TheTalkingMule
Distributed Energy Enthusiast
I think we're looking at the turning point for IOU's ability to push these PUCs into acting against solar customers and lower costs in general. The only reason they can get away with these things in Nevada/New Mexico/Arizona is the public's lack of understanding. How long will that last? California consumers are ahead of the game on renewables and understand cost, therefor the PUC doesn't have the political capital to make such moves, even today. Look at Pennsylvania, if there was ever a state that should rule in favor of protecting natural gas plants it's PA. However we just locked in pure retail net metering and our legislature is every bit as backwards as Arizona.Net metering may be locked in but the IOUs in California will continue to lobby the PUC for fixed charges and shifts in TOU rate periods. One shift SCE recently made was in the peak rate period to 2pm until 8pm. That put more of my solar production out of the peak. That will incentivize new installs to orient more to the west. To me that is fair, because that follows the load.
What happens when solar doubles and then doubles again in short order? A ton of these libertarian semi-conservative types are flooding into solar because of the independence, cost savings and "zombie grid collapse" paranoia. Those folks will occupy federal buildings if the CPUC tries to game the system for IOUs, that's much worse than the hippie/retiree outrage they're facing today.
Once solar more mainstream all these concerns go away, I imagine that's why SCTY is willing to blow through so much cash to get it up to speed. Every doubling of installs multiplies the industry's political power by 10.