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what cant you understand about the fact that the state wanted to have x% of all power generated in the state coming from rooftop solar.As a result, the STATE OFFERED EARLY ADOPTERS INCENTIVES to reach their goals. So some of us took them up on their offer. The offer not only paid for part of the system it came with a 20 year deal.... not a 5 year deal, not a 10 year deal, but a 20 year deal.You just seem to think that rooftop solar owners are making it more expensive for non users, and there is zero evidence of that. The benefits of rooftop solar are many. But even if there were ZERO benefits, it still doesnt change the fact that it was the state coming to us with the deal...... now years later they dont like the deal and want to change the terms of the deal we signed. Is absolutely going to result in multiple lawsuits. I will never apologize for not staying low income for my entire life and relying on govt handouts.
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I have been a lifelong democrat, but these politicians that keep coming after my families pocket book with stuff like this will have me voting GOP soon. We already have huge property taxes, and pay a pretty decent amount in federal and state income taxes.... Im ok with that as it applies to most of us equally. Our tax dollars go to a ton of things... again, Im ok with that. But when you come after me just because of our income and add a tax to us specifically to transfer it over to low income... thats just going to push me over the edge.Comment
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Just deleted a post that belongs elsewhereLast edited by foggysail; 04-24-2023, 11:16 AM. Reason: Deleted my post. Should have posted to a different threadComment
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I understand this: The 20yr. NEM 1.0 agreement that SDG & E has with me and my system started 10/13/2013. As of this writing that agreement is good until 10/13/2033. So far, nothing of that part of the agreement has changed although the fine print of my agreement in the NEM says it may be rescinded or changed by appropriate legislation. There's no guarantees in life or contracts and I live with that However, my guess is that the political ****storm that will happen if the POCOs are allowed to renege on earlier agreements would be onerous enough to them to make them very reluctant to try to crap out on it, but I'm under no illusions that it might happen. I'm not quite that naive or simplistic.
Also, I never wrote, nor do I believe residential PV owners are making it more expensive for the less financially fortunate to buy electricity. They (the less fortunate) like all of us bear the responsibility for their actions. They, like all of us can use less electricity. I know it can be done because I've been forced to do it in the past and now prefer it that way. For their part the I.O.U.s might try to emulate the municipal utilities a bit more and maybe get their costs more in line, but I expect that will happen about the same time elephants fly out of my butt.
BTW, you and foggysail are not the only one's around here with a past.
I just know that - for me only - life can be a bitch but it's made worse by whining and moaning about how unfair the world has been and can be to me, so I don't - I just get on with it.
I also understand, probably better and with more detail than most that the state's renewable goals were partially met and incentivized by mandated NEM legislation that forced the I.O.U.s to buy NEM customers' non excess product at the same prices they (the I.O.U.s) charge their customers for that very same product.
Last time I checked, that's not how capitalism is supposed to work - that is - buying back your product for the same price you sell it at. I don't think that's a good way to make a profit.
So, in one way of looking at it, the gov. mandates a program and the I.O.U.s administer it and then have to eat what they claim is the cost to them (the I.O.U.s) of lower rates paid by often/usually wealthier PV owning rate payers.
Meanwhile, the I.O.U.s continue to get rate increases from the CPUC slugs that they then pass along mostly to (what they claim with some justification are) their less well to do, non NEM customers and try (with some justification and success) to put the blame on rich NEM customers.
Look, I'm no fan of the I.O.U.s but it seems to me like the whole thing is FUBAR - the I.O.U. robbers, the crybaby fat cat PV owners, the non NEM customers who won't as much as turn off a light or educate themselves on how to lower their electric bills, legislators who are complete assholes and self-serving crooks, and all the rest of us who are getting dumber, lazier and less informed by the minute.
As for the state offering some incentives to early adopters, they did, but those incentives were separate from NEM legislation, and they ran out a long time ago when the 5% generation capacity targets were reached. The incentives and NEM were separate deals. I was one such adopter and got $928 from the state from that program as well as 30% of the balance of my system cost after that from the fed. gov.
I suppose it wasn't so much the state that paid for that program as the rest of the state's taxpayers who were expected to fund the difference through budget allocations or taxes in some way(s) to make up the difference.
But that's separate from the state mandated NEM program that has cost the state little to nothing except maybe some admin. and advert. costs.
Take what you want of the above. Scrap the rest.
Rant mode off.Last edited by J.P.M.; 04-24-2023, 09:33 PM.Comment
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Thank you for your well thought out response. I do not consider it a rant at all. I do not consider the rest of the non NEM customers as flipping the bill for our tax credits.... well, I guess if you do, then we could do that for everything that is funded with tax dollars. The state makes investments with tax dollars in all sorts of programs fir the betterment of all of us, even though we do not directly benefit from such programs.
Low income students have access to programs that will teach them skills, such as an electrician or an HVAC installer, for free or vastly reduced costs. My kids do not have access to that same program. The state covers these costs as an investment into the future. It better to have this individual with a good job and paying taxes then have them be in state prison. So the investment in that program benefits us all and therefor I do not complain about it being funded for by my tax dollars. For some reason, the funding of the program that incentivized rooftop solar adoption is viewed very differently. Even though the state and its' residents are clearly benefitting in various ways from having so many people put solar panels on their house, the fact that the majority of those same people are in the upper income brackets is why I suspect that it is viewed very differently. Those people are somehow viewed as evil and taking advantage of low income people... even though many of those people are paying zero in taxes and dont subsidize anything in the state.
Once again, I appreciate your well thought out response.
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My POCO in Arizona tried to modify thousands of active grid-tie contracts back in 2015 and it didn't go well. They had lobbied and received utility commission approval for all new RE customer contracts but they also wanted to force existing RE customers into the new contract terms as well. That change would have moved me onto a "special" plan designed only for RE customers that was more expensive with higher monthly base fees only for solar customers plus a single mandatory TOU plan that reduced credit for production during the peak of the day. My ROI would have moved from 7 years to over 11 years. They quickly did an about-face though. All I can guess is that some well-known lawyers were on grid-tie agreements at the time and probably promised to litigate because in less than a week, the utility sent out a retraction and apology assuring all current RE customers than their contracts would not be modified in any way until after the contract period had expired.Dave W. Gilbert AZ
6.63kW grid-tie ownerComment
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Definitely not.
But it's not capitalism. Public utilities exist in a no-man's land between capitalism and socialism. They have a guaranteed monopoly, so they can't work as a purely capitalistic industry, They also have to make their shareholders happy, so socialism doesn't work there. They instead embody many of the properties of a private company while being regulated by government (usually a PUC appointed by the government,)
Thus mandated programs like lower cost power for poor people or people with disabilities are forced upon them as a cost of being able to keep that monopoly. And government being government, they often don't make great decisions.
The problems of DG has brought this to the forefront. Government wants more people to install solar, because people elect politicians who promise more solar. As you said, there is no way that the utilities want that; they are effectively incentivizing people to make their own power and not pay for it, which is the opposite of their business model. While solar was just for weirdos and freaks that wasn't much of a problem. Now that everyone wants it, it is.
Every solar/storage conference I've been to in the past 10 years has had talks that lament the death of the traditional utility model, brought about by that very DG and storage. There are a dozen proposals for what comes in its place. A regulated government operation to install and maintain a power grid, with anyone able to sell in and anyone able to buy on an open exchange? That gets rid of the conflict - but no one wants to put the government 100% in charge of that infrastructure. A more private system, with more than one utility allowed to use public rights-of-ways? Then you get back to what New York looked like in the 1920's, where you could barely see the sky for all the wires everywhere. But maybe a more regulated system could work there. Utility ownership of DG? Utilities love it, homeowners hate it. Just say F it and let grid abandonment start being a big thing? That starts a death spiral for utilities, where every person who leaves due to high prices jacks up the prices for the remaining customers.
There are no easy answers for any of this.
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Agreed. Like I wrote: FUBAR.
I once mused - back in the early days of PV around 2005 or so (about the time I stopped going to alternate energy conferences) - what would happen if a scheme something like the POCO's or maybe some quasi-governmental agency governed by state PUCs or such were to own all the PV generation equipment and put it on leased portions of rate payer's roofs or other parts of their properties, maintain the equipment and pay a portion of the value of the produced power to the property owners who would then be treated like every other POCO customer except for the revenue stream from the produced PV.
Looking at it now, besides perhaps getting around some of the issue of the well off getting most of the benefits of NEM, that may have been one way to avoid all this ill will and angst about who pays for what and who's getting screwed.
I'm sure a lot of details would need to have been worked out (making this little more than one of another of what I derogatorily call a "you could just" idea), but if the POCOs got into the PV distributed ownership business at the homeowner level, at least power generation would be back in the hands of those who know how to do it and manage it.
Seems to me that wouldn't be any worse than the boondoggle we find now.
Last edited by J.P.M.; 04-25-2023, 09:52 PM.Comment
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Says roughly half the country. I am not going to get into politics, but a very large group of people want nothing to do with government, and want it small enough (in their words) to drown in a bathtub. They oppose all expansions of government roles.
In a practical sense, I don't see government as much different than a publicly owned utility. Same reduced accountability, same insulation from market forces. Some do it well (TVA) some don't (ERCOT, PG+E.)
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Well, 2 orders of magnitude better might be a stretch.
However, the municipal owned utilities in CA which provide about 25 % or so of the state's electricity seem to put out a product comparable to that of the I.O.U.'s for a lot less $$ cost to their customers but a lot of the time those provider's NEM's aren't as sweet as the I.O.U.s' NEM agreements used to be.
Fact is (or maybe the handwriting is on the wall), that now (or soon) will be the end of the sweetheart days and deals of residential PV net metering for the I.O.U.s, at least in CA.
Anyway, It's about time the training wheels got kicked off the PV industry's bicycle, it (the PV industry) put on its big boy pants and competed in the energy market/business with the rest of the players.Last edited by J.P.M.; 04-26-2023, 01:08 PM.Comment
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So our tax information will be sent to SDGE?
How are homes with multiple renters going to be figured?Comment
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