Posted on 04/12/2024 9:18:41 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
About 2 1/2 years ago I wrote a post titled "California plans to kill the residential solar industry." At the time, I had just had solar panels installed on my roof to save money and within months California announced a new plan (Net Metering 3.0) that would have taxed me and anyone else who owned a rooftop solar system for owning the panels. I predicted that if this plan passed, California's rooftop solar industry would fall off a cliff.
The result of Net Metering 3.0 is likely going to be the end of the residential solar industry in California. I have a neighbor who was interested in possibly getting a system after I had mine installed. Like me, he figured that after 10 years he’d break even on the cost and would still get years of free power. But under the new system his break even point would be 18 years or more so now he doesn’t see the point. A lot of other people are going to run the numbers and reach the same conclusion. Solar installers are about to see their orders drop off a cliff which doesn’t make much sense if the goal was to shift people to green energy. Earlier this week, Elon Musk (who owns one of the major solar installers) called the new plan “insane.”
The backlash to the initial plan was strong enough that Net Metering 3.0 was revised but eventually it did pass and went into effect on April 15, 2023. Since then, rooftop solar installations in California have indeed fallen off a cliff. The NY Times wrote about it in January of this year.
California has long championed renewable energy, but a change in the state’s policies last year has led to a sharp decline in the installation of residential rooftop solar in the state.
Thousands of companies — including installers, manufacturers and distributors — are reeling from the new policy, which took effect in April and greatly reduced incentives that had encouraged homeowners to install solar panels. Since the change, sales of rooftop solar installations in California dropped as much as 85 percent in some months of 2023 from a year earlier, according to a report by Ohm Analytics, a research firm that tracks the solar marketplace. Industry groups project that installations in the state will drop more than 40 percent this year and continue to decline through 2028...
Construct Sun, a solar installation company that is based in Reno, Nev., stopped doing business in California after its sales dried up four months after the policy began; executives said the company was now focusing its efforts on Florida, North Carolina and Ohio...
The nation’s largest residential solar company, Sunrun, which is based in San Francisco, cut about 2,000 jobs after California regulators reduced the rooftop incentives.
There is a caveat here which I have to mention. Solar installation was up slightly in 2023 compared to 2022. Supporters of the new policy point to this as proof that the industry is fine. But the truth is that the vast majority of those installs happened in the first three months of 2023 before the policy went into effect. There was a rush of buyers trying to get in on the good rates but since then the entire industry is down sharply.
But that may not be the end of the story. On Wednesday, the California Supreme Court agreed to hear a case about Net Metering 3.0.
The court agreed on Wednesday to hear a challenge to a disastrous decision by the California public utilities commission, or CPUC, to decimate the state’s once-thriving rooftop solar program. The appeal was filed by the Center for Biological Diversity, or CBD, Environmental Working Group and the Protect Our Communities Foundation...
“The Supreme Court’s decision is a ray of hope for rooftop solar at a time when plummeting installations and massive layoffs are wrecking this vital industry and jeopardizing California’s climate goals,” said Roger Lin, a senior attorney at CBD.
We'll have to wait and see what happens but there's still a chance this decision could be reversed or dialed back. More recently, California Democrats have come up with an even worse plan which amounts to an income tax paid to your utility company.
Under the proposal, households will see a fixed rate covering basic electricity services and the utility company’s operating costs on a scale based on their household income.
- Households with annual income from $28,000 – $69,000 would pay $20 a month in Edison territory, $34 a month in SDG&E territory and $30 a month in PG&E territory.
- Households earning from $69,000 – $180,000 would pay $51 a month in Edison and PG&E territories and $73 a month in SDG&E territory.
- Those with incomes above $180,000 would pay $85 a month in Edison territory, $128 a month in SDG&E territory and $92 a month in PG&E territory.
In California Karl Marx is now apparently running the utilities. Those rates aren't based on usage, just on income and this new plan could take effect as soon as this summer. If it goes through I will be paying about $1,000 a year to Southern California Edison even though I literally generate more electricity than I use on an annual basis. It's stuff like this that makes people decide to pack up and leave the state of California for good.
I think our state’s utility company gives discounted rates to elderly people based on income. Perhaps they have other stuff too? “You may qualify for a rebate on your new furnace based on your income”, etc.
Yet another example of why the wealthy should be prohibited from government and politics.
They’re too far removed from the common man to be involved in their governance.
Even without Big Brother taking his cut, how's that working out for you long term? Had to replace your battery pack yet?
When you consider the cost of mining, manufacturing and, sooner rather than later, disposal, let alone auxiliary damage, is any supposedly green energy actually green at this point?
The democrats are not happy that there was a 85% drop in sales. They want 100% drop.
What is sad is those rates look really good in comparison to what I pay in Colorado”
The Author poorly explained the proposed rates. Those are essentially fixed delivery fees not including actual usage. The per kilowatt rate would supposedly go down a bit if enacted. I though I read a few weeks back this proposal was dead, but maybe not.
Back when I had my system installed in 2021 and added onto in 2022, I couldn't find a U.S. supplier of batteries with quality and price that could compete with Chinese ones.
Utilities are state regulated. States know your income.
You don’t need to tell them anything when all they need to do is fly a drone over your home or use a satellite pic.
Well, duh!! Under the old system, suppliers were required to buy electricity for the same price that they sold it. That’s a formula for bankruptcy. They had to buy it when it’s at a surplus and sell it when there’s a shortage. Who would ever do that without government coercion.
and
home solar system doesn’t make good economic sense. Of course, if they raise the rates high enough, maybe it would.
It depends a lot on your situation and if you do your homework. For example, without selling power to the grid I was slated for my home energy project to pay for itself in 12 years, with my solar panels having 25-year/70% throughput warranties (guaranteed to have only a small loss in throughput each year so that on the 25th year they'd still be producing 70% as much power). My batteries have a 19-year/50% warranty.
I installed some of them in spring 2021, liked it, and adding on to it in the fall of 2022 to make the full version I wanted (but only after I made sure the smaller version worked as well as expected). And after having the full system for a year (and seeing how it handled my now all-electric home, including charging the EV for 16K miles per year of home charged miles, and handled the changing seasons), I calculated when my payback point was. That assumed the aforementioned degradation of throughput, and also a 3% inflation rate in the power rates I mostly avoid. The payback point is 12 years after the 2021 install (11 years after the 2022 upgrade).
And all of that was without selling power to the grid. I recently started selling power to the grid. In my state there are extra fees us solar users have to pay if we sell power to the grid. Plus, the rate we get per kWh for selling is usually 1/5th to 1/4th the rate we pay per kWh for buying power. So I recommend anybody considering solar to plan on not ever selling power to the grid (which means your payback math is based only on saving power, not selling power, and also means you'll buy inverters with the option to turn off grid-sell like mine have). Then only after having solar for a year and seeing how well it performs in all seasons do you crunch the numbers and decide if selling power to the grid makes you more than the extra fees. Otherwise it's best to not sell to the grid and just be a normal residential power consumer like everybody else (only don't pull from the grid as much because your solar saves you power).
But you MUST do your own homework first. And don't forget other energy saving techniques such as caulk-sealing cracks, adding gaskets around doors, adding insulation, replacing old HVAC and water heater with more efficient ones. In my case, because I live in the south it made economical sense to convert my two natural gas appliances to electric (but only because I can produce homemade power, I wish I could produce homemade nat gas).
One thing to keep in mind is that you have to increase your home insurance coverage. My insurance doesn't have a solar fee. But I raised my premiums when I raised my coverage amount because if a tornado comes (in Alabama we call it "tornado insurance" instead of "fire insurance" LOL) I'll need more coverage to not only rebuild the house, but replace the solar system. Another thing to keep in mind is if you put the panels onto your roof, you have to consider the years left on your shingles (I have a fairly new metal roof that ought to outlast my 25-year warranty solar panels).
And of course, there's the solar tax credit (I hate it both because I hate the govt messing with the market and I hate that it artificially inflates the upfront prices I had to pay). The 30% credit is non-refundable, but does carry forward. In other words, I haven't received all of the tax credit yet, only part of it. When I file my taxes a year from now it'll get the remaining portion of my credit. I use that solar tax credit refund to pay down on the HELOC I took out to buy and install the solar equipment, install upgraded HVAC and water heater, and help make payments on the EV.
So there's a lot to take in. Last but not least is an analysis of how much power you consume on a regular day, how much that changes in the seasons, and how much peak solar hours you get per day in your area (and how that changes in the seasons). YOU HAVE TO DO YOUR HOMEWORK.
But it works for me. In the past 366 days, 80.7% of all of the power we consumed was from homemade power. That includes charging the EV for 15K miles of the 25K miles we drove it in the past 12 months (not counting the 10K miles we charged elsewhere). That means that when the Dims at the national level mess up energy costs, it impacts our budget only in the 20% of power we buy from the grid, plus gasoline cost for what little we drive the gas pickup, plus long trip driving costs (either gas or power, depending on which car we take). It's a sweet feeling to have my quasi-retired budget not have to worry about future energy policies having much impact on our long-term financial planning.
That’s true enough,.
As for the income issue, here’s the bill, 39 pages if it.
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220AB205
But darned if I understand how the heck they find out what you make.
Folks can do a find in page search using income.
Maybe someone else can figure it out.
In any case, since taxpayers are funding LIHEAP to the tune of BILLIONS, why the heck is this legislation needed, eh?
BTW, LIHEAP funds can be used for cooling, too.
And I just checked...
The total funding for FY 2023 LIHEAP is $6.1 billion.
Via the utility providing net metering.
They buy your electricity and you are being taxed on that income.
I don’t think they can tax on an off grid system
One cannot purchase a self cleaning oven any more
It’s California.. the most f’ed up state in the United States with another 25 or so right behind them.
A 1099 issued to customer by utility
The utility issues a 1099.
Easy peasy
Just checked out more...
6 to 7 million families receiving LIHEAP assistance.
So, roughly (and not worrying about overhead= administrative costs), $6 bil divided by 7 mill comes to...
About $857/per family annually if they got it all, which they don’t.
But still a good deal of money.
Bet it’s not taxed, either.
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