CPUC Adopts New Rules for Solar

Solar providers across the state are breathing a huge sigh of relief today as the California Public Utilities Commission finalized its rules for how new solar customers will be credited for power they produce on the grid for the next 20 years. There are a few parts of the decision that are not as solar friendly as we would have preferred, but if the art of governing is negotiation and compromise then consumers and solar advocates can say they got more than they gave. 

Key decision components (according to California Solar Industries Association briefing):

• Maintains full retail credit for net metering (one Kwh in -- one Kwh out). A partial credit feed-in tariff, as was recently adopted in Hawaii and Nevada, would have been the death knell for California solar. That ain't happening.
• Creates an interconnection fee. This one-time fee of between $75 - $150 speaks to the "solar pays its fair share" argument and seems a reasonable request to cover the utility time for processing applications and connecting solar customers. 
• Assesses new fees per Kwh that a customer feeds back to the grid of 2.3 cents/Kwh (for PGE customers) to cover expenses such as subsidized low income electricity rates, DWR bond payments, nuclear decommissioning costs, and other miscellaneous fees that current utility customers all pay. This is one of the things we gave up. It is not unreasonably on its face I suppose, but the rate seems high and I have always contended that the CARE program needs closer supervision so that customers who do not meet the spirit and intent of the discount rate program don't get it.
• Rejects utility proposals for a bunch of charges they wanted to glomp onto to solar customers, including demand charges, capacity fees, grid access fees, standby charges and monthly netting. 
• Requires immediate time of use rate structure for all new NEM 2.0 solar customers. We were hoping for a few years of phase-in, so I guess you could say this is another thing we gave up, However time of use fundamentally makes sense for grid power management and at the end of the day is one of the arguments in favor of solar (we produce a lot of power during the peak of the day when third party contract rates are really high, so utilities actually save money by not having to acquire as much power during these peak periods).
• Rejects utility proposals to end or restrict virtual net metering. In our experience the utilities are not very good implementing or managing  this program yet, but it does make sense that multiple meters on the same property can each take advantage of a single installed solar system.
• Existing NEM 1.0 customers are grandfathered in with their existing program for 20 years, and NEM 2.0 customers will also not be subject to future changes to these rules for years.

When you consider this decision along with the extension of the 30 percent federal tax credit adopted in Dec., all in all it's been a very good month for solar. Shine on!