Senators Launch Campaign To Repeal Solar Tariffs, Mirroring Similar Effort In The House

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent

Mirroring the efforts in the House, two Western-state Senators have introduced a federal bill to repeal the 30% solar tariffs President Donald J. Trump imposed on imported solar modules in January.

Earlier this year, solar tariffs repeal became a federal issue when five members of the House of Representatives introduced similar legislation.

U.S. Senators Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) and Dean Heller (R-Nev.) have introduced the Protecting American Solar Jobs Act, which would accomplish the same goals as the House solar tariffs repeal bill, meaning it would not only eliminate the tariffs immediately but would refund money already spent on the tariffs to the companies affected.

“President Trump’s decision to impose a new import tax on solar energy equipment harms hundreds of locally-owned companies, jeopardizes tens of thousands of workers and stifles billions of dollars in investment in communities and manufacturing in New Mexico and across the country,” said Senator Heinrich in a press release announcing the bill’s introduction. “We need to look at the bigger picture of the American solar industry and its role as a major employer of American workers. The bipartisan Protecting American Solar Jobs Act would reverse the harmful tariffs imposed by the Trump Administration and put American workers first.”

Heller also weighed in, saying:

Nevada continues to be a national leader in solar innovation. In fact, solar energy powers countless homes, businesses, and even resorts and casinos across our state,” said Senator Heller. “Our bipartisan bill protects Nevadans’ jobs in this important sector by reversing the 30 percent tax on solar panels, a tariff that threatens jobs and has the potential to harm our economy. I thank Senator Heinrich for his leadership on this issue, and I look forward to working with him to pass our proposal into law so that Nevada can continue to build on its renewable energy progress.

Whether either bill has a chance to pass out of committee is an open question, but the fact that such bills have been introduced do show the increasing awareness of solar’s importance to the country and its economy. In particular, Heller’s support may show that Nevada politicians finally understand how important solar is to the state’s economic future after several years of stumbling around after an inexplicable decision to end net metering prematurely – a decision that has since been rectified.

Read the full bill here:

Heinrich-Heller Tariff Bill

More:

Bipartisan Tariff Repeal Bill Introduced In Congress – Any Chance It Passes?

Liberty Utilities Wants To Own Your Behind-The-Meter Battery System (And Why That’s A Bad Idea)

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent

Liberty Utilities, New Hampshire’s largest utility currently has a docket before the New Hampshire Public Utilities Commission that sounds like a good idea.

At issue is the state’s largest pilot program in history that would allow New Hampshire solar users to install batteries at no cost to them. Sounds good, right?

And although the intent of the program – to see how batteries will affect grid resiliency and performance – is pretty benign, solar advocates in the state have concerns about the size of the program and what it could mean for the long-term future of battery storage in the Granite State.

After all, the proposal as it is currently written gives only customers with utility-owned batteries access to time-of-use rates or monthly peak reduction payments, meaning the goal of the pilot program isn’t really to test how batteries operate on the grid. It’s to give the utility an unnecessary monopoly on battery storage, which should be granted only when a clear market failure demands it.

Instead of attempting to grab new monopoly powers where they don’t clearly exist, advocates suggest that Liberty Utilities should scale back its own pilot program and let other companies – in some cases local companies employing New Hampshire citizens – compete on a “Bring Your Own Battery” system. In other words, set rates based on performance and let the market – not a state-sponsored monopoly – decide who should handle the solar + storage systems in the state.

As it is, battery storage is something new for monopoly utilities in most cases (and most certainly in Liberty Utilities’ case), whereas multiple companies in the private sector are already deploying solar + storage in many states, giving them insights into the particular challenges and opportunities such systems provide. Why should New Hampshire residents become the guinea pigs for a large-scale pilot program that would effectively shut out the competition?

No one is suggesting Liberty Utilities shouldn’t set up a pilot program or that that the NHPUC shouldn’t grant them one. But make it a reasonably sized one that forces utilities to compete in the market – which would allow all ratepayers, solar consumers and non-solar consumers alike, to win.

Despite True Believers, EXPERTS Say Trump Nuke Bailout Could Cost $17 Billion Per Year In Overly High Electric Bills

Those are your electric bills going up in … steam. (You thought I was going to say “smoke,” didn’t you? See, I know things.)

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent

No matter how many utility executives say, “We don’t have enough information to decide whether the President Trump nuke bailout is a good idea yet,” the people who know stuff – you know, experts – have weighed in, and the news is not good.

At the same time Exelon’s CEO was telling a crowd at the Edison Electric Institute’s annual meeting that no one had any idea whether Trump’s plan to mandate that grid operators buy electricity from failing nuclear and coal plants was a good one yet, the Nuclear Information & Resource Service (NIRS) was saying that the planned federal handouts for nuclear alone could add up to $280 billion to electricity bills by 2030. That’s $17 billion per year in unnecessary money being shelled out by ratepayers like you and me.

It probably doesn’t need to be said, but Exelon owns all or a portion of 16 nuclear plants throughout the United States. So maybe he’s a bit … what’s the word … biased in favor of a Trump nuke bailout.

The NIRS also said in a release that:

Forcing the purchase of overpriced and non-competitive nuclear and coal power also would crowd out renewables, leaving the U.S. farther behind in wind, solar and energy storage technology development and use.

Because if there’s anything the United States needs right now, it’s to fall even further behind in new electricity-generation technology. Gotta keep those coal jobs alive somehow, I guess.

Tim Judson, executive director, Nuclear Information & Resource Service (NIRS), said (emphasis ours):

By pushing for a nationwide bailout for nuclear power and coal, the Trump administration is rushing headlong into an energy buzz saw, and they don’t even seem to know it. Subsidizing the nuclear industry alone is likely to cost American consumers $8 billion to $17 billion per year, and subsidies for coal could cost just as much. Betting on old, increasingly uneconomical nuclear and coal power plants as a national security strategy is like gold-plating a Studebaker and calling it a tank. And it could destroy the booming renewable energy industry, which is already employing more Americans than coal and nuclear combined.

The words for this madness, they fail.

More:

Exelon CEO: ‘We Need Federal Intervention’ on Grid Resilience

Was David Crane Right? (Yes. Yes. He Was.): NRG Energy Sheds Power Plants In Favor Of Consumer Focus

Former NRG Energy CEO David Crane

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent

NRG Energy shed David Crane in 2015, blaming the company’s financial struggles on the former CEO’s decision to dive head-first into renewable energy and focusing on how consumers wanted to get their electricity instead of focusing on propping up the old centralized utility model.

Turns out, maybe Crane had a point.

Reuters reports the company is now eliminating more than half its power plants to focus more on the retail side of the business. As new CEO Mauricio Gutierrez told the wire service:

NRG started as a generation company that moved into retail and some people still think of NRG in terms of (power plants). But when you think about NRG in the future, I invite you to think about the company in terms of the number of customers we serve.

Stop focusing on polluting fossil-fuel-based power plants. Move to a more consumer-friendly model. Perhaps throw in renewable energy as the catalyst for keeping customers happy and on board with NRG Energy. Hmmm….we feel like we’ve heard that before.

Oh, right. We did. From … David Crane, who could have saved Gutierrez and the rest of the NRG Energy braintrust three years of wheel-spinning had they just allowed him to complete his transformation of the company beyond his 2015 expiration date.

But they didn’t, and now here they are.

Now Gutierrez says the company is finally on the right track, telling shareholders in a letter (again from Reuters):

“When I became CEO, it was clear we were trying to be too many things to too many people,” Gutierrez said in a letter to shareholders on Wednesday. He wants to grow the retail business, especially in the Northeast where NRG still has more generation than it needs to serve customers.

So let us get this straight – you entered in the middle of someone else’s transition from a power-plant purveyor to consumer-focused energy company, decided he was trying to be “too many things to too many people,” and are now … transitioning from a power plant purveyor to … a company that is consumer-focused.

And hilariously, Gutierrez’s interview appeared a mere two hours after NRG Energy just signed a deal to do three big solar farms with food distribution giant Sysco. So there’s that.

Somewhere, David Crane is laughing his face off (and probably crying a little. But mostly laughing.)

NRG Sheds U.S. Power Plants to Focus on Retail Customers

https://www.chron.com/business/energy/article/Sysco-and-NRG-to-team-up-to-build-solar-gardens-12969596.php