This is not an opinion of the Green Real Estate Appraiser Blog. This is an article from the San Diego Union Tribune Newspaper.
“Just figure out what’s next,” visionary CEO of Apple, the late Steve Jobs, told an interviewer when asked about his success.
Jobs’s computer industry was infinitely more competitive than the static world of regulated utility companies. Jobs wasn’t running a monopoly with captive customers whose daily lives would collapse without his products. He didn’t have guaranteed profits predetermined by regulators. He couldn’t run to the public for rate increases.
Jobs did, however, have an unyielding compulsion to move forward, not backward. SDG&E’s controversial proposal to slap solar customers with a “network use charge” doesn’t just turn back the clock on responsible energy policy. It is a wholesale attempt to wipe out rooftop solar in order to protect an antiquated way of doing business by a company that, unlike Jobs, failed to evolve.
SDG&E argues that solar customers, who typically contribute power into the region’s grid during the day and draw from the grid at night, aren’t paying their fair share of upkeep costs. With public interest in solar soaring – prior to SDG&E’s proposal, county government was on pace to issue 1,336 solar permits by June 2012, a 36 percent increase over the prior year – the utility argues that non-solar customers are somehow “subsidizing” their neighbors.
SDG&E’s claims ring fantastically hollow when you count up the regional benefits of rooftop solar and weigh them against the devastating consequences of SDG&E’s network use charge.
Read entire article: http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2011/dec/04/sdges-hollow-claims-hide-utilitys-real-motive/
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