Some more back up
Zabe's the IOU's position that that the solar market is "cratered"; blaming residential rooftop is total crap. There was some sentiment that California needed a curtailment of future residential rooftop solar and massive fees collected to offset the "destroyed" solar market.
The CPUC has mandated an additional 11,500 MW of renewables (which likely will be mostly solar) to be constructed over the next 4 years. This is meant to offset the decommissioning of Diablo Canyon and also replace some natural gas electricity generation. 11,500 MW is roughly equivalent to the amount of residential rooftop solar right now.
So to re-iterate the situation... the IOUs say solar is only worth $0.03 to $0.05 per kWh at noontime on the Avoided Cost Calculator because there is a monster surplus of solar already (mostly from utility grade sources that have really expensive PPAs from legacy contracts). So, more solar generation without storage is worthless. NEM 3.0 was written to dissuade homeowners from adding solar-only.
But the NEM 3.0 "disincentive" for residential solar-only persists even if the homeowner adds batteries. It's not like the fixed costs get reduced with ESS. So the NEM 3.0 rules effectively stop all residential solar and makes it so the CPUC and their cronies are the only ones to build future solar and ESS. The solar market isn't "cratered" at all.
On the one hand... the CPUC wants their cronies to submit proposals (RFP's) on creating 11,500 MW (with no massive fixed costs fees to be seen). This will result in billions of profits for those agencies and companies to profit off of the future PPAs and energy rights.
On the other hand... the CPUC tells California homeowners they robbed billions from the poor.
Hey, guess what. Who is going to pay for the 11,500 MW that the CPUC is asking for now? It's going to be the poor people that the IOUs said they were "protecting". The RFP's will all require more PPAs and guaranteed revenue to rationalize the investment. And, if there are more centralized solar/ESS generation sites, guess what PG&E needs? More massive rate increases to fund transmission infrastructure across the scorched California landscape.
Poor people's bills aren't going down if NEM 3.0 passes and collects billions from homeowners with solar on their roofs. Everything is going up; including PG&E's profit amount since they are guaranteed a profit % on all investment that goes through them and their cronies. The CPUC enables it because their rule-makers are all interconnected with this cronyism.
Rooftop residential with ESS means less transmission costs since it is distributed where people use the electricity. Those poor people the IOU's want to claim to "protect" are going to see higher bills as the poor, rich, everyone gets forced to pay for things they wouldn't need if we had more residential solar+ESS.
Here's R2005003 which describes the RFP process of the 11,500 MW
Some CCAs are already submitting their RFP's... basically putting their generation credits in play to lock in sources so they can in turn pass the buck over to the rate payers. The people winning are the big cronies. Jane Doe homeowners are going to be paying for all of this.
SCP is the public power provider for Sonoma and Mendocino counties. Climate change affects everyone, so our programs are designed for everyone.
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