glass half full

California net metering bill progresses 1

Just to follow up on a previous thread, AB 560 (the bill to lift the net metering cap in California) passed a key hurdle today, passing out of the Senate Energy, Utilities, and Communications committee by a vote of 9-1. The bill was amended—instead of lifting the 2.5 percent cap on net metering to 10 percent of utility system peak load, the bill now lifts the cap to 5 percent. While that’s half of what we wanted, it’s still twice the status quo, and as a direct result, Pacific Gas and Electric and Southern California Edison (though not Sempra, the third investor-owned utility in the state) are now in support. I got to say, I found the hostility of some of the Senators to this program really surprising. We’ll take the win.

The bill now goes to Senate Appropriations Committee, and then to the Senate floor (if all goes well, likely in August).

 

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  1. neosapiens Posted 2:29 pm
    09 Jul 2009

    A feed-in tarriff system might work better, but net metering does work pretty well for both the end-user with a small solar PV system and for the utility company. The end-user gets more value out of generating power, and the utility gets locally-generated power that supports the peak load, minimizes losses, minimizes maintenance costs on the grid, and helps to motivate the end-user to shift power usage to off-peak hours (leaving as much of the generated power to support peak power demand as possible).   My guess is that the utilities want more control (they want to be the power producers) and they want to get a bigger slice of the benefits when an end-user does generate power (i.e., simple greed).  I really believe that net metering or feed-in tarriffs are essential to push the roll-out of distributed generation as quickly as possible, and that is something we need as part of our GHG reduction efforts.  Unfortunately, folks like me who do generate power at home can't benefit from generating any more power than we consume, since the utiltily company pockets any extra benefits. All in all, net metering has worked pretty well for me.

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