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Protecting California's Net Metering

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gene

Active Member
Supporting Member
Feb 11, 2013
2,586
17,108
Santa Barbara, CA
I would like to mention this group that I think would be a good idea for solar owners in California (and other places) to support. They have been fairly effective at keeping the PUC on the side of the citizens rather than caving into the utilities attempts to defeat Net Metering. I just spent an hour on the phone with their #1 guy, David Rosenfeld. He seems to really know his stuff and is dedicated. If you decide to support this group, tell David "Gene" sent ya'.

Solar Rights Alliance

Petition for solar bill of rights: Solar Rights Alliance

Solar is under attack. Fight back. Defend your rights.
California’s monopoly utilities are waging a multi-pronged attack on our individual rights and our ability to put solar on our homes, our schools, our businesses. At stake is our freedom to cut the cord to ever-rising energy bills, and generate and store clean energy when and how we see fit.
While California has led the nation on protecting the rights of private property owners and renters to go solar, these rights are not set in stone and are constantly under attack.
For example, right now in California, the powerful utilities are lobbying to...
...slap higher fees on solar owners,
...impose more red tape for installing solar,
...cut the credit for giving solar energy back to the grid,
...grab exclusive control over all solar and battery storage, and more.
The bottom line: utilities are serious about holding onto their monopoly. One California regulator once warned that the utilities would like to "strangle rooftop solar if they could." We need to stop them.

Solar owners across California are fighting back.
It is time for a Solar Bill of Rights -- a law that recognizes the right of every Californian to choose and control how they get their energy without the utility getting in the way.
A Solar Bill of Rights will ensure that:
Your solar energy is yours, always -- to use, to store, or to give back to the grid with compensation. The utility should never be able to take that right from you.
No more red tape and extra fees. Solar users, no matter where you live, should be able to interconnect solar panels and batteries to the grid instantaneously at no or little cost.
Fair credit for sharing your extra energy. Your solar energy should be considered a valuable, clean resource for the community -- and you should be credited appropriately for sharing your extra energy with the grid.
 
This seems like scare tactics. No mention of an impending hearing or legislative bill. No mention either that California mandated solar on every new home constructed after 2020. No doubt we need constant vigalance but I need something more specific to mobilize myself.
 
My provider LADWP still provides net meter & solar credit but they are extremely slow on the final inspection. Took 4 months for them to allow my solar to connect to the grid. They also denied my TOU request many times.
 
Well, I guess I beg to differ. I've worked for San Diego's utility for 33 years and have solar PV on my own rooftop, and I can honestly say that the company does not want to "shut down" solar. It is part of the future, which the company has embraced and is planning for. Solar and other renewable energy is definitely part of the plan for the region's future.

Yes, there is one issue that needs to be figured out, and that is parity among customers when it comes to solar. One example of this is a solar owner that generates in the daytime what they consume all day long and into the evening. They receive a minimal bill, and are using the grid as a "storage battery" essentially for free. That needs to be fixed up. But I would hardly call that "shutting down solar"...

I don't think that NEM is going anywhere; it is here to stay...
 
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Well, I guess I beg to differ. I've worked for San Diego's utility for 33 years and have solar PV on my own rooftop, and I can honestly say that the company does not want to "shut down" solar. It is part of the future, which the company has embraced and is planning for. Solar and other renewable energy is definitely part of the plan for the region's future.

Yes, there is one issue that needs to be figured out, and that is parity among customers when it comes to solar. One example of this is a solar owner that generates in the daytime what they consume all day long and into the evening. They receive a minimal bill, and are using the grid as a "storage battery" essentially for free. That needs to be fixed up. But I would hardly call that "shutting down solar"...

I don't think that NEM is going anywhere; it is here to stay...
I hope you are right, especially since California wants 100 % renewables by 2045.
 
In the summer I currently sell electricity to PG&E during the day at round 45 cents and buy it pack at night at 12 cents to charge the car. As more solar power is added this eventually will flip flop and electricity will cost more at night and less during the day. In addition the cost will be higher in the winter than the summer because both wind and solar have higher output in the summer than the winter. Wind and solar output is about 2 times as high in the summer than the winter in California. Based on this by the time we get to 100% renewable during the winter we will have to curtail solar output greatly during the summer and or sell it at loss to other states.
 
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I don't think that NEM is going anywhere; it is here to stay...
NEM has been threatened and decreased in many states. Even here in California, NEM 1 was replaced with less attractive NEM 2. The utilities would love to kill NEM, make no mistake. The idea of a solar "Bill of Rights" would make for rights that could not be whitled away. The utilities are certainly not the independent homeowners with solar friend.
 
Well, I guess I beg to differ. I've worked for San Diego's utility for 33 years and have solar PV on my own rooftop, and I can honestly say that the company does not want to "shut down" solar.
The utilities love PV if they own it or can buy the generation wholesale. The machinations are to shut down independent production that cuts the utility out of the loop.
 
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The utilities love PV if they own it or can buy the generation wholesale. The machinations are to shut down independent production that cuts the utility out of the loop.

This group is pretty well-educated, so you probably already realize that a solar owner under NEM gets full retail price credit for their solar generation export (at the time it is generated) and depending on what rate they are on. This is true until the point where they overgenerate for the year, and then the wholesale price is applied,but only for the overgenerated amount. So most folks are getting the retail price for most or all of their solar exports.

Per my previous statement above that I'll stand by, the only issue the utilities have with NEM are the economics and the financial pressures it puts on other customers. Most everything mentioned eventually ties back around to this issue...The transition from NEM 1 to NEM 2 was an attempt by the CPUC to start to fix this issue.
 
I agree that the costs associated with NEM in California do, in effect, amount to a hidden carbon tax on other ratepayers. Today, I see this as a good thing overall (of course, I may be biased as a home PV owner), with the caveats that this is somewhat regressive in nature and that electric rates are already quite high in California. As the grid continues to grow cleaner, though, it'll make less and less sense to effectively penalize ratepayers who lack their own solar panels.

In the not too distant future, with more and more PV on the grid, it seems that midday electric rates will need to drop substantially. Nighttime rates may need to go up. This will have the effect of reducing the value of NEM while increasing the value of storage batteries and encouraging EV owners to charge while the sun is shining. Such changes would reduce the burden on non-NEM ratepayers. My only concern is that this would likely result in fewer retail customers installing solar panels. Perhaps this could be mitigated by providing other incentives that would avoid distorting the time-of-day-based value of electricity.

If somehow NEM were to end tomorrow, we'd be in a better position than most because we have EVs and two Powerwalls. We could self-consume the vast majority of our PV production. We just wouldn't benefit from the arbitrage between high daytime rates when we feed into the grid and low nighttime rates when we charge our EVs. Hopefully, as battery costs decline, batteries will end up being sold with most PV systems.

If, however, our utility company were to attempt to assert control over our self consumption of energy that we generate behind the meter, then we would be very unhappy. That would be a good way to motivate a number of people to attempt to "defect" from the grid.

Per my previous statement above that I'll stand by, the only issue the utilities have with NEM are the economics and the financial pressures it puts on other customers. Most everything mentioned eventually ties back around to this issue...The transition from NEM 1 to NEM 2 was an attempt by the CPUC to start to fix this issue.
 
I read a significant part of the administrative law judge's opinion about the Power Charge Indifference Adjustment case that is going through the CEC. One of the core issues is that by State law, tariffs must be established to protect one class of ratepayers from subsidizing another. This is a core issue for the NEM tariff. Not only does the addition of NEM generation cause "departing load" which reduces the amount of generation that the utility needs to provide to customers in aggregate, but there needs to be a fair assessment of the value of the distributed generation fed into the grid.

Another issue brought to light in my mind in the PCIA case is the effect of long term contracts on rate proceedings and how fast renewable energy can be incorporated into the State's grid. It seems to me that if the utilities have long term contracts to buy fossil generation, that generation will either be fed into the grid regardless, or there needs to be a negotiated price for each contracted fossil generator to stand down considering fuel cost savings, etc. Forcing mass cancellation of fossil generation contracts is obviously untenable. Pre-contracted fossil generation going into the grid also frequently forces renewable generation to be either curtailed or exported to adjacent markets at below market or even negative prices in order for the ISO to keep the grid balanced.

I would also like to see some smart people propose ways that we can change the utility profit model so that they are incentivized to act in the rate payers' interest. The only thing that comes to mind is compensation based on performance metrics like capital efficiency, forecasting accuracy, balance of contracted to spot market pricing, etc.
 
Per my previous statement above that I'll stand by, the only issue the utilities have with NEM are the economics and the financial pressures it puts on other customers.
With all respect due,

BS.

The investor owned utilities (IOU) worry that a shrinking market for electricity they buy at wholesale (or own) and sell at retail will reduce their profits. HIgher charges to the remaining pool of customers is due to the IOU's demand to preserve profits spread over a smaller group, NOT (substantially) because the PV owners are free-loaders. This distinction is important because it highlights that PV owners are no more a "cost" to the utility than a customer who simply uses less.

If IOU's were being honest (hah!), they would advocate to separate grid cost and electricity cost.
 
With all respect due,

BS.

The investor owned utilities (IOU) worry that a shrinking market for electricity they buy at wholesale (or own) and sell at retail will reduce their profits. HIgher charges to the remaining pool of customers is due to the IOU's demand to preserve profits spread over a smaller group, NOT (substantially) because the PV owners are free-loaders. This distinction is important because it highlights that PV owners are no more a "cost" to the utility than a customer who simply uses less.

If IOU's were being honest (hah!), they would advocate to separate grid cost and electricity cost.
Your location says "Colorado". Do you actually know how the California IOUs operate? Community Choice Aggregation is becoming a big thing. That does actually separate the Transmission and Distribution from the Generation. That is one reason that there is such a big fight going on right now about Departing Loads. The CCAs are buying the generation on behalf of their customers, so the IOUs' existing supply contracts don't actually cover those customers any more. The IOUs are trying to load up these above market costs in the PCIA fee, allegedly so that remaining non-CCA customers don't bear those costs alone. My biggest problem with the whole thing is that there is no motivation for the IOUs to make the best generation contracts in the interests of their customers. Whatever the costs are, they just pass it on. My hope was that the CCAs would be able to ride out this transition at equal costs to the IOUs and then we would actually be able to reap the benefit of our local CCAs buying generation in our interests and truly lowering our costs. The PCIA fee has to eventually come to an end, but the IOUs want to ride that train forever.
 
Additionally, the CPUC asks several questions to guide the overall structure of the eventual successor to NEM 2.0.

  1. What guiding principles (including those related to Assembly Bill 327 (2013, Perea), equity, environmental goals, and social justice) should the Commission adopt to assist in the development and evaluation of a successor to the current net energy metering tariff?
    2. What information from the Net Energy Metering 2.0 Lookback Study should inform the successor and how should the Commission apply those findings in its consideration?
    3. What method should the Commission use to analyze the program elements identified in Issue 4 and the resulting proposals, while ensuring the proposals comply with the guiding principles?
    4. What program elements or specific features should the Commission include in a successor to the current net energy metering tariff?
    5. Which of the analyzed proposals should the Commission adopt as a successor to the current net energy metering tariff and why? What should the timeline be for implementation?
    6. Other issues that may arise related to current net energy metering tariffs and subtariffs, which include but are not limited to the virtual net energy metering tariffs, net energy metering aggregation tariff, the Renewable Energy Self-Generation Bill Credit Transfer program, and the net energy metering fuel cell tariff.
    7. What additional or enhanced consumer protections for customers taking service under net energy metering and/or the successor to the current net energy metering tariff should be adopted by the Commission?
Comments are due June 10, 2022.