer- probably don't have the leisure time to show up on a call and argue on their own behalf. This is why "local community meetings" are antithetical to democracy: they amplify the voices of people with tons of spare time to show up and yell at community meetings, which is an utterly unrepresentative segment of the general public.
If you have a building with solar and 10 apartments, at a given moment the building could be supplying 100% of the residents' energy demand, yet the residents still have to pay the "retail minus wholesale" price because utilities can't be bothered to write the software to measure what the building is actually doing.
That is an injustice.
You could sort of argue that the energy is traversing "the grid" when it bounces off the local utility-owned transformer, but the additional maintenance cost is basically zero.
Something like a battery buffer to merge inputs from rooftop solar and utility AC?
First arrange your breakers so that all load comes from your battery powered inverter. Second, charge the batteries with your solar. Third, charge the batteries with a grid connected charger at off peak times or as needed.
You will lose a few percent in the power conversions. Also affordability is left as an exercise to the reader.