But critics insist the costs of those solar panels are beginning to outweigh the benefits.
Incentive payments to homes with solar, they say, have led to higher electricity rates for everyone else — including families that can’t afford rooftop panels. If so, that’s not only unfair, it’s damaging to the state’s climate progress. Higher electricity rates make it less likely that people will drive electric cars and install electric heat pumps in their homes — crucial climate solutions.
The solar industry disputes the argument that solar incentive payments are driving up rates, as do many environmental activists. But Newsom’s appointees to the Public Utilities Commission are convinced, as they made clear Thursday.
“We need to reach our [climate] goals as fast as we can,” said Alice Reynolds, the commission’s president. “But we also need to be extremely thoughtful about how we reach our climate change goals in the most cost-effective manner.”
When I am having a stroke, I don’t stop and calculate of the most cost effective treatment options. I go to the emergency room. We could have done this calculation in 1970 and acted, but that ship has sailed.
When the electricity my panels generate deliver electricity to my neighbors they charge my neighbor for transmission even though the transmission didn’t exist.
How does the power from your panels get to your neighbors if not over the grid?
Generally when people refer to the grid they’re talking about things like high voltage power lines or at least going through transformers. My block has a transformer at the end of it which means my whole street is on 240vac. If I send power to my neighbor the only infrastructure that is being used are those low power lines. They don’t wear out or degrade from me sending power from my house to them. In fact I save all the use of going through a bunch of transformers and long distance. In fact almost all infrastructure degrades due to age not usage. So a more equitable fee would be hey this is our operating cost for the grid per person you get charged per month. But no ca wants that fee plus a fee for transmission which is just double dipping and clearly a way to make more money off the monopolized customer base.