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After resigning for health reasons, a member of the California Public Utilities Commission has warned of intense pressure by utilities to protect against the incursion of rooftop solar energy.
Commissioner Mark Ferron announced last week that he could no longer perform his duties as commissioner after two years of treatment for prostate cancer. In a jocular parting report, he praised California for its leading role on energy and climate policy, while warning that its utilities “would still dearly like to strangle rooftop solar if they could.”
By order of the state Legislature (Assembly Bill 327), the commission is poised to overhaul how much customers can be rewarded for generating their own solar electricity. Ferron, a former executive at Deutsche Bank and Salomon Brothers, warned that zealous legislators with little experience in energy matters have handed the commission “a poisoned chalice.”
“The commission will come under intense pressure to use this authority to protect the interests of the utilities over those of consumers and potential self-generators” of solar electricity, he wrote, “all in the name of addressing exaggerated concerns about grid stability, cost and fairness.”
“You — my fellow commissioners — all must be bold and forthright in defending and strengthening our state’s commitment to clean and distributed energy,” he stated.
Industry analysts and advisers, including the investor-owned utilities association Edison Electric Institute, have issued public warnings of a disruptive threat to existing utility business models by the accelerating adoption of rooftop solar, and other “distributed generation” of electricity by customers.
Ferron said California is approaching an “inflection point” of business and policy opportunities with the convergence of new technologies, changing economics and urgent climate change concerns, while wondering “whether some top managers at our utilities have the ability or the will to understand and control the far-flung and complex organizations they oversee.”
Ferron’s departure leaves one vacancy on the five-seat, governor-appointed commission.
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The California Public Utilities Commission is considering a proposal to shift charges away from heavy users of home electricity toward low-use customers. San Diego Gas & Electric, the author of the proposal, says its low-use customers have been paying far less than it costs to serve them.
Will high utilities bills effect the value of your home? Will solar add value to your home? Contact the real estate appraisers at www,scappraisals.com for your home value questions.
The changes, if approved, would increase kilowatt-hours charges on everyone’s initial allotment of electricity by an estimated 24 percent come July 1, according to recent filings by SDG&E with the California Public Utilities Commission. The largest home-electricity users would avoid a major bill hike, and could see some reductions.
The proposal is only a prelude to a major restructuring of residential utility bills in early 2015, as mandated by the state legislature last year. Assembly Bill 327, signed by Gov. Jerry Brown in October, allows the utility commission to raise fixed fees to as much as $120 a year and reconfigure the current “tiered” rate structure that steps up charges in four steps according to how much electricity is used by the end of each month.
read more at: http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2014/feb/06/big-changes-utility-rates/
Disclaimer: for information and entertainment purposes only
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