How dumb is CA? This dumb:
(WSJ)
"The state has installed so many panels that it has a glut of solar power during the day. Last year, California implemented new rules that cut the amount of compensation most rooftop solar owners get for the electricity they send to the grid by 75% or more to manage the oversupply and soaring costs for upgrading the grid.
Residential solar sales have dropped to a quarter of what they were a year ago, and more than a fifth of the state’s solar contractors have been laid off, according to some estimates.
“It was like getting a gut punch,” says Carlos Beccar, marketing director of Fresno-based Energy Concepts, a solar installer that had to lay off more than half its 75 employees after sales plummeted as much as 90% following the new rules.
Households are getting hit with the ballooning costs of building or upgrading electrical grids and other critical infrastructure to support the energy transition. Electric rates under California utility PG&E have increased 127% in the past decade along with surging costs for wildfire prevention and grid upgrades. Nearly a quarter of the utility’s customers are now delinquent on their bills.
California, which aims to run on 100% clean energy by 2045, generates much more solar power than its electrical grid can handle during the day. The change to metering rules is an attempt to spread the cost of grid development and push homeowners to install batteries to store excess power. New rooftop solar installations in the state have plummeted 75% as a result, and an estimated 17,000 workers at companies that put panels on rooftops have been laid off. A state law that makes higher-income people pay more for their electricity has split the clean-energy community.
Mark McKean, a third-generation farmer in central California, has installed solar panels since 2017 to power irrigation pumps for his fields and orchards and lower his electricity bills. The metering changes meant he would have to sell all the solar electricity he generates to PG&E at low prices and buy what he uses back at high rates. Adding more panels, he said, “doesn’t make financial sense any more.”
.................
I took a course in college on the Economics of Regulation, we had a bunch of master candidates and lots of people in suits from the utility companies (they audited). The fundamentals of utilities is to have a large economic base and deliver less expensive cost to the consumer. Increasing the solar base has been a colossal mistake and the result in a bizarre rate structure that punish consumers.
