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New Hampshire Net Metering Veto Could Crush Rooftop Industry

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent

New England is one of the hottest solar areas of the country, with New Jersey, New York and Massachusetts getting all the attention. Unfortunately, New Hampshire may not be joining them after their governor vetoed a bill designed to raise an arbitrary 1 MW cap on net metering.

The Concord (N.H.) Monitor reports on the turmoil into which the veto has thrown the rooftop solar industry. As David Brooks writes:

Not surprisingly, the governor’s veto of a bill to make large solar projects more profitable has put a number of municipal solar projects on hold, or at least up in the air.

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Under current law, any project over 1 MW is not eligible for net metering. The bill would have raised that cap to 5 MW had the governor not vetoed it.

But Governor Chris Sununu vetoed the bill anyway, arguing that net-metering compensation would hurt other non-solar consumers, who would pay for grid upkeep that solar consumers don’t pay for. In other words, it’s the old cost shift argument raised to the level of the governor’s office.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with the “cost shift” argument, it is the erroneous lie that solar consumers don’t pay their fair share of costs for grid upkeep. The truth is that the cost shift doesn’t happen until at least 10% of a state’s electricity is generated from solar – currently only the case in five states, of which New Hampshire is not one.

And even in those five states, the cost shift is only only a fraction of a penny per kilowatt-hour. In other words, it’s not even worth talking about.

It’s the one disappointing part of Brooks’ article, which otherwise is quite good. He accepts the cost shift argument without challenge. It’s a common error among the popular press, who aren’t as familiar with the reality of the solar industry as some of the rest of us are.

It’s up to us to point this out in an effort to educate more people about this pernicious lie so that utilities – and their politicians like Sununu – can’t pull the wool over the eyes of the general public.

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Veto of net metering bill puts solar projects on hold

Could DTE Proposal Kill Rooftop Solar In Michigan? Advocates Say Yes

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent

Just when you think Michigan is finally getting its solar act together, utilities like DTE Energy hatch plans to destroy rooftop solar in the state, at least according to the advocates that talked to our friends at Inside Climate News.

Becky Standfield, the Midwest director for Vote Solar, isn’t one for hyperbole. She’s one of the most level-headed solar activists I’ve known. So to see her say this to ICC was both startling and arresting:

“It is very clear that DTE is trying to put a dagger in the heart of rooftop solar in Michigan.”

Whoa. And that’s not even the strongest comparison advocates are making.

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A little background on this fight is necessary here. Traditionally, net metering is done at a the retail rate – a one-to-one exchange. But under current Michigan law, there is no set level of compensation set, meaning utilities can pay solar consumers at whatever rate the Public Utilities Commission will allow.

Right now, DTE Energy has a proposal before the PUC that will allow them to compensate solar consumers at the wholesale rate, which would be approximately 75% under retail rate.

How can they justify this highway robbery? Well, it’s the zombie lie of the “cost shift” again raising its ugly head. In case you’re not familiar with this well-worn piece of nonsense (and utilities across the country cling to it like a drowning man to a life preserver), the “cost shift” argument holds that solar customers don’t pay their fair share of grid upkeep. Therefore, the “costs” of their energy self-production are then passed on to non-solar consumers.

And as I’m sick of writing, it’s complete bunk. The cost shift doesn’t happen until a state gets at least 10% of its electricity from solar power (which only occurs in five states now, and Michigan is not one of them). Once the cost shift happens, it’s only fractions of a penny per kilowatt-hour – so even at its worst it’s a marginal cost at best.

A 75% cut in compensation for electricity exports would essentially kill rooftop solar in Michigan, mirroring, says Inside Climate News, the screeching halt a similar proposal in Nevada visited up on that state’s solar industry.

That was so bad that it took two years before the solar industry was even a shell of its former self, and three years later the rooftop solar industry is still recovering.

Michigan should learn from Nevada’s example. It’s PUC should reject DTE Energy’s ridiculous request.

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High-Stakes Fight Over Rooftop Solar Spreads to Michigan

What’s The Matter With Kansas? Demand Charges, That’s What

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent

Ah, Kansas, why did you go and have to be the exception?

The Kansas Corporation Commission (KCC) (which regulates its utilities) decided last week to grant the proposals made by the state’s two largest utilities – Westar Energy and Kansas City Power & Light to lower utility bills for everyone in their service areas except solar users.

For some reason, the KCC decided it would allow solar users to be penalized for generating their own electricity by hitting them with a demand charge that could cost solar users anywhere between $27 and $36 a month, according to calculations by the Wichita Eagle.

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When we originally wrote about this last month, we had hoped Kansas would continue the trend shown by so many other regulatory bodies, in finding demand charges to be too confusing for average customers to understand. And in the case of Westar, we were also hoping the KCC would reject the ridiculous zombie lie that solar users don’t pay their fair share of grid upkeep, which reared its ugly head again in the Westar argument.

This is the “cost shift” argument which, for those of you who have not followed our work on this before, plays out thusly:

But unfortunately, the KCC allowed the wool to be pulled over its eyes. In its ruling, it wrote (again quoting the Wichita Eagle):

“The Commission finds that, in Westar’s case, under the two-part rate design for (solar) customers currently in place, the (solar) customers are receiving a preferential rate,” the commission said in its order approving the settlement.

Ugh, for the last time, SOLAR USERS AREN’T GETTING PREFERENTIAL TREATMENT, FOR CRYING OUT LOUD. That’s a lie. It’s nonsense. And you on the KCC should have been smart enough to recognize it as such.

It’s so disappointing to see a misguided ruling such as this because it will essentially strangle Kansas’ budding solar industry before it even gets to take its first breath – and that’s a damn shame.

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New Westar Energy rates will benefit average customer but not solar power users

Proposed Kansas Demand Fees Could Bring Solar Installations To A Screeching Halt

(Stephen) Moore’s “Law” Fails When Facts Are Fake

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent

If you have followed conservative political thought at all over the past 30 years, you’re familiar with Stephen Moore. Currently a senior fellow at the conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation, Moore has been around since he was the president of the anti-tax group Club For Growth (which is not, as it is often mistaken for, a hair replacement club).

Now at the Heritage Foundation, his voice resonates with far greater reach and allows him to land his particular free market gospel at places like Creators.com, which is where I found his most recent screed, “How Solar and Wind Mandates Tax the Poor and Middle Class.”

As i started reading the piece, fully ready to be wowed by the intellectual rigor and argument from someone at the Heritage Foundation, what I found instead was a bunch of repackaged gobbledy gook – think my infamous “zombie lie” writ large – seasoned with a dash from Adam Smith’s Invisible Hand that exists only in the fever dreams of market absolutists and ignored inconvenient facts about what he lovingly refers to as subsidies.

Let’s dive right into to this poorly argued mess, shall we?

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Out of the gate, what Stephen Moore wants you to “know” is that solar and windpower is expensive. So central is this fake “fact” to his argument that he uses the word “expensive” explicitly twice in his second paragraph, where he begins his argument by saying the renewable portfolio standards (which he refers to as “renewable energy standards,” but are the same thing) force utilities to purchase “expensive renewable energy” and “expensive solar and wind power.”

This assertion contains no facts to back it up – it’s just baldly stated as if it were a truism. One marvels, then, at the most recent report from the Solar Energy Industries Association that insists that utility-scale solar – you know, solar built and run by utilities – has been the biggest boom segment of the industry. Moore would argue that it’s the result of RPS’s that they are building these solar farms and that, without the mandate, they’d just keep merrily building fossil fuel plants and burning through coal and oil as if there were no tomorrow.

Except that, of course, the opposite is true. They are building solar farms because they are actually the least expensive option in a lot of states and may soon be the least expensive option nationwide. Utilities are choosing solar over more expensive fossil fuel and nuclear plants – they aren’t being forced to to do it. And they’re passing those savings on to their customers.

So having set up the strawman of “expensive renewable energy,” Stephen Moore proceeds to beat it with the “zombie lie” of the cost shift, saying utilities are increasing rates on non-solar customers because of the expense of buying solar energy.

Sigh. I don’t mind having to fight with these people, but could they at least come up with some original arguments now and then. Sheesh.

As we’ve discussed ad nauseum, the solar “cost shift” doesn’t happen until at least 10% of a state’s electricity comes from solar power, something that is occurring in only five states. That leaves 45 states where Moore’s argument is a flat-out lie, and in the five remaining states, the “cost shift” is fractions of a penny per kilowatt-hour. So this idea that somehow utilities buying solar is a tax on the middle and lower classes – the heart of Moore’s brainless argument – is laughable.

Finally, and this is where I literally chuckled out loud, Stephen Moore ends his piece by talking about how is solar and wind are so good, why can’t they compete without mandates and subsidies? Let’s let the market work, people, he says.

To which I respond – you first. The day the fossil fuel industries give up their subsidies is the day solar should give up its subsidies, and not a moment before.

The bottom line is this – solar is becoming increasingly competitive with fossil fuels, and there is a day coming when solar+storage (another development Moore seems to have never heard of) is going to displace fossil fuels throughout the United States. And guys like Moore are going to be sad – but you know what? Making Moore sad is a perfectly reasonable outcome from where I’m sitting.

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How Solar and Wind Mandates Tax the Poor and Middle Class