PUC and solar
Two weeks ago, the Ukiah Daily Journal editorial supported new proposed PUC regulations on roof top solar installations. The claim is that because excess solar production is paid at retail rates, roof top solar is not paying the full costs of the interconnection to the grid, pushing those costs onto regular customers, thus “rich” people who install solar on their homes are ripping off the poor of California. The new regulations would reduce the value of solar overproduction to $0.05/kwhr, add a fixed monthly connection fee of $50 per month, and start a fund to aid low-income customers. The proposal was promoted and funded by the investor-owned utility industry, which views widespread distributed solar as a threat to corporate control. The reality is more nuanced.
When net metering of roof top solar was first introduced, it was advertised as “spinning your meter backwards”. That means that when your home array produces more electricity that you are currently using, the power is shipped onto the grid through the same meter that measures your power consumption. The bill you pay is the “net meter” value, the power you consumed minus the power produced, crediting the customer overproduction at retail power rates.
This was a technologically simple arrangement. Roof top solar was expensive, and represented a small percentage of the overall power market. But public awareness of climate change has increased, and the price of solar has declined rapidly, so solar is now a significant portion of the power market, although roof top systems are still a small percentage. As we shift from producing power when we want it, to collecting power when it is available and storing it for later use, the overall grid structure has to change.
But the price of solar power doesn’t reflect all the real values. Normal grid power is electronically noisy, with rapid, high voltage spikes and dips as heavy machinery starts and stops. When intense, this variability can damage sensitive electronics, but the power company can’t really do much about the spikes, so the customer has to pay. When solar arrays are installed, the inverters on the systems tend to smooth out the power on the local grid, reducing the destructive spikes, benefiting everyone.
Locally produced power is more valuable than imported power. The grid is close to saturation, and occasionally fails as power demand exceeds what the system can handle, just like freeway gridlock. Increasing the capacity of the grid is very expensive and time consuming. Locally produced power allows for local growth without having to expand the entire grid, thus saving massive infrastructure costs.
Continued use of nonrenewable power, “business as usual”, will kill the entire economy. Scripps Institution of Oceanography estimated that within 50 years, there is a 1 in 4 chance of human extinction. The current value of American infrastructure is at least $250 trillion, and a modest value for our people is another $150 trillion. The annualized risk assessment of losing all that is about $2 trillion. America pays about $1 trillion per year for our fossil fuels, meaning that carbon-based fuels actually cost at least three times as much as we currently pay. There is no such added cost with renewable power.
Sonoma Clean Power production base is 92 percent non-carbon, and SCP will provide 100 percent non-carbon power for an extra $13 per month. For an average home, that extra 8 percent costs $0.36/kwhr, giving a real-world estimate of the value of renewable power.
One true fact in the PUC argument is that California is being ripped off, but it is not by roof top solar. Recent reports show that over the last few decades, PG&E diverted $60 billion from infrastructure maintenance to increase executive salaries and shareholder dividends. Devastating fires have resulted in the last five years, killing over 100 people, but nobody at PG&E has gone to jail, and the fines levied become corporate tax deductions or increased customer fees.
The PUC proposal is a punitive effort to preserve a dysfunctional corporate structure of dominance and exclusive gain. To address the climate crisis, we need to double or triple our solar installations, rather than discouraging them. In addition, we need to fund distributed storage, to level the production peaks, maximizing the utility of our existing grid, while building local power resiliency. Ignoring climate reality is suicide.