New to this forum, but not to solar as I've had small off-grid systems in my home and boat for 20 years now. I decided a while ago that it was time to invest in a grid-tie system for my home. As my roof is pointing the wrong way and I had been wanting to build a small storage/workshop building anyways, I designed the building to accommodate sufficient solar panels. It took a while (like 2 years) to get all that through Building and Safety and build it, but it was all signed off and finished January of this year, including the 2.65 KW Solar System. I missed out on any incentives or credits except for the Fed'l credit, but that's OK. What's NOT OK is that the local utility is refusing to tie me into the grid, with some BS about how their "solar program" ended at the beginning of the year...
Now it was my understanding that California's solar energy policy, NEM 1.0 required the utilities to pay customers for power they generated from solar until it reached 5% of peak electric demand. That has now been replaced by NEM 2.0, which doesn't pay quite as well as there some fixed costs that can't be offset as well as having to pay a new, one time connection fee, but it does remove the "cap" on how much solar power can be generated. This would be great if it was true, but it seems state sanctioned monopolies like utilities can do whatever they want. What good is a State implemented energy policy if utilities can ignore it? I wonder how this is supposed to play out in 2020 when ALL new construction in California will be required to have rooftop solar? Add $10-20K to the cost of all new homes so that they can have useless equipment on their roofs, like I do?
Now it was my understanding that California's solar energy policy, NEM 1.0 required the utilities to pay customers for power they generated from solar until it reached 5% of peak electric demand. That has now been replaced by NEM 2.0, which doesn't pay quite as well as there some fixed costs that can't be offset as well as having to pay a new, one time connection fee, but it does remove the "cap" on how much solar power can be generated. This would be great if it was true, but it seems state sanctioned monopolies like utilities can do whatever they want. What good is a State implemented energy policy if utilities can ignore it? I wonder how this is supposed to play out in 2020 when ALL new construction in California will be required to have rooftop solar? Add $10-20K to the cost of all new homes so that they can have useless equipment on their roofs, like I do?
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