For GSS Energy Use chapter 5. Excerpt: For years, power companies have
watched warily as solar panels have sprouted across the nation’s
rooftops. ...utility companies are moving to roll back government
incentives aimed at promoting solar energy and other renewable sources
of power. ...In Arizona, for example, the country’s second-largest solar
market, the state’s largest utility is pressuring the Arizona
Corporation Commission, which sets utility rates, to reconsider a
generous residential credit and impose new fees on customers, months
after the agency eliminated a commercial solar incentive. In North
Carolina, Duke Energy is pushing to institute a new set of charges for
solar customers as well. Nowhere, though, is the battle more heated than
in California, home to the nation’s largest solar market and some of
the most aggressive subsidies. ...At the heart of the fight is a credit
system called net metering, which pays residential and commercial
customers for excess renewable energy they sell back to utilities.
...Some keep the credit in line with the wholesale prices that utilities
pay large power producers, which can be a few cents a kilowatt-hour.
But in California, those payments are among the most generous because
they are tied to the daytime retail rates customers pay for electricity,
which include utility costs for maintaining the grid. ... “If the costs
to maintain the grid are not being borne by some customers, then other
customers have to bear a bigger and bigger portion,” said Steve
Malnight, a vice president at Pacific Gas and Electric. “As those costs
get shifted, that leads to higher and higher rates for customers who
don’t take advantage of solar.”.... http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/27/business/energy-environment/utilities-confront-fresh-threat-do-it-yourself-power.html. Diane Cardwell, New York Times. |
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