XPost: az.politics, talk.politics.guns, talk.politics.misc   
   XPost: alt.solar.photovoltaic, misc.industry.utilities.electric, sac.politics   
   From: remailer@domain.invalid   
      
   Arizona regulators voted on Wednesday to consider lowering the rates   
   that electric utilities must pay homeowners with rooftop solar for   
   their excess power. Clean energy advocates say the move will   
   undermine the state’s booming solar industry and unfairly pad   
   utilities’ profits.   
      
   The decision follows a deep cut to solar benefits in neighboring   
   California, an indication of how states with high rates of rooftop   
   solar — regardless of their political leanings — are struggling to   
   integrate solar power with the legacy electric grid.   
      
   “It was a straight-up dumpster fire,” Jason Gallagher, chief   
   operating officer for Chandler-based solar installer Fusion Power,   
   told Semafor of the Arizona meeting.   
      
   Tim’s view   
   The decision in Arizona illustrates how solar power, in spite of its   
   plummeting global price and unprecedented federal backing, is still   
   subject to local political whims and the rehashing of decade-old   
   arguments.   
      
   In Arizona, as in most states, when a home’s rooftop solar panels   
   generate more electricity than the house needs, the excess can be   
   sold into the grid, a practice called net metering. The rate   
   utilities offer for that power differs between jurisdictions;   
   usually it’s the same rate the house would pay to buy power from the   
   grid, or a bit less. In 2016, after an expensive lobbying campaign   
   by the state’s biggest utility, regulators adopted a plan that would   
   gradually step down the rate over time (pre-2016 customers were able   
   to keep a grandfathered higher rate). The justification was that the   
   retail rate, being higher than the wholesale rate utilities would   
   typically pay to acquire electricity, raised utilities’ costs in a   
   way that was eventually passed on to non-solar customers.   
      
   Over the last few years, Arizona’s net metering rate has now fallen   
   the wholesale rate, such that excess rooftop solar power is actually   
   a bargain buy for utilities. Yet the perception that net metering   
   constitutes an unfair cost-shift or subsidy has persisted in some   
   corners. At Wednesday’s hearing of the Arizona Corporation   
   Commission, which regulates the state’s utilities, chairman Jim   
   O’Connor, a Republican, argued that anyone wanting a solar roof   
   “shouldn’t do that at the expense of their neighbors and   
   communities.” O’Connor, along with two other Republicans on the   
   five-member commission, voted to reopen the 2016 policy and   
   potentially allow for much steeper annual cuts in the net metering   
   rate.   
      
   The decision makes solar a hard sell for homeowners in one of the   
   country’s sunniest states, Gallagher said, because it makes it   
   impossible to calculate a realistic payback period, and most likely   
   extends any such period. That view was echoed in a filing by Tesla,   
   which sells solar and battery systems in the state and said the   
   decision will “harm investor and customer confidence in Arizona.”   
   Even the utility companies that originally pushed to lower the rate   
   were against reopening the existing policy.   
      
   “They’re setting a precedent that whatever they decide in one   
   meeting doesn’t really matter,” Gallagher said, because it’s liable   
   to be re-litigated every two years when the commissioners are up for   
   reelection. “There is no major renewable energy company in the   
   nation that, if they looked at what happened [on Wednesday], would   
   feel comfortable investing in Arizona.”   
      
   Room for Disagreement   
   In defending his vote, O’Connor pointed to the example of   
   California, which in April deeply slashed its net metering rates in   
   spite of its liberal, climate-focused politics. That state is by far   
   the country’s top solar market, and net metering had become a   
   legitimate problem for the grid. Midday peak solar production in   
   California is now so high that it sometimes more than covers the   
   entire state’s electricity needs — but then forces power companies   
   to massively ramp up other forms of generation as the sun goes down,   
   raising costs and the risk of blackouts.   
      
      
   The View From New York   
      
   Notable   
   The global price of solar would be even lower, an Oxford University   
   lecturer wrote this week, if not for a century-old kidnapping.   
   George Cove was a Canadian engineer in New York who invented the   
   first solar panels in 1909, to much publicity, and was shortly   
   thereafter kidnapped, with a term of his release being that he give   
   up his solar patent. After his release, he never returned to the   
      
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