Changing solar rules bad idea
January 9, 2022
The California Public Utilities Commission wants to allow investor-owned utility companies like PG&E to raise the utility rates for rooftop solar customers. PG&E would cut in half the credit that it pays to owners of rooftop solar and add on a $40 a month “grid participation charge” to connect to the power grid. Here’s what’s wrong about the PUC’s proposal:
1. It is based on pitting homeowners of rooftop solar against other utility ratepayers by allowing PG&E to charge higher rates to non-solar customers in order to continue to favor profits for shareholders and highly paid executives.
2. It puts rooftop solar out of reach for working and middle-class families by lengthening the years it takes to recoup the average cost of $20,000 for solar installation.
3. It is based on the false assumption that the current credits to solar customers go only to wealthy ratepayers, when 42% of installations in California were to households with less than $100,000 in annual income.
4. Perhaps most importantly, by making rooftop solar more costly, it would “cripple California’s ability to meet a legislative mandate to eliminate carbon from the electricity grid by 2045” to fight climate change, according to solar advocates.
Lynn Jacobsson, Clovis
https://www.fresnobee.com/opinion/letters-to-the-editor/article257084592.html
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