Looks like it is a trend among utilities, to charge people for free power.
Puerto Rico legislator Héctor Ferrer called on Congress to use its oversight authority over Puerto Rico’s fiscal oversight board to oppose a proposed fee on rooftop solar power.
pv-magazine-usa.com
There are three things that stand out for me in this.
First is that is appears to be a way to pay a $9 billion loan. Who should pay it, how and over what period?
Second is the attempt to include those who have no connection to the grid to the tax - and that, it appears, is why it is indeed being called a tax rather than a surcharge. But....irrespective of inherent fairness or not, this is not new or in any way unexpected. I recently learned that it is considered de rigeur for private residences that front streets upon which a distributed natural gas line is to be constructed will, regardless of whether they wish to or not to make use of such service, be presented with a bill - either for a mandatory hookup or for an increase in the property's Tax Valuation or both.
Third is the social service concept. Now, this will sound like socialism to some - it does to me - but within a society, to carve out from paying into a Community Fund, as it were, those who will not benefit from it because they are wealthy enough to not need a service (in the Puerto Rico case, it's those who have their own electric systems vs the less fortunate who have to use grid electricity) is a way to burden that latter with permanent payments that the more fortunate do not have to assume. I know this intimately because I was in such a situation: when the unregulated utility that provided electricity to our minuscule remote Alaskan community raised its rates from an ungodly $2.00/kWh to an utterly incredible $4.15 (Yes!!!!!), I told them to do something anatomically impossible and built my own solar+battery+diesel backup facility. That hastened the demise of operator and, as it failed, so burdened the rest of its customers. They departed - and now I live in a ghost town, inhabited solely by me, my wife and our son. For better or for worse.
This is an absolutely extreme case, yet its lesson should not be lost on those who have to make the decision in Point #1: HOW is that loan to be paid off?