The biggest solar market in the country is once again attacking solar customers by trying to reduce payments to homes and businesses that supply clean electricity from rooftop solar to the power grid.
The California Public Utilities Commission’s (CPUC) latest proposal tries to smooth the uproar over the state’s previous attempts to gut solar incentives, but continues to fall short of what’s needed to support a robust solar industry.
The plan calls for a 75% reduction in the credit that new customers would get for exporting excess power to the grid, according to the California Solar & Storage Association (CSSA).
The proposal is sure to spark debate between rooftop solar installers, monopoly utilities, and labor unions as California seeks to transition to 100% clean energy by 2045.
California’s current net metering program offers rooftop customers full retail credit for renewable energy they supply to the grid. The incentive, adopted more than 20 years ago, has resulted in the installation of 1.5 million home solar systems, or about 45% of the nationwide total.
The CPUC’s original proposal issued nearly a year ago would have required new solar customers to pay monthly grid connection fees. The new plan does not include grid connection charges but reduces how much credit solar customers would get for exporting their excess power.
The CSSA estimates new solar customers would be paid a base rate of 5 cents per kilowatt-hour of electricity that they don’t use and instead send to the larger power grid — down from as much as 30 cents under California’s current net metering program.
The proposal would also change electric rates to encourage people to store their solar energy during the day and either export it or use it later in the evening when power is more expensive.
A vote on the proposal by the CPUC is expected before the end of the year.
David Hochschild, who leads the California Energy Commission, described the proposal to the Los Angeles Times as a “haircut” for the rooftop solar industry. He said the plan is “vastly improved” from the previous version and would ensure that newly built homes — which are required to have solar panels — would still save money in the long run.
California, which relies on natural gas for a more than a third of its electricity, has struggled to keep the lights on during summer heat waves.
“Instead of reducing a successful program that has made California a leader in solar deployment, the CPUC should focus on increasing access to clean energy and improving integration of dispatchable energy resources (DERs) like rooftop solar and battery storage to improve reliability and take advantage of demand-side management opportunities,” said Robert Dillon of the Energy Choice Coalition.
Advocates for lower-income families were critical of the plan for making affordable renewable energy more difficult to access for those consumers.
“As we progress toward our goals of a fully clean energy economy, it’s critical that solar access be expanded for all, especially including low-income and marginalized customers. Unfortunately, today’s proposal fails to properly support these communities,” Sachu Constantine, executive director of Vote Solar, wrote in a statement and on Twitter. “The CPUC’s restrictive definition of low-income excludes significant portions of low-income customers, who already face the biggest barriers to solar adoption and spend the largest percentage of their household income on energy costs.”
The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory released data showing that 12% of California solar adopters in 2021 had incomes below $50,000, and that an additional 28% had incomes between $50,000 and $100,000.
“The proposed decision does not provide a smooth or predictable path from the solar policies of today to those of tomorrow” Constantine tweeted.