The Public Utilities Commission proposal that went public in December would cut the rates that customers can get when they sell their excess solar power back to utilities. The proposal would also impose a new monthly fee to connect solar customers to the grid. Plus, it would set aside $600 million to help lower-income communities go solar and add battery storage for peak evening hours after the sun goes down, when electrical usage is still high.
There are two competing visions for what solar power generation will look like in California. Solar installers want it distributed, in small arrays on rooftops across the state. Utilities want to invest in large-scale arrays developed out in the desert and built by union labor.
Many environmentalists ask, why don’t we have both?
“It is going to be a tall order to build out all the resources we need to hit our climate targets. And California needs a thriving rooftop solar industry,” said Kate Ramsay, an attorney with the Sierra Club, one of the many parties that weighed in to ask state regulators to keep the subsidies. She says the fact that this discussion is going on at all means that California’s green energy industry is thriving and mature.
“We have greened many parts of our grid,” she said. “Now a lot of parties are trying to focus on decarbonizing those peak hours in the late afternoons and evenings, when we’re firing up our gas plants, particularly on the hottest days of the summer.”
Ben Giustino, owner of A1 Sun, shows off a packet of rooftop solar panels at his Berkeley business in February 2022. (Raquel Maria Dillon)
Rooftop solar systems won’t solve that peak problem, unless more homeowners invest in battery storage. The proposed changes include incentives to install batteries. But they’ll also mean it’ll take longer for the savings on power bills to pay off after a home gets panels.
Ben Giustino, with A1 Sun, the Berkeley company that installed the Coopers’ panels and battery, says solar installers are in limbo, waiting for the PUC to reevaluate its proposal and wondering what to tell their customers and sales leads in the meantime.
Giustino’s father founded the company, which makes Ben the second generation in his family to work in solar. It’s a family-owned business, complete with a dog named Sunshine. He and his colleagues are riled up about what the Public Utilities Commission might do to their industry. But he says one thing he’s learned from watching his dad over the years is that solar is a threat to the status quo, which benefits investor-owned utilities.
“People call it the solar coaster. It’s a disruptive technology. And so there’s a lot of larger powers that don’t really necessarily know what to do with it or like it because it challenges their way of doing business,” Giustino said. He thinks the proposal before the Public Utilities Commission was bought and paid for by investor-owned utilities and jeopardizes the future of clean energy in California.
“There’s rooftops that can be used” to generate power, he said. “That benefits the homeowners, it benefits the grid, it reduces CO2 emissions. So the main gist of what investor-owned utilities are trying to do is pull the rug out from the competition so they can maintain monopoly.”
The California Solar and Storage Association, which represents installers and the 75,000 Californians who work in the solar industry, says the proposed changes to subsidies would cost thousands of jobs statewide. Giustino says they would jeopardize a dozen jobs at his company. But worse, he says, cutting subsidies and adding fees would make solar power a niche industry, like it was when his dad got into the business — only for tinkerers, off-grid homesteaders and devoted environmentalists.
“There’s still lots of people here who are probably going to install solar just because it’s the right thing to do,” he said. “But if you look across the state and across the industry, there’s no doubt that people will stop installing solar if it stops making financial sense for them.”
Since the proposal came out in December, it’s been busy at A1 Sun. Potential customers want to complete their solar projects and get grandfathered in before regulators make a decision. But even customers who already have rooftop arrays will lose their current rates eventually. Exactly when depends on what California utility regulators decide to do.
Under the much-criticized proposal that the PUC is reevaluating, Luverta Cooper will be grandfathered in and able to sell power for solar credits at current rates for the next 15 years, and then at dramatically lower rates. But Veronica Young is quick to admit that part of what inspired her and her family to go solar was that “we truly hate PG&E” because the company isn’t managing the environment and wildfire risk well.
“PG&E has not done what they should have,” she said. “And because of that, the customer is being punished. We’re the ones paying the lawsuits that they lost.”
Young and her mother don’t buy the arguments about equity, even though the family is African American.
“Veronica did not grow up poor, but I did. And so I do understand that part of it,” Cooper said. “I have family who couldn’t afford to do this, and I understand those issues, but I don’t feel like I need to be made responsible for what others are doing. I’m taking responsibility for my own situation.”
Cooper says she and her husband worked hard to buy this house back in 1984, so she could provide her daughter with all the privileges of a middle-class upbringing. She intends to keep her home updated so she can pass it on to her daughter and share the generational wealth she’s accumulated.
“A lot of the people who do solar aren’t exactly truly rich,” Young said. “I think they’re like us, who are [a] middle-class family who want to get off from paying unpredictable energy bills.”
