Victory for Solar-Friendly Rates in PG&E Territory

The California Public Utilities Commission voted down proposals by PG&E that would have been a big step backward for solar customers. The two major victories were 1) the CPUC opted to maintain its 4 tier rate structure, wherein high usage customers are given a strong price signal to conserve electricity or invest in solar to offset the cost of high usage, and 2) PG&E will not be allowed to implement a fixed customer charge.

Why does this matter? Because rate design, or the process of setting electricity prices, is one of the most important factors in the financial decision for energy customers to go solar. Since much of a solar energy system’s value comes from the utility payments it is offsetting, electricity rates have a significant impact on a solar customer’s return on investment.

In the PG&E rate case, the utility had proposed eliminating its 4th residential tier – effectively moving its highest consumption customers into a lower tier and raising rates for others. This closely follows PG&E’s decision to eliminate Tier 5, which recently penalized existing PV owners and makes the changing price dynamics for solar even more extreme – not helpful when you’re trying to encourage investments with long-term payoffs. We modeled the impact of these proposals across a variety of consumption levels, PV system sizes and geographic locations under the two rate scenarios. The modeling showed that most PV customers would lose bill savings in a big way under PG&E’s proposed changes. The graph below illustrates the impact to a typical Tier 4 customer:

Furthermore, PG&E proposed a fixed $3.00 charge in lieu of its existing minimum charge. On policy grounds, Vote Solar opposes flat charges like these because they represent a lost opportunity to incentivize energy conservation and customer investment in PV; in other words, no amount of customer activity would be able to reduce that charge. And the net effect of the proposal would be to drive up rates for low usage customers and reduce rates for high usage customers.

Vote Solar is a non-profit grassroots organization working to fight climate change and foster economic opportunity by bringing solar energy into the mainstream.