Free Republic

Ballot initiatives to protect the current system, which state regulators say steals from the poor to benefit the rich, are filed for 2022 election. Regulators want to destroy rooftop solar to protect the obscene profits of utility companies, one side charges. The other side claims rooftop solar owners are circling the wagons to protect their own profits — the over-market amount they’re paid for exporting power to their neighbors — and to avoid paying their fair share to maintain the electric grid. Under the now-tabled proposal, rooftop solar owners like Raj Pandey of Irvine would have seen the credit they...

The California Public Utilities Commission is poised to kill off much of the rooftop solar photovoltaic (PV) industry in California, which will result in the use of more polluting natural gas and biomass electricity as well as dirty electricity imported from out of state. The use of the new dirty electricity will raise air pollution death rates in California above the 12,000 per year who perish in the state already. Most of these additional deaths will be in poor communities in the Los Angeles basin and Central Valley, where pollution levels are already the highest in the state. Roof PV...

Up to 40 percent of the cost of installing solar panels onto your home or business isn't related to hardware at all, but rather due to complications from "soft costs," like permitting, zoning, and hooking your system up to the power grid. In fact, according to a report released earlier this year by SunRun, local permitting and inspection processes alone add more than $2,500 per residential installation nationwide. To add to the problem, permitting and other processes are often complicated and vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. In order to make solar energy competitive with other types of energy, it will be...