California Public Utilities Commission gets an earful about its new rooftop solar proposal [Breaking]
Advocates for the solar industry argued during a special hearing by the California Public Utilities Commission on Wednesday that a proposed decision that would affect 1.5 million rooftop solar customers goes too far while the state’s three big power companies insisted it doesn’t go far enough.
California’s NEM rules have not been updated since January 2016 and the commission has been working for years on an update, colloquially called NEM 3.0., a proposal was put forth but it met furious opposition from solar advocates — in particular, a provision to create a fixed charge of $8 per kilowatt on the solar systems of residential customers. With typical rooftop installations being 5 to 6 kilowatts, that would come to about $40 to $48 per month.
The utilities argued that the fixed charge should be put back into the new proposal, saying the growing number of installations leaves customers who don’t have solar paying an unfair share of the fixed costs that come with maintaining the electric system — things like wires, substations and transformers.
“I think it’s important to have a long-term view,” Heavner said during Wednesday’s question-and-answer period. “If we decimate the ability to install clean energy in communities where we’re going to be adding load and electric vehicles, that will hurt us in the long run when we’re heading to 100 percent clean energy.”
“We can build 10 times as much capacity for the same price with large-scale solar and storage, which is going to create more jobs,” said Rachel Koss of the Coalition of California Utility Employees.“The proposed decision improves the existing structure,” said Matt Baker, director of the Public Advocates Office. “It will reduce the cost shift from new solar customers by about $1.8 billion a year by 2030.
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