How To Screw Up Solar With One Horrid Bill (Connecticut Edition)

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent

What Happened: The swath of destruction the Connecticut legislature is about to cut through the solar industry with their latest bill to replace net metering is breathtaking and stupefying to behold.

The absurdity of the legislation is so mindblowing I’m going to have to take more than one piece to do it justice, but it includes the illusory cost-shift, a buy-all, sell-all scheme, an arbitrary commercial solar cap….oh, yeah. This legislation is a beaut.

The worst part of it is, the legislative session ends next Wednesday, so there’s little time to scuttle this monstrosity (fire up your phones and get dialing is what I am saying).

The level of awful in the Connecticut solar bill that is careening drunkenly toward passage as the session comes to an end is breathtaking in scope and stupidity.

SolarWakeup’s View: Connecticut Senate Bill (SB 9) is the perfect distillation of everything that solar opponents use when they’re trying to destroy solar industries in various states.

For today’s lesson in bad solar ideas, let’s just start with the legislature’s decision to eliminate net metering.

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As introduced, SB 9 moved solar power from net metering to a “sell all, buy all” system, meaning that homeowners with solar on their rooftops wouldn’t be allowed to use the electricity they produce themselves. Instead, they would have to sell all their electricity to the utility at a lower, wholesale rate. Then the homeowners would be required to buy all their electricity back from the utility at the higher retail rate. Solar advocates in the state say this is akin to having the utilities seize the solar panels from customers’ roofs and charging them for the privilege.

This is, seriously, one of my favorite anti-solar policies because, DID YOU READ IT? They want solar consumers to sell their power to the utility so it can be sold back to them at a higher rate. Somewhere, Bernie Madoff is smacking his forehead and saying, “Why didn’t I think of that?”

Pushback against this idiotic scheme has led solar opponents to say, “OK, fine. We won’t violate your property rights that way. Here’s another scheme, though, that we think you’ll LOVE!”

The replacement is called “simultaneous consumption,” which means that every kilowatt-hour solar consumers produce will be credited immediately, and then the public service commission will choose what the utilities will pay them for their excess production. ‘Cause, you know, that’s fair.

As The Alliance for Solar Choice (TASC) argues,

Its uncertainty would jeopardize the financibility of systems, which will disproportionately impact low-income customers who depend upon it. It also disadvantages working people who cannot change when they use electricity.

And that’s just the beginning of what’s wrong with this bill. Just you wait – if you think it can’t get any worse, wait until you see my next article.

I can’t urge you strongly enough to get on the phones and tell Connecticut legislators not to destroy the state’s solar industry by passing this bill. No, seriously. Do it now. You only have seven days left to stop this monstrosity.

More:

Here’s this asinine bill:

SB 9

Here’s What Happens When Utilities Rule The Roost

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent

What Happened: This is going to shock a lot of you, but utilities would like the solar industry to stop harping on net metering and move to what they call “rate design.”

K Kaufmann, communications manager for the Smart Electric Power Association (the utilities’ arm of the solar discussion) (SEPA), lays out the case for why moving the conversation away from net metering will help utilities.
Oddly, however, it doesn’t explain why there would be any advantage to the solar industry to move off net metering.

Is the image of the sun setting on a utility pole too heavy handed? I worry it’s a little heavy handed.

SolarWakeup’s View: Sometimes, the jokes write themselves.

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So over at the Smart Electric Power Association (SEPA) blog, K Kaufmann lays out the case for why the solar industry should abandon its fight over net metering because…I guess…it hurts the utilities’ feelings or something?

The basic argument in the piece, apart from the head-nod to the vague concept of “rate desgin,” is that fighting for net metering sets up a false conflict between the solar industry and utilities. After all, Kaufmann writes, utilities are adding solar at ever-rapidly increasing rates – why isn’t the solar industry telling those stories, huh?

In a vacuum, of course, Kaufmann is right. Utilities are adding solar at an ever-increasing rate. But what her analysis misses is the reason they are adding solar: They’re afraid of losing their monopoly on electricity generation and, therefore, their livelihoods. At least, that’s what most utility executives would tell you if you pumped them full of sodium pentathol and asked.

In one of the most revealing passages in her piece, Kaufmann writes:

From colonial times to present day, the U.S. energy system has been built on successive transitions. The historical record clearly documents that such transitions are, by their very nature, messy, uncomfortable and confusing for all involved.

Who can argue with that? But here’s my question in response: Why should we cling to a distribution and transmission system befitting a 19th century vision of the grid and the means to power it?

As distributed generation grows – by which, to be clear, I mean non-utility-owned solar for purposes of this conversation – utility monopolies are becoming increasingly irrelevant. And while I’d never deny that transitions can be scary, I’d agree with Kaufmann that:

On the upside, they also create a lot of room for experimentation, innovation and cross industry collaboration.

But asking solar to renounce its most potent growth mechanism and put its faith in the benevolence of utilities is an absurd premise unless you are only looking at things from the utilities’ perspective instead of looking at the question from all sides.

This is the kind of reasoning that occurs when the utilities are in control – and that is not in solar’s best long-term interests.

More:

The stories we aren’t telling: Focus on net metering misses the bigger picture (SEPA)

South Carolina Solar Soul Under Attack

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent

What Happened: The burgeoning South Carolina solar industry is being debated in the state’s legislature, with two conflicting bills offering significantly different visions of its future.

The utilities are at again (by which I mean lying) about a cost-shift to reduce how much the utilities pay solar customers under net metering
A second bill would remove a 2% cap on how much solar utilities have to accept, a measure designed to expand the industry”
Meanwhile, solar advocates worry that Dominion Energy’s attempt to buy the parent company of South Carolina Electric & Gas (SCEG) could damage solar’s prospects in the state

SolarWakeup’s View: All I can tell you is that I shook my head in disbelief as I perused all the South Carolina solar news lately.

I’ve seen this lunacy before, where a state is caught between a voracious anti-solar utility and, you know, its citizens. But some legislators in South Carolina, whose solar industry has only been growing since former Governor Nikki Haley signed net metering legislation into law in 2014, are trying to undo all the progress the state has made by essentially dismantling the work Haley began.

For reals. And this misguided attempt to kill the South Carolina solar industry is based on the same lie the utilities are telling Kentucky lawmakers to undermine the solar industry there, to wit: Solar customers are shifting costs to non-solar customers, a lie I have debunked so many times I’ve lost count.

To those of you new to this zombie lie, a study by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has said that though a miniscule cost shift happens, it only happens when a state reaches 10% solar penetration.

Wanna guess how much electricity South Carolina produces from solar? According to the Solar Energy Industries Association, 0.21%. So, yeah, the cost shift is a lie here just as much as it is in Kentucky.

Here, let’s let a South Carolina backer of the net metering destruction bill explain himself, courtesy of Sammy Fretwell of The State:

State Rep. Bill Sandifer, R-Oconee, said he is not opposed to solar power but the existing system is unfair to power companies and customers who don’t use solar energy.

Utilities say non-solar customers are paying to subsidize solar customers – a point sun-power advocates sharply dispute.

That is akin to socialism, Sandifer said. “It is totally wrong for customers, or ratepayers who are not utilizing solar, to be paying for the people who are utilizing it. This prevents that.’’

Aside from the mislabeling of net metering as a “subsidy” – it’s actually a free-market way of compensating solar users for the excess electricity produced (even Ayn Rand would be happy with this arrangement), Sandifer’s argument might as well have come from a SCEG spokesperson. (And as another aside, does the word “socialism” scare anyone under the age of 60 anymore? Lordy….)

Meanwhile, SCANA Corp., the parent company of SCEG, is up for sale, and Dominion Energy of Virginia is the buyer of choice for many. But solar advocates worry that such a purchase would further damage the industry because of Dominion’s lobbying might. I have no idea whether those concerns are real, but I tend to trust solar advocates of utility ones.

Opposing this idiotic bill are efforts to remove a 2% cap on solar capacity that most observers expect to be hit by the utilities this year. If that happens, the solar industry could stop growing and could well freeze in place.

So there you have it – the battle over the future of South Carolina solar is set – and now it’s up to the solar customers in the state to keep the worst-case scenario from happening. Let’s raise the cap and keep net metering – it’s really the best solution for everyone.

More:
Utility friendly politicians take aim at solar expansion in SC

South Carolina solar advocates worry Dominion-Scana deal will stall industry

Zombie Lie Informs Kentucky’s Attempt To Kill Its Solar Industry

Costa Nicolaou – PanelClaw CEO With A Decade Of Profitable Solar Experience

I interview a great friend, Costa Nicolaou, the CEO of PanelClaw. PanelClaw has the leading market share in the rooftop racking market and has been in business for over a decade. Having raised very little money, PanelClaw shows that success can be achieved if you operate your business efficiently.

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