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.

  •  Rivalarrival   ( @Rivalarrival@lemmy.today ) 
    3•1 year ago

    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 they can’t afford rooftop panels, but can afford traditional generation, the rates aren’t yet high enough.

    •  memfree   ( @memfree@beehaw.org ) English
      2•1 year ago

      They can’t afford any of it. Two points.

      Point A) Renters. They’re renting. The new change will…

      … make solar panels less economically enticing for apartment dwellers, farmers, schools and strip malls, solar companies say.

      – there were harsher proposals, but this is a mid-way kinda where renters will get something but not as much as others.

      renters will be paid much less than they are today for electricity generated by their rooftop panels above and beyond what they and their neighbors use — electricity that is sent to the larger power grid, helping the rest of us keep the lights on.

      Point B) They’ve made it pointless for schools and farms:

      other utility customers affected by the decision — including schools and farms — will still have to pay full retail rates for all the electricity they consume. Even if they install solar panels that cover some of their consumption, they’ll have to pay their utility for power during times of day when their panels are generating.

      Under the new rules, “schools will not be permitted to generate their own power any longer. Instead, they’ll be forced to buy their own solar back from utilities at full price,” said Sasha Horwitz, a legislative advocate at the Los Angeles Unified School District.

        •  memfree   ( @memfree@beehaw.org ) English
          2•1 year ago

          You can pat yourself on the back? The article is about how the new rules make it hard for such groups to justify the cost of installing solar when the benefits look thin and potentially changeable.

          You still get SOME money for adding power to the grid, but you’re basically getting paid a ‘wholesale’-like price and paying out the retail mark-up. I’m not sure how California’s grid works, but where I am, we have “line fees” for maintaining the infrastructure to cover that sort of thing.