The California Public Advocates Office (PAO) published this in late August a fact sheet on net metering which claims the state’s rooftop solar incentives will cost customers without solar an estimated $8.5 billion by the end of the year. The PAO is a government agency tasked with advocating for the lowest possible bills for customers of California’s regulated utilities.
The PAO says that while the new NEM 3.0 net billing rate (NBT) is an improvement over previous net metering programs, it does not address the ongoing “cost shifting” from older NEM 1.0 and 2.0 customers to non-solar payers .
The calculation of the cost shift by the PAO.
In response, the PAO proposes that the state take one of two actions: Provide NEM 2.0 customers with compensation set at the electricity rates in effect at the time the incentives were introduced, or NEM 1.0 and 2.0 -convert bills to the NBT, either when selling a house or after 10 years of interconnection.
Bernadette Del Chiaro, Executive Director of the California Solar & Storage Association (CALSSA). World of solar energy that she is not concerned about the implications of the report on solar energy policy in California, but that she is concerned about the PAO’s position on solar energy.
“The California Public Advocates Office (PAO) recently published a fact sheet that echoes the rooftop solar debate, repeating the highly inaccurate cost of rooftop solar to argue for changing contract terms for two million solar energy consumers. PAO’s unprecedented anti-solar activism is misguided and wrong,” CALSSA said in a press statement.