Electricity Transmission Pylon at Dusk. (Photo: chuyuss/Shutterstock)
California’s Rush for Rooftop Solar Crashes After CPUC Changes Rules Midstream
California’s latest costly solar energy scandal – remember Solyndra? Proterra?
By Katy Grimes, December 29, 2023 8:44 am
“California’s electric grid is significantly powered by clean energy during daytime hours, but peak electricity demands in the late afternoon and continuing into the night lead to a greater reliance on greenhouse gas emitting resources.”
That admission is from the California Public Utility Commission in December 2022 when they published their decision to reduce payments to homeowners from utilities for solar power storage. Naturally, solar companies predicted this decision would slow construction of new rooftop solar projects.
Turns out solar companies were right.
The CPUC revamped California’s rooftop solar regulations, reducing payments to homeowners for excess battery stored power. After the fact. After all new homes built in 2022 were mandated by the state to have costly rooftop solar.
But by golly, the CPUC is providing nearly a billion dollars in incentives to encourage more solar projects for low-income homes.
Once again, the middle class are being robbed to pay for something they will never receive.
“California sharply reduced incentive payments for rooftop solar power [last year], taking a sledgehammer to a program that helped 1.5 million homes and businesses put solar panels on their roofs and made the state a leader in fighting the climate crisis,” the Los Angeles Times editorial board reported.
“The unanimous vote by the state’s Public Utilities Commission to reduce payments to solar customers for the electricity they generate comes after a decade of controversy over the program. Critics say it has resulted in higher electric bills for households that don’t have rooftop solar panels, including low-income families that can’t afford them.”
CPUC Commissioners claimed the new rules disproportionately negatively impacted low-income ratepayers.
So, the natural move they made involved DEI – diversity, inclusion and equity:
“the successor tariff should promote equity, inclusion, electrification, and the adoption of solar paired with storage systems, and provide a glide path so that the industry can sustainably transition from the current tariff to the successor tariff and from a predominantly stand-alone solar system tariff to one that promotes the adoption of solar systems paired with storage.”
This word salad is actually called a redistribution of wealth… from ratepayers who don’t really have “wealth” and are being squeezed by Bindenomics and Gavinnomics.
As the Globe reported in November:
“The California Utilities Commission just granted Pacific Gas and Electric a 13% rate hike – ostensibly to pay for under grounding power lines.”
“Because Gov. Gavin Newsom appoints the commissioners to the CPUC, this is ‘Gavinomics.’ Expect the other utilities to hike the rates as well.”
And since Gavin Newsom appoints the CPUC commissioners, they are doing what he wants – what his funders want.
“Remember, it was only this April 2023 that Southern California Edison, Pacific Gas & Electric and San Diego Gas & Electric filed a proposal to install a fixed-rate electric bill system for those under the three largest power companies in the state, the Globe reported. A 2021 report from the University of California at Berkeley recommended that the state link California’s highest-in-the-nation electricity bills to customer incomes – ie. your ability to pay. The real plan is to create income-based utility billing. So hold that thought.”
Residential electricity prices in California are already more than twice the national average.
Now, the ratepayers and homeowners who shelled out the $20,000 to $30,000 for mandatory rooftop solar, and the backup storage batteries, will not receive the compensation for the extra stored power they were promised by the state.
I know – you are shocked that California rewrote the rules midstream.
And lest you wonder what is behind this change, the CPUC explains that it’s not just DEI: “These price signals also benefit customers who electrify their vehicles, home devices, and appliances. The changes will improve the reliability of electricity in California and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”
Climate change woo woo is expensive, and detrimental to the electricity grid.
Every move the CPUC makes hurts California’s energy production, rather than enhancing it and providing more.
The CPUC rule revamp is really about California’s self-imposed kooky goal of zero-carbon electricity by 2045, and deranged plan to end the use of oil, gas and coal power sources.
Not only is the goal patently absurd, the state isn’t even close to such grandiose objectives. The CPUC commissioners twisted themselves into pretzels claiming they need to rely on renewable energy to meet the state’s Greenhouse Gas/carbon production, but they could do that with more clean nuclear power, more clean hydroelectric power, and more clean natural gas use. More – not less.
“California helped create the US solar industry, subsidizing rooftop panels at a time when the federal fight against climate change had barely begun,” Bloomberg reported. “Now, it’s leading a sharp sales slowdown that’s threatening widespread adoption [of solar].”
Boom. Exactly. The state tried to bolster its political agenda by incentivizing homeowners to add rooftop solar. But as we’ve witnessed with every government incentive program, there’s no there there.
In August, the Globe reported that California-based Proterra electric bus company filed for bankruptcy.
And do you remember Solyndra?
This is a flashback to Solyndra, a solar panel start-up and recipient of federal funds from the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). Solyndra blew $570 million taxpayer dollars before it folded.
“Solar panel start-up Solyndra was the first company to get government-backed loans from ARRA after its passage, collecting $535 million and receiving a $25 million tax break from California’s agency for alternative energy,” Forbes reported.
As for Proterra, which was a huge political donor to state politicians, and US Energy Secretary Jennifer Grandholm invested in Proterra, was awarded a California Competes tax credit worth $7.5 million ($4.5m was later recaptured because the company defaulted on the agreement), and received a $10 million COVID PPP loan that was later forgiven.
“Since Proterra filed a Chapter 11 business reorganization, they could be saved by private investors if their infrastructure is decent – but I’m not holding my breath – too many government subsidies and not enough free market interest I am deducing,” the Globe reported.
This is how energy in California is done – not based on supply and demand, but based on subsidies and kickbacks to politicians and political policies.
The “California regulations that scaled back the amount of money solar homeowners earn when they sell excess electricity to the grid — a shift that hit just as higher interest rates were making the systems more expensive,” couldn’t come at a worse time.
“Installers are slashing jobs. Bankruptcies are mounting. And it’s not just mom & pops feeling the pinch,” Bloomberg said.
The latest drop in rooftop solar installations “shows that the rooftop solar business remains dependent on government policy, long after its backers hoped it could thrive on economics alone.”
What the latest drop in rooftop solar installations really shows is government interfering in private industry – picking winners and losers – is always a losing decision. Government is inept. And the “winners” they choose, almost always end up losing.
And the taxpayers – you, me, your parents, your friends, your neighbors – always foot the bill. This is why elections matter.
The CPUC decision affects only solar power ratepayers by California’s investor-owned utility companies: Southern California Edison, Pacific Gas & Electric and San Diego Gas & Electric.
Be sure to reread:
California Based Electric Bus Company Proterra Stuns With Bankruptcy Filing: Too many government subsidies and not enough free market investment?
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So the unelected Democrat bureaucrats who were appointed to the CPUC have decreed like petty dictators that payments to homeowners for excess battery stored power are being reduced (but only for California’s investor-owned utility companies solar power ratepayers) while providing nearly a billion dollars in incentives to encourage more solar projects for low-income homes? With a median statewide price in December 2023 of over $750K, what is the CPUC’s definition of a low-income home? No doubt most of those incentives will disappear with subsidies and kickbacks to Democrat politicians and Democrat connected non-profits? Maybe a few RINO politicians might profit as well?
With the energy shortage why would the government mandate electric vehicles?
There obviously is no energy shortage
cpuc exempted ladp and media leaves out important details.
1. 17 percent of californias power is solar, which is likely not an excess during day.
2. large solar farms in desert use weedkillers and not designed correctly environmentally and raise distrubtion costs. just favor big business, screwing homeowners, but water under the bridge.
3. i agree we need more battery storage and support home storage its most efficient and mass produeable like home solar
4. better if cpuc let energy costs in evenings and night rise and go to market costs, this will encourage battery use and everyone to use less power at night unless you buy batteries.
5. we need to go to a more off grid approach long term, so let evening prices soar, people will buy batteries an let people go off grid during high cost periods. we need to recover much of the lower ditribution costs and reduced fires from distribution going forward.
6. but nem 3 is a money grab, paying only a tiny fraction of the value of energy. states like florida
have almost a third cost we have in california for energy and have huge peak ac on grid.
7. electric cars can help, encourage electric cars to be able to power houses at night.
8. cogeneration would also help using them as heaters and generators at night, so let power costs at night soar, but pay people the true value of the energy they produce
Promises, promises…
Why would any believe these jerks ever again!
If it is too good to be true or mediocre in this case then it is too good to be true!
“The most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the government and I’m here to help.”
― Ronald Reagan
keep in mind that Nancy Pelosi’s darling Nephew (Yes. Gavin Newsom, That Nephew!) is setting his sights on Running for President of the United States of America! Oh Joy! His policies are forcing Californians ànd her Businesses to flee this sad wreckage of a State! To Where will we flee if This Boob and the Democrats, God Forbid,engineer another coup to steal another Election just as that pathetic,doddering Fool,currently in Office, is about to be removed! Open your eyes and Remove these Incompetent parasites from the “Gravy Train”! VOTE THEM OUT!
Four out of five CPUC commissioner are lawyers with zero engineering background. The fifth has a degree in materials engineering, but that is more similar to a chemistry degree than anything remote related to utilities. They’re all clueless as to how to manage utilities. Mechanical, electrical, and civil engineers, on the other hand, know this stuff. It’s embarrassing that our pretty boy governor appointed ambulance chasers to manage our utilities.
tTim
I know a lib who has invested everything they have in “renewable power”. I heard today they have lost over a half a mill and they are on track to lose it all.
So, so sad….
/sarc
Home owners who installed or signed up before the changes are grandfathered in to the higher payback rate so they’re not effected. Solar is making huge. advances in panel efficiency as well as battery storage. The push for home owners to adapt was flawed . Utilities should have been required to invest in solar farms to reduce rates for everyone home owners or apartment renters.
Jim. You’re wrong. I am in NEM-2. I have 30 rooftop solar panels. My export rate has been cut 80-90% by So Cal Edison under the new NEM 3. I signed up for a 20 year fixed rate guarantee but instead NEM 3 changed the rules midstream and screwed everybody with rooftop solar and no battery storage. Now I receive $400 plus electric bills a month. I converted two gas furnaces to heat pumps which use electricity. Big mistake.
Sophomoric ranting RW blather. Dragging in Solydra… a federal DOE stimulus bet that didn’t pan out (while the whole portfolio is DOE investments did) is laughably unconnected to any of this.
By all means put everything you have into renewables if you actually believe that clap trap. Don’t ask for sympathy when you lose your foolishly “invested” money.
BTW there are hundreds of businesses similar to Solyndra that have also folded but a smart guy like you must already know that.
A disjointed rant mascarading as an article. This is obviously written without much knowledge of either the solar industry or energy policy. Scraping up the 15 year old story Solyndra and whining about a failing bus company has nothing to do with current affairs in the solar arena today. Poor MAGA folks flogging their extremism just can’t grasp reality.
John, my then 5 year old could’ve told you Solydra was just a leftist grift operation with zero hope of actual business success. And my then 5 year old was a cat. Why are you even here?
Could you image how much better California would be if the CPUC was either eliminated or was responsible to the citizens of this state and had their best interest at heart? Every right-minded politician should be talking about the benefits of cheap plentiful power. This is a fundamental area of society that is going to have to be repaired and “upgraded” in order to meet the current demands and future needs of this state.
Interesting comments. I particularly enjoy the die-hard CA left folks who label any anti-Newsom statement as MAGA inspired… fascinates me. The plain truth is the Governor appointed CPUC. Another truth is the new net metering decimated the rooftop solar industry and incentives — especially for the middle class. by all means help low income folks in California, it’s an expensive state. but don’t ignore the ever shrinking middle class in this state. Many of us “wealthy” residents who make over six figures actually spend frugally, and yet at the end of the month after taxes, mortgages, fuel, food… have little extra to save or enjoy.
Well said!
As with most government commissions, the CPUC will change its position as they realize the current path has gone past the corrections needed. My experience over past 7 yrs was to pay 32k for panels and receive about 10k in tax credits all in. Pay 68k for batteries (5 power walls and controller) and receive 100% back in form of a check from the state. It took 8 months. I have a plug in hybrid car rarely needing gas. 3 or 4 fill ups a yr. SDG&E annual bill is about $180. Mostly covering tax fees as my net energy use is under 100kw annually including charging the car. I do not worry about my power consumption. The cost of power I have used has crossed over the break even. It does not account for loss of income of the liquid asset initial investment awaiting recovery. That is still ~20k away. All this to say that opportunity is there at times, but not all the time. Be mindful and take advantage when you see it. If you missed it, quit whining and find another. The CPUC pendulum will swing back.
you sound like newsom rich and inconsiderate. the only fix for california is to get rid of dumb ass communist sorry democrats
Glad I left CA 13 years ago. 2A abuse was a canary in the coal mine. Now the working middle class there is being screwed six ways to Sunday by DIE climate grifters in office. Reserve your U-Haul early.
“Use less,” has been the mantra of the energy companies and legislature for the past 30 years. This will result in lower energy bills, but don’t attempt to help ease the stress on the grid through roof top solar because the politicians don’t want your help. They want to protect the energy companies excessive profits, so their allegiance is not to the citizens.
A tax based rate for payment of the transmission fees is their idea of fairness. Their mantra of “use less,” is now making the installation of rooftop solar just useless.
Saving on my bill of $100 (including gas) if a monthly fee of over $100 is added to my bill is impossible. I can’t use less to save. Their fee structure models only show average or well-above users, which makes their plan appear to be savings all around. I added rooftop solar this year in hopes that my bill will stabilize and to do my share to contribute to the grid. I am not trying to make a profit on what we had installed. I expect to have my investment help pay for itself over time. Our current elected politicians are representing the people who pay for their reelection and an aggressive policy of energy reduction, but will be met with unattainable results without removing their belief that giving subsidies to the lower income by making the middle class taxpayers pay more is a societal expectation. Basing utilities costs on taxable income is an illegal tax, even if our legislature approved a bill and our out of touch Governor signed it.
Dammit!! There is no climate crisis! None whatsoever!
There is not a shred of evidence. Actual data shows no discernible increases in any of the so-called disastrous effects. This “crisis” meme has got to be the most massive example of group “brainwashing” ever.
Wanna put up some panels on your rooftop to generate some electrons for your use? Great. Don’t make me pay for it.
We can debate about climate change all you want. But there is zero debate when it comes to pollution. We are polluting our atmosphere and just about everything else at astronomical rate. putting some solar panels up to reduce carbon emissions and pollution can’t hurt.
I’m glad I left California. High taxes, crappy politics and and most, not all but most have a high materialism drive.
It’s no surprise that California is losing population, tax money and businesses. It’s got me rotten at the core and I hope that the people that are left can turn it around.
There are two problems. People with means that went solar have had no bill. I’ve had no bill really since 2007. Now with the time of use peak moving from 12-6 to like 4-9…. The people with money could decide to install batteries….so still not paying a bill. So the middle class will pay for all the DEI nonsense. I don’t think they will stop u til they get x dollars per kw system size for high incomes…
I knew it would go that way after Newsom was reelected. PG&E is also avoiding people who made application for a system in the time permitted to be grandfathered in. I am one of those people. They are telling me my application cannot be approved because the panels are not on the state list. But the state says they don’t have to be on their list, PG&E is just making the rules.
Choosing winners and losers based on party affiliation is the very definition of Fascism. You and I have to pay “for the greater good”.
Fuck CPUC…
So CPUC can have babies?
Yall voted for this, stop complaining.
I liked to say I’m Shocked but sadly us on Main Street are thrown under the wheels of the corp. bus all the time. If I owned a home and had the money, I would install an off-grid system
This article didn’t t mention that the CPUC will be ruling on another dagger to us solar customers. They are proposing 10am-2pm become a super off peak TOU, meaning during the peak of daily solar production they will be giving us even less for our energy back into the grid. Shame on you CPUC and SDGE !
Well, maybe californians need to wake up and vote their corrupt politicians out.. Ignorance is bliss until it touches your pocket… its only gonna get worse.. good luck to all you west and east coasters…
I was reading this and started to wonder what alternate reality I was living in. oh there’s my answer. this is an extremist right wing rag full of misinformation.
It is called Kalifornia.
All UC campuses are on the take to conduct research to reduce GHG. We were sold to install solar on that premise. In reality we customers did it to save money.
One thing I find absolutely irritating is everyone believes when you put solar panels on your home that the electric bill just disappears……It doesn’t…It’s replaced with a bill for the loan you had to take out to finance the solar….I over built a little so I produce more than I use so my good months offset my bad and if I end up with a little left over SCE just owns it, if I don’t use it they don’t pay me for the overage they just keep it
and no one was paid extra money for solar. I work a basically minimum wage job and put them on my house with 1 battery cause that is all I could afford, it was $52k with a new roof. where is my money for it? I got a fed tax credit that I will never see full amount cause I don’t make enough. I did it cause the power companies have too much power in commiefornia.
I’m reading all these comments and the author themselves. spewing lies and misinformation. this is the definition of fake news and idiots listening to idiots. all the people that paid 20 and. 30k dollars for their rooftop solar ARE GOING TO GET THEIR money’s worth. they all get grandfathered into the old policies. also why would you choose ownership for your solar if you don’t qualify for the tax credits? that’s on you.
Pack it up and get out of Mexicalli!! I did 12 years ago life is so simple now I won’t even drive thru that horrible dirty place.
This is you, the California tax payor covering their decades of dereliction of duty. Which was to take action and prepare for the future. Now, it is you who will be part of their patch work of new and old grid infrastructure. You get to be the “new grid”, your roof and your batteries. They are trillions of dollars behind on this. There is no other way. Nuclear energy would help but it is the home owners batteries of the future that the Energy company needs. You are their solution.
Don’t borrow money for things like that. By the time it’s paid for it will need repairs. My plan was to own what I buy. I haven’t had a house payment in 44 years.
Batteries don’t last. They aren’t the future. Solar isn’t free power, you have to buy the equipment and labor if you aren’t capable. Then it needs maintenance and repairs.
Gold is free if you own millions of dollars in equipment to mine it. 😉
So much to unpack. I agree 100% with the criticism of the CPUC decisions on solar. They have nearly killed a booming industry in CA. All the DEI justification was clearly just a smokescreen. They tried this same stuff a year earlier and the public outcry was too much so the quietly backed away until the masses forgot about it.
Basically, their solar rooftop incentives worked a little too well and energy storage became an issue. So then, who will pay for that storage? My view was that the utility companies should create grid scale storage and then they can sell the power through their grid from their storage systems. No. They were too cheap for that. They want the consumer to pay for panels, pay for storage and pay a ridiculous rate if their use exceeds the storage! It is outrageous, but they got it through.
From a pure science view, producing as much electricity as possible at its point of use (like residential solar) is obviously the most efficient as you eliminate losses to resistance in the grid. Surplus energy going to the grid for use and storage should have been encouraged. If CA was really trying to get to “net zero” then we need more solar, (and wind, geothermal, hydro, wave, nuclear, etc.) not less.
The CPUC is just protecting high pay and pensions at the utility companies. I notice this change was after lawsuits for fires caused by faulty line inspection and maintenance caused deadly wildfires. Just saying.