Rooftop Solar Unfairly Blamed for Driving Up Energy Bills in CA

In response to the recent Patch article by Kat Schuster, “CA’s Solar Surplus Is Driving Up Your Energy Bill” - The article doesn't bother to explain that we must have an overcapacity of energy production in California, that this is necessary to handle peak power demand loads, which vary day-by-day and month-by-month. If a given power grid didn't have excess capacity, we'd suffer brown-outs or worse during the peak energy-consuming periods. And solar is probably the best energy source to handle the needed excess capacity for the peak periods, since solar systems generate their largest loads during afternoons, when peak power demand also occurs. See slide # 4 from a presentation put together by Solar Rights Alliance, a group that I support. Solar Rights Alliance slide deck

Part of the reason for the current energy surplus is the operating license extension of Diablo Canyon nuclear plant, which represents nearly 10% of the energy consumed in California. The decision was made by California regulators a year ago to extend the operating license of the Diablo Canyon plant by five years, from 2025 to 2030. Many California residents and environmental groups opposed this extension due to safety concerns regarding embrittlement of the reactor pressure vessel and seismic core damage. There is no guarantee that the full life extension will be able to be carried out safely, and certainly this vast amount of energy production won't be able to be quickly replaced if the extended operating license is cut short, or when it expires five years from now.

There is the added fact that the conversion of many appliances and vehicles to electric that started a few years ago is still occurring in California, and our electrical demand will continue to grow in the state as that trend continues. Rooftop solar has kept peak electricity demand flat for years, despite this growth (see slide # 6 in the Solar Rights deck). We need a larger electrical supply, in the form of solar, to handle future growth. That supply won't be built overnight, there are bound to be periods when supply and demand don't exactly balance out. As the Patch article quotes the U.S. Energy Information Administration, "Grid operators must balance supply and demand to maintain a stable electric system."

The biggest shortcoming of the Patch article is that it doesn't distinguish between residential rooftop solar, which is by definition decentralized, and the giant centralized solar farms that the utilities have been promoting and building. Centralized solar projects, and the accompanying transmission and distribution projects (lines and poles) needed to support them, are the main reasons for the recent big increase in power costs. This has largely been due to out-of-control spending by the utilities. The utilities love the transmission and distribution projects, since they are guaranteed by statute an 8-10% return on those projects, something they don't get from the rest of their business. And, notably, only about 13% of the money spent in the last two years on lines and poles was actually spent on wildfire mitigation (see Solar Rights slides # 16 and 17). The rest was spent because the utilities got approval for the centralized solar projects, most located a long distance from where the power was needed, at the same time as they and the CPUC were gutting residential rooftop solar with NEM3 (see Solar Rights slide # 20). This out-of-control utility spending has caused the utilities to seek and get approval for several rounds of electric rate increases in the past year or so. This in turn has resulted in (you guessed it), massive increases in profits for the utilities, their investor, and executives, with accompanying larger electric bills shouldered by all ratepayers.

Decentralized (residential rooftop) solar doesn't create demand for more wires and poles, and in fact it lowers the need. Residential rooftop solar has caused all Californians’ electric bills to be decreased, not increased. The utilities and the CPUC and their paid consultants have spread the opposite lie, that the increases in consumers' power bills, which they've labeled the "cost shift”, is occurring because of residential rooftop solar, which isn't the case at all. A recently released study by respected energy economist Dr. Richard McCann supports the fact that residential rooftop solar has produced a net savings of $2.3 billion per year for California and its electricity users, not a net added cost of $8.5 billion per year, as several studies paid for by the utilities have purported to show. Dr. Richard McCann's report

Michael Volk, Oakland