Solar panels are expensive. The only reason that are sold is that government steals money from taxpayers and gives it to wealthy greedy corporations making and selling the panels.
““California’s electric grid is significantly powered by clean energy during daytime hours, but peak electricity demands in the late afternoon and continuing into the night lead to a greater reliance on greenhouse gas emitting resources.”
That admission is from the California Public Utility Commission in December 2022 when they published their decision to reduce payments to homeowners from utilities for solar power storage. Naturally, solar companies predicted this decision would slow construction of new rooftop solar projects.
Turns out solar companies were right.
The CPUC revamped California’s rooftop solar regulations, reducing payments to homeowners for excess battery stored power. After the fact. After all new homes built in 2022 were mandated by the state to have costly rooftop solar.
Now people are forced to pay lots of money, getting back less in tax incentives—in other words creating more inflation and a lower standard of living. How do you make people poor—this is a good way.
California’s Rush for Rooftop Solar Crashes After CPUC Changes Rules Midstream
California’s latest costly solar energy scandal – remember Solyndra? Proterra?
By Katy Grimes, California Globe, 12/29/23 https://californiaglobe.com/fr/californias-rush-for-rooftop-solar-crashes-after-cpuc-changes-rules-midstream/
“California’s electric grid is significantly powered by clean energy during daytime hours, but peak electricity demands in the late afternoon and continuing into the night lead to a greater reliance on greenhouse gas emitting resources.”
That admission is from the California Public Utility Commission in December 2022 when they published their decision to reduce payments to homeowners from utilities for solar power storage. Naturally, solar companies predicted this decision would slow construction of new rooftop solar projects.
Turns out solar companies were right.
The CPUC revamped California’s rooftop solar regulations, reducing payments to homeowners for excess battery stored power. After the fact. After all new homes built in 2022 were mandated by the state to have costly rooftop solar.
But by golly, the CPUC is providing nearly a billion dollars in incentives to encourage more solar projects for low-income homes.
Once again, the middle class are being robbed to pay for something they will never receive.
“California sharply reduced incentive payments for rooftop solar power [last year], taking a sledgehammer to a program that helped 1.5 million homes and businesses put solar panels on their roofs and made the state a leader in fighting the climate crisis,” the Los Angeles Times editorial board reported.
“The unanimous vote by the state’s Public Utilities Commission to reduce payments to solar customers for the electricity they generate comes after a decade of controversy over the program. Critics say it has resulted in higher electric bills for households that don’t have rooftop solar panels, including low-income families that can’t afford them.”
CPUC Commissioners claimed the new rules disproportionately negatively impacted low-income ratepayers.
So, the natural move they made involved DEI – diversity, inclusion and equity:
“the successor tariff should promote equity, inclusion, electrification, and the adoption of solar paired with storage systems, and provide a glide path so that the industry can sustainably transition from the current tariff to the successor tariff and from a predominantly stand-alone solar system tariff to one that promotes the adoption of solar systems paired with storage.”
This word salad is actually called a redistribution of wealth… from ratepayers who don’t really have “wealth” and are being squeezed by Bindenomics and Gavinnomics.
As the Globe reported in November:
“The California Utilities Commission just granted Pacific Gas and Electric a 13% rate hike – ostensibly to pay for under grounding power lines.”
“Because Gov. Gavin Newsom appoints the commissioners to the CPUC, this is ‘Gavinomics.’ Expect the other utilities to hike the rates as well.”
And since Gavin Newsom appoints the CPUC commissioners, they are doing what he wants – what his funders want.
“Remember, it was only this April 2023 that Southern California Edison, Pacific Gas & Electric and San Diego Gas & Electric filed a proposal to install a fixed-rate electric bill system for those under the three largest power companies in the state, the Globe reported. A 2021 report from the University of California at Berkeley recommended that the state link California’s highest-in-the-nation electricity bills to customer incomes – ie. your ability to pay. The real plan is to create income-based utility billing. So hold that thought.”
Residential electricity prices in California are already more than twice the national average.
Now, the ratepayers and homeowners who shelled out the $20,000 to $30,000 for mandatory rooftop solar, and the backup storage batteries, will not receive the compensation for the extra stored power they were promised by the state.
I know – you are shocked that California rewrote the rules midstream.
And lest you wonder what is behind this change, the CPUC explains that it’s not just DEI: “These price signals also benefit customers who electrify their vehicles, home devices, and appliances. The changes will improve the reliability of electricity in California and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”
Climate change woo woo is expensive, and detrimental to the electricity grid.
Every move the CPUC makes hurts California’s energy production, rather than enhancing it and providing more.
The CPUC rule revamp is really about California’s self-imposed kooky goal of zero-carbon electricity by 2045, and deranged plan to end the use of oil, gas and coal power sources.
Not only is the goal patently absurd, the state isn’t even close to such grandiose objectives. The CPUC commissioners twisted themselves into pretzels claiming they need to rely on renewable energy to meet the state’s Greenhouse Gas/carbon production, but they could do that with more clean nuclear power, more clean hydroelectric power, and more clean natural gas use. More – not less.
“California helped create the US solar industry, subsidizing rooftop panels at a time when the federal fight against climate change had barely begun,” Bloomberg reported. “Now, it’s leading a sharp sales slowdown that’s threatening widespread adoption [of solar].”
Boom. Exactly. The state tried to bolster its political agenda by incentivizing homeowners to add rooftop solar. But as we’ve witnessed with every government incentive program, there’s no there there.
In August, the Globe reported that California-based Proterra electric bus company filed for bankruptcy.
And do you remember Solyndra?
This is a flashback to Solyndra, a solar panel start-up and recipient of federal funds from the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). Solyndra blew $570 million taxpayer dollars before it folded.
“Solar panel start-up Solyndra was the first company to get government-backed loans from ARRA after its passage, collecting $535 million and receiving a $25 million tax break from California’s agency for alternative energy,” Forbes reported.
As for Proterra, which was a huge political donor to state politicians, and US Energy Secretary Jennifer Grandholm invested in Proterra, was awarded a California Competes tax credit worth $7.5 million ($4.5m was later recaptured because the company defaulted on the agreement), and received a $10 million COVID PPP loan that was later forgiven.
“Since Proterra filed a Chapter 11 business reorganization, they could be saved by private investors if their infrastructure is decent – but I’m not holding my breath – too many government subsidies and not enough free market interest I am deducing,” the Globe reported.
This is how energy in California is done – not based on supply and demand, but based on subsidies and kickbacks to politicians and political policies.
The “California regulations that scaled back the amount of money solar homeowners earn when they sell excess electricity to the grid — a shift that hit just as higher interest rates were making the systems more expensive,” couldn’t come at a worse time.
“Installers are slashing jobs. Bankruptcies are mounting. And it’s not just mom & pops feeling the pinch,” Bloomberg said.
The latest drop in rooftop solar installations “shows that the rooftop solar business remains dependent on government policy, long after its backers hoped it could thrive on economics alone.”
What the latest drop in rooftop solar installations really shows is government interfering in private industry – picking winners and losers – is always a losing decision. Government is inept. And the “winners” they choose, almost always end up losing.
And the taxpayers – you, me, your parents, your friends, your neighbors – always foot the bill. This is why elections matter.
The CPUC decision affects only solar power ratepayers by California’s investor-owned utility companies: Southern California Edison, Pacific Gas & Electric and San Diego Gas & Electric.
