California officials push to cut energy credits to households with rooftop solar panels

[Danny ter Haar]

The commission staff, with the support of its consumer-focused Public Advocates Office, is making a case for cutting credits to those who installed rooftop panels before April 2023. Those panel owners are paid the retail rate for the excess electricity they send to the grid, while later adopters are paid a fraction of that price.
Among the ideas floated in a report by commission staff last week is to limit the number of years those customers can receive the retail rate, or end it when a home is sold. The commission staff also suggested adding a new monthly charge to solar owners’ bills, saying it would reduce the costs needed to maintain the electrical grid that it says are shifted to other customers.

https://archive.ph/Cplgt

[Danny ter Haar]

I send the same information to a retired electrical engineer who is also pro EV & pro PV

This was his (imo great) response:

I believe that the infrastructure improvements and repairs should be something built into a well managed system.  

So asking for additional money to do what should be part of the normal operation is something that needs to be investigated.   

Along this line of discussion should be the real impact of how the distributed installation of roof top solar has reduced the load on the infrastructure.   

It does not seem like enough is being said or studied of the solar benefit to infrastructure 'easing' related to reduced line loading and transformer loading.  

Wanted to share his response with the group.

[cit...@sbcglobal.net]

True on many points . The whole solar program is slanted towards whoever runs the grid . No accountability for equipment maintenance or failure , the solar program as I understand it greatly benefits the utility company with enormous margin for them , not so much the home owner. Joe